Two Wrongs (Detective Inspector Ross Reed Book 1) Read Free

she had run away were slim. That left the possibility that a stranger might have taken her or lured her away. People don’t tend to do that with good intentions. As the number of days went by, any hopes of finding her unharmed faded and the pressure built.
    With a stack of files under one arm, he flicked the TV off, gulped down the remainder of his cold coffee, kicked Rupert the female cat out the back door, struggled to put his shoes on with one hand because he stubbornly refused to put the files down to make the task easier, and then finally stepped out of the front door. He checked off the items in his pockets: Phone, wallet and car keys. Good.
    After walking gingerly down the gravel driveway, ducking the stringy branches of the willow tree, he unlocked the car door, got in and wrestled his items past the steering wheel and put them on the passenger seat. He made himself comfortable and then fastened his seat belt. Now he sat for a moment anticipating what was to come. He raised his hand to the ignition, inserting the key with more care than was needed and hoped that the car was going to start. Something was wrong with it but he hadn’t had the time to visit a garage to see what it might be.
    He screwed up his face a little as he turned the key. It started first time.
    He reversed from his drive and made his way into Watton faster than he should have done before his car could change its mind and start spluttering. Once he was through the town he could keep a decent speed up all the way to Hingham. With every passing mile, Reed felt his confidence grow in the performance of his vehicle. The Wicklewood bends provided a good final workout so that Reed finally started to enjoy the solitude of the journey. On a normal day he would have taken in the Norfolk countryside between the towns and villages with pleasure; the vast open crop fields, the sporadic trees that lined their edges, the hedgerows that ran alongside the roads, which if you stuck your arm out of the window were close enough to touch. He loved the glimpses of Scoulton Mere through the trees and every time he passed it he promised himself he was going to walk round it one day. Then, just as he entered Wymondham, it seemed that he’d reached that zone from the house when you suddenly remembered something.
    “The bloody bin.” He had already traveled too far to turn back without setting his whole day behind schedule. He hoped the bin man would make the short journey down his drive to the visible wheelie bin and bail him out of trouble. How far was too far? 5 metres? 10? His whole driveway was only 25 metres long. If the bin man didn’t push the boundaries of duty and get it for him, he would have to empty it into bags and take a trip to the dump, eating away into the precious time he did have off. His apology to Kate had just got longer; not only had he bitten her head off this morning, he had forgotten the very thing she had asked him to do.
    The car parking spaces at the police station were assigned to rank, the higher up the food chain you were the closer to the building you got. As a Detective Inspector, Reed got a pretty good spot, about three rows back from the main doors. As childish as it was, he got a little satisfaction from parking there. When he turned the ignition off the car coughed and spluttered as if not wanting to stop for fear of not starting again. Reed’s satisfaction with his parking space waned quickly as heads appeared at the office windows to see what the commotion was. Reed pretended that the offending noise was from somewhere else, making a big show of looking for the culprit himself as he locked up, then gave a dramatic shrug and started walking away.
    As he walked through the automatic doors of the police station he knew no breaking news was forthcoming or somebody would have called him. He was leading the investigation after all, but unfortunately so far he hadn’t led it very far.
    He made his way up the stairs to the CID