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

Her eagerness surprised Ford, but then he realised: she enjoyed proving points with logic.

Peterson folded his arms and glared at her.

‘Jools, take us through what you found this morning,’ Ford said.

‘It looks like he’s targeting food-bank users on the days they visit. Also, I have a list of who was working-slash-volunteering there on the dates the murders took place. Can I?’ She looked at Ford and gestured to the whiteboard.

‘Go for it,’ he said, pleased to see how people were shifting in their chairs and whispering to each other. He felt the energy level lifting: good news when the golden hour was a distant memory and optimism was flagging.

At the front of the room, and with an uncapped blue marker in hand, Jools addressed the assembled investigators with a confidence that belied her years. ‘Here are our four adult victims.’ She wrote Marcus, Angie, Paul, Aimee in a line across the whiteboard. ‘And the dates they were murdered.’ The dates followed. ‘And here are the only four people who were present on each of those dates.’

Centred below the victims’ names, she wrote,

Charles Abbott

Robert Babey

Matthew Kyte

Jason Torrance

The murmuring as she’d been writing intensified.

‘Wait a moment!’ Peterson’s voice, strident, cut through the hubbub.

‘Yes?’ Ford said, not even bothering to mask his irritation.

‘I didn’t realise that by “Abbott”, you meant Charles Abbott.’

‘OK. And?’

‘Charles Abbott, the consultant haematologist?’

‘Yes. What’s your point?’

‘You can’t possibly be serious? I play golf with him, for God’s sake! And he doesn’t work at the food bank. He’s a trustee.’

Ford opened his mouth. Caught a warning look from Sandy, plus a fractional shake of her head. Shut it again.

‘Martin,’ she said, in a smooth, calm voice. ‘Two things. One, as DI Ford said just now when you asked, Charles Abbott is not a suspect.’ She paused and looked round the room, lingering on Ford. ‘Two, sad though it might seem to someone in a purely overwatch role, as opposed to frontline officers like my team here, even golf-playing charity trustees are not above either suspicion or the law.’

Peterson folded his arms as Sandy spoke, and looked at the ceiling. He was not so much listening, Ford saw, as waiting for his chance to interject.

‘That’s all very well, Detective Superintendent Monroe,’ he said when she paused for breath, ‘but I will say this: tread very carefully. Charles Abbott is a man on the move, with some very powerful friends.’

After the meeting, Ford went to see Jools. ‘That was great policework, Jools, really. Can we eliminate any of the four based on their physical characteristics?’

‘On it, guv. By the way, none of our adult victims had their Purcell Foundation cards on them. He must have taken them.’

‘Trying to hide his tracks,’ Ford said. ‘Clever.’

She came to see him an hour later, the smile broader than ever. ‘Babey’s six-seven, and Torrance is my height.’

‘Leaving Matthew Kyte and Charles-bloody-Abbott,’ he said. ‘And he won’t come in unless we arrest him, I’m sure of it.’

‘Kyte’s already agreed to come in for another interview. You want to sit in?’

Ford paused, thinking. It’s not him. Abbott’s the wrong ’un, I’m sure of it. But let’s make certain and have this Kyte in so we can eliminate him. ‘Can you work up a profile on Kyte for me?’

She nodded and returned to her desk, tapping keys as she settled herself before her screen.

Ford made himself a coffee and took it back to his office. Something was bugging him, and he needed caffeine and peace and quiet to let it percolate through his brain.

He pulled an A4 pad towards him and started jotting down thoughts.

It’s all about the food bank.

Link: victims all customers/users.

Murdered on same day as visit to FB. Significant?

Matthew Kyte?

Angie hit with tin of baked beans. Deliberate choice? Emphasise her poverty?

As he scribbled down the final word, Lisa Moore’s statement came back to him.

‘You called her worthless,’ he said to his empty office. ‘Is that what this is about? Do you feel superior to them? Are they worthless because they’re poor?’

Hannah sat at her desk, reading through the till receipts issued by the food bank to its customers and marking off items with a freshly sharpened pencil. Her monitor displayed photographs taken at each of the crime scenes.

Beginning with Angie Halpern’s receipt, she cross-checked each item from the food bank against the hi-res images in front of her. Reaching the end of the list of groceries, she frowned, then began again. After her second pass, she muttered to herself.

‘Where’s the Tesco pasta?’

She made a note, then proceeded to the crime scene photos from Paul Eadon’s drab, badly furnished kitchen. With a dawning sense that she was on to something, she raced through the images, her eyes flicking from the till receipts up to the crime scene photos.

‘Waitrose ketchup.’

Another note, another small smile that crept across her lips.

She moved on to the images relating to Aimee Cragg. She studied the crime scene photos for longer this time, searching for the discrepancy. She found it.

‘Sainsbury’s teabags.’

The photos from the Marcus Anderson crime scene were next, and last. Ignoring the black pools and spatters, she focused on the shots of the kitchen cupboards. It was hard to tell, but by enlarging sections of the images and flipping back and forth between different shots, she found it.

‘Lidl crackers.’

She found Jools in Major Crimes. Everyone else was out.

‘He’s taking items of shopping.’

Jools looked up from her screen. ‘What?’

‘The killer. He’s taken one item from each victim’s most recent shop.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Hundred per cent. Not a joke, by the way.’ She flapped a sheet of paper at Jools.

‘What’s this?’

‘I’ve diagrammed it. The crime scenes and the missing food items. Pasta, ketchup, teabags and crackers.’

She watched Jools study her analysis, realised she was holding her breath and let it out in a hiss.

Jools looked up at her. ‘What about the missing litre of blood?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Hannah said. ‘We know for a fact he took a litre out of Aimee Cragg’s bath. And