Shallow Ground (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

  Ford ignored the provocation. ‘You’re going to go down for a long time, Charles. Tell me where he is and it will look good to the judge,’ he said. ‘That you cooperated.’

  Abbott placed a fingertip to his chin and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘I think not. I’ve achieved what I set out to do. I’m free of him. Nothing else matters.’ He frowned. ‘You said earlier we were similar because we both have sons. But I wonder, are we alike in other ways?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can move on. But what about you, Inspector?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Can you move on?’

  ‘Once you’re locked up, yes, of course I can.’

  Abbott smiled. ‘That’s not what I meant. Can you move on after Louisa?’

  Ford had to fight down an urge to vomit. ‘What?’

  ‘I researched you on the internet. It wasn’t hard. “Detective’s wife dies in tragic accident”, the Salisbury Journal had it. Everything’s digital these days.’

  ‘That’s none of your damn business.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I wonder, did you have a hand in Louisa’s death? Did you sabotage her harness? What was it? Did you get tired of her constant nagging about doing night feeds?’ Abbott’s grin widened. ‘Did the old sex life peter out after the baby came along? Or were you fucking someone else?’ He looked at Hannah. ‘I wonder, do Dr Watson’s charms extend beyond the intellectual to the physical?’

  ‘Interview terminated,’ Ford said, stabbing the STOP button on the tape machine.

  He stood up and left, Abbott’s final yelled taunt ringing in his ears.

  ‘Maybe we’re not so different, you and me, Ford. Death enjoys our company!’

  In the corridor, Ford turned to Hannah.

  ‘Nice job on the password.’

  ‘Thank you. I noticed his number plate when we called on him,’ she said. ‘In an ordinary person, a personal plate means very little. But in a psychopathic personality it’s a visible symbol of their narcissism. I thought he’d probably like to use it as often as possible.’

  He smiled. ‘Come on. Let’s get the troops together.’

  She shook her head. ‘I need to get over to his house in Britford. I’ll see you later.’

  Having assembled the team in the briefing room, Ford clapped his hands to restore order.

  ‘Charles Abbott just confessed to the killings. All five, plus the attempted murder of Lisa Moore. He also told us he killed a cleaner at Revelstoke Hall Hospital, so I need them contacted. He’s been charged and remanded in custody.’ The murmurs that had stilled rose again. ‘Which is a result you can all be proud of. But we’re not done yet.’

  ‘What is it, guv?’ Jools asked.

  ‘He’s got his old man locked up somewhere, bleeding to death, and he won’t tell us where.’

  ‘We should check Abbott’s house ourselves,’ Jools said. ‘You said it was a big place and the CSIs are all working inside at the moment.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll take a team over there myself. I saw lots of outbuildings in the garden. Even a boathouse. You’re with me.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘Mick, see if Abbott has a second property. His sort usually have a cottage in the country, don’t they? Or down on the coast. Dorset? Cornwall?’

  ‘On it, boss.’

  ‘Olly, can you check out the father’s place, please? Nicholas Abbott, middle names Ralph Augustus. He’s probably the only man in the country with that particular moniker, so he should be easy enough to find.’

  Olly nodded, making a brief note. ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘The rest of you, keep digging into Abbott’s background. I want everything on him that exists anywhere. Our systems, Home Office, GMC, any disciplinaries for sexual touching, inappropriate behaviour. Any juvenile criminal record, school expulsions, animal cruelty, yes?’

  A chorus of ‘yes, guvs’ filled the air.

  ‘Thanks, all. Let’s find Nick Abbott before it’s too late.’

  The heat plaguing the country for the previous month and a half had intensified. The station car park felt like a furnace as Ford climbed in beside Jools in her sporty A3 hatchback. The black leather upholstery seared his skin though his sweat-dampened shirt. He switched on the air conditioning as Jools powered out towards Britford.

  ‘Olly, Mick, call me the moment you find anything, OK?’ he said into his radio.

  ‘Yes, guv,’ ‘Yes, boss,’ their answers crackled back to him.

