R. D. Wingfield
A Touch of Frost

Tuesday Night Shift (1)

A cold, clear autumn night with a sharp wind shaking trees. The man in the shadows was trembling. The pa of his rubber-gloved hands were moist, and warm sv trickled down his face under the mask. Soon he would able to see her. To touch her. She wouldn’t see him, in the black of the moon shadow. She wouldn’t know was there until it was too late.

At first he thought it was a police trap. A girl, a young girl, in school uniform, walking all alone in Denton Wo at eleven o’clock at night. But how could the police know he’d be here? The other attacks had taken place miles away. And how could the police know it was the re young girls who turned him on. The police knew nothing. He was too smart for them. Far too smart. They] questioned him. They had cleared him. They had thanked him for his co-operation.

Even so, he hadn’t taken any chances. Only fools took chances. As always, he had carefully reconnoitred area. Nothing. Nobody. For miles around there was one but him, and the girl. The girl! In that school uniform. Wearing those dark thick stockings. She could be much more than fifteen… a schoolgirl, young and innocent, unaware of her developing body… just like girl in the book, the book he had hidden away in bedroom.

What was that?

He stood stock still, ears straining, his heartbeats booming in the screaming silence. He had heard something.

Something moving. He tensed, ready to tear off the mask and run. It was only the mask that could give him away. Without it the police had nothing. No leads, no clues, nothing. Even if they brought him face to face with his victims, they couldn’t identify him. The first they knew of his presence was the sudden suffocating blackness as the cloth went over their heads, and then the pressure of his fingers on their throats, squeezing, choking. One of the girls… the second, or was it the third?… had managed to tear the cloth from her face. But all she saw of him, before his fists pounded her into unconsciousness, was the mask. The black hood that completely covered his hair, his face, his neck. The newspapers had dubbed him the “Hooded Terror’. Tomorrow’s headlines would read “Hooded Terror Strikes Again. Schoolgirl Latest Victim’. He liked reading about himself in the papers. It made him feel important.

He slid deeper back into the shadows, his body tensed, his ears tuned. The sound again. A rustling, a snapping of twigs. His hand crept up to the mask as he listened, trying to make out what it was. Then a snuffling and grunting as something blundered through the undergrowth. Something small. An animal of some kind. A badger, perhaps, but definitely not human. He relaxed and eased forward. He could smell his own sweat, his excitement. Soon he would hear her.

Such a shame he would have to hurt this one. She was so young, so innocent. How wonderful if she submitted without protest, her eyes wide open and wondering. At first terrified, but gradually, as she experienced the new delights, the unbelievable sensations he was offering, she moaned, as if in pain, gasping with pleasure, drawing him on… the way the girl in his book reacted the very first time it happened to her. She was a schoolgirl, too.

His ear caught another sound. The dry whisper of fallen leaves on the narrow path scuffed by quick, nervous footsteps.

It was her. The girl. Again he held his breath. Stood stock still and tensed…

Ready to spring.

Police Constable David Shelby, twenty-five, married with two young children, shivered and stamped his feet as the wind, cutting down the deserted back street, found an empty lager can and rattled it across the cobbled road. He checked his watch. Twelve minutes past eleven. He wondered who the station would send, hoping it wouldn’t be Detective Inspector Allen; but whoever it was, he wished he would come soon. He had far better things to do tonight than stand guard over a dead body.

Above his head an enamel sign, hanging from a wrought-iron frame like a gibbeted body, creaked as it swung to and fro in the wind. The wording on the sign read Gentlemen, with an arrow pointing downwards. Behind Shelby a broken metal grille sagged, no longer fit to perform its function of denying entry to the worn, brass-edged stone steps which descended to the dank darkness of the underground public convenience, built by the Works Department of Denton Borough Council in 1897 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

The sound of a car approaching. Headlights flared as a mud-splattered, dark blue Ford Cortina rumbled over the cobbles, coming to an uncertain halt behind Shelby’s patrol car. The door opened and a scruffy-looking individual wearing a dirty mac draped with an equally dirty maroon scarf, clambered out. In his late forties, he had a weather-beaten face flecked with freckles, his balding head fringed with light-brown fluffy hair. Shelby smiled, relieved that the station had sent the easygoing Detective Inspector Frost and not that sarcastic swine Allen, who treated the uniformed branch with contempt and who was bound to ask some probing questions. It would be a lot easier with Jack Frost.

The wind found the lager can again and dribbled it across to the inspector, who gave a mighty kick and sent it flying through the air, past Shelby’s ear, to rattle and bounce down the toilet steps.

“Goall’ yelled Frost, ambling over.

Shelby grinned and swung his torch beam toward the depths. “Shall we go down, sir?” He was anxious to get this over, but Frost was in no hurry.

“What’s the rush, son? If he’s dead, he’ll wait for us. Besides, I’ve got my best suit on and I don’t want to mess it up sooner than I have to.” He opened his mac to reveal a ne wish-looking, blue pinstriped suit with a fairly respectable crease to the trousers. It was the retirement party tonight. Police Inspector George Harrison was leaving the force after twenty-eight years in Demon, and the division was throwing a big farewell thrash for him in the station canteen. Although officially on duty, Frost had set his heart on attending and was going to take the first presented opportunity to sneak up there. Which was why his old blue-striped wedding suit had been pa rolled from its moth-balled prison. He could have done without Shelby’s newfound efficiency in finding this lousy dead body.

Frost fished a battered packet from his mac pocket and worried out a cigarette. “You’d better fill me in with some facts. How did you find him, and why the hell didn’t you pretend you hadn’t seen anything and leave him for the morning shift?”

“Well, sir, I was driving past on watch when I noticed the metal grille across the stairs had been forced back…”

“Hold on,” said Frost. “You know what a slow old sod I am. What were you doing driving down this bloody back street at this time of night?”

“It’s part of my beat, sir,” protested the constable, looking hurt. “It has to be covered.”

“Highly commendable,” sniffed Frost, spitting out a shred of tobacco, ‘but next time there’s a party, stick to the main roads. And speed it up, son. The beer’s going to run out before you reach the punchline.”

“Well, sir, I stopped the car, got out, and checked the grille.” He directed his torch toward the sagging grille and they both moved forward to examine it. “As you can see, the padlock has been forced.” Frost gave the padlock the briefest of glances and stared pointedly at his wristwatch. Taking the hint, Shelby speeded up his narrative. “As you know, sir, these toilets are locked up at eight o’clock.”

“I didn’t know,” grunted Frost. “I always pee in shop doorways.”

“Anyway, sir,” continued Shelby doggedly, “I thought I’d better investigate.”

Frost snorted. “Investigate what? Illicit peeing after hours?”

“There’s plenty of copper and lead piping down there, Inspector,” Shelby pointed out. “They could have been after that.”

“Sorry, son,” Frost apologized, ‘you’re quite right. Carry on. I’ll try and keep my big mouth shut.”

“Not much more to tell, sir. Iwent down and found this tramp sprawled on the floor. As far as I could tell, he was dead. Dr. Cadman only lives round the corner, so I nipped round and brought him back.”

The inspector dragged on his cigarette. “Pity you didn’t just call an ambulance and let the hospital take over.”

“He might not have been dead, sir. The doctor would have been quicker.”

Frost nodded gloomily and said, “You’re right again, son. Pity you have to be so bloody right on the night of the big booze-up. What did the quack say?”

“Doctor Cadman found damage and bleeding at the base of the skull. He reckoned death was caused by a blow to the head.”

Frost stared moodily into the darkness. He knew Dr. Cadman. Knew him well. Cadman had been his wife’s doctor. It was Cadman who had diagnosed stomach pains as mere indigestion and kept prescribing the white peppermint mixture until the unbearable pains drove her to hospital. “An old tramp, you say?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen him knocking around the district, but I don’t know his name.”

“I suppose we can’t put the evil moment off.” Frost pinched out his cigarette and stuffed the butt back into the packet. “Let’s get inside before people think you’re trying to pick me up.”

One hand gripping the brass handrail, he followed Shelby’s torch cautiously down stone steps worn concave in the middle from the traffic of thousands of hurrying feet. The echoing, monotonous plopping sound of dripping water grew louder.

“Do you know which police surgeon they’re sending us?”

“Dr. Slomon, sir. Mind that step… it’s a bit dodgy.”

“Slomon!” exclaimed Frost. “That snotty-nosed little bastard? He’ll want everything done by the book. I reckon I can kiss the party goodbye.” He moved his foot down to the next step only to give a startled yell as something cold and wet leaped up and licked its way inside his shoe. “Flaming hell, Shelby, it’s awash down here. You might have bloody warned me.”

“It wasn’t as bad as this before,” said Shelby. The reflections from his torch beam danced in the rippling water which lapped at the bottom step. “One of the cisterns is overflowing and the body’s blocking the drain.”

