Shallow Ground (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

‘I didn’t know anything, either. Not until recently, anyway,’ Ford said. ‘But I had a chat with Mr Abbott.’

  ‘The haematology consultant.’

  ‘Exactly. And he told me all about blood-group compatibility. You see, all the adult victims had the same blood group: A-positive. That means their blood would be compatible with yours. So you could be our killer and you could be transfusing their blood into yours.’

  The lie about compatibility was a trap. According to Abbott’s blood comp chart, someone with B-positive blood couldn’t accept A-positive blood. Ford wanted to hear what Matty would say.

  Matty’s brow furrowed for a split second and his lips parted with a wet click. Then he clamped them into a thin line and his forehead smoothed out again.

  ‘Something wrong, Matty?’ Ford asked.

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Sorry, Matty, you’ve lost me. How?’

  Kenney laid a hand on Matty’s forearm, but he shook it off.

  ‘My blood isn’t compatible with theirs. I can only have donations of O or B blood.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How do you know you can only have O or B blood? You said you didn’t know anything about blood transfusions.’

  ‘They told me at the blood drive.’

  ‘But you didn’t donate. You were on antibiotics, remember.’

  ‘I was chatting to one of the staff. She told me.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  Matty smiled. ‘Sorry, I can’t remember. She was pretty, though. I do remember that.’

  Ford was certain Matty was lying, just giving random answers, sure he wasn’t going to get caught out in a big enough lie to matter.

  ‘What are you hiding, Matty?’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing,’ he repeated. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth. I think you murdered five people, and attempted to murder a sixth. And unless you give me something to explain your, frankly, erratic behaviour during the two times we’ve spoken, I will see you charged with those crimes.’

  Matty looked at Kenney, then back at Ford. The clock ticked. The tape spools hissed. He dropped his gaze for a moment, then locked on to Ford, his lower lip quivering. He swallowed, Adam’s apple jumping in his pallid throat.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a naughty boy, Mr Ford,’ he said, finally.

  This was it. The moment the case ended.

  Ford leaned forward, heart pounding. ‘What have you done, Matty?’ he asked quietly.

  DAY TWENTY-ONE, 10.03 P.M.

  A tear ran down Matty’s left cheek. ‘I’ve been taking stuff from the hospital. Laptops, stationery, bed linen. Sometimes even from the patients. And I’ve been selling it on eBay. For our deposit.’

  Ford jerked his head back. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m a thief, Mr Ford. We’re so far from our target, me and Jen, what with our wages not being much, even together,’ he said. ‘And she wants it so badly.’ He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘She said if I could just get hold of a few hundred extra quid a month, we’d be, you know, closer.’

  Ford’s mind was racing. He desperately wanted not to believe Matty, but saw that it could explain everything: his evasiveness, his wife’s hostility. Bloody Guilty Secret Syndrome!

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Ford said, unable to resist the pull of his earlier conviction that he had his man. ‘You’re not seriously trying to tell me that, faced with life in prison as a serial killer, your best line is “I’ve been nicking stuff from work”?’

  ‘I can prove it!’ Matty said. ‘Our back bedroom’s full of it. It’s why I didn’t want that Detective Cable poking around the house. Check my eBay account. You’ll see what I’ve sold. Ask up at the hospital. Procurement have a record of all thefts from the hospital.’

  And then he burst into tears, sobbing loudly and wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  ‘I’d like to suggest we break here, Inspector,’ Kenney said. ‘You have my client’s explanation for his behaviour, which, as it’s the admission of guilt in another crime, I think you can take seriously. It’s late and he’s entitled to sleep.’

  Ford stared at her, then at Matty.

  ‘Interview suspended.’

  Pulling off the road into his drive, Ford realised he had no memory of the drive home. The traffic guys had told him about it once. You were on a familiar route, your mind drifted to other, more interesting topics and then WHAM! – you’d rear-ended a mum driving her brood to school, or hit a pedestrian too busy on their phone to look before crossing the road.

