ALSO BY ANDY MASLEN Detective Ford: Shallow Ground DI Stella Cole: Hit and Run Hit Back Harder Hit and Done Let the Bones Be Charred Weep, Willow, Weep A Beautiful Breed of Evil Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers: Trigger Point Reversal of Fortune Blind Impact Condor First Casualty Fury Rattlesnake Minefield No Further Torpedo Three Kingdoms Ivory Nation Crooked Shadow Other Fiction: Blood Loss – A Vampire Story This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Text copyright © 2021 by Andy Maslen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781542021005 ISBN-10: 1542021006 Cover design by Dominic Forbes To my family – Jo, Rory and Jacob CONTENTS START READING CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE CHAPTER FORTY CHAPTER FORTY-ONE CHAPTER FORTY-TWO CHAPTER FORTY-THREE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR ‘If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.’ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations CHAPTER ONE Polly Evans gasped for breath, unwilling to believe what lay at her feet. Sparks fizzled in her peripheral vision and tremors broke out all over her body. Five minutes earlier, she’d been enjoying a walk through the countryside with her border terrier, Murphy. They’d stopped in a tussocky meadow at the edge of a shallow section of the meandering River Ebble. Mid-drink, Murphy had raised his dripping muzzle, splashed through the water to the muddy bank opposite and raced towards a white-blossomed hawthorn hedge. By the time Polly had reached the yelping little dog, he’d disappeared into a gaping hole in the reddish earth big enough to fall into. Polly had got down on her knees. She could see Murphy’s bunched rear end as he struggled to retrieve something. He’d reversed out and dropped his trophy before her on the grass, tail wagging, pink tongue lolling. Mustering all the self-control she’d acquired in her thirty-year career as an inner-city biology teacher, she took out her phone and called the police. To calm herself as she stared at the object Murphy had retrieved, she began naming its parts. Ulnar artery, flexor muscle of wrist, fibrous sheath of finger . . . CHAPTER TWO As Eric Clapton played ‘Three O’Clock Blues’ on the Discovery’s stereo, Ford glanced at the satnav. The dog-walker’s location was less than a mile away. Control had called him twenty minutes earlier. He slowed to pass a young woman pushing a bicycle up the steep hill. She smiled and waved. He smiled back and accelerated away from her. He saw a lay-by on the other side of the road, just before a hump-backed bridge. A gate beside it stood open. Someone must have asked the farmer to unlock it. He eased the Discovery through the gate and into the field beyond. The grass rippled in four-foot-wide undulations, the troughs containing six inches of water. In the distance, he could see a forensics tent. A white van marked ‘Wiltshire Forensics Service’ sat off to one side, its rear doors open. White-suited CSIs moved between tent, van and a spot a little further towards the centre of the field, also protected by a tent. Uniforms were present, too. They’d erected a blue and white tape cordon. The Discovery rolled and heaved its way across the field, splashing through the drainage ruts. Ford’s stomach churned as he drove closer to the crime scene. Ever since he’d left his wife to drown on a sea-level rock shelf on their last climb together, he’d experienced nausea at every murder scene he’d investigated. The rational part of him knew he’d done the right thing. But the emotional Ford, the Ford who lay awake at night, endlessly rerunning those last, precious few moments with Lou, saw things differently. It leaned across a judge’s bench. Pointed an accusing finger. Screamed YOU KILLED HER! Loaded guilt on to his chest until he sat bolt upright at 3 a.m., gasping for breath. Pushing the memories, and the nausea, down, he parked next to the CSI van. He gave the uniformed loggist on the cordon his collar number and slid under the tape she held up for him. The uniforms had set up an inner cordon. The white plastic tent occupied its centre, sides sucking in and bellying out in the breeze as if breathing. It backed on to a hedge of white-flowered hawthorn, through which brambles and ivy twined. Out of the wind’s rough caress, the temperature rose. Standing just inside the doorway, Ford loosened his tie. The CSIs had erected the tent over a hole that opened out at the foot of the hedge. It was enormous. Easily big enough for a man to fall into. Around the edge, earth had been piled up. He looked closer. Sitting atop the soil he saw a few fragments of eggshell and a tiny white bone. ‘It’s a badger sett, sir,’ a male CSI said. ‘The lady who found the hand said her dog pulled it out of here.’ Ford left the tent and went over to a couple of uniforms standing with a woman in late middle age holding a scruffy little terrier on a lead. They’d managed to procure a cup of coffee for her, which she drank in small sips, her eyes darting every which way from over its rim. He introduced himself, then said, ‘I understand you found the hand.’ ‘Murphy
