Shallow Ground (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Believe me, that would have been preferable.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Martin-effing-Peterson, that’s what.’

  ‘What’s he done now?’

  She felt the rage banked up inside her threatening to burst free again. Took a deep breath. Ran her hands through her hair.

  ‘Our dear PCC has just called to, and I quote, “offer some well-meant advice” on this serial case of ours.’

  ‘Let me guess.’ Ford mimicked Peterson’s snooty accent: ‘“You see, Sandy, we’ve managed to put the whole Novichok business behind us, and we can’t afford another dent in our reputation as a global tourist destination. Just get it cleared. Soonest, yes?”’ He paused before adding the PCC’s favourite sign-off. ‘Cheers, now!’

  ‘Bugging my office, are we?’

  He shrugged and poured boiling water into a chipped mug. ‘Informed guesswork.’

  ‘We could do with a bit of that on these murders. How’s it going?’

  ‘My office?’

  She took a chair at a small round table covered in papers. Ford sat opposite her.

  ‘I’ve worked up a preliminary profile with Hannah,’ he said.

  He outlined their working assumptions about the killer. She listened in silence, nodding at things she liked, pursing her lips at some she didn’t.

  When he’d finished she said, ‘Does any of that help us get closer to finding him?’

  ‘I think it does. And I think it’s a close match for Abbott. The profile fits him like a glove. The killer’s obsessed by blood. Abbott’s a haematologist, for God’s sake. How much more do we need?’

  Sandy sighed. ‘I’m assuming you remember our last conversation. So how about evidence? Something we can take to the CPS? There’s hundreds of blokes up at SDH who fit that profile, let alone in Salisbury as a whole.’

  ‘I can feel, it, Sandy. Right here,’ he added, placing a hand over his belly. ‘He’s a wrong ’un.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not good enough. Not by a long chalk. This is the twenty-first century. How’s it going to look if I waltz into a press conference and say, “Morning, ladies and gents, well, it’s good news. My star DI has solved the case because his tummy told him who did it”?’

  Ford bit down to prevent himself saying something he’d regret. ‘We’re digging into links between the victims,’ he said instead. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky that way.’

  ‘Keep me posted, OK? If I have to speak to Peterson again before you have someone in custody, I’ll have a stroke.’

  Ford’s phone rang. It was Jools. She sounded rattled.

  ‘We’ve got another one, guv. Really bad. And really old.’

  Ford drove all the way to the cabin in his own car. The Discovery may have lacked the finesse and sparkle of some of his CID colleagues’ wheels, but when it came to investigating rural crimes it had them beat. While they waited for a ride in one of the station’s Skoda Yeti 4x4s, he was already heading to the scene.

  Gagging as he walked up to the front door, he nodded to Hannah, clad, like her colleagues, in a white paper suit and wearing a rebreather.

  ‘You want one?’ she asked him, her voice muffled by the mask.

  He shook his head, extracting the tobacco tin from a jacket pocket. ‘Got my patented stink-busters.’

  With the menthol’s minty fumes chilling the inside of his forehead and making his eyes water, he entered the cabin.

  Standing at the edge of the room, he logged the similarities with the two earlier crime scenes. His stomach was roiling already, as it always did in the presence of death. Ever since Lou. He began fishing in his pocket for a bag. Realised he’d used his last one at Paul Eadon’s flat.

  Decomp and hot weather had reduced what had once been a human body to a blackish-purple heap through which off-white knobbles protruded here and there. Maggots writhed over it, their noise a loud, liquid hiss. It lay in a vast patch of dried blood the colour of treacle.

  Gulping, and sensing he only had a few more seconds, he looked around the rough, lime-plastered walls.

  And, as he’d known he would, he saw it.

  167

  Black smears. Runs and drips. Clots stuck to the bare plaster. Cruder than the first two numbers.

  He closed his eyes. Desperate to catch even a fleeting sense of the killer. Male, female, kid, adult, I don’t care. It’s not sex. It’s power. I hate them. I hate their blood. I hate blood. That’s why I let it all out.

  He gulped. Felt the sweat sheening his face. The smell was so bad. Worse than rotting meat and sewage.

