by Andy Maslen
Ford took the folder and read the single sheet Jools had stapled to the inside of the folder. He nodded. ‘Thanks, Jools. How’s your interview with Matty doing?’
She grinned. ‘Slam-dunk.’
Ford called the hospital and discovered Abbott was taking a day off.
Abbott opened the door in a pair of chinos and a pistachio-green linen shirt, open at the neck. Seeing Ford on his doorstep appeared not to faze him. He smiled. Ford caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath.
‘Detective Inspector! What a pleasant—’
Then he looked over Ford’s shoulder. Where two of the biggest uniformed officers Ford had managed to find stood side by side. Gary and Mark were each well over six foot and members of the same rugby club.
Beyond them, a police car stood idling on the road, its blue lights flashing, casting their cobalt glow over Ford’s Discovery and a white prisoner transport van.
Abbott’s face betrayed no emotion as Ford spoke. ‘Charles Abbott, I am arresting you on suspicion that you murdered Angie and Kai Halpern, Paul Eadon, Marcus Anderson and Aimee Cragg, and that you attempted to murder Lisa Moore.’ He paused, sensing the two big PCs beside him squaring themselves. ‘We have compelling evidence linking you to these crimes. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand what I have just told you?’
Abbott pursed his lips. ‘I understand your words, but what I fail to understand is what the devil you’re playing at? I thought we’d concluded I wasn’t your man?’
‘Cuff him, please, Mark,’ Ford said, standing to one side.
‘Wait!’ Abbott barked, in such a commanding tone that Mark stopped with his hand midway to his cuffs. ‘I think you’re risking your career over a simple misunderstanding, Inspector,’ Abbott said, quieter now. ‘You know I have influential friends. Are you sure you want me to make a formal complaint against you?’
‘One hundred per cent. The cuffs, Mark.’
Mark had Abbott in the cuffs in seconds and, unable to resist, the consultant was frog-marched to the van, where, with a little gentle encouragement from Gary, he climbed up on to the step and made his way into the internal cage.
The van roared away, its diesel engine loud in the sleepy village.
Ford beckoned the two PCs over. ‘Inside, with me.’
They nodded grimly. On the drive over they’d agreed the arrest of the wife might prove trickier than that of the husband.
‘Mrs Abbott?’ Ford called out, reaching the kitchen. ‘Police!’
‘Upstairs, sir?’ Mark asked.
‘Go on. Gary, check the downstairs. Shout if you find her.’
Their booted feet heavy on the wooden floorboards and the stairs, the two burly officers left Ford in the kitchen. He looked through the French doors.
Lucinda Abbott lay on a steamer chair, topless, her eyes shaded by oversized round sunglasses. Ford strode across the lawn, conscious of the Quik-Cuffs rubbing the skin in the small of his back and the patch of sweat between his shoulder blades.
Seeing him, she stood and pulled a coral sundress over her head. He was struck, again, by her beauty. She stood, one hip cocked, as a swimsuit model might.
‘What brings you to our humble abode, Inspector?’ she asked.
Ford approached to within two feet of her. Swallowed. ‘Lucinda Abbott, I am arresting you on suspicion of being an accessory to murder . . .’
As he recited the arrest script, Lucinda Abbott’s mouth dropped open. Halfway through the caution, her knees gave way and she collapsed on to the chair.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she asked, looking up at him with panicked eyes. ‘There must be a mistake. Where’s Charles?’
‘Your husband is under arrest. At the moment he’s in a prisoner transit vehicle, being taken to Bourne Hill Police Station, where he will be formally charged with murder.’
She shook her head, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. ‘No. No! This is all wrong. Charles isn’t a murderer. Nor am I. He was with Zoe Denys. He told me. He told you.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t believe that. We have no evidence that she even exists. Stand up, please. You need to come with me.’
She stretched up a hand; he pulled her gently but firmly to her feet and completed the arrest script.