“This gets better and better,” the inspector observed bitterly. “So where is he?”

Shelby swung his torch and illuminated a sodden shape huddled in one corner. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to get our feet wet, sir.”

They splashed over, the water finding holes in Frost’s shoes he never knew existed and reminding him of the pair of Wellington boots lying idle on the back seat of his car. The heap in the corner looked like a mess of wet rags, but the light of the torch revealed it to be a man. A dead man. He lay on his back in the flooded guttering of the urinal stalls, his long, matted hair bobbing in the rising water, wide-open, sightless eyes staring unflinchingly into the burning glare of the torch. The mouth was agape and dribbling, the beard and ragged overcoat filthy with vomit that stank of stale, cheap wine. The body of a derelict, a tramp who had crawled into some dark corner to die.

Frost stared at the tired, worn-out face, a face long unwashed, grimed and greasy with dirt. “Good God, it’s Ben Cornish!”

“You know him, sir?” Shelby asked.

“I know him,” Frost replied grimly. “And so would you bloody know him, Constable, if you spent more time on your job and less on looking for crumpet.”

In the dark, Shelby flushed. He believed his woman ising was a well-kept secret, but nothing seemed to escape the seemingly unobservant Frost.

“He may look a bloody old man, Shelby, but he’s not much older than you.” The inspector bent down, his hand slipping under the water to the back of the head, his fingers exploring and finding the sticky section where the skull moved under pressure. “He’s been living rough ever since his family chucked him out a couple of years back. He started out as a wino cheap booze laced with me ths or surgical spirit then he progressed to heroin.”

“Heroin!” exclaimed Shelby, his torch beam slowly creeping over the emaciated figure at his feet. “That’s an expensive habit.”

“Well, by the look of him,” observed Frost, “I doubt if he wasted money on nonessentials like soap and food. He used to be a lovely kid. A cheeky little sod. Look at him now!” He prodded the body with his foot, then turned away. A match flared as he relit the butt. “I suppose you haven’t been through his pockets?”

“Not yet,” the constable admitted. “He’s a bit messy.”

“Well, he’s not going to get any bloody cleaner floating in pee, is he?

Is there any way to stop this damn water rising? It’s up to my ankles.

I feel like a passenger on the Titanic.”

Shelby paddled over to the far end of the fetid room leaving Frost in the dark. “I think it’s this one over here sir.”

“Don’t give me a running commentary, son. Just fix it.”

Shelby’s torch beam bobbed, then pointed upward to spotlight a cast-iron cistern tank which was meant to flush the urinal stalls at regular, hygienic intervals. It was brim-full, and water was cascading over the sides and down the wall. Shelby reached up and plunged his hand inside the tank. He jiggled the ball cock up and down a couple of times, and suddenly the cistern gulped, emptied itself, then filled up and cut off. Satisfied, She splashed back to Frost.

“That’s done it, sir. If we can shift the body it should unblock the drain and let the water flow away.”

“Better not move him, son. You know what a fussy little creep this police surgeon is. And see if you can’t find a light switch. Slomon’s bound to moan about the dark.” He sneaked a look at his watch. How much longer before he could get to the party? Where was bloody Slomon?

His question was answered by a clatter of footsteps from the top of the stairs and a peevish voice that inquired, “Anyone down there?”

Shelby’s torch guided the newcomer down. Dr. Slomon, a short, fat, self-important individual wearing an expensive-looking camel-haired overcoat, peered distastefully into the murk as Frost waded over. “Inspector Frost! I might have guessed. Somehow one associates you with places like this.” His overcoat was unbuttoned, and beneath it Frost could see a bow tie, and a smart black evening dress suit.

“You needn’t have got tar ted up just to come down here Doc. Any old suit would have done.”

Slomon smiled sourly. “If you must know, I was on my way to Inspector Harrison’s retirement party when I got this call. I hope it’s not going to take long.”

“So do I,” said Frost. “Hold on a tick, we’re trying to find the light switches.”

At first there didn’t seem to be any way of turning on the lights, but eventually the beam of the torch followed the wiring down until it disappeared inside a small wooden cupboard on which was stencilled Switches -Keep Locked. In obedience to this request, the cupboard door had been secured with an enormous brass only just popped up to the surface. I grabbed his arms to pull him out… and his bloody arms came off. I was left holding the damn things while he sank to the bottom again.” Both Shelby and Slomon winced at this choice tidbit of reminiscence.

“Will this do, Doc?” asked Frost, dumping the body at the foot of the stairs and shaking his sleeves where water had run up his arm.

Nodding curtly, Slomon bent forward, looked at the face with disgust, then moved the head forward so he could examine the base of the skull with probing fingers. It was a brief examination. “As I thought,” he said, treating the inspector to a self-satisfied smirk, ‘the head injury was not the cause of death and was not the result of a blow. The damage probably resulted from his head colliding with the stone flooring when he fell.” He looked around, then pointed to something glinting on the floor, by the wall. “Something you missed, Inspector. Fortunately I keep my eyes open whenever I do an examination.”

Frost swore softly as Shelby retrieved a broken wine bottle from the gully. There was no way they could have seen it earlier, as the dirty water had completely covered it.

Stretching out a hand, Slomon received the bottle from the constable and cautiously raised it to his nose. A delicate sniff, followed by a smug nod of satisfaction at his own cleverness. “Wine laced with industrial alcohol, a potent combination.” He handed the bottle to Frost for confirmation. Frost took his word for it and passed it to the constable. “He drank himself senseless, then fell,” continued Slomon dogmatically. “Then he choked on his own vomit. I’ll arrange for the hospital to carry out a post-mortem first thing tomorrow, but they will only confirm my diagnosis.” He consulted his watch. “The party calls. I’ll leave the tidying up to you.” With a curt nod he was up the steps and out into the clean night air.

“I wish they were doing a post-mortem on you, you bastard,” Frost muttered. He again looked around his unsavoury surroundings. Why was something nagging away? Why was that little bell at the back of his head ringing insistently, warning him something was wrong? He looked around again, slowly this time. But it was no good whatever it was, it wasn’t going to show itself. And why was he worrying? Death was from natural causes, and he had the party to go to.

“Do we know his next of kin, sir?” asked Shelby, his notebook open.

“His mother and brother live in Denton,” Frost told him. “The station will have their address.”

“Someone’s going to have to break the news to them, sir.” Shelby paused and looked hopefully at the inspector. “I’m not very good at it.”

Frost sighed. Why did he always fall for the nasty jobs? How do you tell a mother her eldest son had choked to death on his own vomit down a public convenience? He took one last look at the dripping heap of death sprawled at his feet and shook his head reproachfully. “Ben Cornish, you stupid bastard!” The open eyes of the corpse looked right through him.

“All right, Shelby. I’ll break the news to his old lady. You arrange for the meat wagon to take him to the morgue, and wait here until it arrives. I don’t want any late-night revellers peeing all over the body.”

He trotted up the steps to the street, Shelby, who wasn’t going to be left alone with the body, following hard on his heels. At ground level the wind was still prowling the streets. Frost took a deep breath. “Doesn’t fresh air have a funny smell?” He looked up and down the empty street. Or was it empty? He thought he saw something move down by the back entrance to one of the Market Square shops. As if someone had ducked into a doorway to avoid being seen. He caught a quick glimpse of the expression on Shelby’s face. The constable had seen the movement, too, but he was making a determined effort to keep his face passive. Strange, thought Frost. Very strange. He wondered what Shelby was up to… but if he was going to get to the party before the beer ran out… With a wave to the constable, he climbed back into his car. As he settled down in the driving seat, his sodden trouser legs flapped clammily around his ankles, and he felt the cold squelch of his wet socks as he pressed his feet on the pedals. On the back seat, unused and bone dry, his Wellington boots sat on top of a yellowing back number of the Dally Mirror.

He reversed, only hitting the kerb once. As he drove past the red-brick building with the creaking enamel sign, he realized he couldn’t see the broken metal grille. It was halfway down the stairs and completely out of sight from the road. Yet Shelby said he had spotted it from his car. It vaguely worried him, but there was probably a logical explanation which could wait, whereas the party couldn’t. The dull boom of the disco belting out full blast from the station canteen was waiting to meet him as he turned into Market Square.

She was nervous. The moon, a diamond-hard white disc in the starless sky, made the path as bright as day but buried the bushes in deep shadow. She had an uneasy, nagging feeling of danger. Of someone lurking. She felt in her pocket, and her hand closed reassuringly over the nail file. Not much of a weapon, but just let anyone try anything and she’d use it like a knife.

But she didn’t have a chance to use it. He was too quick for her. A slight rustling noise from behind her, and, even as she was turning, the cloth blacked out the moon, the stars. She opened her mouth to scream, but choking hands squeezed and squeezed.

Inside her head she was screaming, loudly, deafeningly. But only she could hear.

