Shallow Ground (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

  ‘I didn’t mention this before, but my PhD is in cognitive neuroscience. I went on to develop expertise in forensic psychology. I specialised in the psychology of lying. That’s what I was working on with the FBI.’

  ‘Which is amazing. But I don’t see—’

  ‘If you think there’s some value in discussing the killer’s mental state, you wouldn’t need to spend money on an external profiler. I could help you.’

  Ford checked his watch. ‘I have to get home to my son. Can I offer you a lift? We can speak in the car.’

  ‘Yes, please. I live in Harnham. It’s—’

  ‘I know it. We live there, too. Rainhill Road.’

  ‘I’ve walked that way. Which house is yours?’

  ‘Jump in. I’ll show you.’

  She cast an appraising eye over the dusty Discovery. ‘Your car isn’t very smart. I thought all detectives drove classic cars. You know, old Rovers or Saab convertibles.’

  He smiled. ‘I think you’ve been watching too much TV.’

  A summer shower had created wide puddles on both sides of the narrow road leading to Ford’s house, and he took childish delight in running his nearside wheels through as many of them as possible, making Hannah laugh.

  ‘Sam used to love doing that,’ he said. ‘He’d beg me to take him puddle-hunting after a big rainstorm.’

  He turned off the road and parked on a gravel drive encircling a flower bed. Somehow, on the short journey home, he’d invited Hannah to stay for something to eat. She had a way of speaking that he found unsettling, yet fascinating; direct, seemingly unembarrassable and ready to discuss anything and everything under the sun.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll introduce you to Sam.’

  She pointed at an engraved slate rectangle set into the wall beside the front door, half-hidden by honeysuckle. ‘Windgather. What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a crag in the Peak District.’

  ‘Why did you name your house after a crag in the Peak District?’

  ‘My wife and I loved climbing there when we were beginners.’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  Inside, his head still full of the honeysuckle’s sweet perfume, he led her through to the kitchen, yelling up the stairs as he went. ‘Sam. Come down. We’ve got a visitor.’

  Upstairs, a door slammed. Then came a thumping on the stairs, as if a heavy item of furniture had toppled over and tumbled all the way to the bottom. Hannah turned to Ford and raised her eyebrows in a question.

  He smiled. ‘Wait.’

  The door opened. Framed in the rectangle stood a boy, nearing six foot, dressed in skinny jeans and a Metallica T-shirt. His shoulders were narrow, his hips slim, his legs long. His curly hair drooped over dark brown eyes above a prominent nose waiting for the rest of the face to catch up with it.

  He looked at Hannah.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘I’m Hannah.’

  Not Dr Fellowes, Ford mused.

  Sam said, ‘Hi,’ as he took her hand and had his pumped up and down three times.

  ‘Hannah’s a colleague at work. She’s a CSI,’ Ford said.

  At this, Sam’s eyes, projecting biblical levels of boredom just a moment earlier, flashed wide. He pushed hair away from his forehead. ‘Like on the TV?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘In fact, I am a senior CSI. I am also the deputy manager of the CSI team, and I have a PhD. I used to teach at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.’

  ‘That is so cool.’

  ‘What? You never say my job’s cool,’ Ford protested.

  ‘Yeah, and there’s a good reason for that, Dad. It’s not.’

  ‘Today I investigated a murder scene,’ Hannah said. ‘It was very gruesome. The victims were seated in a pool of blood.’

  ‘Whoa! No way. Like, what happened?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. But I expect we’ll find out. How old are you, Sam?’

  ‘Oh, er, fifteen.’

  ‘And is Sam your nickname?’

  ‘Not really. At school they call me Mondeo. You know, because of—’

  ‘Ford. Your surname. The Ford Mondeo was the best-selling large family car in the UK until 2007. At that point it was overtaken, which is a joke, by the way, by the new-look Vauxhall Vectra.’

  ‘Awesome. Do you, like, know all about cars and everything?’

  ‘I don’t know all about everything. But I looked it up on Wikipedia today. Because DI Ford is called Henry at work. After Henry Ford, who founded the Ford Motor Company on June the sixteenth, 1903.’

