Shallow Ground (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Impressive stuff. And now for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Could you describe him?’

  She took a quick sip of tea. ‘I’m really not sure. It all happened so fast.’

  Ford nodded. ‘Let’s start with an easy one, to get you going. How old would you say he was?’

  She shrugged. ‘Late thirties? It was hard to tell. He had one of those young faces.’

  ‘That’s good. What else can you remember?’

  ‘OK, he was a white male, about six foot . . .’

  ‘Good, keep going,’ Ford said encouragingly. ‘Build?’

  ‘Quite muscular. Not a bodybuilder but, you know, in good shape.’

  ‘How about his face?’

  Lisa started to speak, but then her face crumpled; tears welled over her lower lids and ran down her cheeks. She swiped at them angrily. ‘Bastard!’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Ford said. ‘You’re in shock. It does funny things to the memory. Let’s start with something simple. Do you remember anything about his eyes?’

  ‘He was wearing glasses. Thick frames.’

  ‘What about eye colour?’

  ‘Brown? Maybe? I’m sorry, I can’t remember.’

  ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry. You’re doing really well.’

  In this way, Ford prompting without leading, Lisa answering, he built a description of her assailant.

  Male

  IC1

  35–45

  5’11”–6’0”

  Medium/ athletic build/ broad-shouldered

  Eyes: unknown/ thick-framed glasses

  Black moustache

  Clean-shaven

  Dress: dark jacket, jeans

  Accent: general southern English

  ‘Thanks, Lisa,’ Ford said when she’d finished. ‘That’s really helpful.’

  The trouble was, the description, give or take a black moustache, fitted hundreds of men in Salisbury. Including Matty Kyte. And Charles Abbott.

  He called Jools. ‘Can you bring photos of Matty and Abbott to Forensics, please?’

  When they showed Lisa the two pictures, one from the SDH website, the other from the PNC, she studied both but then shook her head. She pointed to Matty’s vacant, staring face.

  ‘It could be him. He looks a bit more like him than that other one. I’m sorry, but I’m still not really sure.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ford said. ‘And don’t worry about not making the ID. Your fight-or-flight reflex kicked in hard, which probably saved your life. But that amount of adrenaline also does funny things to memory. One last thing. Did he say anything to you while he was attacking you? Anything sexual, for example?’

  She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. ‘Not sexual, no.’ Then her eyes popped wide. ‘He called me worthless. Bastard,’ she added, feelingly.

  Ford nodded his agreement. ‘I’m going to get one of my detectives to take a formal statement from you. Can you stay here till it’s done, or do you want to go home and have them take it there?’

  She shrugged. ‘Here’s fine. I can get the feel of the place. You know, for when I’m working here.’

  He smiled, amazed yet again at her coolness. But then, he reflected, infantry regiments weren’t exactly places for shrinking violets.

  DAY SIXTEEN, 2.10 P.M.

  The pain in his balls is bad enough, a dull ache that’s spread up into his belly. It makes walking upright hard: he has to stumble, bent at the waist, to the front door and let himself inside.

  But it’s the pain in his head that’s worse. A searing, blinding rage. How dare she! She should have gone down like the others, his to bleed and dispose of like the piece of trash she is.

  He hears his father’s voice again, the relentless insults and demeaning remarks throughout his childhood: ‘You’re a worthless piece of shit! You killed your brother before he was even born. Catch it! CATCH IT! Oh, you dumb little twerp, it’s a rugby ball, not an atomic bomb, it won’t hurt you!’

  Grinding his teeth so hard he can hear them scrape together, he goes looking for her. Finds her in the sitting room with one of those, those, bloody magazines! She turns and smiles up at him.

  He rolls his sleeve up and holds the injured arm out for her to see.

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a blood injury.’

  ‘Oh, baby,’ she says. ‘How?’

  He gives her the answer he has dreamt up in the car. ‘One of the patients had a fit.’

  She fetches a first-aid kit and frees the flap with a rasp of Velcro. She selects a fresh tube of Savlon and twists the cap off. She squeezes a pea-sized blob of the ointment on to the tip of her index finger and smooths it on to the first of the scratches. He watches each movement. She’s good enough to be a real nurse.

