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

unpaid police community support officer and topping up her weekly shop at the Purcell Foundation.

At least she’d been able to give something back. They’d organised a blood drive earlier in the month and she’d been glad to donate. Anything to pay it forward. Or back, she supposed, given she was in receipt of their charity.

The doorbell rang.

She broke off from unpacking and went to the front door. When she opened it, she smiled. ‘Hi. Can I help you?’

The unassuming-looking guy standing on her doorstep returned the smile, though there was something unreadable in his expression. The primitive part of her brain, the part that would once have ordered her to run at the first whiff of a predator, was screaming. But she ignored it. Had she not, things might have turned out differently over the next five minutes.

‘Hi, Lisa,’ he said. ‘My name is Harvey. From the Purcell Foundation?’ He looked embarrassed behind those old-fashioned glasses.

He seemed vaguely familiar, but she didn’t want to seem rude by saying she couldn’t remember him. She felt a sudden rush of shame and stared at her feet.

‘Harvey, yes. Did you want something?’

‘It’s a bit delicate . . .’

‘Oh,’ she said, wondering if they were going to cut her adrift. Maybe there was a limit on how many times you were allowed visit the food bank, and she’d overdone it.

‘Could I come in, please? I’d prefer not to discuss it on the street. You know, where people might overhear us.’

She nodded, fighting down an urge to explain, to plead for a little more time. Just until the permanent post came up and she was back on her feet again. She turned and led him down the hallway, intending to offer him a cup of tea.

He closed the door behind him. She heard the click. Then a scuffling as his shoes slid over the worn flooring in the hall. Now she did listen to her hind-brain. Her old training kicked in, hard.

He grunted as he hit her. A vicious blow to the back of the head that would have knocked her cold had it connected properly. But she was already spinning round to face him and the blow glanced off the side of her skull, dizzying her but leaving her fully conscious.

‘You’re worthless,’ he murmured as he stepped back, preparing to strike again.

The fist came up and over a second time.

It passed over her head as she crouched. Then she drove her own, hard, into his solar plexus. He doubled over, with a groan, and she danced back a step, intending to kick him in the head and put him down.

But he thrust forwards, grabbing her shoulders and slamming her back into the wall, walloping her head into a door frame.

He reared up in front of her, hands outstretched, going for her throat. She grabbed his forearms, digging her nails in, spread them wide and stepped forward. She jerked her right knee up into his balls. With a howl, he turned, scrabbled at the door handle and escaped into the sunlit street.

Panting, she slammed the door and with shaking fingers slotted the security chain home.

‘What the hell?’ she shouted to her empty flat.

She fled to the bathroom and retched into the toilet bowl, bringing up a thin steam of yellow bile. She straightened, flushed, and was about to grab a flannel when she looked at her hands. Her fingernails were bloody and clogged.

She went to the kitchen and separated two clear sandwich bags from a roll she kept in a drawer. She placed one over her right hand and secured it with an elastic band. She repeated the process with her left hand. Then she grabbed her keys and left the flat, heading towards Bourne Hill.

‘Guv?’ Jools called from across the incident room.

Ford turned away from the whiteboard.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the front desk. There’s a female down there says she was just attacked and she thinks it’s our guy. She wants to talk to you.’

‘Tell her I’m on my way,’ Ford said, grabbing a notepad and a pen and sprinting for the stairs.

He arrived on the ground floor in under a minute to see a young woman with reddish hair pulled back into a ponytail chatting to the receptionist. She had a smear of blood on her face, although she was smiling and didn’t seem to be in any pain. Her hands were jammed into the pockets of a pair of pale grey jogging bottoms.

He hurried over. ‘I’m Inspector Ford,’ he said to the woman, trying to bring his breathing under control. ‘You were just attacked, yes?’

‘In my flat, yeah.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Lisa Moore.’

He smiled. ‘OK, Lisa, I’d like you to come with me, please.’

He ushered her into the lift and hit the button for the fourth floor. As the lift ascended, he had a chance to take a look at someone who just might have escaped the killer’s clutches. She was wearing a racerback gym top that revealed tanned, muscular arms. Not quite the ‘guns’ displayed by Jasmin Fortuna, but the woman worked out.

Physically, she bore no resemblance to Angie Halpern. Nothing in her facial features or colouring, either. But then, the target was killing men and women, so if he had a preferred type it had nothing to do with looks.

‘Did you come straight here?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I fought him off and then got here as fast as I could.’

‘That was incredibly brave of you.’

‘Thanks. I hope I hurt the bastard.’

‘Good for you.’

The doors opened. He motioned for her to leave the lift car ahead of him. ‘Let’s get you along to see the police surgeon. She can check you over.’

In the doctor’s office, having been seated on the examination couch, legs swinging over the edge, Lisa pulled her hands from her pockets.

‘I scratched him,’ she said simply, holding her bagged hands up for Ford and the doctor to see.

Ford shook his head with admiration. ‘You fought him off and collected his DNA. We should get you a job in the nick.’

To his surprise,