Tuesday night shift (2)

Police Sergeant Bill Wells, sad-faced and balding, raised his head to the ceiling where all the noise was coming from and bared his teeth in anger. Upstairs, that was where he should be. Up there, enjoying himself, instead of being stuck down here as station sergeant, trying to cope with the running of the district with hopelessly inadequate numbers of staff.

He was one of the few members of the Denton Division forced to be on duty on this special night, the night of the big party. And what was unfair was that he should have been up there. Today should have been his day off. But at the very last minute, for his own peculiar reasons, the Divisional Commander had revised the duty roster, so now Wells was on duty, as was Jack Frost. This didn’t worry Jack Frost, as he intended to sneak upstairs whatever the rosters said. You could get away with it in plainclothes but not if, like Sergeant Wells, you were wearing a uniform. There was no justice.

The skeleton duty force could only cope if the night was almost incident-free. Indeed, all duty men had been instructed not to look for trouble, to walk away from it if it crept up, and to turn a blind eye to all minor of fences But already things had started to heat up with the discovery of a dead body down a public convenience, and it was a well-known fact that shifts that started badly almost always ended badly.

And the damn phone, ringing almost nonstop, wasn’t helping; the calls were usually from members of the public complaining about the noise. It was so unfair. The people upstairs were having all the fun and he was having to cope with all the complaints.

The phone rang again. He snatched it up and blocked his free ear with his finger to try and drown out that monkey music from above.

“Would you mind repeating that, madam? I’m afraid I can’t hear you.”

The woman caller was gabbling away excitedly, but even with the phone pressed so tightly against his ear it hurt, he couldn’t make out what she was agitated about.

“Would you mind holding on for a moment, madam?” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and relieved the steam pressure of his myriad grievances by yelling at young Police Constable Collier, who was painstakingly hacking out a report on the antique Underwood typewriter. “Do something useful for a change, Collier. Get upstairs and tell those drunken layabouts to keep the row down. Some of us are trying to work.”

But before Collier could move, the lobby doors parted to admit the tall, straight-backed figure of Police Superintendent Mullett, Commander of Demon Division. The Superintendent, with his glossy black hair, clipped military moustache and horn-rimmed glasses, looked more like a successful businessman than a policeman. He was wearing his casual party wear: a tailored grey suit, a silver-flecked shirt, and a blue-and-silver tie. Wells and Collier immediately stiffened to attention but were waved at ease. The thump of the disco from above made Mullett wince, and he could feel his head starting to ache, but he put a brave face on it. After all, he was one of the lads tonight, like it or not.

“They seem to be enjoying themselves up there, Sergeant Wells,” he shouted over the din. “Not too loud for you, is it?”

“No, sir,” lied Wells as he pushed the phone to Collier so the constable could take over the call. “Nice to hear people enjoying themselves… for a change.”

Mullett nodded his approval, his gaze wandering around the dingy lobby with its stark wooden benches and the Colorado Beetle Identification poster flapping on the dark grey walls. “I never realized just how dreary this lobby looked, Sergeant. It’s bad for public relations. Do you think you could see about cheering it up… get in some house plants, or flowers, or something?”

“Yes, sir. Good idea, sir,” mumbled Wells, raising his eyes to the ceiling in mute appeal. Bloody flowers indeed! He was a policeman, not a bloody landscape gardener.

“Is Inspector Frost about?” asked Mullett anxiously. He was hoping the answer would be no. He preferred that Frost, with his impressed clothes, his unpolished shoes, his rudeness, and his coarse jokes, should be well out of the way when the Chief Constable arrived.

“Out on an inquiry, sir. Body down a public convenience off the Market Square.”

A public convenience! Mullett flinched as if he had been hit. It sounded just the type of distasteful inquiry that Frost would get himself involved in, but at least it had the advantage of keeping him out of sight when the V.I. P arrived.

He leaned across the desk to the sergeant, taking him into his confidence with great news: “The Chief Constable said he might look in, Sergeant, to say goodbye personally to George Harrison. You might ask one of your spare constables to keep an eye on the road outside.. .”

“I haven’t got anyone spare, sir,” cut in Wells hastily. “I’ve only got one constable with me to help run the entire station.” He indicated young Collier, who didn’t seem to be making much progress with the caller on the phone.

“He’ll do fine,” beamed Mullett, who had no intention of getting involved in these minor staffing problems. “The instant the Chief Constable’s car turns that corner, I want to be told. I’ll be upstairs with the lads.” He paused. “Sorry I had to put you on duty tonight, Wells, but there are so few men I could really trust to do a good job when we’re short-handed.”

Wells gave a noncommittal grunt.

Mullett pushed open the door to the canteen and steeled himself. He was not a very good mixer as far as social ising with the lower ranks was concerned and would never have attended were it not for the promised visit of the Chief Constable. He squared his shoulders, then, like a front-line soldier going over the top, he bravely charged up the stairs.

Wells glowered after him, speeding him on his way with a blast of mental abuse. “That’s right… go and enjoy yourself. Never mind us poor buggers sweating our guts out down here.” He became aware of Collier’s worried face looking helplessly at him, the phone still in his hand.

“What is it now, Collier? Surely you can handle a simple phone call on your own?”

“She won’t talk to me, Sarge, and she’s getting stroppy. She says she wants a high-ranking officer.”

A loud burst of sound and the crash of breaking glass from overhead.

Wells hoped it was Mullett falling over the beer crates.

“She can’t have a high-ranking officer, Collier. All the high-ranking officers are upstairs getting pissed.” He snatched the phone from the constable’s hand. “Go out and keep an eye open for the Chief Constable’s Rolls… and get some bloody flowers.”

“Flowers?” queried Collier, but seeing the look on his sergeant’s face, prudently decided not to wait for an answer.

Wells stuffed a finger in his ear and put on his polite voice. “Yes, madam, can I help you?”

“What are you going to do about that bloody noise?” screeched the woman caller. “I’ve got three children in bed and they can’t get to sleep!”

“We’ll look into it, madam,” promised Wells.

The sliding panel that connected the lobby to the control room slid back and PC Ridley, the controller, poked his head through.

“I’ve got Dave Shelby on the radio, Sarge. He’s trying to get a body to the morgue. The ambulance men refuse to touch it. They reckon it’s too mucky for the ambulance.”

“Mr. Frost is handling that one,” said Wells.

“I can’t contact Mr. Frost, Sarge. He doesn’t answer his radio.”

“Typical,” snorted the sergeant. “Trust him to hide when there’s trouble.” He consulted a typed list of funeral directors. “Tell Shelby to try Hawkins in the High Street. They’re cheap, they’re not too fussy, and they keep begging us for work.”

“Right, Sarge.” The panel slid shut.

Wells was logging the last call in the phone register when he became aware of” an irritating tap, tap, tap. He raised his eyes. Someone had the temerity to be rapping a pencil on the desk to attract his attention. He jerked up his head and there was the new man, that sulky swine, the bearded Detective Constable Webster, with the usual scowl on his face, tap, tap, tapping away. Furiously, Wells snatched the pencil from the man’s hand and hurled it to the floor. Pushing his face to within an inch of the constable’s, he said, “Don’t you ever do that again, Webster. If you want to attract my attention you address me by name, then wait until I am ready to respond. Understood?”

“Yes, Sergeant, I understand.” Webster almost spat the words out.

“So what do you want?”

“I want to know where the hell this Frost character has got to. I’m supposed to be working with him. Two hours ago he dumps six months’ filing on me and says he won’t be a tick. I’m still sitting in that pigsty of an office, waiting.”

A malicious smile slithered across the sergeant’s face. “You want something to do then, Constable?”

Webster gritted his teeth, trying to stop his irritation from showing. The way these yokels took a childish delight in emphasising the word ‘constable’. But he wouldn’t let them see they were getting through to him.

“Yes, Sergeant. I want something to do.”

“Right,” said Wells, smiling. “You can make the tea.”

“Make it?”

“We won’t get any tea from the canteen, Webster. It’s out of bounds to the workers. So you’ll have to make it manually, which I trust is not beneath the dignity of an ex-inspector? There’s a kettle and o’her stuff in the washroom. Brew up enough for six.” He lowered his head and returned to his entry in the log book.

Webster didn’t move.

Wells raised his head. “Is there a problem, Constable, something in your orders that you don’t understand?”

Webster’s face was rigid with fury. “You want me to make the tea?” He said it as if he had received an improper suggestion.

Wells chucked his pen down and bounced back Webster’s glare with a scorcher of his own. “Yes, Constable. Any objections?”

“Yes,” snapped Webster, jerking a thumb at young Collier, who was hovering by the lobby door, anxiously peering out into the road. “What about him? Why can’t he do it?”

