Shallow Ground (Detective Ford) by Andy Maslen (to read list txt) 📕

the outlet tube and inserted a razor-tipped trocar into the other end. He placed them to one side and dragged her jeans over her hips, tugging them down past her knees. With the joints free to move, he pushed his hands between her thighs and shoved them apart.

He inserted the needle into her thigh so that it met and travelled a few centimetres up into the right femoral artery. Then he laid the blood bag on the floor and watched as the scarlet blood shot into the clear plastic tube and surged along it.

With a precious litre of blood distending the bag, he capped it off and removed the tube and the trocar. With Angie’s heart pumping her remaining blood on to the kitchen floor tiles, he stood and placed the bag inside his jacket. He could feel it through his shirt, warm against his skin. He took her purse out of her bag, found the card he wanted and removed it.

He wandered down the hall and poked his head round the door frame of the sitting room. The boy was sitting cross-legged, two feet from the TV, engrossed in the adventures of a blue cartoon dog.

‘Tea’s ready, Kai,’ he said, in a sing-song tone.

Protesting, but clambering to his feet, the little boy extended a pudgy hand holding the remote and froze the action, then dropped the control to the carpet.

Harvey held out his hand and the boy took it, absently, still staring at the screen.

DAY TWO, 8.15 A.M.

Arriving at Bourne Hill Police Station, Detective Inspector Ford sighed, fingering the scar on his chin. What better way to start the sixth anniversary of your wife’s death than with a shouting match over breakfast with your fifteen-year-old son?

The row had ended in an explosive exchange that was fast, raw and brutal:

‘I hate you! I wish you’d died instead of Mum.’

‘Yeah? Guess what? So do I!’

All the time they’d been arguing, he’d seen Lou’s face, battered by submerged rocks in the sea off the Pembrokeshire coast.

Pushing the memory of the argument aside, he ran a hand over the top of his head, trying to flatten down the spikes of dark, grey-flecked hair.

He pushed through the double glass doors. Straight into the middle of a ruckus.

A scrawny man in faded black denim and a raggy T-shirt was swearing at a young woman in a dark suit. Eyes wide, she had backed against an orange wall. He could see a Wiltshire police ID on a lanyard round her neck, but he didn’t recognise her.

The two female civilian staff behind the desk were on their feet, one with a phone clamped to her ear.

The architects who’d designed the interior of the new station at Bourne Hill had persuaded senior management that the traditional thick glass screen wasn’t ‘welcoming’. Now any arsehole could decide to lean across the three feet of white-surfaced MDF and abuse, spit on or otherwise ruin the day of the hardworking receptionists. He saw the other woman reach under the desk for the panic button.

‘Why are you ignoring me, eh? I just asked where the toilets are, you bitch!’ the man yelled at the woman backed against the wall.

Ford registered the can of strong lager in the man’s left hand and strode over. The woman was pale, and her mouth had tightened to a lipless line.

‘I asked you a question. What’s wrong with you?’ the drunk shouted.

Ford shot out his right hand and grabbed him by the back of his T-shirt. He yanked him backwards, sticking out a booted foot and rolling him over his knee to send him flailing to the floor.

Ford followed him down and drove a knee in between his shoulder blades. The man gasped out a loud ‘Oof!’ as his lungs emptied. Ford gripped his wrist and jerked his arm up in a tight angle, then turned round and called over his shoulder, ‘Could someone get some cuffs, please? This . . . gentleman . . . will be cooling off in a cell.’

A pink-cheeked uniform raced over and snapped a pair of rigid Quik-Cuffs on to the man’s wrists.

‘Thanks, Mark,’ Ford said, getting to his feet. ‘Get him over to Custody.’

‘Charge, sir?’

‘Drunk and disorderly? Common assault? Being a jerk in a built-up area? Just get him booked in.’

The PC hustled the drunk to his feet, reciting the formal arrest and caution script while walking him off in an armlock to see the custody sergeant.

Ford turned to the woman who’d been the focus of his newest collar’s unwelcome attentions. ‘I’m sorry about that. Are you OK?’

She answered as if she were analysing an incident she’d witnessed on CCTV. ‘I think so. He didn’t hit me, and swearing doesn’t cause physical harm. Although I am feeling quite anxious as a result.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Ford gestured at her ID. ‘Are you here to meet someone? I haven’t seen you round here before.’

She nodded. ‘I’m starting work here today. And my new boss is . . . hold on . . .’ She fished a sheet of paper from a brown canvas messenger bag slung over her left shoulder. ‘Alec Reid.’

Now Ford understood. She was the new senior crime scene investigator. Her predecessor had transferred up to Thames Valley Police to move with her husband’s new job. Alec managed the small forensics team at Salisbury and had been crowing about his new hire for weeks now.

‘My new deputy has a PhD, Ford,’ he’d said over a pint in the Wyndham Arms one evening. ‘We’re going up in the world.’

Ford stuck his hand out. ‘DI Ford.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, taking his hand and pumping it up and down three times before releasing it. ‘My name is Dr Hannah Fellowes. I was about to get my ID sorted when that man started shouting at me.’

‘I doubt it was anything about you in particular. Just wrong place, wrong time.’

She nodded, frowning up at him. ‘Although, technically, this is the right place. As I’m going to be working here.’ She checked her watch, a multifunction Casio with