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

FPM Room 1 was full this particular morning. Standing behind the stainless-steel table bearing a sheet-covered body was Dr Georgina Eustace, the pathologist, clad in navy scrubs, rubber boots and a hinged visor on a white plastic headband. Flanking her, also in scrubs, were a mortician and a photographer. Ford had brought Mick and Jools. Alec Reid was there. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Henry,’ he’d said earlier that morning. He’d brought Hannah with him, too.

The mortuary air-extraction system was fighting a losing battle against the smell rising from what had once been Angie Halpern. A sharp tang of disinfectant overlaid the stink.

Eustace handed round a blue glass screw-top jar. ‘My signature blend,’ she said to Hannah. ‘Menthol, camphor, eucalyptus and thymol.’

Once everyone had smeared a little of the waxy paste under their nostrils, Georgina began. Without any ceremony, she drew the dark-blue sheet back and handed it to the mortician. He balled it and tossed it dead-centre into a plastic scrubs bin in the corner.

After removing and examining the clothes and jewellery, and describing their condition for her recorder, Georgina began work on the body.

She took a large-bladed scalpel and cut deep into the skin of the left shoulder, passed beneath the breasts and drew the blade down in a long, single cut to the pubic bone. A second diagonal cut formed the Y-incision that allowed access to the internal organs.

In Ford’s mind, a victim – a named victim – was the person on his murder wall at Bourne Hill. Their earthly remains, which were by no means always as intact as those in front of him, were just a body. Separating the two like this helped him cope.

‘Henry, come and look at this,’ Georgina said.

She was using a stainless-steel rod to lift a patch of blood-matted hair from the left side of the skull. As she pulled it away, the hair detached from the scalp, draping over the polished steel like noodles on a chopstick.

He looked down at a crescent-shaped gash through which bone gleamed. The skull appeared intact.

‘Doesn’t look hard enough to have caused her death,’ he said.

‘Agreed. If it was textbook blunt-force trauma, I’d expect to see comminuted spiral fractures in the temporal bone and a depressed fracture beneath the wound site.’ She spoke to the mortician. ‘Pete, could you pass me the tweezers, please.’

Peering at the upper edge of the crescent, she picked free a blood-soaked scrap of tissue. Wordlessly, the mortician proffered a glass dish, into which she tapped it.

Next, she turned her attention to the throat. She used the pointer to prod at the upper end of the windpipe, just before it disappeared beneath the jawline.

‘See that? Her hyoid bone’s broken.’

‘Manual strangulation. Is that what killed her?’

Georgina shook her head. ‘I think not. She was exsanguinated, which required her heart to be still beating. Unless I find any other injuries, here’s what I think happened.’ Ford noticed Mick and Jools opening their notebooks, which pleased him. ‘Her attacker knocked her down with a blow to the head using a weapon with a curved edge. She would have been disorientated, if not knocked out. Then he throttled her into unconsciousness. Finally, he bled her.’

Ford pointed to the blackened puncture wound high on the inside of the right thigh. ‘What’s that?’

Georgina took a second rod, just a couple of millimetres thick, and probed the wound.

‘There we go,’ she said, a note of triumph in her voice.

The thin rod slid upwards into the thigh.

‘He used a needle,’ Ford said.

‘More than likely. Something wide-bore. Like a trocar.’

‘So cause of death was exsanguination,’ Ford said, ‘preceded by throttling and a hefty whack with a weapon of some kind.’

‘I’ll need to complete the PM, but yes, that’s what it looks like.’

‘What about the boy?’ he asked, trying not to visualise the invasive procedures she would have to inflict on his little body.

‘I conducted a cursory examination first thing this morning. No BFT. No cuts. No signs of strangulation. You’d think he’d just gone to sleep, except—’

‘Except for what?’

‘Except for a needle prick on the left side of his neck.’

‘Another trocar?’ Jools asked.

Georgina shook her head. ‘Regular hypodermic. I’ve sent a blood sample to toxicology.’

‘When will you know what it was?’

‘I fast-tracked it. Tomorrow?’

‘Excellent. Thanks, George.’

They watched the rest of the PM, but Ford’s mind was already wandering. Away from the sterile confines of the autopsy suite and on towards the next couple of days. Because whether the killer was sane or not, he was a rat gnawing at Ford’s insides. And Ford was starting to suspect he’d have another body on his hands if he didn’t move fast.

SPRING, THIRTY YEARS EARLIER

His father towers over him, a rugby ball in one massive hand, his florid face a snarling mask of hatred.

‘I’d rather go for a walk, Daddy,’ the big man simpers, in cruel mimicry of his young son’s voice. ‘’Course you would. The idea you might, actually, want to do something manly . . . Jesus! You’re worthless, aren’t you? I can’t believe my blood runs in your veins.’

The boy knows what’s coming and so he steels himself for the tirade. Maybe he can say something to pacify the ogre in front of him.

‘We could go for a walk in the countryside together, if you’d like?’

‘What, and bring back some disgusting roadkill like you did last time? I think not. You know, if Luke had lived, if he’d been born and you’d died in your mother’s belly, I bet I’d be out there now, cheering him on at a match, instead of this, this . . . charade of fatherhood.’

Without warning, his father backhands him across the face. It’s his favourite blow. The chunky gold signet ring catches him on the lower lip, as it has so many times before. A spray of blood jets out and hits the wall.

The taste of his own blood – salty, coppery – is as familiar to him as his morning cereal. He glares up at his