Shallow Ground (Detective Ford) Read online

‘Don’t let it get to you, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s a big case. My first as a DI. How can I not?’

  ‘You’ve got a good team. We’ll catch him.’

  Ford smiled. ‘Listen, when I was talking to Charles Abbott this morning, he mentioned a porter, name of Kyte. Said the guy was drawing in a puddle of blood or something. I want you to go and have a chat.’

  Jools wrinkled her nose. ‘Charming.’

  DAY FIVE, 8.15 A.M.

  The quartet enjoying eighteen holes together on Saturday morning weren’t unusually powerful, by the standards of the others making their way around the sunlit course. The cathedral’s canon treasurer. An army colonel. The chief constable. And Charles Abbott. But their influence overlapped in the four critical organisations bound into the fabric of the city.

  Abbott swung his driver, smiled at the clean metallic click as the club head made contact, and followed his ball’s progress as it flew in a beautiful arc down the centre of the fairway.

  ‘Nice shot, Charles,’ the canon treasurer said.

  ‘Thanks, David.’

  The men walked on.

  Abbott hung back a little and touched the chief constable’s left elbow. ‘Eamonn, I know you hate talking shop on the course, but one of your chaps barged into my office yesterday and, well’ – he sighed – ‘he really upset me.’

  ‘Upset you how?’

  ‘Despite my making every effort to help him out, he actually threatened to arrest me and drag me into his police station to be interrogated.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘A detective inspector, name of Ford,’ Abbott said. ‘He insinuated I was mixed up in this ghastly murder of one of our nurses and her little boy. Just because I’m the blood expert at the hospital. I mean, it’s outrageous!’

  The chief constable smiled and patted his friend on the shoulder. ‘Leave it with me, Charles. I’ll see he’s put back in his box.’

  DAY SEVEN, 8.35 A.M.

  After a precious Sunday off, Jools parked her silver Mondeo in the vast Number 8 car park at SDH. On three sides, it looked out over mile after mile of rolling countryside, a patchwork of greens, golds and yellows smeared here and there with a hazy brushstroke of scarlet poppies. The fourth side faced the collection of red-brick-and-steel buildings comprising the hospital.

  She made her way through the labyrinth of corridors, nodding to the odd staff member she recognised, until she came to the main reception.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, showing the middle-aged black woman on the desk her police ID. ‘I’m looking for one of your porters. What would be the fastest way to track him down, please?’

  ‘What’s his name, dear?’ asked the receptionist.

  ‘Matthew Kyte. Might be known as Matty?’

  The receptionist’s eyes lit up, and she beamed at Jools. ‘Now there’s a true Christian. You know, dear, if I ever find myself in here, God forbid,’ she said, crossing herself, ‘I hope Matty’ll be working my ward. That boy, oh, my stars!’

  ‘Popular, is he?’

  ‘Popular? Did you know, darling, relatives buy him flowers when they come to collect their loved ones.’

  Jools liked to think that she’d managed to avoid falling into a copper’s easy cynicism about people. Although it was many a year since she’d been to church, she did try to follow the old rule: ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged.’ Maybe not the easiest motto to live up to as a detective, but she tried.

  But she found she’d already taken a dislike to Matty Kyte. And she hadn’t even met him. Sounds like a right teacher’s pet, she thought. I bet he tries to smarm his way into their wills. Then she admonished herself for this uncharitable thought. I’m sure he’s lovely. Someone has to be. The cynical side of her character managed to get the last word. And that goes for people who draw in spilt blood, does it?

  She smiled at the receptionist, noting her name badge. ‘Where can I find him, Marjorie?’

  ‘Hold on, let me check our staffing roster.’ Marjorie’s purple-varnished fingernails clicked over her keyboard. She frowned at her monitor then looked up at Jools. ‘Bodenham Ward,’ she said. ‘Women’s cancer.’

  Jools thanked her and followed the direction of her pointing finger to a signboard at the T-junction where the lobby narrowed into a corridor heading left and right, away to different parts of the hospital.

