Shallow Ground (Detective Ford) by Andy Maslen (to read list txt) 📕

– the killer, we assume – wrote the number 666 on the wall in blood.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Mick said with feeling, running a palm over his shaved skull.

‘Satanic murderer hits Salisbury!’ one of the police staff investigators called out.

Ford waited until the banter evaporated under his stern gaze. He turned to the left side of the table. ‘Jan, I want you to set up a search. The house, obviously – all three flats – then, what, a fifty-metre perimeter?’

She nodded and made a note. ‘Should be about right. Anything you want me to look for in particular?’

‘There was a lot of blood. Gallons of the stuff. If he got away without leaving some sort of trail, I’d be amazed.’

‘Lose your breakfast again, did you, guv?’ Mick muttered, just loud enough for Jan to hear.

‘Leave it, Mick,’ she hissed. ‘You know what today is.’

‘Joke.’

‘Right. So, blood drops, footprints or partials?’ Jan asked.

‘Exactly. Other than that, the usual,’ Ford said, offering her a small smile of gratitude. ‘I’d like to recover whatever he used to wound her, too. The murder weapon might be his bare hands, but he must have used some sort of edged or pointed weapon to bleed her out as well.’

‘Sir?’

‘Yes, Olly.’

‘Sorry, sir, but you keep saying “he”. Shouldn’t we be a bit more open to the idea of a female killer?’

Ford caught Mick Tanner’s eye-roll. ‘Let’s settle on “they” for now. Now, what about motives-slash-lines of enquiry?’

‘Robbery gone wrong?’ Jan asked.

‘Nothing taken. Next?’

‘Jealous partner?’ This from Mick.

‘Husband’s deceased, but we’ll check for boyfriends. Next?’

‘Stalker,’ a civilian investigator suggested.

‘Possible. Can you look into that, please? Anything else?’

‘Work colleague with a grudge?’ Olly offered.

‘Seems a bit over the top for a professional rivalry, but yes, possible.’

‘What if the woman was only collateral damage?’ Nat, standing at the back of the room, asked.

‘Meaning?’

‘We’re all talking about Angie. Her ex, her stalker, her colleagues. What if the killer was interested in Kai?’

Ford frowned. Please don’t let it be a child killer.

‘That’s an interesting idea, Nat. Let’s look at all the nonces in our patch with convictions for violence as well as their usual scumbaggery.’

‘Sir?’ It was Olly again. ‘Aren’t we all avoiding the obvious?’

Ford sighed. Bloody graduate fast-trackers. ‘Which is?’

‘Stranger murder.’

‘They’re very rare. But then, so are murder scenes like ours. How do you explain the lack of evidence of forced entry or defensive wounds on Angie Halpern’s body? Wouldn’t she try to fight off a stranger?’

Olly frowned. ‘He rings the doorbell and gives her a line. Something to make her trust him. Then he bashes her over the head to subdue her so he can bleed her out.’

‘Olly could have a point, boss,’ Mick said. ‘After all, she’s hardly going to let a stalker in, is she?’

‘I don’t think a woman living on her own would let a stranger into her home just on the strength of a line,’ Jan said, making air-quotes around the final word. ‘Especially not if her little boy was in the flat with her.’

‘Fine,’ Mick said. ‘Say she knows him, then. Maybe not well. But enough to trust him. He’s not a threat, so she lets him in.’

Ford decided it was time to refocus the discussion. ‘What about the blood?’ he asked the room. ‘It’s obviously not just a by-product of an attack. Angie and Kai were posed. No violence to the bodies, beyond the obvious. Does blood mean something to our killer? Let me hear your ideas. Word association. Blood.’

‘Horror films,’ Jools said.

‘Menstruation, childbirth,’ Jan said, to a groan from Mick Tanner.

‘Do we have to?’ he complained.

She glared at him. ‘You’ve got a female victim, a mother, posed with her child. You saw the photos. She had her trousers pulled down and Kai’s curled into her lap like a foetus. If that doesn’t say her gender mattered, you need to think harder.’

‘A&E,’ Nat said. ‘We’ve all been up there in our careers. Place is awash with it. My youngest cut his hand on a new penknife last year. I took him up there with blood leaking all over my new upholstery.’

‘Those LA gangs, Bloods and Crips,’ someone added.

Then the flood gates opened.

‘The bucket of blood in Carrie.’

‘Haemophilia.’

‘Rambo First Blood.’

‘Dracula.’

‘My Bloody Valentine.’

Ford held his hands up for quiet. ‘Well, well. I didn’t realise what a creatively out-there team I had. Well done, everyone. That was illuminating. Not sure where it gets us at the moment, but keep in mind that the blood probably means something to our killer.’ He started gathering his papers together. ‘Assignments. Jan, you’re sorted. Mick, can you take Olly and start looking into Angie’s background? Jools, I want you to run a search on the PNC, HOLMES, all the usual databases for murders and/or violent assaults where blood played a role over and above the usual spillage. I want reader/recorders for all the data we pull in.’

Ford hated the alphabet soup of acronyms spawned by modern policing. PNC, the Police National Computer, wasn’t too bad. But he reckoned whoever had thought up HOLMES – Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – should be shot.

‘Sir?’

Ford bit back a sigh. ‘Olly, yes.’

‘What about a psychologist? You said we shouldn’t focus on the weirdness, but the number painted in blood and everything. I mean, shouldn’t we call in a psychologist or a profiler?’

‘No. I’m not going to waste money on some minor-league academic out to make a name for themselves. They’ll charge a fortune then tell me what my gut does ten times better and for nothing. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to dip up some blood and do a little bit of finger painting. If I’d just killed my wife’ – he swallowed, and continued – ‘and I wanted to throw the cops off my scent, I’d give it a go.’

Olly folded his arms across his chest and looked away.

‘When’s the PM, boss?’ Jan asked as people started shuffling papers together and leaving their seats.

‘Tomorrow morning. I’ll grab a few of you to attend with me. Thanks, everybody.’

The meeting broke up with