  Ford felt his gorge rising.

  Ran.

  Made it to a hedge.

  Puked. Spat. Heaved again.

  Straightening, he saw Mick walking over.

  ‘You OK, Henry?’

  ‘Tip-top. You?’

  Mick smiled maliciously. ‘Might be a while before I have Heinz Big Soup for my tea.’

  Ford looked away and drew a cleansing lungful of air. ‘Priorities. Identify the victim. I want to know if he or she had any connection to the hospital. Especially to the team that treated Paul Eadon.’

  Mick nodded. ‘Already done. I talked to the farmer. His name’s Rory Pale. I went to school with him.’

  Ford raised his eyebrows. ‘The victim, Mick?’

  ‘Sorry, boss.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Marcus Anderson. Alec said he gave his occupation as environmental activist. One of those bloody troublemakers who—’

  ‘He’s not going to cause any trouble now, is he?’ Ford snapped.

  ‘Sorry, guv.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, Mick. The City Council’s squeezing the mayor, he’s squeezing the PCC, Peterson’s squeezing the Python and she’s squeezing me.’

  ‘Cosy.’

  ‘As a rat’s nest. Listen, it’s the same killer. And that means we’re going to have a media shitstorm breaking over our heads in the next twenty-four hours or so. We’ll have a team briefing about that at five this afternoon.’

  He saw Jan talking to a team of uniforms. She was a great POLSA. She knew the police search adviser’s job better than he did, so when he walked over to her it was to receive information, not give instructions.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked her.

  She turned a full circle, shading her eyes against the sun as she faced into it. ‘No other dwellings in sight. There are more of these cabins in the next field,’ she said. ‘The one beyond the river. I’m thinking our killer must have driven, parked out of sight, then walked the last bit. Less likely to arouse suspicion from an eco-warrior like Marcus.’

  ‘There’s a track over there. I used it myself.’

  ‘Exactly. I’ve got a couple of guys looking for tyre marks the CSIs can cast. Other than from a Discovery, obviously,’ she said, favouring him with a smile.

  ‘Initial perimeter? How big?’

  She inhaled deeply, then wrinkled her nose. ‘That muck-spreading doesn’t half pong. Fifty-metre-diameter circle?’

  He nodded. They’d have their work cut out covering even a small area like that, given the overgrown vegetation. He pointed at a towering oak, its lower limbs kissing the ground.

  ‘It’s outside your circle, but check that, too, would you? Call it a captain’s pick.’

  DAY TEN, 11.38 A.M.

  Ford returned to Bourne Hill and convened a team briefing. Standing in front of a whiteboard full of crime scene images, including the three blood-daubed numbers, he looked at each of his team in turn before speaking. He saw tiredness, but not despair. They were still in the game and up for the challenge. Whether they’d be looking like this in six months’ time, or in a year, he had no idea. He only knew he had to protect them from the flak that was about to hit them from every angle.

  ‘At some point in the next twelve hours or so, we’re going to have the ladies and gentlemen of the media descending on us. I want to set a few ground rules. One’ – he held up a finger – ‘as always, assume you’re speaking on the record. T
wo, if you say it, expect to see it used where the world and his wife can read it. Possibly with your ugly mug next to it.’

  ‘Better keep Mick out the way, then, guv,’ Jools said, provoking laughter from the rest of the room.

  Ford smiled. Noted that Mick managed a diplomatic ‘Fuck you, Jools!’ in response.

  ‘Three, nobody is to mention how Kai Halpern was murdered. Nobody. Understand?’

  A chorus of ‘Yes, guv/boss/Henry.’

  ‘Olly, how are we getting on with the son of the dead woman? Farrell, was it?’

  ‘William, yes, guv. He’s a fit lad. A bodybuilder. Says he was at his gym working out when the first two murders were committed.’

  ‘Corroborated?’

  ‘Working on it.’

  ‘Work harder. And as soon as the pathologist gives us a time of death for Marcus Anderson, ask him for that date too.’ He gestured to Jan. ‘Anything from the searches yet?’

  ‘Sorry, Henry. Nothing so far, but they’re still up there, so fingers crossed. You want me to widen the perimeter?’