“Because he is doing a very important job for Mr. Mullett. And anyway, why should he be the tea boy instead of you? You’re both the same rank… you’re both constables… or have you forgotten?”

“No,” snarled Webster, “I haven’t forgotten.” As if the buggers would let him forget! He spun on his heel and barged out of the lobby, slamming the door behind him.

That’s put the bastard in his place, thought Wells, feeling better now he had syphoned off some of his pent-up frustration.

Collier raced over excitedly. “The Chief Constable’s car, Sarge.”

“Well, don’t wet your knickers about it, Constable. Go upstairs and tell Mr. Mullett, quick.” Wells adjusted his uniform and made his back ramrod straight. He rapped on the panel and warned Control that the Chief Constable was on the way through.

The phone on his desk gave a little cough. Wells glowered at it, daring it to ring. It defied him. So did the other phone. Damn and blast! He’d planned a quick exchange of dialogue with the Chief Constable in which the Chief would look around the empty lobby and say, “All on your own, Sergeant?” and he would reply smartly, with much diffidence, “Yes, sir, but I can cope. I can run this place single-handed if need be…” And the Chief Constable would smile approvingly and make a mental note that there was some very promising promotion material here. Instead, the Chief Constable, in immaculate evening suit, breezed through, nodded curtly at Wells and said, “Those phones need answering, Sergeant.”

The first phone call was from a man living in the senior citizens’ flats off Arberry Road. Some idiot in a sports car was roaring round and round the block, cutting across the lawns and waking the oldies up. Wells scribbled details and promised action. No sooner had he replaced the phone than it rang again. He picked up the second phone. Another senior citizen complaining about the same thing. “Yes, we’ve got it in hand,” he promised, reaching for the first phone yet another old fool wanting the police to do something about this hooligan in the racing car.

As he was taking details, Wells was annoyed to see the Chief Constable pause to have a few morale-boosting words with young Collier, who ought to be answering bloody phones instead of fawning on the top brass. Behind Collier, the Divisional Commander, all atwitter, greeted the honoured guest and escorted him upstairs where the raucous noise had mysteriously abated.

And all the time this damn old man was droning away in his ear about the sports car and the inefficiency of the police who were never around when they were wanted. “I don’t suppose you managed to get its registration number,

Mr. Hickman?” he asked when the caller ran out of breath.

“No,” replied the old man, ‘but you’ll be able to trace him. His licence plate fell off when he hit the dustbins.”

“Right, Mr. Hickman, thank you very much,” said Wells, scribbling out the details. “We’ll send a car over there right away.” He jotted down the time of the call… 10.53, and slid the note through to Control.

Ridley, the controller, checked his wall map. Arberry Road. Charlie Alpha would be the quickest. He depressed the microphone button. “Control to Charlie Alpha. Come in please.”

The old man in the call box replaced the phone and dug his fingers hopefully into the coin-return receptacle in case there was any money there. There wasn’t. He shivered as a gust of wind found the broken pane in the kiosk door. He was still in his pyjamas, with his overcoat as a dressing gown and his sock less feet uncomfortably cold in his hastily laced shoes.

That hooligan in the sports car. It was the second night running the residents had had to put up with it. Screaming tyres, the horn blasting away, speeding round and round the flats as if it were on the Silverstone racing track. Tonight was even worse. The car had left the road and had ripped up lawns and flower beds as it took a short cut. Then there was that almighty crash as it hit the dustbins and sent them flying and clanging. But that was the driver’s downfall. The impact had knocked off the licence plate. The police would get him now. Hickman hoped they’d take away his licence for life and fine him hundreds of pounds. Or, better still, send him to prison. What they ought to do is bring back the birch. That would make these lunatics think twice before they disturbed the sleep of innocent people.

He didn’t hear the car coming back. He was halfway across the road when the blinding glare of its headlamps transfixed him. The horn shrieked at him to get out of the way. But the old man was going too slowly and the car far too fast.

As if in slow motion, he saw the car leap at him, saw every detail of the radiator as it grew larger, then a terrible, smashing blow as the headlamp shattered his face. The pain was awful. Screamingly awful. But mercifully it didn’t last long before a massive cloud of red and black blotted everything out and he was sucked down, down…

Watching from her window, a neighbour saw the car slow down, hesitate, then rev up and roar away, leaving the crumpled heap lying in the road. She had no phone and had to rush out and hammer at the next-door flat, screaming for someone to call an ambulance. The commotion had woken many of the residents. It didn’t wake Hickman’s wife. Slightly deaf, she slept soundly through it all, thinking her husband was still at her side.

The woman who had seen it happen covered the old man’s bleeding body with blankets as they waited for the ambulance. It was on the scene in exactly four minutes from the time the 999 phone call had been received. The same ambulance and the same two ambulance men who had refused to handle the vomit-sodden body from the toilets. Carefully, they lifted Hickman on to a stretcher and, in a little less than thirty seconds, were on their way to the hospital, speeding past the arriving Charlie Alpha as it turned the corner.

The area car slid to a halt in front of the call box, its tyres just managing to avoid the puddle of blood and the shards of broken headlamp glass. PC Jordan took statements from witnesses while his observer, PC

Simms, was sent to find the fallen licence plate. Then someone remembered Hickman’s wife. A woman neighbour went with Simms to wake her and break the news.

Max Dawson, managing director of Dawson Electronics, the big, modern factory complex on the new Denton Trading Estate, gave a gentle guiding touch to the wheel of his Silver Cloud and turned the car into the private approach road to the house. The car purred as it glided toward the garage. Dawson felt like purring, too. This year’s annual dinner and dance for his staff had been the best ever. His wife, who usually acted like a spoiled brat on such occasions, had behaved herself and had stuck to her promised maximum of four drinks, and all the speeches and presentations had gone off without a hitch.

He stole a glance at Clare in the seat next to him. For some reason she had been edgy all evening, fiddling with her bag, lighting cigarette after cigarette. But at least she had behaved like a managing director’s wife and not like some slut a lorry driver would pick up. She certainly looked stunning in that low-cut red-and-black evening dress. Too damn low-cut perhaps. He’d noticed the way two of his sales representatives had eyed her and sniggered suggestively to each other. He’d mentally noted their names. He wondered if they’d still be sniggering at the end of the month.

The outside lights were on to discourage intruders, but the interior of the house was in darkness. The quartz digital clock on the dash pulsated to show the time as 11.31. His young daughter, Karen, spending the night at her friend’s house, would be in bed. Fifteen-year-old Karen, sweet and unsophisticated, who hadn’t inherited any of her mother’s less endearing habits, thank God.

A touch of the remote control, and the garage door glided upward to receive the Rolls. “We’re home,” he said to Clare, who had her eyes closed.

Originally an early nineteenth-century farm building, the house had been completely gutted and converted, an undertaking that had cost him nearly ninety thousand pounds, but it had been worth it. On the open market there would be no shortage of buyers at an asking price in excess of a quarter of a million.

They went into the huge, split-level lounge with its massive natural-stone fireplace, large enough to roast the traditional ox if the log fire had been real. He pressed the ignition button and the living-flame gas jets plopped into life and licked hungrily at the sculptured logs. The instant warmth and the friendly red glow from the flickering flames increased his good humour to the extent that he was only mildly irritated to see that Clare had gone straight to the bar and was pouring herself a drink. Well, at least she had rationed herself at the function, so he’d let this one go by without comment.

“I’ll just give the Taylors a ring to make sure Karen’s all right,” he told her.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” his wife snapped.

A touch of jealousy there, he thought. He’d been noticing it more and more of late.

Loosening his bow tie, he walked over to the phone and jabbed at the push buttons.

Debbie’s parents were in bed. It was her father who eventually answered the phone, yawning loudly and at first not taking in what Dawson was saying. “No, Max, Karen’s not here. Isn’t she with you?”

Dawson stared at the phone in disbelief. Had the fool gone mad? “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted. “She was going to the cinema with Debbie, then spending the night with you. It was all arranged.”

“I know,” yawned Taylor. “Debbie waited outside the Odeon, but Karen never showed up. We assumed you’d taken her to the dance with you.”

“You assumed? Why the bloody hell didn’t you phone to check?”

“Well… we assumed…”

“You stupid sod!” roared Dawson, his face red with anger. “Hold on.”

He put down the phone and charged up the staircase to Karen’s room. Flinging open the door, he looked in. The curtains were drawn, and the room was quiet and still. No sound of breathing. He fumbled for the light switch and clicked it on. Karen’s bed was empty, still neatly made up from the morning. He raced down the stairs, grabbed the phone, and shouted, “She’s not here! If anything has happened to my daughter, I’ll kill you, you bastard!” He was shaking with rage.

“What is it?” asked Clare, clutching his arm. “Where’s Karen?”

“That’s what I’m damn well going to find out.” He raised the phone.

“Is Debbie there?”

“Of course, Max… but she’s asleep.”