  Outside the ward, she pressed the buzzer for admittance. When a nurse in sage-green scrubs peered through, Jools flattened her ID against the small square panel of wire-reinforced glass. Smiling, the honey-skinned woman let her in.

  ‘I’m looking for Matty Kyte,’ Jools said. ‘Reception told me he was working on this ward today.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She looked round. ‘He was here a minute ago.’ She called out to one of her colleagues, who was carrying a bedpan away from a curtained-off bed. ‘Annie, did you see where Matty went?’

  The second nurse came over. She frowned. ‘I think he went down to get Mrs Rennie a sandwich from the shop.’

  ‘But she only just had one!’

  ‘Said she didn’t like it. Matty volunteered to get her something else. I told him they all take advantage, but he just smiled, like always.’

  Jools felt her resentment of the saintly Matty building. ‘OK if I wait here for him to come back?’ she asked.

  ‘Be our guest,’ the first nurse said. ‘You can sit at the nurses’ station if you like.’

  Jools plonked her bag under the small desk and sat on one of the blue-upholstered swivel chairs. A half-eaten box of Cadbury’s Dairy Box chocolates lay beside a small pile of women’s magazines. She flicked through a much-thumbed copy of Vogue while she waited. The ward was hot, and the beeps and hums from the various monitors and machines made her drowsy.

  ‘Excuse me, Officer? Marisol said you wanted to talk to me?’

  Jools jerked her head round, realising she’d been half-asleep and lying on a sunlit beach waiting for someone to bring her a mojito. Standing to her right was a smiling man in the midnight-blue uniform of a hospital porter: baggy trousers and long-sleeved tunic.

  She stood and extended her hand for him to shake, buying a little time for her brain to wake up. His skin was dry, and the pressure of his grip was firm, but not hard. Nothing like the bone-crushers favoured by a few of her male colleagues at the nick.

  ‘Matty?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s me! Given name Matthew, but only Mum and Dad call me that.’

  She assessed his appearance. He was a white male, around six feet tall, and looked fit, though not muscle-bound. His hair was a middling brown – the kind that witnesses describe as ‘average’ – short, straight and parted on the left.

  He also had dark brown eyes; rather beautiful dark brown eyes, she couldn’t help thinking, fringed with thick eyelashes that she, personally, would kill for.

  ‘I’m DC Julie Harper, Wiltshire Police,’ she said, holding up her ID. ‘Could we find somewhere quiet for a chat?’

  His eyes slid sideways. ‘It’s not my break for ages.’

  She pasted a smile on her face. How eager was Matty to help? Really? ‘I’m sure your boss would understand if they knew you were helping the police.’

  ‘It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s my patients.’

  Your patients? She leaned closer and was gratified to see him mirror her body language. Win them round, Jools, before they even realise what you’re doing.

  ‘I’m investigating two murders. A nurse and her young son. You might have read about them,’ she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

  This close, she could smell his aftershave, a pleasant, woody aroma she always associated with her father.

  His hand flew to his mouth, fingers fluttering. The gesture looked stagy to her.

  ‘I did. It’s so awful. If it was one of my ladies, I’d have just died.’

  His outward appearance was throwing her off. She realised she’d been expecting some poorly educated lump for whom portering was the highest up the ladder h
e was ever going to get. Yet here was a well-spoken, well-groomed, if slightly camp individual, with movie-star good looks and an apparent passion for going above and beyond to care for the patients on his wards.

  ‘So, is there somewhere we can go for a quiet chat, Matty?’ she asked him again.

  He looked over at the row of windows facing the fields and hedgerows. ‘Sometimes I get a takeaway latte and sit on a wall just down there,’ he said. ‘I like listening to birdsong.’

  Thinking he was just too good to be true, Jools consented, nonetheless. ‘Let’s go there, then,’ she said. ‘See if anyone’s singing today.’

  There! A flicker of a different kind of expression crossed his face. Blink and you’d miss it. Jools did neither.

  DAY SEVEN, 8.55 A.M.

  They sat on a low red-brick wall on the edge of a sunlit courtyard. Jools opened her mouth to speak, but Matty held a finger up to his lips.