  ‘Not for now. He used what came to hand to stun Angie, a punch with Paul, and God alone knows with Marcus. It’s classic serial-killer MO evolution. He’s refining and adapting as he goes.’

  ‘The signature’s consistent, though,’ Olly said. ‘The bleeding out and the numbers.’

  Ford turned to the whiteboard and stabbed an index finger at the three images of the bloody numbers.

  666 – tap.

  500 – tap.

  167 – TAP.

  ‘Significance?’

  The room fell silent. Someone snapped a pencil. The crack was loud.

  ‘The numbers are in the wrong order,’ Hannah said, keeping her gaze fixed on Ford as all heads swivelled round to look at her.

  ‘No, they’re not,’ Mick said. ‘666 was Angie, 500 was Paul and 167 was Marcus.’

  ‘That’s the order of discovery. Not the order they were killed. I think Marcus had been dead for longer than a week. More likely, over two. Though we’ll need a forensic entomologist to confirm it.’

  ‘You’re saying it should go, 167, 666, 500?’ Ford said.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  Ford rearranged the photos on the whiteboard. ‘Anyone?’

  ‘I’m still seeing that 666, guv,’ Mick said. ‘Look, serials are nutters, right? This one happens to be a satanic nutter. It’s not getting us anywhere, is it?’

  Ford agreed. The numbers, the signature, the profile: none of them meant anything until they had a suspect. ‘What do you suggest, Mick?’

  ‘What about this guy Jools interviewed? What was his name again?’

  ‘Matty Kyte,’ Jools said.

  ‘He works at SDH. So did the first victim. And the second vic was treated there, by her.’ Ford tapped the name beneath the photo on the whiteboard. ‘Angie, I mean,’ Mick corrected himself. ‘Then we’ve got Olly’s guy. The justice warrior. His alibis are “I was training at the gym”. They’re all selling each other steroids, so it’ll be flimsy. Just sticking together.’

  ‘Right. I want you and Olly to tie those up. Get CCTV of him arriving and leaving for the times and dates of the murders. Or in their café, if they have one. See if they have a check-in system, time-stamped till receipts or swipe-card data.’

  ‘Guv?’

  He looked over at Jools. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was looking at the crime scene photos earlier. From Angie’s kitchen. Something weird.’

  Jools clicked a couple of keys on her laptop and projected an image on to a blank section of wall.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘These are the groceries on Angie’s kitchen table. What do you notice?’

  Silence fell as the assembled investigators scrutinised the image in front of them.

  Hannah broke the silence. ‘They’re all different brands.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Mick said. ‘She had coffee, pasta, tinned stuff, cereal. Who buys all one brand?’

  ‘No, not that. The store brands, look.’ Hannah pointed. ‘Tesco, Waitrose, Asda, Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jools said. ‘When most people go shopping, they stay loyal to one store.’

  ‘Not if they’re a bit strapped for cash. Then they shop around for offers,’ Mick said.

  ‘Maybe. But Waitrose? Not cheapest for anything, is it?’

  Ford saw it. ‘The food bank.’

  Jools smiled and nodded. ‘That’s what I reckon. I think poor Angie had more month than money, and when things got tight she went off to the Purcell Foundation.’

  Ford made a note in his policy book. ‘Thanks, Jools, that’s another line of enquiry. Can you start digging, please? Anyone there giving her grief, that sort of thing.’ He turned to the end of the table housing the sergeants. ‘Mick, can you find out if Paul Eadon was a food-bank user?’

  Once the meeting was over, Ford walked with Hannah to Forensics.

  ‘I want to see the photos from the other two crime scenes,’ he said.

  Seated beside each other at her desk, Hannah called up three folders, labelled Halpern/S1, Eadon/S1 and Anderson/S1.

  ‘Those are the primary crime scenes,’ she said, before double-clicking on the folder labelled Eadon/S1.

  She scrolled through until she found a set of images detailing the kitchen cabinets. Slowly, she tabbed through until she found an image of a food cupboard.

  She pointed. ‘Look.’

  There they were. The same random assortment of branded packages. Biscuits from Lidl. Tea from Sainsbury’s. Tinned stew from Tesco. Pasta from Aldi.

