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

Ford arrived at the flat on Water Street at 8.45 p.m. The road was cordoned off, with uniformed loggists at both ends. A white CSI van was parked outside and he spotted the pathologist’s car double-parked a few doors down. He pushed through the crowd of phones-aloft onlookers, gave his collar number to the PC on duty and ducked under the blue-and-white crime scene tape.

He met Jools outside the house. She was pale, her lips were clamped into a line.

‘You OK, Jools?’

‘Yes, fine. It’s just, you know.’

‘Yeah, I do. Never gets easier, but you’ll find you get better at coping.’

‘Jesus, I hope so.’

‘What do we have? Judging from your face, I’d say it’s our boy again?’

‘Female victim. Exsanguinated. But he’s changed his MO.’

Ford felt his pulse quicken. Changes to the MO might mean the killer was escalating. And that might mean he was getting confident. And that might mean he’d get careless.

‘Changed it how?’

‘It looks like he’s knocked her out, then dragged her into the bathroom and manhandled her into the bath, and then he’s hung her from the open window over the tub. He must have put the plug in. It’s all still in there.’

Ford nodded. ‘Get a door-to-door going. Say, ten houses in each direction, plus all the flats here. Someone must have seen something.’

Jools pointed to a young woman talking to a paramedic. ‘She found the body. She shares the flat with her. I tried to talk to her, but she’s pretty shaken.’

‘Make sure she doesn’t leave. I want to talk to her. I’ll be down in a while.’

He went inside and climbed the stairs to the second-floor flat, pausing on the landing to don a crime scene suit and bootees.

The bathroom was tiny, less than six feet square. There was only room for a single CSI, and Ford recognised Hannah, crouching by the bath and inspecting spatters on its white plastic sides. He looked at the body, suspended by its wrists from the window. Looked away.

‘Hi,’ he said, inhaling, then regretting it as his stomach twitched.

‘Hi, Henry.’

‘This is new.’

‘Yes. It’s very exciting.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s changed his MO. That means a lack of discipline, and I’m fairly sure that means he’s losing control.’

‘How sure?’

‘Eight-seven point nine per cent.’

‘Not eighty-eight?’

‘Ha! Got you!’ Her eyes flashed in the gap between her hood and facemask. ‘I can’t really calculate my certainty levels to that degree of accuracy.’

He nodded. ‘Good one,’ he deadpanned. ‘And at a crime scene, too. We’ll make a detective out of you one day.’

‘No, thanks. I’ll stick with the dead.’

He looked around, but the number he’d been expecting was absent. Then he saw why. None of the walls had enough free space. The shower attachment blocked one. Another held a mirrored medicine cupboard. The third, toothpaste-whitened glass shelves crammed with cosmetics, shampoos, hairbrushes, boxes of tampons, hair slides, scrunchies, toothbrushes and, tucked behind a plastic unicorn with a rainbow mane, a packet of condoms.

‘It’s in the bedroom next door,’ Hannah said.

Ford entered the pink-curtained room and looked at the bed. Above the headboard, each digit scrawled in four bloody streaks, was a number. Did you do a finger painting, like Kai’s?

333

Ford closed his eyes. Allowed the nausea to rise, focused on the enveloping sense that he was growing to know the killer.

I enjoyed this one. I enjoyed her a lot. She was a fleshy thing. And I was alone in here. That’s why I spent time displaying her like a butcher’s shop turkey. I’m going to make a mistake soon. You just have to be smart enough to find me.

Ford opened his eyes and left the bedroom. He felt the nausea fade away. Is that because I’m close?

Outside again, he went over to the ambulance. Legs dangling from the tailgate, a skinny young woman – late teens, he guessed – was smoking a roll-up. A paramedic had wrapped her in a blanket and she was clutching it to her chest.

She looked up, eyes red-rimmed, and blew out a lungful of smoke in Ford’s direction. ‘Don’t tell me it’ll kill me. I don’t care.’

‘I won’t. Not my place. I’m Ford. What’s your name?’

‘What sort of a name is that?’

‘You can call me Henry, if you’d prefer.’

She shrugged and looked away. ‘Don’t care, do I?’

He’d met girls like her before. Hard-nosed as a Raymond Chandler gangster’s moll on the outside. But scratch the surface and, nine times out of ten, you found a lost little girl. Battling to play the shittiest cards life could deal her, short of dropping her in front of a train.

‘So, what do they call you?’

‘Nina. Nina Gow.’

‘Nina, I’m so sorry you had to be the one to discover your friend like that. Can you tell me her name?’

She took a trembling drag on her roll-up and exhaled. ‘Aimee. Cragg.’ She burst into tears. ‘Who does something like that? It’s that serial killer, isn’t it? He did it!’

‘Can you tell me what time you found Aimee, Nina? It’s important.’

She sniffed. ‘Quarter to eight. I know ’cause I checked my phone on the way in.’

‘Where had you been?’

‘The shops. I got some cider.’

‘Which shop?’

‘Tommy’s Store on Brown Street.’

‘I know it. Were you with Aimee before you went to the shops?’

She nodded. ‘We were watching YouTube.’

‘What time did you go out?’

She shuddered and scrunched herself tighter into the blanket, even though it was a hot evening. ‘Must have been about seven.’

‘Forty-five minutes to buy cider?’

‘I met a couple of mates, OK? We had a chat and a smoke. Look, can I go now?’

Ford made a quick note. It was a very tight window. The killer must have waited for Nina to leave. She was lucky to be alive.

‘One more question. Did Aimee ever use the food bank?’

‘Sometimes. We both did. Aimee went up there earlier today. Money’s tight, you know? It’s not our fault. We’re not scroungers.’

‘I know.’ He beckoned a uniformed male PC over, thinking, Why Aimee, and not Nina? ‘Nina, this is Mark.’

‘Yeah, I know ’im, don’t I?’ Nina said,