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

or the remains of those who’d reached the end of their tether and done themselves in. But she left the amateur dramatics to the new kids. She was a sergeant, a rank she’d worked bloody hard for, and she felt a certain restraint went with the territory. So, no swearing.

She did, however, shake her head and swallow hard as she took in the scene in front of her. She’d been a keen photographer in her twenties and found it helpful to see crime scenes as if through a lens: her way of putting some distance between her and whatever horrors the job required her to confront.

In wide-shot, an obscene parody of a Madonna and child. A woman – early thirties, to judge by her face, which was waxy-pale – and a little boy cradled in her lap.

They’d been posed at the edge of a wall-to-wall blood pool, dried and darkened to a deep plum red.

She’d clearly bled out. He wasn’t as pale as his mum, but the pink in his smooth little cheeks was gone, replaced by a greenish tinge.

The puddle of blood had spread right across the kitchen floor and under the table, on which half-emptied bags of shopping sagged. The dead woman was slumped with her back against the cooker, legs canted open yet held together at the ankle by her pulled-down jeans.

And the little boy.

Looking for all the world as though he had climbed on to his mother’s lap for a cuddle, eyes closed, hands together at his throat as if in prayer. Fair hair. Long and wavy, down to his shoulders, in a girlish style Natalie had noticed some of her friends choose for their sons.

Even in midwinter, flies would find a corpse within the hour. In the middle of a scorching summer like the one southern England was enjoying now, they’d arrived in minutes, laid their eggs and begun feasting in quantity. Maggots crawled and wriggled all over the pair.

As she got closer, Natalie revised her opinion about the cause of death; now, she could see bruises around the throat that screamed strangulation.

There were protocols to be followed. And the first of these was the preservation of life. She was sure the little boy was dead. The skin discolouration and maggots told her that. But there was no way she was going to go down as the sergeant who left a still-living toddler to die in the centre of a murder scene.

Reaching him meant stepping into that lake of congealed blood. Never mind the sneers from CID about the ‘woodentops’ walking through crime scenes in their size twelves; this was about checking if a little boy had a chance of life.

She pulled out her phone and took half a dozen shots of the bodies. Then she took two long strides towards them, wincing as her boot soles crackled and slid in the coagulated blood.

She crouched and extended her right index and middle fingers, pressing under the little boy’s jaw into the soft flesh where the carotid artery ran. She closed her eyes and prayed for a pulse, trying to ignore the smell, and the noise of the writhing maggots and their soft, squishy little bodies as they roiled together in the mess.

After staying there long enough for the muscles in her legs to start complaining, and for her to be certain the little lad was dead, she straightened and reversed out of the blood. She took care to place her feet back in the first set of footprints.

She turned away, looking for some kitchen roll to wipe the blood off her soles, and stared in horror at the wall facing the cooker.

‘Oh, shit.’

DAY TWO, 9.05 A.M.

In metre-tall dark red digits, smeared and dripping, someone had daubed a number.

666

Feeling her heart thumping in her chest, and not enjoying the sensation, Natalie spoke into her Airwave.

‘Control from Sierra Bravo Three-Five. That G28 in Wyvern Road? Looks like a double homicide. Two deceased. Adult female and young child, a male. A boy, I mean. Christ! A little boy!’

‘Sierra Bravo Three-Five from Control. You OK, Nat?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Send the grown-ups.’

‘Which ones?’

She glanced at the bloody number again. ‘All of them.’

‘OK, Nat. On it.’

She saw a roll of kitchen towel on a pine spindle. Pulled off a half-dozen sheets. Cleaned her boot soles as best as she was able. Scrunched the bloody wad into a tight ball and stuck it in the bin. She’d have to tell the CSIs to take impressions of her soles for elimination purposes, even though she hadn’t seen any other footprints on her way in.

Downstairs, she knocked on the front door of Flat 2. The wife opened the door, still in her gym clothes. Maybe she thought she could still make the class. Not. Going. To. Happen.

‘Mrs Gregory, can I come in?’

‘Yes, of course.’

She stood aside and Natalie entered the cleaner, brighter, not-smelling-like-a-butcher’s-shop version of the flat upstairs.

‘I need to take statements from you and your husband. Is he around, please?’

The woman nodded and offered a tight smile. ‘Rob!’ she yelled. ‘The policewoman’s back. She wants to talk to us. Sorry,’ she said, turning back to Nat, ‘he’s a freelance designer. He listens to music while he’s working. It’s the only way I can get through to him. Do you need a tea or a coffee or something? I have herbal. Peppermint, chamomile, chai, ginger, or even some builder’s somewhere.’

Nat didn’t answer at once. My God, you’re a cool one, aren’t you? Are you used to living underneath murder scenes? Did you have something to do with this one? She pushed the thought down. Above my pay grade.

‘Builder’s would be fine, thank you.’

Ford was writing a report when his force-issued mobile rang. Grateful for the interruption, he answered without looking at the screen. ‘Ford.’

‘It’s Alan in Control, sir. Nat Hewitt’s at a crime scene. Says it’s a double homicide. You’re the duty DI.’

‘Address?’

‘Flat 3, 75 Wyvern Road. CSIs are already there. Plus, I called the