  ‘Sshh!’ he whispered. He leaned towards her. ‘Close your eyes and just listen.’

  This close, she fancied she could feel his body heat, despite the warmth of the sun. The aftershave, which a few minutes ago had aroused only pleasant memories, now smelled overpoweringly male. A flake of dried blood nestled in the crease of his chin.

  ‘You first,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  And he did, just like that. Closed those long-lashed eyelids, let his mouth curve upwards into a smile, inhaled and sighed out a long breath.

  Her muscles twitched as they loaded up with adrenaline, ready to defend her with reasonable force at the slightest suggestion he wasn’t going to play nice.

  As she closed her eyes, she detected, or rather heard for the first time, the wheedling song of skylarks. Then the fluting trills of a blackbird, which imitated a mobile phone ringing at one point. And something else, a distant keening she couldn’t place.

  She opened her eyes and looked to her right.

  Matty was looking straight at her. Still smiling.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Lovely. What’s the high-pitched one?’

  ‘The long cries?’

  ‘Yeah, that.’

  ‘Buzzard. Look,’ he said, shielding his eyes with his left hand and pointing up with his right.

  High above a field of ripe wheat, she picked out a broad-winged bird describing lazy circles.

  ‘People think they’re predators,’ he said, looking back at her. ‘But they’re just as happy scavenging. You know, foxes’ leavings.’ He paused. ‘Or roadkill. Something nobody else wants. Something worthless.’

  His final sentence sent a cold shiver through her. She wished she’d brought an extendible baton or a can of PAVA spray.

  She turned through ninety degrees so she was facing him, taking the opportunity to plant one foot on the tarmac and add a further six inches to the distance between them.

  ‘So, Matty,’ she began, ‘we’ve been investigating the murders, as I said upstairs, and—’

  He put his hand to his chest, palm inwards, fingers splayed. ‘Oh, my God! You don’t think I had something to do with them, do you?’

  ‘Did you?’

  It was a simple counter-question, but she’d found that asking a suspect straight out if they’d done it did, occasionally, work. If they denied it, she got the chance to assess the shape of their denial. Bluster, flat-out lies, aggression, sudden elective muteness: she’d seen them all.

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Have something to do with the murders?’

  ‘Did I have something to do with the murders?’ he repeated, staring at her.

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused, then looked out, over the fields.

  ‘No. I did not. How could you even say that?’ he asked, his voice taking on a whiny tone. ‘I love people. Ask anyone. Ask my ladies. They’ll tell you. They love me.’

  Bloody hell, Matty! Even if you’re not our man, you’ve definitely got something going on behind that pretty face of yours.

  ‘Sorry, Matty,’ she said, modulating her own voice so that it took on a soothing quality. ‘Cop humour. We’re terrible, worse than medics.’

  His shoulders, which had been jacked up under his ears, dropped. He smiled, the outrage passing like a summer storm.

  ‘I know what you mean about doctors. The way they talk about blood. I overheard Mr Abbott talking with another consultant the other day,’ he said. ‘He had just come from theatre and, oh my God, it was so hilarious. He said, “There was so much ketchup spraying around, I nearly ordered some chips!” That’s what they call blood, you know. Ketchup.’ He dropped his voice and leaned towards her. ‘What do you call it? Cops, I mean?’

  ‘Claret, sometimes,’ she answered, mechanically.

  ‘Claret. Funny.’

  ‘Are you interested in blood, then?’ she asked, striving to keep her voice light.

  He shrugged. ‘Kind of, I suppose. There’s a lot of stuff goes on in the hospital. Operations, amputations, abortions,’ he said, then giggled. ‘Blood everywhere.’

  Jools was listening with all her attention, but a checklist in neon floated between them. And one after another, boxes were being checked.

  Appearance. Tick.

  Interest in blood. Tick.

  Hospital worker. Tick.

  Makes my flesh crawl. Tick.

  ‘There was an accident the other day, wasn’t there?’ she asked.

  ‘Accident?’ he echoed.

  ‘Yes. Mr Abbott said one of the junior doctors dropped a blood bag.’