  ‘Wait, what? Does he make you call him DI Ford at work?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me his Christian name, so yes, I call him DI Ford.’

  Ford held his hands out. ‘I said Henry was fine. Or plain Ford. I think Dr Fellowes is having some fun at my expense.’

  She put her hand flat against her chest. ‘Me? No. I would never do that.’ Then she winked at Sam.

  ‘Ooh, burn! Dad, she totally owned you!’ Sam held up his right hand, palm towards Hannah. ‘High five!’

  She cocked her head to one side and looked at Sam’s upraised palm. Ford noticed a fleeting tightness around her eyes. Then she raised her own right hand and smacked it hard against Sam’s, producing a loud pop in the kitchen. For some reason he couldn’t explain to himself, Ford found Sam’s shocked expression amusing.

  Sam cooked a scratch meal of pasta and pesto with a pile of grated Parmesan. As his son placed heaped bowls in front of the two adults and a third for himself, Ford’s eyes prickled and he had to swallow down a lump in his throat. Hannah was sitting where Lou used to. Back when it had been the three of them together.

  After taking a few mouthfuls, Hannah looked up at Ford. ‘Your wife,’ she said. ‘Is she travelling on business?’

  Ford shook his head. Sighed. Why did it never get any easier? Even after all this time? He caught Sam’s eye. Sam looked down at his bowl of pasta. Poor kid. He doesn’t deserve to have this raked over every time someone new comes to the house.

  ‘She died six years ago,’ Ford said quietly, looking at a photo of the two of them taken at Windgather. Lou was smiling, her eyes sparkling in spring sunshine, a loose strand of hair whipping in front of her face.

  ‘How did she die?’ Hannah asked, eyebrows raised.

  That was interesting. No confused attempt to say something sympathetic.

  ‘It was a climbing accident.’

  ‘Was she not roped on properly? That is one of the five main causes of death for climbers.’

  Ford glanced at Sam, who had frozen, a fork laden with green-tinged pasta halfway to his open mouth.

  ‘Something like that,’ Ford said, finally.

  ‘I’m sorry she died.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Looking down so a floppy lock of hair covered his eyes, Sam scraped up the last of his food, clanked his spoon and fork into the bowl and left the table, already fishing his phone from a trouser pocket.

  Hannah watched him go, then turned back to face Ford. ‘If you try to climb Everest, you have a one in sixty-one chance of dying. If you reach the summit, it’s one in twenty-seven.’

  Something about the way the woman sitting opposite him saw the world made him smile, despite Sam’s earlier reaction.

  She frowned. ‘Did I say something funny? I was just telling you about mortality rates on Everest.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t you. Tell me, what did you make of the crime scene this morning?’

  ‘He’s organised. We found very little physical evidence. No DNA. And he didn’t mess up her flat. I think he was focused on the blood.’

  ‘And the 666? That’s the number of the beast.’

  ‘According to the latest theological research, the number of the beast is 616,’ she said. ‘But if our killer is following the text of Revelation 13:15, which I suspect he may be, then he could think that.’

  ‘What is its significance for us?’ Ford asked.

  ‘I have n
o idea. It depends on its significance for the killer. If he’s sane, it could be a taunt, or an attempt to throw you off the trail,’ she said. ‘If he’s insane, he may believe he is doing the Devil’s work. Either way, I would focus on hard evidence and try to find someone who had a reason to kill her. It would be unwise to fixate on the supposedly satanic implications unless and until we have a compelling reason.’

  Ford nodded. She’d expressed his own feelings. ‘I agree. Too many coppers get an idea in their minds and then they’re unwilling to consider alternatives. You can miss vital pieces of evidence that way, ignore leads, even miss suspects sitting right in front of you.’

  She nodded. ‘If you think in a typical fashion, you arrive at typical conclusions. You seem to be different. Have you done any lateral-thinking courses?’

  He smiled. ‘No. But my mum used to say I’d never do anything the easy way if there was a different way of doing it. I used to make model aeroplanes but ignore the instructions.’

  ‘And what were your results like?’

  ‘Interesting. Not airworthy, but definitely unusual.’