  He’d been so sure he had his man. Under pressure from the PTBs, he’d followed the evidence like a proper detective. They’d identified Kyte as a psychopath masquerading as a goody-two-shoes: keeping under the radar as a shy, mild-mannered doormat, running errands, soaking up abuse from the consultants at the hospital while all the time conducting a twisted murder spree.

  He’d wait for the DNA profile to come back the following day, but in his heart, he knew Matty was innocent. And not just because of a ‘not guilty’ verdict. He really hadn’t done it, in a black-and-white, God-sees-you-and-He-knows-you’re-innocent way.

  He cursed himself for ignoring his gut and focusing on Matty when he should have been pursuing Abbott. So what if other people thought it was him. Jools could go by the numbers if she wanted, but he was the lead investigator. He was the DI. Not her, not Mick. Him.

  He stabbed his front door key into the lock and went inside.

  ‘Sam, you up?’ he called.

  ‘In the kitchen!’ Sam shouted back.

  Slinging his suit jacket over the newel post and dumping his briefcase by the hall table, Ford wandered into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of beer from the fridge.

  Sam was assembling thick slices of bread, ham, cheese and sliced tomatoes into a sandwich. He squashed the snack down before trapping it in a hinged cage and slotting it into the toaster. He turned.

  ‘You look like your dog died.’

  ‘I don’t have a dog. As I think you know.’

  ‘Yeah, but if you did, and it died, that’s what you’d look like.’

  It was an old routine. They’d use it whenever one of them was looking down in the mouth.

  Ford took a pull on the beer. ‘The case just went sideways. No,’ he said, wiping his lips, ‘sideways would have been good. It went backwards. At speed.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The guy I arrested—’

  ‘The porter?’

  ‘Looks like he didn’t do it.’

  ‘Clever brief?’

  ‘Nope. He’s just confessed to being a common or garden thief.’

  ‘Bummer.’

  ‘Megabummer.’

  ‘Hyperbummer.’

  ‘Bummerpocalypse.’

  Sam touched his lower lip. ‘You’ve never talked to me about a case before. Not like this one. You know, the Latin, and now this porter guy.’

  ‘I wanted to protect you. It’s pretty horrible stuff I have to deal with.’

  ‘I’m fifteen, Dad. I’ve seen all kinds of stuff on the internet. Plus, it’s cool that you asked, you know? I could be, like, your asset.’

  Ford grinned. ‘My asset?’

  Now Sam was grinning, too. ‘You always say I’m smart. Let me help. Not with, like, confidential stuff, but tricky stuff. Puzzles, weirdness. You could bounce ideas off me.’

  Ford frowned, looked up at the ceiling, then back at his son. ‘Hmm. Maybe I could use, you know, an asset,’ he said, making air quotes and relieved to see Sam’s grin widen. ‘But you know the code, OK?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Not a word to anyone. On pain of death.’

  ‘Worse, on pain of no Wi-Fi. Deal?’

  Sam held out his fist for Ford to bump. ‘Deal. So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Me? I’m going to eat something, then I’m going to have
another beer, then I’m going to listen to the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, very loud through headphones, then I’m going to get some sleep, then I’m going to have to review the whole case right from the start and see if I missed anything,’ he said.

  Sam smiled, then pulled the toasted sandwich out of its cage. He pointed at it. ‘Want half?’

  ‘Yeah. That would be great.’

  Son and father sat facing each other at the kitchen table, munching on the sandwich.

  ‘I’m going round to Josh’s tomorrow after school. So if you have to work in the evening, you know, that’s OK.’

  Ford nodded, realising his son knew more about the way his job worked than he gave him credit for. ‘Thanks. But as soon as we clear this one, you and I are going out for a drive in the Jag. Anywhere you like. A road trip, yeah?’

  ‘Cool. So.’ Sam took a bite of his half of the sandwich, chewed vigorously, then spoke through a cheekful. ‘What about that other guy? The consultant up at the hospital. What happened to him?’

  ‘It’s weird. I was so sure it was him. Still am, really. But his blood group’s wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘We think the killer’s transfusing himself with a litre of blood from each victim.’