‘Is this about the blood?’ she whispered.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘He told me he was taking it from the hospital. It was, I don’t know, past its use-by date or something. I know it’s weird, what we were doing, but it’s not illegal. It was just a fetish of his. Nothing serious.’
‘Turn around, please,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to handcuff you and then escort you to a police car.’
‘That’s not necessary, surely?’ she protested.
Ford slapped the Quik-Cuffs against her wrists, locking them one above the other. Now she did struggle a little.
‘That hurts!’ she squealed. ‘You’ve pinched a nerve.’
‘Keep still, then. Let’s go.’
‘I can’t. Not like this. All those policemen looking at me. It’s not decent.’
‘Fine. Come inside and we’ll get you a coat or something.’
Once they reached the kitchen, he let her go and she turned to face him. She recovered a little of her previous poise. ‘If you can just take these handcuffs off, I’ll just pop upstairs to my dressing room and find something more’ – she paused – ‘appropriate to wear to your police station.’
Ford smiled. ‘I have a better idea,’ he said. ‘Gary!’ he shouted.
The PC arrived in the kitchen doorway, filling it. His eyes strayed over Lucinda Abbott’s body before he returned his gaze to Ford. ‘Sir?’
‘Go and find something to cover Mrs Abbott, please.’
‘Sir.’
Ford remained at the house after the convoy had left Britford for the custody suite at Bourne Hill. His heart was racing, but he felt elated rather than nervous. He’d got him, this time. He was sure of it. The media would have to eat their words.
Never mind the false start with Matty Kyte. He’d assaulted Hannah and he’d admitted to nicking stuff from the hospital, so Ford was certain he could spin the story so that Matty came off a villain, even if not of the psychopathic variety. As for the wife, Ford sensed he knew who had the whip-hand in that marriage.
He put some bootees on, pulled nitrile gloves over his hands and went upstairs, his Tyvek-shod feet sinking into the thickest-pile carpet he’d ever walked on.
The upstairs hallway reeked of vanilla. He pushed open the first door he came to: a bathroom, dominated by a free-standing claw-footed bath standing in the centre of polished wooden boards. He located the source of the smell. On the windowsill a small glass jar held a few inches of an amber liquid, from which protruded a dozen or so slender sticks.
He opened the medicine cabinet, but it held nothing of interest. Just a few unopened packets and tubes of what he took to be guest toiletries. Must have an en suite.
A single door at the end of the hallway beckoned him. He opened it and stepped into the master bedroom.
He gasped. ‘Bloody hell!’
The room was vast: at least thirty feet by fifty, with a pitched ceiling supported by exposed oak beams. One end contained a sofa and armchair in matching silver-and-purple brocade fabric. A vast widescreen TV was suspended from the wall. Currently, it was displaying an image of a lake surrounded by lush tropical forest.
A four-poster bed dominated the other end of the room. A huge four-poster bed, he realised as he got closer – three pillow-widths across and at least seven feet from head to foot.
He pulled open the top drawer of the night-stand. It contained nothing suspicious beyond a novel Ford himself had given up on the previous year on holiday with Sam. He tried the next drawer down. A rat’s nest of cables
, chargers, earbuds and a couple of outdated iPhones.
He tugged at the third drawer, which rattled but didn’t open. He frowned and looked closer. On the side facing the bed, a chromed cylinder protruded by a half-inch. His pulse kicked up a beat or three. You locked it!
Not wanting to wait for CSIs or fiddle with lock picks, he decided to break it open. But first, a little bit of necessary arse-covering for his policy book. He fished out his force-issued mobile and launched the voice recorder. ‘Having spent vital minutes searching for the key, I decided to break into the drawer, as I believed it might contain evidence vital to the case.’
He went back downstairs, fetched a screwdriver from his murder bag and ran back to the bedroom. He bent to the drawer, inserted the flat blade between it and its upstairs neighbour and pushed down. The flimsy lock cracked out of its housing and the drawer flew open.
And there it was. The evidence he needed.