  They looked at each other. ‘Food bank,’ they said in unison.

  The results from Anderson’s eco-hut kitchen were the same. More in the way of lentils, beans and wholewheat pasta, but a similar variety of store brands.

  ‘I don’t think this is about the hospital at all,’ Ford said.

  Half an hour later he was on his way to meet Leonie Breakspear, the manager of the Purcell Foundation’s food bank.

  DAY TEN, 12.30 P.M.

  The young woman walking towards Ford with a smile and an outstretched hand had the tanned face and sun-kissed blonde hair of a surfer.

  ‘I’m Leonie. Welcome,’ she said as they shook hands.

  She showed him to a partitioned corner of the Purcell Foundation warehouse. The space was fitted out with rudimentary office furniture, including a coffee percolator.

  She gestured at it. ‘Would you like a cup? Or is that just a TV thing? You know, policemen always drinking coffee?’

  He smiled. ‘No, it’s real-life coppers, too. And yes, please.’

  She sat beside the desk rather than behind it, so that they were knee to knee.

  ‘How can I help you?’ she said, eyes wide, enquiring.

  ‘Have you seen in the news about the murders?’

  She nodded. Ford was impressed by her reaction. No immediate stagy look of horror.

  ‘Of course. Those poor people.’

  He nodded. ‘We think they were all’ – he paused, unsure of the correct term – ‘customers. Of the food bank.’

  ‘Here?’ she said.

  ‘Unless there’s another food bank in Salisbury?’

  ‘No, just us. But, how? I mean, why? Who would do such a thing to people who are already so vulnerable?’

  Not wanting to explain to her that muggers, killers, stalkers, paedophiles and rapists preferred to go after society’s most vulnerable members, he stuck to his training and asked his own questions. ‘Do you have a list of people who come here?’

  ‘Yes. We ask all new customers to fill out a simple form. We help the ones with literacy problems. But it’s confidential. You can see that, surely? To preserve their dignity.’

  ‘Of course. But if they were customers, that’s a very strong link between them. The killer may be targeting people who use the food bank. Believe me, I have no interest in subjecting any of your customers to intrusive or undignified questioning, and we would keep the
ir identities confidential.’ Unless and until we arrest one. Then all bets are off.

  She looked as if she was in pain, screwing up her face and hunching her shoulders. ‘I do understand, really I do. But there are rules. Policies. Procedures.’

  Fighting down an urge to shout that he was trying to prevent any more of her customers being bled to death, Ford switched tack. ‘Let’s leave your customers for now. How about a list of employees? And do you have volunteers?’

  She puffed her cheeks out, nodding. ‘I suppose that would be all right. Can I email it to you?’

  ‘I’d rather take it away with me.’

  Back at Bourne Hill, Ford gathered the team together. He passed a stack of A4 sheets of paper to Olly. ‘Take one, pass them on, as they say at police college.’

  ‘Who are they, guv?’ Jan asked.

  ‘Purcell Foundation employees and volunteers. Divide them up between you and put a basic personal and lifestyle profile together for each one. Use the PNC, social media, Google, whatever. Everyone on it, please. Back here at three.’

  With the team reconvened in the conference room later that afternoon, Ford clapped his hands to still the buzz of conversation. ‘These are all persons of interest. I want them interviewed as soon as possible.’

  ‘In pairs?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Ideally, yes,’ he said. ‘But there are a lot of people on that list and we’re up against a serial killer who’s already accelerating. So, let’s map them against our suspect profile and score them. Do the ten with the highest scores in pairs, the rest take one each.’

  Half an hour passed in a hubbub of activity as the assembled investigators and CSIs reviewed every person on Ford’s list against the basic suspect profile he and Hannah had drawn up. Finally, he had ten names written up on the whiteboard.

  Geoff Dowd

  Mark Packham

  Lance Williams

  Philip O’Rourke

  Matthew Kyte

  James Collins

  Lenny Hayes

  Jason Torrance

  Robert Babey

  Jasmin Fortuna

  He looked at the fifth name, then at Jools. She was staring at the list, lips pressed together. Focused. Hungry.