  Sam pulled a face. ‘Gross.’

  ‘Yeah, gross just about covers it.’

  ‘So, what, the doctor guy has the wrong blood group or something?’

  ‘He’s O-positive. The killer has to be A-positive or AB-positive.’

  ‘Oh yeah!’ Sam said, his eyes wide. ‘We did that in biology. Right before the monoclonal antibodies that Hannah helped me with. You have to have compatible blood groups or your antibodies destroy the new blood cells.’

  ‘Exactly. And Mr Charles-bloody-Abbott doesn’t have the right blood type.’

  ‘So, you, like, checked him out or whatever?’

  ‘Yes. He took his own blood right in front of me. Alec tested it. It’s not a fit for the killer.’

  ‘Maybe he switched it or something.’

  Ford shook his head. ‘I was right there, mate.’

  ‘Yeah, but what if, right, he knew you’d ask for it and he prepared a trick? It’s like that magic book I was obsessed with when I was a kid, remember? You use – what’s it called? – misdirection. You keep up your patter and you do something to distract the audience, then when they’re looking at the beautiful girl or the dove or whatever, you pull the switcheroo.’

  Ford thought back to the scene in Abbott’s consulting room. Closed his eyes and ran the movie back and forth. A line of dialogue floated free. ‘Hand me a label, would you, Ford?’

  Ford snapped his eyes open.

  ‘Sam, you’re a bloody genius! I love you!’

  He seized Sam by the shoulders and kissed him hard on the forehead.

  DAY TWENTY-ONE, 11.55 P.M.

  Chrissie Norton was nearing the end of her late shift at Revelstoke Hall Hospital. She enjoyed cleaning, and the chance it gave her to have a little poke around in the doctors’ offices. She liked reading patients’ notes if any had been left up on a screen, but that was rare.

  Cupboards were fun, too. Never knew what you might find. Boxes of chocolates were her favourites. Popping a caramel into her mouth, she’d assuage her guilt with the thought that nobody’d miss one or two.

  Humming to herself, she unlocked the door to the last office on her corridor. The brass name plate, which she would polish to a beautiful sheen after cleaning the room itself, bore the name Charles Abbott.

  So handsome. And those eyelashes. Like a girl’s!

  He was a careful one, Charles Abbott was. Never left his computer switched on, let alone with the patient database open on the screen. Kept his cupboards locked, too, stingy bugger! Still, he was a charmer, that was for sure, and she quite liked the way his eyes roved over her body on the rare occasions their paths crossed.

  Reflexively, she hooked a finger around the slender aluminium handle of the first cupboard along the back wall and gave it a tug. No harm in trying, is there? Her heart fluttered as the door swung open. He must be getting careless. She squatted down and peered inside. And she frowned.

  ‘Now, why would a nice wealthy gentleman like you be shopping in these places?’ she said aloud as she took in the odd assortment of groceries arranged on the shelf.

  Then the door opened behind her, making her jump. She turned to see Charles Abbott framed in the doorway. He didn’t look cross. That was a good thing.

  ‘It’s Christine, isn’t it?’ he asked her, smiling, and locking the door behind him. ‘What do they call you? Chris? Chrissie?’

  She got to her feet, smoothing her hands over her smock. ‘Chrissie. I, I’m so sorry, Mr Abbott. I didn’t mean to pry. I was just dusting the cupboard and the door opened.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, still smiling, and taking a step towards her. ‘Silly of me, really. Forgetting to lock it, I mean. I’ve been under a degree of pressure recently.’

  Her heart fluttering in her chest like a caged bird, Chrissie backed away from him until the windowsill jabbed her just over her kidneys.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t report me. I’ll lose my job.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in a low, reassuring voice she always associated with doctors. Must teach it them at medical college. ‘I’m not going to report you. But I do need to tell you something. Something personal. Would that be OK?’

  ‘You can tell me anything. I won’t breathe a word,’ she shot back, anxious to please now he’d offered her a lifeline.

  He crooked a finger. ‘Come here, then.’