“Then wake her, you fool. She might know where Karen’s got to.”

As he held on for what seemed like hours, anger fighting with apprehension, Clare drifted over to the bar and refilled her glass. “Your daughter is missing,” he snarled, ‘and all you can do is get bloody drunk.”

Clare burst into tears. He turned his back on her and waited impatiently for Debbie.

He scuttled through the woods, eyes and ears alert. He thought he had heard something. A scream. A piercing sound that tore a jagged hole in the silence. But all was quiet now… as quiet as the woods ever were at night above the rustlings and the murmurings and the moanings Sometimes, when he was lucky, the murmurings and the moanings came from lovers, hot, sweating, coupling lovers too busy to realize they were being observed. The things some of them got up to… you’d never believe it! And some of the girls were worse than the men… far worse.

He squeezed between two bushes, taking a shortcut. He knew all the shortcuts. There was something in the long grass. Something black. He picked it up. A brassiere. A black, lacy, deep-cupped brassiere, the fastener hanging by a thread as if someone couldn’t wait to undo those fiddling little hooks. He pressed it to his cheek and slowly rubbed it up and down the side of his face then, folding it carefully, pushed it deep into his pocket.

On through more bushes. The moonlight gleamed on something silvery white. He stiffened and stood stock still. It was the white of bare flesh. Holding his breath and moving quietly, with the skill of long practice, he inched forward, parting branches so he could get a better view.

Dear sweet Mother of God!

On the ground, ahead of him, lay the naked body of a young girl, her face raw and battered, the mouth and chin hidden under a mask of blood. Her body was mottled with livid green bruises. Strewn around, on the grass, her clothes. He crouched, making himself smaller in case whoever had done this was still lurking about. He listened. Silence.

It seemed safe, so he inched forward until he could touch her. The flesh was cold. Ice cold. He lowered his ear to her bloodied mouth but could detect no sound of breaming. Slowly his eyes travelled down the bruised and bleeding body to her thighs, then her legs. She was wearing thick black stockings which made the flesh of her thighs appear even whiter by contrast. The pieces of clothing strewn around the body seemed to be a school uniform of some kind. The girl’s black-stockinged legs fascinated him, the stockings’ tops circled by wide red garters, garters that were meant to be seen, not hidden. He would have thought school wear was far less sexy. This one must have been a right little teaser, deserving everything she’d got.

How marvelous it must be, he thought, to have a partner of one’s own as quiet and submissive as this one. He had never touched a naked girl before. He had sweated and groaned in vicarious excitement as he watched other men caress, fondle, and make love to them. But he had never touched one himself. Not properly. Kneeling beside her, he gently stroked the flat stomach.

A twig snapped. He whirled around. Nothing. But this wouldn’t do. Suppose someone saw him touching the body. Saw him and told the police. The police would think he had done this. He stood up and backed away from her, then turned abruptly, crashing through the bushes to the path that would take him to home and safety.

As he neared the phone box he knew he would have to call the police. Tell them about her. He wouldn’t say who he was, but if anything went wrong… if they suspected him, he’d say, “But I was the one who phoned you. Would I have done that if I’d killed her?” Yes, that would be clever. That would be smart. His hand dug deep into his pocket to caress the lacy softness of the black bra.

Police Sergeant Wells nudged Collier and nodded toward the lobby doors, which were opening very slowly. Jack

Frost tiptoed in, obviously hoping to sneak upstairs to the party without being noticed. Unaware he had an audience, he furtively crossed the lobby and pushed open the door leading to the canteen, letting a warm burst of happy sound roll down the stairs on an air current of alcohol.

With perfect timing, Wells lobbed his grenade. “You can forget the party, Mr. Frost. Mullett’s up there.”

“Eh?” Frost paused in midstride and nearly stumbled before spinning around, looking as guilty as a choirboy caught with Penthouse inside his hymn book “You frightened the bloody life out of me, Bill,” he began, then the import of the sergeant’s words hit him with a clout. Mullett had made it clear to everyone that the party was for off-duty personnel only. “Mullett? Upstairs?” He studied the sergeant’s face in the hope that his leg was being pulled.

“I’m afraid so, Jack. He’s up there boozing and licking the Chief Constable’s boots while you and I have got to stay down here and work.”

“Flaming ear holes,” muttered Frost bitterly.

PC Ridley slid back the panel and called out from the control room, “Mr. Frost. Dave Shelby has radioed through. Your body’s been taken to the mortuary. The post-mortem will be at ten o’clock sharp.”

“Great,” replied Frost. “There’s nothing like a bowlful of stomach contents to give you an appetite for dinner.” He then gave his attention to young PC Collier, who was waving two burglary report forms at him.

“Two more break-ins, Inspector.”

“Shove them on my desk, son. I’ll stick them in the Unsolved Robberies file if I can find room, and in the wastepaper basket if I can’t.” Denton was being plagued with an epidemic of minor break-ins and burglaries. They all seemed to be quick in-and-out, spur-of-the-moment jobs no clues, no prints, no-one seeing anything. Only money was taken, small amounts usually, so, short of catching the villains in the act, there was little the police could do. With more than eighty reported incidents, and probably many more unreported, Mullett had decided there was little point in wasting time sending experienced police officers to the scene of the crime. There would be nothing to see but an irate householder and an empty drawer, vase, purse or tea caddy where the money had been. Instead, a form was provided so the householder could fill in details of the break-in. The forms were then cursorily examined, filed, and usually forgotten. Jack Frost was nominally in charge of the break-ins investigation, and his file of burglary report forms was growing thicker each day. The accumulated figures made the division’s unsolved crimes return look incurably sick.

Another roar of laughter from upstairs. The Chief Constable must have told his unfunny joke and Mullett’s pants would be wet from uncontrolled giggling. Frost stared at the ceiling sadly, then brightened up. Surely Mullett and the Chief Constable wouldn’t stick it out right to the bitter end. As soon as they’d left, he’d be up there, and would he make up for lost time! He ambled over to the desk and offered Wells a cigarette.

“Ta, Jack.” Wells flinched back as the flame from Frost’s gas lighter seared his nose. “You’ll never guess what Mullett’s latest is: He reckons the lobby wants brightening up. He only wants vases of bleeding flowers all over the place.”

Frost was only half listening. For some reason the face of Ben Cornish swam up in his mind, the dead eyes reproaching him for something he had overlooked.

Then he realized he hadn’t told Wells who the body in the toilet was.

“Ben Cornish? Oh no!” Wells slumped down in his chair. Cornish was one of his regulars, nothing too serious… public nuisance, drunk and disorderly… but lately he had been on drugs. Hard drugs. “He was only in here a couple of days ago, stinking of me ths and as thin as a bloody rake. I gave him a quid to get something to eat.”

“I doubt if he bought food with it, Bill. I don’t think he’s eaten properly for weeks. When I saw him tonight he looked like a Belsen Camp victim on hunger strike. I reckon the jar of his stomach contents tomorrow will be absolutely empty. Whatever he bought with your quid was squirted straight into his arm with a rusty syringe.”

“I bet his mother took it badly.”

Frost smacked his forehead with his palm. “Damn and bloody blast… I knew there was something I’d forgotten to do. I’ll have to nip round there. Any chance of some tea first?”

“Shouldn’t be long, Jack,” said Wells, adding with a note of smug triumph, “Webster’s making it.”

Frost stepped back in amazement. “How did you get him to do that?”

“Simple. I gave him an order. Why shouldn’t he make it? He’s only a bloody constable.”

“He may be just a bloody constable now,” said Frost, ‘but he used to be an inspector, and half the time he thinks he still is one.”

The subject of their conversation, Detective Constable Martin Webster, twenty-seven, bearded, was in the washroom filling the battered kettle from the hot tap for speed. He banged six fairly clean mugs on to a tin tray and slurped in the milk from a cardboard carton.

Is this what he had come to? A flaming tea boy? Six months ago he had been an inspector. Detective Inspector Martin Webster, wonder boy of Braybridge Division. Braybridge was a large town some forty-three miles from Denton.

Shipping him to this dump called Denton was part of his punishment, just in case being demoted wasn’t enough, and the cherry on the cake was being saddled with that stupid, sloppy, bumbling oaf Jack Frost, who wouldn’t have been tolerated as a constable in Braybridge, let alone an inspector. How did a clown like Frost make the rank? Someone had tried to tell him that the man had won a medal, but he wasn’t swallowing that… not unless they handed out medals for sheer incompetence. Police Superintendent Mullett, the Divisional Commander, seemed to dislike Frost with the same intensity as he detested Webster. “I’m not happy having you in my division,” Mullett had told him. “I accepted you under protest. One further lapse and you’re out…”

So how did Frost manage to get Mullett to recommend him for promotion? Webster smiled ruefully to himself. It probably helped that Frost didn’t stagger into the station roaring drunk and punch his superior officer on the jaw. The memory made him shake his right hand. His knuckles still ached. So hard did he clout Detective Chief Inspector Hepton, that he believed, at the time, he had broken the bones of his hand.