  She repeats the process until each of the nasty little wounds is smeared with the antiseptic. She takes her time circling the pad of her little finger over each scratch.

  One of the cuts has started weeping. Holding her husband’s gaze, she bends her head to his arm and touches the tip of her tongue to it, licking away the pink cream.

  ‘Does that feel better, baby?’ she asks, keeping her head down, cradling his forearm against her cheek.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Do you want to play doctors and nurses later?’

  He grunts. ‘You’d like that, would you?’

  She lowers her head further. Unzips him. ‘I like what you like,’ she mumbles.

  He drags her head away by the hair, making her yelp. The frustration is overwhelming. He’s missed out on the fifth litre and now his whole plan is ruined.

  The slap isn’t hard. Not really. Not compared to the blow he feels like delivering. But his wedding ring catches her lip and splits it, and at the sight of the blood he screams in anger and frustration. ‘Bitch!’

  ‘But, sweetheart,’ she says, lisping as her lip swells, ‘why—’

  He grabs her face, squeezing his fingertips deep into the flesh of her cheeks so her bleeding mouth pooches out in a way he finds comical.

  ‘Shut up! Do you hear me? Shut. The hell. Up!’ He stares into her face. ‘I couldn’t get any blood today. They . . . They were doing a stock check.’

  She croaks out an answer, but it’s inaudible because of the hard grip he has on her jaw. He releases her.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Can’t you just get some more?’

  He slaps her again. Harder this time. Her head swings to the left with the force of it. If she knew where the blood was really coming from, she wouldn’t ask such a stupid question.

  He raises his hand again and enjoys the way the movement makes her flinch. Maybe when this is all over I’ll get rid of her. Find someone younger.

  He changes his mind about hitting her. Instead he reaches over and sticks his hand inside her blouse. Finds her left nipple and pinches it hard. She moans with the pain, but there’s something else below that, something animalistic. He feels his erection growing.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ he says hoarsely.

  After they finish, he gets dressed and goes into town. He buys some loose buckshot from Berret & Sartain, the gunsmiths in the city centre. He spends an hour in his workshop sewing a rectangle of leather cut from an old jacket into a tube, and filling it with the shot. He smacks the finished sap into his palm.

  Later, working his way down a bottle of vodka, he pulls up Tasha Young’s Facebook page. He shakes his head as he peruses her photos.

  ‘If you only knew who you were allowing into your life, Miss Young, you’d change your security settings like that,’ he says, snapping his fingers.

  She’d put her whole life out there for anybody to see. Relationship status: single. Favourite movie: Sleepless in Seattle. She’d provide her blood group if the Yanks put a field in the form for it. Stupid cow! Stupid, worthless cow!

  Next time I see you at the food bank, I’ll be sure to be at my most helpful. Seems the least I can do, given what I’ve got planned for you.

  He spins round in
his executive computer chair, bought online and delivered by some immigrant from Eastern Europe. Consults his chart with the victims’ food-bank membership cards he took neatly taped beneath their names. The first four photos have been crossed through with a black marker. But it’s all wrong, isn’t it? Because Lisa Moore didn’t donate.

  He’d killed them when he could. That was down to circumstances. What mattered – what really mattered – was the order in which he’d used their blood. Alphabetical, just like dear old Dad would have liked.

  But now Moore had ruined everything. Too late to stop, though, when he was so close to purifying himself. So close to that tantalising goal: purging himself of his blood for ever.

  You’ve no other option, then, have you? Track Young and, when she next comes in, it’ll have to be a ‘buy one, get one free’ deal at the food bank.

  The thought makes him laugh. He swivels round and looks up at the photos. Smiles with satisfaction. Soon, Pops, very soon.

  DAY SEVENTEEN, 10.45 A.M.

  Jools hurried into Ford’s office. He looked up from his screen, grateful for a break from the growing number of documents he needed to read.

  ‘Guv, you’re going to want to see this.’

