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

scowling. ‘Bloody nicked me a couple of times, didn’t he?’

‘Hi, Nina,’ Mark said. ‘All right?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I have to go,’ Ford said. ‘Mark’s going to look after you, OK? Make sure you’ve got somewhere to stay tonight.’

Ford left them to it, signalling an apology to Mark with his eyes. Mark grinned back. Used to it. From cop to babysitter in five seconds flat.

DAY ELEVEN, 9.00 P.M.

A few miles away, he lies back against the cushions. He’s naked, like the last time. He’s shivering. It’s a common side effect of transfusions, and he’s not bothered. Why should he be, when he’s washing that poison out of his system? He can feel himself growing stronger after each kill. More his own man, and less his.

He’s told her he’s getting the blood from work. And she believes him. Soon he won’t need her any more. Then the world had better watch out.

DAY ELEVEN, 9.55 P.M.

At the crime scene, Georgina Eustace stood with her arms folded, staring at the pale corpse hanging from the window. The killer had used a length of plastic clothes line. The ligature had bitten deep into the wrists.

No wound on the inner thigh this time, either. He must have gone for the posterior tibial artery in the ankle.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ a young DC said, coming in from the hallway to stand beside her. ‘How do you want to get rid of the blood? Shall I let the plug out? Or is that contravening health and safety rules?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s fine. The sewerage system receives far worse than a few pints of blood, believe me.’

He nodded. ‘OK, then. Wish me luck.’

He pushed the sleeve of his Noddy suit up past his elbow and leaned over the bath. He hesitated, then moved his hand downwards, swatting away the flies that rose towards his face.

‘Wait!’ Georgina shouted.

He jerked his arm back, as if bitten by something beneath the surface. ‘What?’

‘I saw a plastic swing-bin in the kitchen. Can you fetch it for me, please? Take the bag out first. And a measuring jug. Failing that, a bottle, or something we can use to get the blood out of the bath.’

Thirty minutes later, the bath was empty. The plastic swing-bin was a third full of blood.

Georgina sprayed the body’s feet with the shower head. Once they were as white as the rest of the body, she leaned closer, examining first the left, then the right, ankle.

‘There you are, my little beauty,’ she said.

In the indentation behind the outside of the right ankle bone she discerned a two-millimetre-diameter hole. A hole such as might be made by a trocar.

DAY TWELVE, 9.30 A.M.

Ford stood beside a large whiteboard he’d wheeled in from the incident room. A4 photos of the five victims were stuck along the top edge, Kai Halpern’s cheeky smile beside his mum’s.

‘Thanks for getting here so quickly, everyone,’ he said. ‘Especially on a Saturday. Let’s get started. Yesterday, at 7.45 p.m., a fifth murder victim, a female, was discovered. Not counting Kai Halpern, Aimee Cragg is the fourth in what is a series of linked killings.’

He turned to the whiteboard and scribbled four numbers in red. A bit of showmanship to make them stick in people’s minds.

666 – 500 – 167 – 333

‘At each of the kill sites, the murderer wrote a number on the wall in the victim’s blood.’

‘That’s the order of discovery, yes?’ Sandy asked.

‘Yes. But if we redo them in the order he killed them, we get this.’ He rubbed them out and rewrote them.

167 – 666 – 500 – 333

‘We’re working on trying to figure out whether it’s a code or some other sort of clue. But it may all be psycho bullshit, to use a technical term. The concrete facts are these.’

He summarised what was known about the victims and their movements, laying emphasis on them being food-bank customers. As he concluded he noticed Hannah was frowning, her lips moving silently.

‘What’s on your mind, Hannah?’

She came to the front and held her hand out. ‘Can I have the marker, please, Henry?’

He handed it to her and stood aside. She scrubbed at the numbers with the eraser, leaving a pinkish smeared oval in their place. Then she wrote the numbers out a third time.

167 – 333 – 500 – 666

She turned to face the room, and Ford noticed the beginnings of a blush stealing across her neck. This is hard for you, and yet you’re pushing yourself to do it.

Hannah cleared her throat. ‘This is a more logical sequence. Low to high. I don’t think they’re Bible verses or satanic symbols or record speeds or road races. I think they’re an arithmetic progression: a sequence of numbers where the difference between successive term members is a constant.’

‘Glad we cleared that up,’ Mick said.

‘Good,’ Hannah said. ‘As you can see, DS Tanner, the constant in this sequence is 167.’ She frowned. ‘Well, 166 or 167, anyway.’

She started scribbling, then turned back and tapped the column of simple equations she’d written.

1 x 167 = 167

2 x 167 = 334

3 x 167 = 501

4 x 167 = 668

‘That’s not the sequence, though, is it?’ Mick complained. ‘The second, third and fourth numbers are out, by one, one and two.’

Ford saw the solution. ‘They’re rounded,’ he said. ‘Hannah, can I have the pen, please?’

She handed it over wordlessly and resumed her seat.

Ford scrawled numbers on the board.

167 = 166.66666

‘Look at all those sixes,’ Jan said. ‘We’re back to the number of the beast. He is a religious nutter. That’s a fiver you owe me, Mick.’

Ford shook his head. ‘No. Hannah’s right. It’s all about the numbers as numbers. Come on, people. What does it mean? Think!’

A heavy silence descended on the assorted investigators. The wall clock ticked the seconds over.

‘It’s a sixth!’ Hannah shouted, making Jools, who was sitting next to her, jump.

‘Jesus, Hannah! We’re only here!’

‘Sorry. But I’m right, aren’t I? One divided by six equals