He’d remember that night as long as he lived. The day before, he’d had that damn-awful row with his wife, Janet. The rows had been getting nasty, but this one was the worst ever. Janet didn’t know how badly things had been going for him at the station. There had been complaints about his treatment of suspects. All right, perhaps he had been a mite overzealous, but he was getting results. But then there had been those two incidents, one after the other, where one prisoner had a black eye, and the other bruised ribs, and they’d screamed ‘police brutality’. Both had been resisting arrest and were swinging punches, but Detective Chief Inspector Hepton had preferred to believe them rather than one of his own officers. Hepton had threatened to take him off CID work and put him back into uniform.

He hadn’t told any of this to Janet. All she got was his bitterness, his resentment, and his temper. He couldn’t remember how that last row started. It had built up until he swore at her and called her filthy names. Reacting angrily, she had whipped her hand across his face. He deserved it. That’s what made it so hard to take: He bloody deserved it. He should have let it go, apologized, begged her forgiveness. But he had reacted without thought, the back of his hand cracking across her mouth, splitting her lip, making it bleed. She just looked at him with contempt, face white, blood trickling, then she slowly walked out, slamming the door behind her.

Later, the phone call from her mother’s, saying she was leaving him.

That’s when he should have swallowed his pride and gone after her. Instead he preferred to wallow in self-pity and drink himself stupid on the contents of the cocktail cabinet.

And when he finally staggered into the station, unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, there was Hepton, Chief Inspector-bloody-Hepton, waiting for him, barring his way, that nagging, jarring voice scratching away at his raw nerve ends like a fingernail dragged down a blackboard.

And then things were very blurred. He recalled flinging a punch. An almighty punch which spun Hepton around, knocked him into a filing cabinet, and sent him crashing to the floor. Then the room was full of people, angry, shouting, holding him back. Someone must have taken him home because he next remembered waking in his own bed the following morning, his head split by wedges, hoping against hope that it had all been some ghastly drunken nightmare. But Janet wasn’t in bed with him. The house was empty, her clothes gone, and his fist swollen and hurting like hell.

Suspension, Disciplinary Tribunal, demotion to constable, and transfer to Denton and to Jack Frost, the cretin of the year.

“Webster. How much longer are you going to be making that bloody tea?”

Wells’s voice, calling from the lobby, dragged him back to the present. The room seemed to be in a thick mist, outlines blurred and indistinct as the kettle boiled its head off. A roar of delight from the party upstairs. God, how he could do with a drink. Just one. But they’d warned him. Be drunk on duty just one more time…

He turned off the gas ring and made the tea.

In the lobby, Frost and Wells were huddled together exchanging moans. Young Collier was at the Underwood, splashing correction fluid over a typed report as if he were painting a wall. Frost lowered his eyes guiltily as Webster handed him the mug of tea, knowing that he should have taken the detective constable with him on the Ben Cornish job. Indeed, it would have been better if he had then Webster would have been the one floundering about in the wet and nasty instead of him. But he was finding the hair shirt of Webster’s permanent scowl a mite too much to take without the odd break. He pulled the mug toward him. “Thanks, son. Looks good.”

Wells accepted his tea without comment, but Collier, looking up from his remedial work, said, “Thanks very much, Inspector… sorry, I mean Constable,” which provoked a muffled snort of suppressed laughter from the sergeant.

Webster’s face went tight. Laugh, you bastards. My time will come. He rapped on the panel, pushing the mug through as Ridley slid it open. The controller nodded his thanks, then called across to Wells: “That hit-and-run victim, Sergeant they’ve taken him to Denton General Hospital. He’s not expected to live. Oh, and they’ve found the licence plate from the car that hit him.”

“A licence plate from the car that hit him!” exclaimed Frost in mock excitement. “Now that could be a clue!” He sipped his tea. “It’s never been my luck to have a bloody licence plate left behind. I’m lucky if I find two witnesses who can agree on the colour of the car.” Then he paused, the mug quivering an inch from his lips, and whispered, “Listen!”

They listened to comparative silence. No music. No stamping.

Putting his mug down, Frost hurried over to the door that led to the canteen and pushed it open. Various voices called “Goodbye, sir… Thanks for coming, sir…” The Chief Constable and Mullett were leaving. Frost smiled to himself. The minute they left, he’d be up those stairs like a sailor with a complimentary ticket to a brothel.

Picking its moment, the phone rang. “Answer that, Collier,” Wells ordered. He wasn’t going to miss his chance with the Chief Constable again. But Collier was doing his doorman act, standing to attention, holding the main door open for the VIPs to pass through. Crawling little sod, thought Wells disgustedly.

Webster had skulked off to the office and Jack Frost had ducked out of sight as he always did when Mullett loomed into view. That left only Wells to answer the phone.

Mullett and the Chief Constable shimmered into the lobby in a haze of whisky fumes and expensive cigar smoke. The Chief was talking, Mullett was listening, nodding vigorously and murmuring, “Couldn’t agree with you more, sir,” whether he heard what the Chief was saying or not. At the door the Chief Constable paused, smiled approvingly at Collier, and said to Mullett, “You’ve got a smart man there, Superintendent.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Mullett, wondering why Sergeant Wells was looking daggers in his direction.

Wells shifted the phone to his other hand and took down the details. “I see, sir. Well, try not to worry. I’ll have a detective inspector over to you right away.”

He hung up.

Upstairs, whoops of delight. The record player started up again. Jack Frost scuttled out of his hiding place in Control and hurried across to the door. The sound billowed and beckoned as he opened it.

He never made it.

“You can forget the party, Jack,” said Wells. “I’ve got a missing teenage girl for you.”

Tuesday night shift (3)

Out to the car park and the Cortina, Frost scuffling along behind Webster, the bright lights from the canteen windows looking down on them. Absent-mindedly, Webster slid into the passenger seat and stretched out as he used to in the days when a detective constable drove him around. Frost opened the passenger door and peered in. “I think you might be sitting in my seat, son.”

With a grunt of irritation, Webster shifted over to his rightful, lowly place behind the wheel, listening sullenly to the muddled directions Frost gave him as they drove off.

It was Frost who broke the uneasy silence.

“This might come as a surprise to you, son, but you’re not exactly the flavour of the month around here.”

Webster, in no mood to accept any form of criticism, especially from a twit like Frost, stiffened. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, son, that you’ve been behaving like a spoiled brat ever since you arrived. I know we’re not God’s gift to the demoted, but why don’t you try and meet us halfway? The odd little smile twinkling through your face fungus wouldn’t come amiss.”

“I treat people the way they treat me,” snapped Webster, slowing down to wait for the lights to change. “I’m sick of having to put up with all this “Thank you, Inspector… sorry, I mean Constable” crap.”

“Young Collier’s harmless,” said Frost.

“It’s not only Collier,” said Webster, accelerating as the lights changed, ‘it’s everyone, especially Sergeant Wells. He delights in making me look small.”

“There’s a reason,” Frost said. “Bill Wells wants to be an inspector so badly it hurts. He’s passed all the exams but the Promotion Board keeps turning him down. So when he comes across someone who was an inspector, something he’s never going to be, and who chucked it all away, well, he’s bound to feel resentful.”

“And there’s Inspector Allen,” began Webster.

“Inspector Allen is a bastard,” Frost cut in. “Lots of inspectors are bastards. I bet you were one yourself.” He peered through the dirty wind-screen. “Turn right here.”

Webster spun the wheel, braking suddenly as the car headlights picked out a brick wall charging towards them. They had driven down a cul-de-sac.

“Sorry,” said Frost. “I meant left.”

Stupid bastard, thought Webster, backing out with great difficulty. “And another thing. Why was I deliberately excluded from that dead junkie investigation tonight?”

“Because I’m a stupid old sod who never does the right thing,” replied Frost disarmingly. “I’m sorry about that, son, honest I am.”

The reminder about Ben Cornish made him feel guilty. He knew he hadn’t been very thorough. All he had wanted to do was get out of that stinking hole and off to the party. And there was no mystery about it. Accidental death, like the doctor said. But something nagged, itched away at the back of his mind. He shut his eyes, trying to picture the scene… the filth, the body… the sodden clothes. Wait a minute, the clothes! He had the feeling that the pocket linings of the overcoat were pulled out slightly as if someone had gone through the pockets. Yet Shelby had said he hadn’t searched the body. It wouldn’t be the first time a copper had been through a dead man’s pockets and kept what he found. Immediately he discounted this possibility. Shelby might be a lousy copper in many ways, but he wasn’t a thief. Besides, what would Ben have had that was worth plunging your hands in vomit-sodden pockets to find?

