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

Abbott. The profile fits him like a glove. The killer’s obsessed by blood. Abbott’s a haematologist, for God’s sake. How much more do we need?’

Sandy sighed. ‘I’m assuming you remember our last conversation. So how about evidence? Something we can take to the CPS? There’s hundreds of blokes up at SDH who fit that profile, let alone in Salisbury as a whole.’

‘I can feel, it, Sandy. Right here,’ he added, placing a hand over his belly. ‘He’s a wrong ’un.’

She shook her head. ‘Not good enough. Not by a long chalk. This is the twenty-first century. How’s it going to look if I waltz into a press conference and say, “Morning, ladies and gents, well, it’s good news. My star DI has solved the case because his tummy told him who did it”?’

Ford bit down to prevent himself saying something he’d regret. ‘We’re digging into links between the victims,’ he said instead. ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky that way.’

‘Keep me posted, OK? If I have to speak to Peterson again before you have someone in custody, I’ll have a stroke.’

Ford’s phone rang. It was Jools. She sounded rattled.

‘We’ve got another one, guv. Really bad. And really old.’

Ford drove all the way to the cabin in his own car. The Discovery may have lacked the finesse and sparkle of some of his CID colleagues’ wheels, but when it came to investigating rural crimes it had them beat. While they waited for a ride in one of the station’s Skoda Yeti 4x4s, he was already heading to the scene.

Gagging as he walked up to the front door, he nodded to Hannah, clad, like her colleagues, in a white paper suit and wearing a rebreather.

‘You want one?’ she asked him, her voice muffled by the mask.

He shook his head, extracting the tobacco tin from a jacket pocket. ‘Got my patented stink-busters.’

With the menthol’s minty fumes chilling the inside of his forehead and making his eyes water, he entered the cabin.

Standing at the edge of the room, he logged the similarities with the two earlier crime scenes. His stomach was roiling already, as it always did in the presence of death. Ever since Lou. He began fishing in his pocket for a bag. Realised he’d used his last one at Paul Eadon’s flat.

Decomp and hot weather had reduced what had once been a human body to a blackish-purple heap through which off-white knobbles protruded here and there. Maggots writhed over it, their noise a loud, liquid hiss. It lay in a vast patch of dried blood the colour of treacle.

Gulping, and sensing he only had a few more seconds, he looked around the rough, lime-plastered walls.

And, as he’d known he would, he saw it.

167

Black smears. Runs and drips. Clots stuck to the bare plaster. Cruder than the first two numbers.

He closed his eyes. Desperate to catch even a fleeting sense of the killer. Male, female, kid, adult, I don’t care. It’s not sex. It’s power. I hate them. I hate their blood. I hate blood. That’s why I let it all out.

He gulped. Felt the sweat sheening his face. The smell was so bad. Worse than rotting meat and sewage.

Ford felt his gorge rising.

Ran.

Made it to a hedge.

Puked. Spat. Heaved again.

Straightening, he saw Mick walking over.

‘You OK, Henry?’

‘Tip-top. You?’

Mick smiled maliciously. ‘Might be a while before I have Heinz Big Soup for my tea.’

Ford looked away and drew a cleansing lungful of air. ‘Priorities. Identify the victim. I want to know if he or she had any connection to the hospital. Especially to the team that treated Paul Eadon.’

Mick nodded. ‘Already done. I talked to the farmer. His name’s Rory Pale. I went to school with him.’

Ford raised his eyebrows. ‘The victim, Mick?’

‘Sorry, boss.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Marcus Anderson. Alec said he gave his occupation as environmental activist. One of those bloody troublemakers who—’

‘He’s not going to cause any trouble now, is he?’ Ford snapped.

‘Sorry, guv.’

‘No, I’m sorry, Mick. The City Council’s squeezing the mayor, he’s squeezing the PCC, Peterson’s squeezing the Python and she’s squeezing me.’

‘Cosy.’

‘As a rat’s nest. Listen, it’s the same killer. And that means we’re going to have a media shitstorm breaking over our heads in the next twenty-four hours or so. We’ll have a team briefing about that at five this afternoon.’

He saw Jan talking to a team of uniforms. She was a great POLSA. She knew the police search adviser’s job better than he did, so when he walked over to her it was to receive information, not give instructions.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked her.

She turned a full circle, shading her eyes against the sun as she faced into it. ‘No other dwellings in sight. There are more of these cabins in the next field,’ she said. ‘The one beyond the river. I’m thinking our killer must have driven, parked out of sight, then walked the last bit. Less likely to arouse suspicion from an eco-warrior like Marcus.’

‘There’s a track over there. I used it myself.’

‘Exactly. I’ve got a couple of guys looking for tyre marks the CSIs can cast. Other than from a Discovery, obviously,’ she said, favouring him with a smile.

‘Initial perimeter? How big?’

She inhaled deeply, then wrinkled her nose. ‘That muck-spreading doesn’t half pong. Fifty-metre-diameter circle?’

He nodded. They’d have their work cut out covering even a small area like that, given the overgrown vegetation. He pointed at a towering oak, its lower limbs kissing the ground.

‘It’s outside your circle, but check that, too, would you? Call it a captain’s pick.’

DAY TEN, 11.38 A.M.

Ford returned to Bourne Hill and convened a team briefing. Standing in front of a whiteboard full of crime scene images, including the three blood-daubed numbers, he looked at each of his team in turn before speaking. He saw tiredness, but not despair. They were still in the game and up for the challenge. Whether they’d be looking like this in six months’ time, or in a year, he had no idea. He only knew he