  She closed the distance between them. ‘What is it, Mr Abbott? What do you want to tell me?’

  ‘Let me whisper it,’ he murmured.

  He leaned closer and she turned so he could place his lips against her ear. She became aware of his aftershave, a lovely spicy smell. Gently, he cradled the back of her head.

  ‘What?’ she whispered back.

  ‘You’ve discovered my little secret.’

  ‘Secret?’

  ‘My trophy cabinet.’

  She frowned. What was he on about? She wanted to step back, but his fingertips were pressed against her scalp, clamping her head against his chest. He was very strong.

  ‘The food, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. You see, Chrissie, I took them from each of my victims. And now you know about them, don’t you?’

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. You’re him. Off the news.

  ‘I won’t tell a soul. I promise,’ she whispered, feeling her pulse bumping in her throat.

  She tried to pull away, but his grip had tightened.

  ‘I’m sure you think that’s true, Chrissie. But we both know you’d weaken. You might let it slip to one of your friends. Or the police will start interviewing people here and you’ll just have to be honest, won’t you?’

  Fear was making her knees tremble and she thought she might wet herself. ‘Please, Mr Abbott. Please don’t hurt me. You could move them. Throw them in the hospital bins out the back.’

  ‘But, Chrissie, you’d still know, wouldn’t you? Best we just nip this little problem in the bud, yes?’

  Oh, God, had he just bitten her? The sharp sting took her breath away. Then it blossomed into searing, burning agony. She clutched her neck and felt the wetness surging out between her fingers. She felt cold. Icy.

  He was grinning at her. He was holding a shiny silver knife . . .

  . . . a whatchamacallit scalpy is that right no it’s a scalper no a sca— . . . sc— . . . sss— . . .

  She sank to her knees, and as her hand fell away from her neck and the world darkened, she had just enough time to see the jets of blood splashing against the wall. They sounded like the sea in her ears.

  Driving away from the hospital two hours later, skin tingling from a thirty-minute scalding shower after the clean-up, Abbott felt so serene he wanted to close his eyes and drive by intuition alone. He resisted the
temptation. Tomorrow would be his biggest test yet.

  He glanced in the Aston’s rear-view mirror. The incinerator’s orange glow underlit the plume of smoke issuing from the chimney.

  DAY TWENTY-TWO, 9.00 A.M.

  Ford woke early and called Jools.

  ‘Morning, guv.’

  ‘Morning. I want you to finish interviewing Matty without me. When his DNA sample comes back, my guess is it won’t be a match. And on that basis, I want you to de-arrest him for murder and rearrest him for assault and theft. Jen, too.’

  ‘Got it. And guv?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got some good news for you. Looks like your gut was right, after all.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I got Abbott’s medical records. His blood group isn’t O-positive. It’s A-positive.’

  Ford smiled. He felt a surge of triumph replacing the black mood that had engulfed him the previous day.

  ‘Thanks, Jools. You’re a star.’

  Ford called Alec on the drive in to work. ‘Has the DNA lab sent back the report on the blood sample Abbott provided?’

  ‘Yes. Just now, as a matter of fact. But it’s not a match to the scrapings I took from Lisa Moore. I’m sorry, Henry.’

  ‘I’m not. He switched the blood.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘No time to explain.’

  No sooner had he ended the call than his phone rang.

  ‘What is it, Olly?’

  ‘I found a complaint a neighbour made against Abbott’s dad back in 1981. The dad was swearing at Charles, turning the air blue, according to the neighbour. She dictated the dad’s exact words, guv. Listen.’

  As Olly read out the torrent of invective the father had spewed into his son’s ears, Ford’s gut clenched. This was it: the clue to Abbott’s psychology he needed.

  At Bourne Hill, he started planning the arrest. And he thought back to his conversations with the Abbotts. There were plenty of examples of married couples sliding into depravity together. Now that he was going to arrest Abbott for murder, he could try to upgrade the charge against Lucinda from obstruction to accessory to murder.

  Jools came in and handed him a folder. ‘Abbott’s medical records. They make interesting reading. I pulled out the juicy bits.’