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

down the oddness scale. Have you met Alec?’

‘Of course I’ve met him! You introduced me to him on my first day, remember?’

‘Joke?’

‘That’s another thing you might notice about me. Word-jokes are hard for me to understand.’

‘Sorry. What sort of jokes do you like?’

‘I like slapstick. Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton. Laurel and Hardy.’

‘I used to watch them with Sam when he was little. He used to laugh so hard.’

‘He’s nice. You’re lucky.’

Ford nodded. ‘He’s OK. He misses his mum, though.’

A silence thickened between them. Ford looked out of the window, watching the tremulous leaves of a silver birch flutter in the breeze.

‘Let’s get back to our killer,’ he said.

After another thirty minutes, Ford held up a sheet of paper on which he’d written notes on their tentative assumptions about the murderer.

MO: bludgeon/throttle/bleed

Signature: writes number in blood on wall

Motive: not sex – stealing life-force (Abbott hypothesis)?

Profile

Interested in/fascinated by blood

Male, strong, fit and over 5’10”

Organised/intelligent/in control

Prob lives with partner

Charming – gift of the gab

Lacks empathy

Shallow emotional responses

Some medical experience as well as knowledge

– not necessarily doctor, could be nurse or even aux. staff – porter?

May have been abused as child

Hannah left at 11.00 p.m., turning down Ford’s offer to walk her home.

DAY NINE, 11.45 P.M.

He leans back against the soft cushions she’s plumped up for the latest procedure. His heart is racing. That’s good. It makes the whole process more efficient.

If it was at the hospital, he’d have just rolled up his sleeve. But here, at home, there’s no need for modesty. Especially given what’s coming afterwards.

So he’s hard. And completely naked. She’s not, though. She’s got her uniform on. The upside-down watch, everything.

‘You’re going to feel a little prick,’ she murmurs before she slides the needle in.

He leers up at her. ‘You’re going to feel a big one when we’re done.’

‘Naughty,’ she says, grinning as she releases the clamp.

He watches as the polluted blood drains into the plastic measuring jug he bought from the kitchen shop in town. When the blood reaches the topmost mark, she chokes off the flow.

‘Be back in a minute,’ she says.

He watches her behind as she carries the jug to the sink and tips the blood away, anticipating the rush when she replaces it.

DAY TEN, 9.15 A.M.

Pale’s Mead Farm occupied 243 acres on the south-west side of Salisbury, in a fertile V between the Ebble and Avon rivers. As many farming families had done, faced with global competition and predatory supermarket prices, the Pales had diversified from agriculture, in their case into renting out sustainable eco-cabins on their land.

Outside the cabin furthest from the farm’s main buildings, Rory Pale’s two-year-old border collie Gem was signalling fear with short, sharp barks. Her tail was tucked between her legs. Her ears lay flat against her skull. Body rigid, she turned and crept back to her master, where she lay down, whining softly.

Rory hadn’t seen his tenant for a couple of weeks and had made the two-mile trip on a quad bike to check on him. He stroked the dog’s silky head, shushing her, trying to ignore the anxiety he felt at Gem’s behaviour.

‘Quiet now, girl. Quiet now.’

He walked up to the front door. And caught it immediately. The smell of death. He’d come across enough dead badgers, deer and foxes to recognise it. Knowing in his churning gut that he’d be calling the police in a minute or two, he tried the handle.

The door opened.

He tried to call out his tenant’s name. ‘Mar—’

The ‘—cus’ died in his throat.

He turned and ran for the quad bike, fumbling his phone out of a pocket.

‘So, Sandy, if you could try just a little bit harder, the mayor, the City Council and I would all regard it as a sign of your renewed commitment to getting Salisbury back on its feet again. Cheers, now!’

Sandy slammed her phone down. Her heart was thumping against her ribs like a drunk whacking his head against the cage in a Black Maria. Conversations with the police and crime commissioner rated on her list of favourite activities somewhere above being shot at but below having a smear test.

She stood, knocking her chair back into a framed photo of her shaking hands with a minor royal on his visit to the cathedral. The glass smashed.

‘Shit!’ she yelled.

Feeling that her options were limited to taking some brisk exercise or suffering a heart attack, she left the shards on the carpet and headed down to see Ford.

She found him in the kitchen on the fourth floor, staring at a jar of coffee and a box of peppermint tea bags.

‘I’d go for the caffeine, if I were you. You’re going to need it,’ she said.

He turned. And he frowned. ‘You all right? Someone dent your new Merc?’

‘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