He shook his head and erased the picture from his mind. Then he realized he still hadn’t broken the news to Ben’s mother. He sighed.

There were so many things he had left undone. Which reminded him

“Did you manage to finish the crime statistics?” he asked hopefully. cNo,” said Webster, ‘your figures didn’t make any sense.”

Frost nodded gloomily. They didn’t make any sense to him either, which was why he had passed them on to the detective constable. The returns were a monthly headache. This month Mullett had received a rocket from County Headquarters because, yet again, in spite of firm assurances, the Denton figures hadn’t been received on time. Fuming at his division’s failure, Mullett, in turn, had castigated Frost, and County had reluctantly agreed to extend the deadline by thirty-six hours. This deadline expired tomorrow.

“First thing tomorrow, son… as soon as we get back from the post-mortem… we’ll make a determined effort.”

Webster said nothing. Frost’s intentions were always of the best, but when the morning came, and the question of doing the returns was raised, Frost would suddenly remember some pressing reason why he and Webster had to go out. Webster badly needed to make good, but his chances of clawing his way back to his old rank of inspector were being sabotaged by his involvement with this hopeless, incompetent idiot.

“Left here,” directed Frost. Webster spun the wheel and the Wellington boots on the back seat crashed to the floor.

Frost leaned back and picked them up. “Must get the car cleaned up soon. We’ll do it as soon as we finish the crime statistics.”

High up, ahead of them, a large house, its grounds floodlit. “That’s the Dawson place, son. Dead ahead.”

Max Dawson was waiting for them at the open front door. He barely glanced at the warrant cards they waved at him, almost pushing them into the house and through the double doors which led to the lounge.

The split-level lounge, which ran almost the full length of the ground floor, was roomy enough to hangar a Zeppelin. It smelled strongly of expensive leather, rich cigar smoke, and money… lots of money. A welcome contrast to the gents’ urinal back of the High Street, which smelled of none of these things, thought Frost.

The lower level, panelled in rich oak, gleamingly polished, boasted a bar as big as a pub counter but much better stocked, and an enormous natural-stone fireplace with an unnatural but realistic log fire roaring gas-powered flames up a wide-throated brick chimney. The room’s trappings included a giant-screen projection TV posing as a Chippendale secreta ire a concealed screen that emerged from the wall at the touch of a button, and at least five thousand pounds’ worth of custom-built hi-fi equipment in flawlessly handcrafted reproduction Regency cabinets. The carpeting was milk-chocolate Wilton over thick rubber, underlay. It set off the deep-buttoned, soft leather couches in cream and natural brown.

The second level, up a slight step, housed a full-sized snooker table with overhead lights, cue racks, and score-board. One wall was lined with what appeared to be banks of gilt-edged, leathes-bound books that probably concealed a wall safe, the other with open-fronted cabinets displaying sporting guns, revolvers, and rifles.

Dawson came straight to the point. “My daughter’s been kidnapped,” he said, flicking his hand for them to sit. “I’ll co-operate with the police, but if there’s a ransom demand, I intend to pay it. My only concern is my daughter’s safety.” Then, as an afterthought, he indicated the woman seated by the fire, cradling a glass, “My wife.”

Dawson, in evening clothes, the two ends of his bow tie hanging loose, was a short stocky man of about fifty with thinning hair, hard eyes, and tight, ruthless lips. Clare, his wife, was much younger and quite a looker, with dark hair, rich, creamy flesh, and the most sensuous mouth Frost had ever seen.

“Right,” said Frost, unbuttoning his mac. “We’d better have the details.”

The door bell chimed. Dawson jerked his head to his wife. “That’ll be the Taylors. Let them in.” Obediently, she tottered out of the room. “I want you to hear what this girl has to say,” he told the two policemen.

While they waited, Webster rose from his chair and wandered over to the second level, where he took a closer look at the guns. He removed a Lee Enfield Mark III from a rack and squinted down its sights. “Are these genuine, sir?” he asked.

“Of course they’re not bloody genuine,” snapped Dawson. “They’re replicas. I’ve got the genuine guns locked away.”

“I take it you have a gun licence, sir,” persisted the detective constable, forgetting he wasn’t in charge of the case.

Annoyed at this digression from the main business, Dawson jerked open the drawer of a long sideboard and pulled out some papers. “Yes, I bloody have. Do you want to waste time seeing it, or shall we talk about my daughter?”

Stubbornly, Webster held out his hand for the licence. Frost jumped in quickly before the constable got too entrenched in his detective inspector act. “We can spare the gentleman that formality,” he said firmly.

Reluctantly, Webster’s hand dropped. That’s right, you bastard, make me look small, he smouldered, his expression mirroring his thoughts.

Clare Dawson returned with Mr. Taylor, a nervous little man with a pencil moustache who entered the lounge hesitantly, as if not certain of his reception. He clasped the hand of his daughter, Debbie, whose face was hidden in the hood of a thick blue duffel coat.

“So sorry about the misunderstanding, Max,” he began, offering his hand.

“Misunderstanding?” snarled Dawson, knocking the hand away. “You little creep. If anything’s happened to my Karen, I’ll break you.. .”

His wife tried to make peace. “I’m sure nothing’s happened to her, Max.”

Dawson spun round, his face furious. “What are you, bloody clairvoyant all of a sudden? How do you know she’s all right? You don’t even bloody-well care!” He paused and waved his hand jerkily in what was intended as a gesture of apology. “I’m sorry. I’m overwrought.” He squeezed out a smile for Taylor and the girl. “Please sit down.”

Debbie unbuttoned the duffel coat and slipped it off. Beneath it she wore a green long-sleeved pullover. A serious-faced little girl wearing glasses, her hair twisted in pigtails, she looked half asleep, frightened, and a lot younger than her fifteen years.

“Right,” said Frost. “Let’s make a start so Debbie can get back to bed.” He checked to see what Webster was up to and was annoyed to locate him back with the guns. “Do you think you might spare the time to take a few notes, Constable?” he called.

Webster’s frown crackled across the room like a lightning flash as he dragged out his notebook.

“Karen’s been kidnapped,” said Dawson. “There was a man hiding in the house. You saw him, didn’t you, Debbie?”

“Well, I think I did,” whispered the girl. She seemed too shy to look at anyone in the room and kept her head bowed down.

“You think you did?” shouted Dawson angrily. “What do you mean “think”? You told me over the phone you definitely saw him.” He spun around to Mr. Taylor. “Have you been getting her to change her story?”

“Hold hard everyone,” pleaded Frost. “This is getting confusing. I’m a bit on the dim side, I’m afraid, so everything has to be explained very slowly to me. How about starting right from the beginning with not too many long words?” He nodded for Dawson to begin.

“I’m managing director of Dawson Electronics. Tonight was the firm’s annual dinner and dance, which my wife and I attended. As we wouldn’t be back until late, our daughter, Karen, had arranged to go straight from school with Debbie to see a film at the Odeon – Breakdance or some such name they’re both mad on dancing. After the film they were going back to Debbie’s house, where Karen was to stay the night. My wife and I got back home from the function a little after 11.30. I phoned Taylor to see if Karen was all right. He told me they hadn’t seen her. Debbie had turned up outside the Odeon at the appointed time, but no Karen. Debbie waited and waited, but, as Karen hadn’t arrived by the time the programme started, she went in and saw the film on her own.”

“Hold on a minute,” said Frost. “You say Debbie waited for her outside the cinema? I thought the original idea was that they went straight there together from school?”

“Tell the inspector, Debbie,” said Dawson.

“The school closed at lunch time,” said Debbie, her head bowed, talking to the floor. “We were all sent home. The teachers went on strike.”

‘ Did you hear that?” demanded Dawson, quivering with barely suppressed anger. “The teachers went on bloody strike! If they worked for me I’d sack the lot of them. And this isn’t the state-run comprehensive school we’re talking about. This is St. Mary’s.”

Frost nodded. St. Mary’s College for Girls was a very exclusive, extremely expensive private school for the daughters of the filthy rich.

“They kick the kids out, lock up the school, and don’t bother to tell the parents,” ranted Dawson. “If anything has happened to Karen as a result of this, I’ll sue that bloody school for every penny it has.”

As the tirade continued, Frost’s eyes wandered to Mrs. Dawson, who was quietly topping up her glass. She certainly was a seductive piece of stuff. At a guess, she was at least fifteen years younger than her husband, but it was difficult to tell those rich birds knew how to slow down the ageing process. Her low-cut red-and-black evening gown revealed acres of warm, creamy flesh just crying out for exploration. She was, if one were being hypercritical, just a trifle on the plump side, but warm and inviting nevertheless, just like an over-inflated sex doll. She’s wasted on her husband, he thought. I bet he only has sex if it comes up on his agenda. 11.02-11.04, sex with wife, weather permitting. As Frost tore his gaze away, his eyes met Webster’s. He too was taking a sly surveillance. Frost leered and gave the constable a knowing wink. Webster looked away quickly, finding his notebook of consuming interest.