  Jools flipped a switch on the dash and blue flickers reflected back to them from the shiny paintwork of the Honda Jazz in front on the congested ring road. She tapped the steering wheel and a siren sounded, a series of stuttering whoops that had the Civic swerving right, the Astra on its left mirroring the manoeuvre to give them space to nose through.

  Two and a half minutes later, she slid to a stop in Britford’s main street, right outside the Abbotts’ house.

  ‘Nice driving, Jools,’ Ford said as he exited the car.

  ‘Thanks, guv.’

  Inside the house, Ford stopped to think. Where would I keep a man I intended to bleed to death? Scullery? Utility room? Basement?

  ‘Take the inside, Jools,’ he said. ‘When the others get here, you direct them.’

  ‘Guv.’

  Ford ran through the kitchen and out through the French doors, grabbing a set of keys off a hook by the back door.

  He could see a large garden shed, one window obscured somehow. An octagonal brick-and-glass summerhouse. The boathouse down on the riverbank.

  He ran to the summerhouse. It was empty. The shed next. The door was padlocked. He looked at the keys in his hand. There were over a dozen, all Yales, Chubbs or Ingersoll, typical of high-end residential locks.

  He didn’t have time to try them all so he reared back and kicked out at the door over the hasp. The wood, dry but thin, splintered. He kicked again, smashing the metalwork off the door. He wrenched it open and went inside.

  The body was prone beneath a tarpaulin.

  ‘Shit!

  He leaned over and pulled back the tarp.

  ‘Nick!’ he shouted.

  Then he stopped.

  ‘Oh, for Chrissake.’

  He stood up and kicked the torso.

  DAY TWENTY-TWO, 4.59 P.M.

  Abbott had stored a full-size medical training dummy in his shed. The insides of both thighs were marked with dotted lines and crosses in blue marker pen.

  Ford turned and left. He ran down to the boathouse, but it was a simple shelter, walled on two sides but open at the front and back, containing just a rowing boat, empty save a pair of oars.

  He scraped a hand over his mouth and chin. He walked back the way he’d come, only to meet Jools halfway down the lawn.

  ‘Any sign, guv?’ she asked.

  ‘No. They’re all empty.’

  ‘Us the same. We’ve been all over the house. No basement, but Trev’s gone up into the loft. The place is clean.’

  Ford checked his personal and work mobiles. Nothing from Mick or Olly. ‘Bugger it! I was sure he’d have him somewhere he owned or controlled.’

  They walked back to the house and found Hannah taking samples from the kitchen.

  ‘Any luck?’ she asked, switching off an alternative light source.

  Ford shook his head. ‘The dad’s not here.’

  She pointed at the bunch of keys. ‘Any of those look like they’d fit a lock-up or an industrial unit’s padlock?’

  ‘Don’t think so. They all look like car or house keys to me.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  Ford handed the keys over. He and Jools watched as Hannah examined them in turn. She stopped at a silver key with a thick plastic grip.

  ‘This is a Squire. Squire make heavy-duty padlocks.’ She handed it to Ford.

  ‘OK, listen up, everyone!’ he shouted, then waited until the searchers had gathered in front of him in the kitchen. ‘I think Nick Abbott is somewhere on the premises, b
ut he’s behind a door padlocked with a Squire padlock. Is there a cellar we’ve missed? A door behind a curtain or something? Check now, please.’

  He called Mick. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On the M5. Abbott’s got a little cottage outside Padstow. I’m on my way there now.’

  ‘OK, good work. Listen. When you get there, look for a door secured with a bloody great Squire padlock.’

  ‘Sorry, boss, you broke up there. Say again?’

  ‘A padlock, Mick. Look for a door with a big padlock. A Squire. I think that’s where he’s holding him.’

  Ford ended the call and hit Olly’s speed-dial number. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Yes, guv. I’m at seven Sarum Avenue, out Pitton way. Nicholas Abbott’s place. Heavy security at the front. Window bars and a monster front door. No rear access. I’m waiting for an MOE team. Gary tried to kick the door in and broke his toe.’

  ‘I think he’s behind a padlocked door. Jools and I’ll meet you there. Mick’s too far away.’