  Curious, and with a flicker of excitement igniting in his gut, he followed the ambitious young DC out of his office and across the incident room to her desk. She dropped into her chair and jiggled her mouse to wake up her screen.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘It was when I took Lisa Moore’s statement yesterday,’ Jools said with a grin. ‘She said she’d been to the food bank that same morning.’

  ‘Don’t keep me in suspense, Jools.’

  ‘I got to thinking. What if he’s picking them on the day they go there? I don’t know, watching and waiting. Like a hunter.’

  ‘Plausible. How does this help us?’

  She jabbed a finger at the screen where she’d typed the list of adult victims, plus dates.

  ‘I checked with the Purcell Foundation. They keep records of who comes in and what they buy – I mean, take. But they give them a sort of pretend credit card to scan. It’s about preserving their dignity.’

  ‘You did well to get that out of the food bank. You didn’t get any of that GDPR crap, then?’

  ‘I explained to the manager, Leonie Breakspear, that legally, dead people don’t have rights. To property, or privacy.’

  Ford nodded. ‘Smart. You know your law.’

  Jools’s grin widened. ‘Thanks, guv. But there’s more. First of all, Angie and Paul visited the food bank on the days they were murdered,’ she said, indicating the table of dates and names. ‘It was harder with Marcus, on account of the wider time-frame, but it looks good.’

  ‘Excellent. We can cross-check with the food bank to see who was working on those days.’

  ‘Already asked. Leonie said she’d get back to me later today.’

  ‘Jools, this is great. We’ll have a much narrower pool of persons of interest, and I hope to God our Mr Abbott is on it.’

  She frowned. ‘You still like him for it, don’t you?’

  He thought of the profile he and Hannah had drafted. ‘In the absence of anyone else, yes, I do. And we need to think about getting a DNA sample from him for cross-reference when the samples come back from Lisa’s fingernails. Anything else?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Briefing at noon. Keep on it till then. And check whether any of our victims had their card on them.’

  The conference room was packed, once more. Just as Ford was about to speak, the door banged back on itself, making everyone jump. Sandy stood in the doorway, her face unreadable. Ford saw a face behind her and scowled reflexively.

  ‘Morning, all,’ she said, in a jovial tone that Ford recognised as her fake-jolly voice. ‘We have a guest for this meeting. Someone make space for our police and crime commissioner.’

  Peterson squeezed past Sandra and took the chair pulled out for him by Mick Tanner.

  ‘Don’t mind me, everyone,’ he called out. ‘Just here in an overwatch capacity. Pretend I’m not here.’

  Ford bit back the obvious comment he saw written on the faces of the investigators in the room. He began by running through the leads they had, the forensics and the progress of each of the lines of enquiry.

  ‘Excuse me, DI Ford?’

  Ford turned to face Peterson. ‘Yes, Martin. You have a question?’

  ‘This is your first murder investigation as a DI, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, cautiously. ‘Although I ran plenty as a DS.’

  ‘But they were Cat Cs, for the most part, I think I’m right in saying. Straightforward domestic killings, and the odd brawl-gone-wrong between drunken squaddies?’

  Ford knew where Peterson was going, and didn’t like it. ‘Sorry, Martin. Not following you.’

  Peterson looked round the room, his smile as out of place as a giggle at a funeral. ‘This is a complex serial-killer investigation. I’m just wondering whether you’ve made any real progress. I’ve seen a name double-underlined on your board out there.’ He gestured at the wall separating them from the incident room. ‘Abbott. Is he your prime suspect?’

  Sensing Peterson would love to get his hands on the crucial line of enquiry – and leak it, too, you bastard – Ford downplayed its significance. ‘He’s a person of interest.’

  ‘As I said, a suspect.’

  Ford failed to stifle his sigh. ‘Someone tell Martin why Mr Abbott isn’t a suspect, please.’

  Hannah beat all the assembled detectives and PSIs to the punch. ‘A person identified as a suspect must be arrested as soon as is practicable. Although it gives us extra tools in terms of surveillance, search and interview, it also sets the PACE clock ticking.’