  ‘Even if you had followed the instructions, they still wouldn’t have been airworthy.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She frowned as if he’d said something stupid. ‘Because they were models.’

  ‘Good point. I never thought of that before.’

  She looked up at the kitchen clock. ‘I should go. I have to feed Uta Frith.’

  ‘Who, or what, is Uta Frith?’

  ‘My cat. I named her for the Emeritus professor of cognitive development at UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. Uta Frith is my hero.’

  Wrongfooted yet again, Ford stood. ‘Need a lift home?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, thanks. I can walk from here. See you at work tomorrow.’ A shy smile. ‘Henry.’

  With Hannah gone, Ford went in search of Sam. He always made a point of asking him how his day had gone, even if it was only met with a grunted ‘Fine.’ Hannah’s arrival had skewed their normal routine.

  Sam wasn’t in his bedroom. Or the garden, sitting on the old swing and scrolling through his social media. That left only one place. Ford sighed. Sam felt the anniversary of his mother’s death just as keenly as Ford. He just dealt with it differently. Maybe bringing Hannah home wasn’t such a great idea.

  Ford walked back to the house and opened a door to the right of the kitchen. It led to the garage. Neon tubes cast an unforgiving glow over the spotless interior. Sam was where Ford had expected to find him, slumped in the red leather driver’s seat of a long, low silver E-Type Jaguar, his long fingers caressing the smooth wood of the steering wheel.

  Ford remembered the day Lou’s parents had presented them with the keys. It was two days before their wedding. Lou’s father had made a lot of money in banking and spent a good deal of it building up a small collection of classic sports cars.

  ‘Dad!’ Lou had said, a huge grin lighting up her suntanned face. ‘You’re not serious?’

  Her father smiled as he ushered his daughter into the driver’s seat, closing the door with a soft click once she’d settled behind the wheel.

  ‘You’ve always loved her. Mummy and I want you to have her.’ He turned to Ford. ‘Get in, then. Take her for a spin, and we’ll have some champagne when you get back.’

  Laughing, the wind blowing her hair about her face, Lou drove fast through the Berkshire countryside. And Ford watched his wife-to-be, astounded that she was soon to be his.

  Ford ran a finger along the cold, smooth side of the car, its paint unmarked by a single scratch, its chrome reflecting his distorted face so that his eyes drew down into ovals.

  ‘You OK, mate?’ he asked, opening the passenger door and sitting beside his son.

  Sam was staring straight ahead. His eyes glistened in the neon light. ‘Why did she have to ask about Mum?’

  Ford laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, but Sam shrugged it off, irritably. ‘Hannah was interested, that’s all. She doesn’t seem to have much of a filter.’

  ‘You think? Is she, like, on the spectrum, or something?’

  ‘I don’t know. Would that matter?’

  ‘Of course not! I said, she’s cool. It’s just—’ Sam heaved a sigh, raising his slender shoulders and letting them slump again.

  ‘What?’ Ford asked. He knew, though. Knew what was coming.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I’ve told you. Lots of times. And I know you’ve searched for the media reports.’

  ‘Tell me again!’ Sam snapped, hammering his palm on the steering wheel’s wooden rim.

  Avoiding seeing the scene that played out in his nightmares, Ford began his well-rehearsed version of the truth like a witness coached by an exacting brief.

  ‘We were climbing Pen-y-holt. It was a beautiful day. Your mum’s eyes really shone in that bright sunshine. We were trying a new route and it was harder than we expected. Mum hurt her leg. It happened in a split second. There was nothing I could do. I went for help, but by the time the coastguard arrived it was too late to save her. She drowned.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you do anything? Why couldn’t you save her, Dad? Tell me the truth for once.’

  Ford sighed. ‘If I could have, Sam, don’t you think I would have?’

  Sam’s tears were flowing freely now, dripping off the sharp point of his chin on to his lap, creating dark splotches on the denim.

  ‘You’re lying,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, I’m not. Why would you say that?’

  ‘You always told me Mum was a great climber. She wouldn’t mess up. I know she wouldn’t!’ Sam’s voice cracked on this last word.

  Ford’s heart turned over at its frail sound. He replaced his hand, and this time Sam left it there.