  Thanks to Jools’s spirited use of all the A3’s engine, transmission and steering had to offer, she skidded to a stop outside Nicholas Abbott’s house just nine minutes after leaving Britford. Infuriatingly for Ford, as he scanned the houses on the even-numbered side of the street, all hid behind high fences or had wide extensions to the edge of the property line.

  Ford leapt out. The roadway was choked with police cars. As he ran up the path, the MOE team’s Skoda Yeti pulled up and a uniformed sergeant emerged.

  ‘Hi, Danny,’ Ford said. ‘Get your kit ready, but I’ve got some keys here. Let me try them first.’

  The sergeant nodded and started briefing his team.

  With Olly and Jools watching over his shoulder, Ford tried each of the keys, bar the Squire, in the front door. One after another they either failed to penetrate more than a millimetre or wouldn’t turn at all when they did slide home.

  Ford called over to the MOE sergeant. ‘All yours, Danny.’ Then, to Olly and Jools, ‘We need to get round the back somehow. You two split up and see if there’s a lane or an alleyway we can get through.’

  ‘What about you, guv?’ Jools asked.

  ‘Old school. I’m going to ask the neighbours,’ he said, smiling with humour he didn’t feel.

  Both next-door neighbours were either out or well into their morning naps. Ford moved to the next house on the left and leaned on the bell. Almost immediately, he heard frenzied barking from inside. Through the frosted glass in the window beside the front door, he saw a smallish dog leaping up and down.

  A woman’s voice silenced it. ‘Walter, quiet! Quiet!’

  The door opened. No chain, Ford had time to notice.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman asked. She was in her mid-sixties and had striking silver hair tied back with a leopard-print hairband. An air of a schoolteacher about that enquiring gaze.

  ‘Police, madam,’ he said, holding up his ID. ‘I need to gain access’ – Oh, Ford, ditch the cop-speak! – ‘I mean, get into number seven.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Nick’s?’

  ‘Yes. Have you got rear access? A garden. A gate, even?’

  She smiled. Looked down at the terrier, whose nose was poking round her calf to sniff at Ford. ‘Of course! Follow me. How exciting!’

  Ford followed her along a narrow hall hung with watercolour landscapes, through a large farmhouse kitchen and out into an immaculate garden filled with flowers.

  ‘The gate’s at the end. No lock. Just latch it after you. Is he all right? Nick, I mean? Only I haven’t seen him for a while. He’s a very private man, hates prying, as he calls it. But you know, good neighbours, and so forth.’

  ‘I’ll latch the gate,’ Ford called out, running down the garden.

  The row of houses backed on to a small wooded area, mainly sycamores and ash with a few holly and yew trees sprinkled amongst them. Ford pulled open the gate, swung it shut behind him and found himself on a narrow gravelled track.

  He ran towards the rear of Nick Abbott’s house and found his way barred by a tall wooden gate secured with a Yale lock. Beside the gate was a lockbox, closed with a four-wheel combination lock.

  Swearing, Ford hoisted himself on to the top of the gate and dropped down on the other side, ripping his suit jacket on a protruding nail.

  Here was his third suburban back garden of the day. More roses. Another pond, overgrown with water lilies and arching sword-leaved irises. And a shed to his left.

  He pulled the unpadlocked door open and looked inside. The six-by-eight-foot space was immaculate. Everything stowed tidily. No Nick Abbott.

  The kitchen door was open, and as Ford walked up to the house, Jools came out, accompanied by a couple of uniforms. She stood on the deck, raised above the sloping lawn by four feet or so.

  ‘Nothing, guv,’ she called. ‘He’s not here. You?’

  Ford shook his head.

  Then he glanced at the deck and noticed a dark space in the centre of the wooden facings. He ran up the long lawn, pointing.

  ‘What’s in the gap, Jools?’

  Jools jumped down and turned to look at the gap.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ she shouted. ‘There are steps. And a door.’

  Ford reached the short set of steps. At the bottom, a four-foot square of concrete lay before a sturdy-looking black-painted door. The timbers were banded with metal of some kind and the whole thing had an air of a medieval fortress.

  Hanging from a hammer-finished blue-steel hasp bolted to the wood was a chunky navy-blue padlock. The brand was visible in the gloom.