  Her eagerness surprised Ford, but then he realised: she enjoyed proving points with logic.

  Peterson folded his arms and glared at her.

  ‘Jools, take us through what you found this morning,’ Ford said.

  ‘It looks like he’s targeting food-bank users on the days they visit. Also, I have a list of who was working-slash-volunteering there on the dates the murders took place. Can I?’ She looked at Ford and gestured to the whiteboard.

  ‘Go for it,’ he said, pleased to see how people were shifting in their chairs and whispering to each other. He felt the energy level lifting: good news when the golden hour was a distant memory and optimism was flagging.

  At the front of the room, and with an uncapped blue marker in hand, Jools addressed the assembled investigators with a confidence that belied her years. ‘Here are our four adult victims.’ She wrote Marcus, Angie, Paul, Aimee in a line across the whiteboard. ‘And the dates they were murdered.’ The dates followed. ‘And here are the only four people who were present on each of those dates.’

  Centred below the victims’ names, she wrote,

  Charles Abbott

  Robert Babey

  Matthew Kyte

  Jason Torrance

  The murmuring as she’d been writing intensified.

  ‘Wait a moment!’ Peterson’s voice, strident, cut through the hubbub.

  ‘Yes?’ Ford said, not even bothering to mask his irritation.

  ‘I didn’t realise that by “Abbott”, you meant Charles Abbott.’

  ‘OK. And?’

  ‘Charles Abbott, the consultant haematologist?’

  ‘Yes. What’s your point?’

  ‘You can’t possibly be serious? I play golf with him, for God’s sake! And he doesn’t work at the food bank. He’s a trustee.’

  Ford opened his mouth. Caught a warning look from Sandy, plus a fractional shake of her head. Shut it again.

  ‘Martin,’ she said, in a smooth, calm voice. ‘Two things. One, as DI Ford said just now when you asked, Charles Abbott is not a suspect.’ She paused and looked round the room, lingering on Ford. ‘Two, sad though it might seem to someone in a purely overwatch role, as opposed to frontline officers lik
e my team here, even golf-playing charity trustees are not above either suspicion or the law.’

  Peterson folded his arms as Sandy spoke, and looked at the ceiling. He was not so much listening, Ford saw, as waiting for his chance to interject.

  ‘That’s all very well, Detective Superintendent Monroe,’ he said when she paused for breath, ‘but I will say this: tread very carefully. Charles Abbott is a man on the move, with some very powerful friends.’

  After the meeting, Ford went to see Jools. ‘That was great policework, Jools, really. Can we eliminate any of the four based on their physical characteristics?’

  ‘On it, guv. By the way, none of our adult victims had their Purcell Foundation cards on them. He must have taken them.’

  ‘Trying to hide his tracks,’ Ford said. ‘Clever.’

  She came to see him an hour later, the smile broader than ever. ‘Babey’s six-seven, and Torrance is my height.’

  ‘Leaving Matthew Kyte and Charles-bloody-Abbott,’ he said. ‘And he won’t come in unless we arrest him, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Kyte’s already agreed to come in for another interview. You want to sit in?’

  Ford paused, thinking. It’s not him. Abbott’s the wrong ’un, I’m sure of it. But let’s make certain and have this Kyte in so we can eliminate him. ‘Can you work up a profile on Kyte for me?’

  She nodded and returned to her desk, tapping keys as she settled herself before her screen.

  Ford made himself a coffee and took it back to his office. Something was bugging him, and he needed caffeine and peace and quiet to let it percolate through his brain.

  He pulled an A4 pad towards him and started jotting down thoughts.

  It’s all about the food bank.

  Link: victims all customers/users.

  Murdered on same day as visit to FB. Significant?

  Matthew Kyte?

  Angie hit with tin of baked beans. Deliberate choice? Emphasise her poverty?

  As he scribbled down the final word, Lisa Moore’s statement came back to him.

  ‘You called her worthless,’ he said to his empty office. ‘Is that what this is about? Do you feel superior to them? Are they worthless because they’re poor?’