  Matty rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, yes. But it wasn’t her, it was him. I saw. He dropped it on purpose, to humiliate her. Probably because she’s Indian.’

  ‘And poor old you got the mucky job of mopping it up.’

  ‘I don’t mind them treating me like shit,’ he said, then flushed. ‘Sorry, I mean like dirt. But I’m the lowest of the low, aren’t I?’

  ‘Is that why you drew in it, Matty? Were you angry with them?’

  His eyes flash-bulbed. ‘What? I didn’t!’

  ‘No? I heard that the ward sister saw you.’

  He grinned, but it looked lopsided, forced. ‘She was mistaken. I shouldn’t say this, but Sister McLaughlin’s half-blind. I wasn’t drawing. Why would I?’

  Jools smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it, Matty. I’m sure it was an honest mistake.’

  She consulted her checklist.

  Liar. Tick.

  Suddenly, she wanted, very badly, to have him in an interview room. And at least one more officer beside her. With a taser.

  ‘We’re having a chat with a few people who might have known the victims,’ she said, still doing her best to keep her tone breezy, unthreatening. ‘You know, through work. Would you be happy to come into the station for a chat at some point?’

  His eyes flicked away from hers, across to the fields and miles of countryside beyond.

  ‘Happy? Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  Jools agreed a time the following day and walked with Matty back up to the ward. As she was leaving, an older lady caught her eye and beckoned her over. She was sitting up in bed, wrapped in a knitted shawl in soft-looking, medicine-pink wool.

  ‘Are you police, dear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What were you talking to Matty about?’ she asked, fixing Jools with a stare from watery blue eyes, their rims inflamed and crusty.

  ‘Just asking him a few questions. We’re looking for help catching this’ – she paused, looking for appropriate phrasing –‘dreadful man who’s killed people in Salisbury.’

  ‘I hope they lock him up and throw away the key when they catch him,’ the lady said, feelingly.

  Jools smiled. ‘Well, there’d have to be a trial first.’

  The lady snorted. ‘Huh! It’s a shame they did away with hanging, that’s what my Bert used to say.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Jools said, checking her watch. ‘Was there something you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘Me, dear?’


  ‘You called me over?’

  She tutted. ‘Of course, silly me! I’ll be forgetting my own name next. Which is Ivy, by the way. Ivy S. Johnson. The S stands for Sheila, if you want to make a note.’

  Jools sensed that the old lady was looking for a little excitement. Something to tell the nurses, or her next visitor.

  She smiled and pulled out her notebook. ‘Ivy S. Johnson,’ she repeated, though she scribbled Call Ford ASAP on the open page.

  ‘Well, dear, all I was going to say is, you can’t possibly believe Matty has anything to do with that horrid business in the town,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell, dear? That man is the sweetest, kindest thing. Why, only yesterday he offered to sit with me because I felt a bit woozy after my injection.’

  DAY SEVEN, 9.30 A.M.

  With his father’s long-ago taunts ringing in his ears – ‘You stupid little shit! You can lick that up!’ – he pushes the grubby bell button. He has to wait for two minutes before it crackles with an answer.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Mr Eadon? Paul?’

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘My name is Harvey. Harvey Williams. I’m from the Purcell Foundation. May I come in?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think you dropped your rolling tobacco at the food bank. I have it here in my hand.’

  The latch buzzes, and he’s through. He pats his jacket over the pocket containing his equipment. The hallway stinks, as does the stairwell. Nothing but junkies and alkies. Losers! Pathetic, worthless losers.

  He climbs to the fifth floor, not trusting the foul-smelling lift. Turns left out of the stairwell and knocks on the scuffed red front door three from the end of the walkway.

  The man who opens the door has red-rimmed eyes and a rash of sores around his mouth. He’s thin, but his cheeks are still a reasonable colour. Nice and pink.

  ‘You got my baccy?’

  ‘May I come in? I have something else for you.’

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ the man drawls, turning and shuffling back into the gloom.

  Grinning, Harvey punches hard into the right side of Eadon’s neck. The vagus nerve isn’t an easy target, but he’s done his research. Eadon goes down.