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

department on the second floor. The building was big and glamorous; it was only 7 years old and was the envy of many a force throughout the country. Everything you could ever need was here, and Reed still wasn’t sure if he had entered all of the departments on the site.
    He entered conference room 1E, where they were basing the investigation. Every available space was filled with tables, chairs, computers and people doing various jobs. On one wall was a huge whiteboard with details of the investigation so far; maps, names, pictures, sketches and important snippets of information from various people’s statements had been stuck all over it.
    Reed’s superior, DCI Edward Whitehead, was sat at the main desk at the head of the room just in front of the whiteboard reading through some papers. Reed had his own office but he had a desk here, too. He slowly padded down the corridor that was created by all the other tables and said “Morning” to a few people, trying to take his time, hoping Whitehead would up and leave. He didn’t. Reed stood the opposite side to which Whitehead was sitting and waited. Whitehead looked up, looked back down at the papers in his hand, shook his head in disapproval at something and then left without saying a word.
    Whitehead was a tall, frail looking man with a long, sharp pointed nose. He had short grey hair which was combed back on top. Reed always thought that Whitehead’s eyes looked too small for his head. He reminded Reed of a weasel, and an angry one at that. He moved away with an assured walk and Reed resisted the urge to stick his tongue out.
    Whitehead had been transferred to Norfolk when the new police headquarters had opened. He was headhunted from the Metropolitan Police in London where he had been in the force since he was 20 years old and now had thirty eight years’ experience behind him. He had been a Detective Chief Inspector for eleven of those.
    He must have experienced every type of case at least twice over and had been appointed to show the sleepy Norfolk force how things were handled. There was no point in having a state of the art headquarters if the people inside it weren’t up to the job. DI Reed had a certain amount of respect for him professionally, but couldn’t help thinking that compared with his previous post in London, little old Norfolk was just a bit too quiet for him, making him permanently grumpy.
    Reed put his files down on the desk. He checked to see that his boss was still walking away and when the coast was clear he picked up the folder that Whitehead had been reading and started to go through it himself. It was Lee Gulliver’s statement, the man who had given Carmella a lift home the night she went missing. Reed had read it a few times and had never felt the need to shake his head.
    “Gather round.” Whitehead shouted, standing approximately about one metre behind Reed, making him physically jump. How had the old bastard got there so quick and unnoticed?
    Reed let the meeting wash over him; there was nothing new to report so they just ran over some old ground. He was more concerned with Whitehead’s show of disapproval and wondered what his superior had seen in the statement that he had not. Pushing his self-doubt to one side, he decided it was time to go back to the boring tasks such as door to door inquiries, hoping to find one detail that had been left out- the one detail that could make a real difference. They would start near Carmella Chapman’s house and work outwards. It was uninspiring work but it had to be done. Residents could have been out the first time the police had knocked on their door; they might have remembered something since they last gave a statement, or they might mention something which seemed irrelevant at the time, but the more they considered it over time, it had seemed a little odd.
    Reed walked outside the office with no particular destination in mind. He wanted to clear the meeting from his head. Every second that