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

It’s a lie. But now she’s relieved to be on safe ground, he can see that. ‘Actually, yes, way!’ He accompanies her out of the front door and leads her to the side road where he’s left the car. ‘Come on, I’m parked over there,’ he says, pointing.

The car is just a few yards away. He’s walking a half-step behind her. Looking over at her neck. The carotid pulses at him through her translucent skin. He’s not done one there, not yet. Maybe Tasha can be the trailblazer. He’ll have to be careful. It’ll be like pushing a needle into a firehose.

His stomach is fizzing.

She’s talkative now. Gabby. He wishes she’d shut up. He pictures the moment when he hits her. He’s brought something for the job this time. After Moore fought back, he’s decided he needs to be more careful. The slim, saggy cosh he made now lies snug in the small of his back, tucked inside his waistband.

They’re at the car now. He’s opening the boot.

‘Nice car!’ she says appreciatively.

‘Tasha!’ a woman’s voice calls out.

He looks round. An older woman is hurrying across the road towards them. Tasha has turned away from him. He’s losing her. No!

‘Hi, Lesley,’ she says.

‘I was just going to grab a coffee and a cake before work. You got time?’ the woman says. ‘My treat.’

‘I was just about to run Tasha home,’ he says, trying to keep his voice light.

Tasha turns back to him. ‘I think I’ll just grab a coffee with my friend. Lesley, this is . . .’ She frowns. ‘Sorry, I don’t even know your name. How rude!’

He grimaces. ‘It’s Harvey. Harvey Williams.’

The woman steps in and shakes his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Harvey.’

Inside, he’s screaming obscenities. He pictures her dying in a welter of her own blood. Arcs of crimson spraying into a cloudless sky. Like rainbows.

He watches the two women walk away with the shopping bags, heads bent towards each other. Almost weeping with frustration, he gets into the car and after a long time staring at their retreating forms, starts the engine.

DAY EIGHTEEN, 9.05 A.M.

Charles Abbott stood talking with a colleague in the centre of the ward.

‘Has that bloody policeman been poking his nose in your business, too?’ Abbott asked his colleague.

‘What, Detective Inspector Ford?’

‘Yes.’

‘As a matter of fact, he has. One of his team has, anyway. I told her what I could, and I gave her a list of my team’s contact details, for which, incidentally, I have already been reprimanded by the chief operating officer.’

‘Bad luck. But at least she only asked you for help. For some reason, the bloody man’s got it in for me.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘About as little as I thought I could get away with.’

‘Good for you, Charles. Bloody plods marching in here, thinking they own the place. Don’t they know it’s men like us who are doing the real hard work? We save lives, for God’s sake.’

Abbott nodded his agreement as a porter approached, pushing a bedding-laden trolley.

‘’Scuse me, gents,’ he said cheerily. ‘Hello, Mr Abbott.’

Abbott glanced at the man bent over the push-rail of the trolley, hairy wrists protruding from his uniform’s shirt-cuffs.

‘Good morning, er, Matt, isn’t it?’

‘Matty, that’s right,’ the porter answered with a smile before continuing to the end of the ward.

‘Fraternising with the lower orders?’ Abbott’s colleague asked, grinning slyly. ‘You’ll be signing people’s leaving cards next.’

Abbott snorted, and had opened his mouth to answer when a scream shattered the quiet.

They whirled around, just in time to see an overweight woman slowly collapsing to the ground. The screamer was an elderly lady in the nearest bed. Before anyone else could react, Abbott rushed over to the stricken woman. In a fluid move he scooped her up, arms under her knees and shoulders, and laid her on her bed before standing back as nurses rushed to take over.

‘Impressive work there, Charles,’ his colleague said. ‘Be careful now. They’ll start a rumour you care about your patients!’

Abbott smiled back. ‘Bet you a tenner she’s dead of a coronary within the year.’

DAY EIGHTEEN, 9.30 A.M.

Ford shook his head, furious. ‘Thanks, Jools. Tell Olly he’s buying the first round tonight, for the whole team.’

Grim-faced, Jools nodded and left.

Apparently, Olly had blown the plan to snoop around Matty’s place, informing Jools it didn’t ‘sit well with my personal and professional ethics’. He’d asked to search quite openly, and Matty had refused point-blank to let them in.

His phone rang. The Python.

Sandy looked across her desk at Ford. Her stomach was a ball of iron and her pulse hammered in her chest. A call ten minutes earlier from Martin Peterson was the proximate cause of her spiking blood pressure. But behind it was the mounting sense that Operation Shoreline was destined to be a runner, maybe months or years from resolution. She’d seen good detectives brought low – sometimes to the point of suicide – when large, long-running cases fizzled out. She didn’t want it for Ford. And she definitely didn’t want it for herself.

‘Surely you’re making a little progress towards arresting someone, Sandy?’ Peterson had said, in that infuriating manner of his – a pretence at concern only just masking his contempt.

And now here was Ford, glaring at her, demanding to know why he couldn’t arrest Charles Abbott. Her chest felt tight, like she’d fastened her bra on the wrong hooks.

‘We need to do something, Sandy,’ he said. ‘He’s the best lead we have.’

‘He’s got an alibi,’ she said, rubbing her left bicep and wondering if she were about to have a heart attack right in front of her new DI.

No! She wouldn’t suffer the indignity of it. The sheer bloody indignity. She’d worked like a Trojan to get the D/Supt nameplate on her office door. And no PCC or over-eager DI was going to catapult her from her hard-earned space into a bed at the hospital.

‘Provided by his wife, for God’s sake!’ Ford was saying. ‘Look at him, Sandy. A blood