  ‘When does it stop hurting, Dad?’ he said, after a long pause.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it never stops. Maybe it just dulls a little, each passing day.’

  DAY THREE, 10.00 A.M.

  The specialist forensic post-mortem suite at Salisbury District Hospital shared a basement with two huge incinerators. They were kept busy day and night burning medical waste, from bandages to body parts. It was agreed that the guys tending ‘Vesta’ and ‘Vulcan’ possessed the darkest sense of humour in the hospital.

  FPM Room 1 was full this particular morning. Standing behind the stainless-steel table bearing a sheet-covered body was Dr Georgina Eustace, the pathologist, clad in navy scrubs, rubber boots and a hinged visor on a white plastic headband. Flanking her, also in scrubs, were a mortician and a photographer. Ford had brought Mick and Jools. Alec Reid was there. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Henry,’ he’d said earlier that morning. He’d brought Hannah with him, too.

  The mortuary air-extraction system was fighting a losing battle against the smell rising from what had once been Angie Halpern. A sharp tang of disinfectant overlaid the stink.

  Eustace handed round a blue glass screw-top jar. ‘My signature blend,’ she said to Hannah. ‘Menthol, camphor, eucalyptus and thymol.’

  Once everyone had smeared a little of the waxy paste under their nostrils, Georgina began. Without any ceremony, she drew the dark-blue sheet back and handed it to the mortician. He balled it and tossed it dead-centre into a plastic scrubs bin in the corner.

  After removing and examining the clothes and jewellery, and describing their condition for her recorder, Georgina began work on the body.

  She took a large-bladed scalpel and cut deep into the skin of the left shoulder, passed beneath the breasts and drew the blade down in a long, single cut to the pubic bone. A second diagonal cut formed the Y-incision that allowed access to the internal organs.

  In Ford’s mind, a victim – a named victim – was the person on his murder wall at Bourne Hill. Their earthly remains, which were by no means always as intact as those in front of him, were just a body. Separating the two like this helped him cope.

  ‘Henry, come and look at this,’ Georgi
na said.

  She was using a stainless-steel rod to lift a patch of blood-matted hair from the left side of the skull. As she pulled it away, the hair detached from the scalp, draping over the polished steel like noodles on a chopstick.

  He looked down at a crescent-shaped gash through which bone gleamed. The skull appeared intact.

  ‘Doesn’t look hard enough to have caused her death,’ he said.

  ‘Agreed. If it was textbook blunt-force trauma, I’d expect to see comminuted spiral fractures in the temporal bone and a depressed fracture beneath the wound site.’ She spoke to the mortician. ‘Pete, could you pass me the tweezers, please.’

  Peering at the upper edge of the crescent, she picked free a blood-soaked scrap of tissue. Wordlessly, the mortician proffered a glass dish, into which she tapped it.

  Next, she turned her attention to the throat. She used the pointer to prod at the upper end of the windpipe, just before it disappeared beneath the jawline.

  ‘See that? Her hyoid bone’s broken.’

  ‘Manual strangulation. Is that what killed her?’

  Georgina shook her head. ‘I think not. She was exsanguinated, which required her heart to be still beating. Unless I find any other injuries, here’s what I think happened.’ Ford noticed Mick and Jools opening their notebooks, which pleased him. ‘Her attacker knocked her down with a blow to the head using a weapon with a curved edge. She would have been disorientated, if not knocked out. Then he throttled her into unconsciousness. Finally, he bled her.’

  Ford pointed to the blackened puncture wound high on the inside of the right thigh. ‘What’s that?’

  Georgina took a second rod, just a couple of millimetres thick, and probed the wound.

  ‘There we go,’ she said, a note of triumph in her voice.

  The thin rod slid upwards into the thigh.

  ‘He used a needle,’ Ford said.

  ‘More than likely. Something wide-bore. Like a trocar.’

  ‘So cause of death was exsanguination,’ Ford said, ‘preceded by throttling and a hefty whack with a weapon of some kind.’

  ‘I’ll need to complete the PM, but yes, that’s what it looks like.’

  ‘What about the boy?’ he asked, trying not to visualise the invasive procedures she would have to inflict on his little body.