‘I knew it!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got you.’
His background nausea subsiding, he placed the items on the bed. The trocars, the tubes and clamps, the blood bags, the vial of fentanyl and a pack of unused hypodermics, a leather sap and a Purcell Foundation ID on a lanyard, printed with Abbott’s photo and the name Harvey Williams.
As he surveyed his haul, he pulled out his phone and called Jan.
‘I want you to set up a search at Abbott’s house.’
DAY TWENTY-TWO, 10.45 A.M.
Just as Matty Kyte had done before him, Charles Abbott sat across the metal-topped table from Ford in Interview Room 4. The pungent aroma of disinfectant and fear-sweat had the man wrinkling his nose. The light bulb above their heads emitted an intermittent hum. Ford had screwed it into the socket himself.
Abbott’s solicitor had arrived thirty minutes earlier, striding into Major Crimes and bestowing a look of world-weary contempt on the police officers around him. He was tall and cadaverously thin, with steel-grey hair cropped close to his skull.
After introducing himself – ‘Jacob Rowbotham, of Rowbotham, Plummer, Minghella’ – and demanding to be taken to his client ‘at once’, Olly had taken him to Abbott.
Ford had assigned Jools and Mick to interview Lucinda Abbott. For his own interview with Charles Abbott, he’d asked Hannah to join him.
After everybody had identified themselves for the recording, Ford began.
‘You almost pulled it off, Charles.’
‘I’m not hearing a question,’ Abbott said.
‘You killed those people.’
‘No. I did not kill those people.’
‘Would you like to hear a story?’
‘Inspector Ford,’ Rowbotham said gravely. ‘My client is a respected member of this community as well as a very busy, and talented, medical man. If you arrested him, you must imagine that you have good grounds. Let’s hear them, rather than engaging in childish games.’
Abbott glanced sideways. ‘It’s fine, Jacob. Really.’ He turned back to face Ford. ‘Please continue. I love a good yarn.’
‘For some reason, one day this summer, you decided being a consultant haematologist and playing God up at SDH and that private place in the New Forest wasn’t doing it for you any more,’ Ford said. ‘The respect, the money, the kowtowing: they just got stale. You needed something more exciting. Something to impress the little people.’
Abbott smiled. ‘I’m gripped already.’
‘You gave yourself a whole new lease of life by transfusing yourself with the blood of strangers,’ Ford said. ‘You selected your victims from the food bank, organised a blood drive to check their blood groups were compatible with yours, then you murdered them. How am I doing so far?’
Abbott spread his hands. ‘It’s all utter fabrication, but your imagination – well, I take my hat off to you. Is there more?’
‘You lied about your alibis, and when the so-called truth came out, that threw me. I thought I had you on the back foot, so I ignored your second lie. And that was the big one, wasn’t it?’
‘Second lie? I don’t follow.’
‘The bait and switch over your blood sample. You told me you were O-positive. In fact, you’re A-positive.’
Abbott smiled and shook his head. ‘O-positive is what I said, and O-positive is what I am.’
Ford changed tack. ‘You attacked Lisa Moore in her home. She fought you off and scratched your arms.’
‘Brambles, as I told you.’
‘When we booked you in, was the cheek swab conducted professionally, would you say, Charles?’
‘It was conducted adequately.’
‘How will you feel when we identify your DNA in the samples we took from under Lisa Moore’s fingernails?’
Rowbotham leaned over and muttered behind his hand. Abbott’s eyes never left Ford’s as he listened.
‘No comment.’
‘And when we match the scrap of fabric we found near Marcus Anderson’s place to one of the garments we’ve taken from your house?’
‘No comment.’
‘If you’re innocent, Charles, now would be an excellent time to explain how I found a fake Purcell Foundation ID in your bedroom cabinet in the name of Harvey Williams.’
‘No comment.’
‘What were the trocars and blood bags for?’
‘No comment.’
