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