  SQUIRE

  The key slotted home with a series of soft clicks. Ford gave it a firm twist and the chromed shackle popped open. He pulled it free of the hasp and opened the door.

  A stench of excrement, urine and putrefying blood assailed his nostrils.

  He reeled back, gagging, as flies swarmed out of the dark. Turning to look for a light switch, he cried out involuntarily. Charles Abbott was leering at him beside a bloody 167 on the wall of Marcus Anderson’s eco-hut. The oversized selfie was projected on to the cellar wall. As Ford watched, transfixed, it faded to be replaced with another, Abbott beside a bloody 333. And another: 500. And, finally, 666.

  Holding his breath, he felt around on the inside of the door frame. Nothing on the right. But on the left, a switch.

  The cellar flooded with light.

  Bound by rope to a kitchen chair occupying the centre of a spreading pool of blackened blood sat an old man. His head, silver-haired, lolled on his bare chest. To his left stood a tall chrome metal stand from which hung a bag half-full of a clear liquid.

  A thin tube descended from the bag into a needle emerging from his left elbow. From his right, a sinuous tube, plum-red, snaked to the ground. Halfway down, a plastic tap and clear cylinder interrupted the thin bore.

  Ford observed, horrified, as a plum-red bead formed at the upper end of the cylinder, swelled, and dripped down.

  He stepped into the centre of the pool of blood and closed off the tap. He withdrew the needle from the old man’s right elbow and called over his shoulder.

  ‘Jools, get in here. Put pressure on that and then hold his arm up high.’

  Jools squeezed in beside him, muttering, ‘Nice,’ as she jerked her chin at the cycling images on the wall.

  Ford jammed two fingers into the soft place beneath the man’s jaw. Waited, eyes closed, searching by feel for a sign of life.

  There! Faint, but present: a tremor. A weak, fluttering pulse as Nick’s overstressed heart fought to pump the decreasing volume of blood around the body.

  Ford reached for his phone and called for an ambulance.

  DAY TWENTY-TWO, 7.59 P.M.

  A stone’s throw from Bourne Hill nick, the Wyndham Arms was packed with police officers, CSIs and police staff.

  In a corner, a band was warming up, chords and drumrolls adding to the din of conversation, laughter and good-natured banter. The guitarist, a battered red Fender Stratocaster slung from h
is shoulder, stepped forward and took the mic.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, friends, and’ – he winked at a fifteen-year-old boy who had his mother’s smile – ‘Sam.’ A cheer. ‘We did it. All of us here. I want to thank you for the long hours you put in, for keeping after him and giving up time with your families and friends. For not being downhearted, even if we had knockbacks. For staying calm despite the shit being heaped on your heads by the media and the PCC.’ He paused as a huge cheer went up. ‘Thank you all for making my first case as DI a success.’

  ‘Hope your playing’s better than your speeches, Henry!’ Mick yelled out, to a burst of laughter and calls of ‘Can it, Mick!’

  Ford smiled. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

  He stepped back, allowing Alec Reid to reclaim the mic. As the opening notes of BB King’s ‘How Blue Can You Get?’ filled the pub, Ford looked over at Hannah. She turned to face him and smiled, then mouthed something. Taking his hand off the strings, he cupped a hand behind his ear. She said it again, and this time he caught it.

  ‘You’re very good!’

  High on adrenaline and not a few beers, he smiled back, feeling his blood speeding through his veins.

  De motu cordis.

  The motion of the heart.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank you for buying this book. I hope you enjoyed it. As an author is only part of the team of people who make a book the best it can be, this is my chance to thank the people on my team.

  For being my first readers, Sarah Hunt, Jo Maslen and Katherine Wildman.

  For sharing their knowledge and experience of The Job, former and current police officers Andy Booth, Ross Coombs, Jen Gibbons, Neil Lancaster, Sean Memory, Trevor Morgan, Olly Royston, Chris Saunby, Ty Tapper, Sarah Warner and Sam Yeo.

  For helping me stay reasonably close to medical reality as I devise gruesome ways of killing people, Martin Cook, Melissa Davies, Arvind Nagra and Katie Peace.