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

‘Thanks, Lisa,’ Ford said when she’d finished. ‘That’s really helpful.’

The trouble was, the description, give or take a black moustache, fitted hundreds of men in Salisbury. Including Matty Kyte. And Charles Abbott.

He called Jools. ‘Can you bring photos of Matty and Abbott to Forensics, please?’

When they showed Lisa the two pictures, one from the SDH website, the other from the PNC, she studied both but then shook her head. She pointed to Matty’s vacant, staring face.

‘It could be him. He looks a bit more like him than that other one. I’m sorry, but I’m still not really sure.’

‘Thanks,’ Ford said. ‘And don’t worry about not making the ID. Your fight-or-flight reflex kicked in hard, which probably saved your life. But that amount of adrenaline also does funny things to memory. One last thing. Did he say anything to you while he was attacking you? Anything sexual, for example?’

She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. ‘Not sexual, no.’ Then her eyes popped wide. ‘He called me worthless. Bastard,’ she added, feelingly.

Ford nodded his agreement. ‘I’m going to get one of my detectives to take a formal statement from you. Can you stay here till it’s done, or do you want to go home and have them take it there?’

She shrugged. ‘Here’s fine. I can get the feel of the place. You know, for when I’m working here.’

He smiled, amazed yet again at her coolness. But then, he reflected, infantry regiments weren’t exactly places for shrinking violets.

DAY SIXTEEN, 2.10 P.M.

The pain in his balls is bad enough, a dull ache that’s spread up into his belly. It makes walking upright hard: he has to stumble, bent at the waist, to the front door and let himself inside.

But it’s the pain in his head that’s worse. A searing, blinding rage. How dare she! She should have gone down like the others, his to bleed and dispose of like the piece of trash she is.

He hears his father’s voice again, the relentless insults and demeaning remarks throughout his childhood: ‘You’re a worthless piece of shit! You killed your brother before he was even born. Catch it! CATCH IT! Oh, you dumb little twerp, it’s a rugby ball, not an atomic bomb, it won’t hurt you!’

Grinding his teeth so hard he can hear them scrape together, he goes looking for her. Finds her in the sitting room with one of those, those, bloody magazines! She turns and smiles up at him.

He rolls his sleeve up and holds the injured arm out for her to see.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a blood injury.’

‘Oh, baby,’ she says. ‘How?’

He gives her the answer he has dreamt up in the car. ‘One of the patients had a fit.’

She fetches a first-aid kit and frees the flap with a rasp of Velcro. She selects a fresh tube of Savlon and twists the cap off. She squeezes a pea-sized blob of the ointment on to the tip of her index finger and smooths it on to the first of the scratches. He watches each movement. She’s good enough to be a real nurse.

She repeats the process until each of the nasty little wounds is smeared with the antiseptic. She takes her time circling the pad of her little finger over each scratch.

One of the cuts has started weeping. Holding her husband’s gaze, she bends her head to his arm and touches the tip of her tongue to it, licking away the pink cream.

‘Does that feel better, baby?’ she asks, keeping her head down, cradling his forearm against her cheek.

‘A little.’

‘Do you want to play doctors and nurses later?’

He grunts. ‘You’d like that, would you?’

She lowers her head further. Unzips him. ‘I like what you like,’ she mumbles.

He drags her head away by the hair, making her yelp. The frustration is overwhelming. He’s missed out on the fifth litre and now his whole plan is ruined.

The slap isn’t hard. Not really. Not compared to the blow he feels like delivering. But his wedding ring catches her lip and splits it, and at the sight of the blood he screams in anger and frustration. ‘Bitch!’

‘But, sweetheart,’ she says, lisping as her lip swells, ‘why—’

He grabs her face, squeezing his fingertips deep into the flesh of her cheeks so her bleeding mouth pooches out in a way he finds comical.

‘Shut up! Do you hear me? Shut. The hell. Up!’ He stares into her face. ‘I couldn’t get any blood today. They . . . They were doing a stock check.’

She croaks out an answer, but it’s inaudible because of the hard grip he has on her jaw. He releases her.

‘What did you say?’

‘Can’t you just get some more?’

He slaps her again. Harder this time. Her head swings to the left with the force of it. If she knew where the blood was really coming from, she wouldn’t ask such a stupid question.

He raises his hand again and enjoys the way the movement makes her flinch. Maybe when this is all over I’ll get rid of her. Find someone younger.

He changes his mind about hitting her. Instead he reaches over and sticks his hand inside her blouse. Finds her left nipple and pinches it hard. She moans with the pain, but there’s something else below that, something animalistic. He feels his erection growing.

‘Take your clothes off,’ he says hoarsely.

After they finish, he gets dressed and goes into town. He buys some loose buckshot from Berret & Sartain, the gunsmiths in the city centre. He spends an hour in his workshop sewing a rectangle of leather cut from an old jacket into a tube, and filling it with the shot. He smacks the finished sap into his palm.

Later, working his way down a bottle of vodka, he pulls up Tasha Young’s Facebook page. He shakes his head as he peruses her photos.

‘If you only knew who you were allowing into your life, Miss Young, you’d change your security settings like that,’ he says, snapping his fingers.

She’d put her whole