Ford was ready with another question when Hannah leaned over and whispered in his ear. Ford nodded, and leaned back. This should be interesting.
‘Mr Abbott, what does the sequence .167, .333, .500, .666, .833, 1.000 tell you?’ she asked.
He yawned, covering his mouth with a fist. ‘Tell me?’
‘Do you recognise it? It’s very simple. Even a child could solve it.’
‘Then you’d be well placed to enlighten me.’
‘It’s sixths, isn’t it? Approximately.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Do you know how many litres of blood are present in the average human body?’
‘It varies.’
‘On average, though. That means—’
‘Yes, I know what “average” means, thank you. Six.’
‘Correct again. Two for two, as the Americans say. I taught there.’
‘Clever girl,’ Abbott replied.
‘Would you like to know where?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Quantico. That’s the FBI Academy. Though it’s also a Marine Corps base.’
‘Bravo. Do we have a Clarice Starling in our midst?’
‘Does that make you Hannibal Lecter?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I know you’re not eating people, so I would have to say no,’ Hannah said. ‘I taught FBI agents how to spot if a suspect is lying. I think you’re lying, Mr Abbott.’
‘I’m not lying,’ Abbott said in a neutral voice. ‘Next question.’
Ford nudged Hannah’s knee with his own and took over. ‘Do you consider yourself a good person, Charles?’
‘Yes. I save lives. I am a trustee at the food bank. I even volunteer to pack their shopping away for them.’
‘A worthy person?’
‘Worthy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where does your sense of self-worth come from, do you think?’
Abbott looked at the ceiling, then back at Ford. ‘My mother said if you could help someone and you didn’t, you weren’t being the best person you could be. It was important to show your worth as a human being. I suppose I got it from her.’
Something in that answer sparked a connection in Ford’s brain. The word ‘worth’. What was it? Then he remembered: Lisa Moore said her attacker had called her worthless. Worth/worthless. Interesting. He made a note.
‘That’s nice. “Said”?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You said’ – he made a show of consulting his notes – ‘“My mother said, if you could help someone”. Not says. Is she not with us any more?’
Abbott folded his arms across his chest. It was the first sign of
defensiveness Ford had seen from him.
‘Charles?’ he prompted.
Abbott shook his head. ‘She’s dead. She died.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss. When did she die?’
‘Beginning of last year. May tenth.’
‘That must have been a stressful time, what with your job and your work as a trustee. So many people depending on you.’
Abbott smiled. ‘I managed. I had to. She would have wanted me to.’
‘What do you think about the people who were murdered?’ Ford asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rowbotham said before Abbott could answer. ‘I fail to see what relevance that has.’
Abbott laid a hand on Rowbotham’s forearm. ‘It’s fine, Jacob, really. The inspector has his job to do.’ He faced Ford again. ‘To be honest, I think far too much is made about food banks. Calling those people customers, for one thing.’
‘What would you call them?’
‘Simply, what they are. They are society’s dregs. They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I mean, this isn’t the thirties, after all. I see no obvious signs of a Great Depression. They’re too lazy, stupid or short-sighted to figure out a way to earn money for food.’
‘Angie was a nurse. At your own hospital. Was she lazy? Stupid? Short-sighted?’
‘Plenty of nurses manage on their salaries, so yes, I imagine she was.’
A feeling of sickness grew, suddenly, in Ford’s stomach. He swallowed hard. ‘I think you killed them, Charles. I think you killed them because, in your eyes, they were worthless. What I can’t figure out is why you were transfusing yourself with their blood.’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ Abbott drawled, inspecting his manicured fingernails.
‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘No. You are wrong. I was not doing that for the simple reason that I did not kill those people.’
There it was again. That stilted speech pattern Hannah had talked about: ‘was not’, ‘did not’. Abbott was lying.
‘Do you have a single scrap of evidence linking my client directly to these crimes of which you are baselessly accusing him?’ Rowbotham asked, shuffling his papers together. ‘I suspect you don’t, in which case I demand you release him.’