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

you’d need to do a home blood transfusion? ‘Nurses make good tenants, I’ve heard.’

She pursed her lips. ‘That what you think, is it? Bloody tarts, most of them. Out half the night boozing or shagging junior doctors.’

‘Not got a good opinion of them?’

‘Huh!’ she snorted. ‘They look down on the likes of me because we haven’t got the right qualifications. But I’m just as good as them.’

‘What job do you do, Jen?’

If she noticed the switch from the formal ‘Mrs Kyte’ to the informal use of her Christian name, she didn’t show it. ‘I’m a care assistant. At Martin’s Croft on the London Road. Just the elderly. No disableds or nothing. Couldn’t stand that.’

‘The nurses there don’t rate you?’

‘We don’t have nurses up there, do we? Well, one, Meg, but she’s all right.’

‘Then, who—’

‘Up at the hospital, of course! Sometimes we have to go up there if one of our residents has a fall or whatever,’ she said. ‘God, the dirty looks they give us. Like it was us what pushed them down the fucking stairs.’ She paused. ‘’Scuse my French.’

Beside him, Ford caught a sudden stiffening in Hannah’s posture at Jen’s blurted expletive.

An insight snagged in his brain. ‘Did you ever train to be a nurse?’

She folded her arms across her chest again. Classic defensive posture. Ford didn’t need an FBI-grade criminal psychologist sitting beside him to know that.

‘Started, didn’t I?’

‘Started?’

Her voice became a whine. ‘I did all right in the first year. I was brilliant on the practicals, but the essays were just too hard.’ The complaining tone intensified. ‘I mean, why do I need to be able to write an essay? Changing shitty nightdresses or pus-soaked dressings, well, it don’t exactly call for Albert-bloody-Einstein, does it?’

Was she aware of the aggression in her voice? He didn’t think so. It sounded like her natural register. ‘So you’ – don’t say ‘dropped out’ – ‘changed direction?’

‘Went into caring, didn’t I? It’s basically the same job. Of course, you don’t get the same pay.’

‘Lucky you’ve got some money put by for the clutch on the Polo.’

She frowned and her mouth opened and closed.

Ford continued, ‘The thing is, Jen, you remember you told us you and Matthew were here watching television on each of the dates when the murders were committed?’

‘It’s true!’

Panicky. Too quick. Time to change up a gear with a small white lie.

‘Your car was photographed by an automatic number-plate-recognition camera in a police car on Castle Street, just after the time when Angie and Kai Halpern were murdered. What do you have to say to that?’

Ford became aware of several sounds as he waited. Hannah’s breathing. The one-tick-per-second of a quartz wall clock to the right of the painting. Cars driving by outside. A key in the front door.

‘Babes! It’s me. Get your knickers off, I’m feeling randy!’

Matty Kyte’s voice was rough, animal – far from the mild and humble tone the charity volunteer and hospital porter used on the job.

Jen’s face reddened so that her cheeks matched her blusher. ‘I’m in the lounge. The police are here,’ she shouted.

The door swung open. Matty stood there in his blue porter’s uniform, the long-sleeved tunic dark with sweat at the armpits.

‘Inspector Ford!’ he said with a broad smile, the cheery voice back. He saw Hannah and walked over to her towards her, hand extended. ‘Hello again, Hannah.’

She took his hand and pumped it three times. ‘Hi.’

‘Sorry about that,’ he said, with a guilty smile, like a larcenous schoolboy caught by a shopkeeper with a handful of gobstoppers. ‘Just our little joke when I come home from work, isn’t it, darling?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, watching him as he lowered himself into the empty armchair. ‘He didn’t mean it. It’s just his little joke.’

‘So, how can I help you?’ Matty asked, spreading his hands wide. As he did so, his right cuff rode up over his wrist. Ford’s gaze zeroed in on the inch or so extra of exposed skin. And the little scab revealed beneath the dark cotton stitching.

‘We were just trying to sort out a little – what shall I call it? – puzzle with what you told us before, Matty.’

Matty raised his eyebrows. Then he frowned. Then he put an index finger under the point of his chin. ‘Puzzle?’ he said, finally.

‘Yeah. About your car.’

‘The Polo?’

‘With the dodgy clutch, yeah.’

‘What about it? It hasn’t been stolen, has it? God, that would solve a whole bunch of problems, wouldn’t it, Jen?’

He laughed and won an answering chuckle from his wife.

‘Wouldn’t need to get it fixed then, would we?’ she said.

‘Car theft tends not to come to Major Crimes,’ Ford said, with a smile of his own.

‘What then?’ Matty asked.

‘I was just explaining to Jen before you arrived. It was captured on camera near Angie Halpern’s flat, just after she and her son were murdered. So . . .’

Now came the interesting bit. He hadn’t told them whether the ANPR camera had caught the face of the driver. Matty could say anything: a friend borrowed it. Joyriders took it, then brought it back. But only if he knew what the police knew about the driver’s identity.

‘. . . who was driving it, Matty, you or Jen?’

Ford waited for Matty to answer. He looked around the room. One of the books on the lowest shelf was much larger than the others. Among the cheap thrillers and crime novels, this had a tatty-looking tan cloth binding. The title on the spine was picked out in gold-tooled lettering.

HARVEY’S

DE MOTU

CORDIS

The title was Latin, obviously, which Ford’s inner-city comprehensive had not felt appropriate for inclusion on its syllabus. But something about the author’s name tugged at his brain.

It was Lisa Moore’s witness statement. ‘He said his name was Harvey.’ A pretty uncommon first name. And here it was on Matty Kyte’s bookshelf.

He realised Matty still hadn’t answered his question. ‘Matty, who was driving the Polo?’ he asked again, dropping some gravel into his voice.

DAY TWENTY-ONE, 7.25 P.M.

‘It was me,’ Matty said.

Ford stared at him. Was this