“So the pupils were sent home at lunch time, sir?” Frost prompted.

“Yes. Debbie walked back with Karen as far as the gates to the drive, and they arranged to meet outside the Odeon that evening.”

“What time would this be, Debbie?”

“About a quarter to two,” she told the carpet.

“You would be at work at that time, sir?” Frost suggested to Dawson.

“Of course I damn well was.”

“And where were you, Mrs. Dawson?”

Clare began to reply, but her husband had no intention of yielding the floor and answered for her. “My wife was out at the hairdresser’s. That’s the point. The house was empty, and yet Debbie saw…”

“Debbie can tell us herself,” cut in Frost. He beamed at the young girl. “Tell us what happened, love, and the naughty man with the nasty beard will write it all down.” He had added this for Webster’s benefit as the constable’s notebook looked suspiciously devoid of shorthand.

Debbie spoke so quietly they had to lean forward to take in what she was saying. “I left Karen at the gates at the bottom of the drive. My house is farther on. As I turned and waved to her, I saw

… I thought I saw… someone at the window of Karen’s bedroom. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t know the house was supposed to be empty.”

“Was it a man or a woman?” asked the inspector.

She stared hard at the floor. “I can’t be sure but I think it was a man. He was closing the curtains. I only saw him for a second.”

“Closing the curtains? You mean the bedroom curtains were open. The man you saw was pulling them together?”

“Yes. I thought nothing of it at the time. I didn’t know it was supposed to be important.”

Frost rubbed his chin. “Did you see Karen go into the house?”

“No, but I saw her walking up the path toward the house.”

“And she had arranged to meet you outside the Odeon at what time?”

“Half past five.”

“You arrived on time?”

“I was there five minutes early. I waited until six… that’s when the programme started. She didn’t turn up, so I went in on my own.”

“Were you surprised she didn’t turn up?”

Her eyes blinked rapidly behind her glasses. “Yes. She’d been excited about it for weeks we both were and she was looking forward to spending the night at my house.”

“Any idea where she might have gone?”

She shook her head. “No. No idea at all.”

“We’ve phoned all her other friends,” said Dawson. “It’s bloody obvious. She’s been kidnapped. The man was inside the house, waiting for her.”

“Thank you, Debbie,” said Frost, ‘you’ve been a great help. Now, you go off home and back to bed. If you think of anything else, get your dad to phone me.” He dug around in his pocket until he found a dog-eared card, which he handed to Taylor. While Clare was showing father and daughter out, Frost asked for a photograph of Karen.

Max Dawson took a coloured photograph from a mosaic-topped coffee table and handed it to the inspector, who studied it, then passed it over to Webster. A photograph of a schoolgirl, dark, shiny, well-brushed hair, a scrubbed, glowing face with a hint of freckles, a snub nose, and a broad grin. If she was fifteen, then, like Debbie, she looked very young for her age.

“A pretty kid,” smiled Frost. “When was this taken?”

Dawson snapped a finger for Clare to reply. “About six or seven months ago,” she said obediently.

“And how old is she?” inquired Webster, writing the details on the reverse of the photograph.

“She was fifteen last Thursday,” Dawson answered.

“Thank you, sir,” said Frost. “And now a couple of questions for you, Mrs. Dawson.”

She started as he addressed her, catching her glass just in time to stop it from falling over. Then she tried to light a cigarette from a statuette of a visored knight in armour that doubled as a table lighter, but she had difficulty in steering the flame to the end of her cigarette. At last the cigarette was alight, but still she kept the statuette in her hand, fidgeting with it, clicking the flame on and off, on and off. “Yes, Inspector?”

She was understandably nervous, and of course worried… but there was something else… something almost furtive about her. The same furtiveness Frost had seen in the face of Dave Shelby. Later, he would remember how he had linked her with Shelby and all for the wrong reasons.

“What time did you leave the house to go out, Mrs. Dawson?”

“This evening you mean?”

“Of course he doesn’t bloody-well mean this evening,” snarled her husband, snatching the lighter from her hand and putting it on the oak mantelpiece above the fireplace, well out of her reach. “He means when you went out to get your bloody hair shampooed and set.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The appointment was at two. I left the house shortly after one.”

With a quick glance to make sure Webster was recording these details, Frost then asked, “And what time did you get back home?”

“Five o’clock, perhaps a little later.”

“Three hours for a shampoo and set?” queried the inspector. “I didn’t think it took that long.”

“It only took an hour, but afterward I walked around the town, looking at the shops, then I went in Aster’s Department Store and had afternoon tea.”

“When you returned home, was there anything that didn’t seem quite right… any feeling that someone had been in the house while you were out?”

She considered this for a moment, then firmly shook her head. “No, nothing.”

Frost smiled his thanks, then switched his attention to the husband. “You suggest your daughter has been kidnapped, sir. I take it there’s been no contact from anyone claiming to be holding her, no phone calls or ransom demands?”

“There’s been no approach… yet. But it will follow, I have no doubt about that. I’m a rich man, a bloody rich man. My daughter is missing, a man was hiding in here, waiting for her. You don’t have to be a genius to see she’s been kidnapped.”

Frost leaned back in the chair and stared up at the high ceiling with its indistinguishable-from-real oak beams and its crystal chandelier. He worried at his scar and chewed the facts over. He wasn’t sold on Dawson’s kidnap theory. If the kid had been kidnapped, surely her abductors would have immediately warned her parents not to contact the police. And here it was, some ten hours or more after the event, and they still hadn’t made their approach. No, he couldn’t buy the kidnap scenario.

Webster watched the old fool drifting off into his reverie, trying to find inspiration from the ceiling. Look at him, he thought. He hasn’t a clue about what to do next. Well, if the inspector didn’t know what to do, Webster certainly did. Abruptly he snapped his notebook shut and stood up.

“Right, Mr. Dawson. Debbie saw a man in your daughter’s room, so we’ll start by taking a look up there.”

The inspector’s face went tight, but after a couple of seconds he relaxed and forced a smile. Pushing himself from the armchair’s cream-and-brown embrace, he said mildly, “Upstairs is it, Mrs. Dawson?”

Clare drained her glass and rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll show you.”

They followed her up a wide, deeply carpeted staircase to the first floor. Her tight-fitting evening dress did more than hug her figure. It intimately explored it, and they were treated to a glorious display of wriggling buttock cleft which Webster might have missed had not Frost nudged him and pointed.

A short wade through the knee-deep carpet of the landing to a dove-grey padded door, which she opened. She clicked on the light, then moved back slightly for them to squeeze past. It was a tight squeeze and she didn’t seem to want to make it any easier. “This is Karen’s room.”

“Thanks very much, Mrs. Dawson,” said Frost, taking her arm and steering her out of the room. “We’ll give you a shout if we want anything.” The door had barely closed behind her before he added coarsely, “Though it’s pretty obvious what you want, darling.”

Webster scowled but didn’t respond. He was becoming inured to the inspector’s tasteless comments on the people with whom they came into contact. But he would have thought even Frost would draw the line at a mother whose kid was missing.

Frost sprawled out on Karen’s bed and bounced up and down to test the springs. He found a half-smoked cigarette hiding in his pocket and lit it gratefully. “Well, you wanted to search the room, son, so search it. If you find any important clues, such as a severed hand, or a warm bra with the contents intact, let me know. Wake me up if I’m asleep.” He closed his eyes and relaxed.

“I was hoping for your co-operation.”

“Oh, it’s me who’s supposed to co-operate with you, is it?” he asked, as if understanding for the first time. “I thought it was the other way around. I’ll co-operate by keeping out of your way.” And he wriggled comfortably.

Who needs your bloody help? thought Webster.

It was a teenager’s dream bedroom, straight out of the pages of an up-market pop magazine. The ceiling was finished in sky blue and dotted with a firmament of silver stars. Along one wall a custom-built unit held a music centre, a video recorder, and a small fourteen-inch colour TV to which was connected a computer keyboard.

Opposite, behind light-oak sliding doors, a built-in wardrobe travelled the entire length of the wall. Webster slid back the door to reveal rows of dresses and coats rippling on hangers. In a separate section a white ballet dress shimmered and rustled next to a cat suit and three pairs of leotards. Neat lines of tap and ballet shoes occupied the wardrobe floor.

Webster moved to the corner, where a small desk faced a double row of bookshelves. On the desk were two blue-covered school exercise books with Karen Dawson, Form VB neatly written along the top. He opened one of them to read, in Karen’s neat handwriting, If I were Prime Minister, the first thing I would do on taking office would be to abolish poverty throughout the land… He dropped the exercise book back on the desk.

Frost was still stretched out on the bed, eyes half closed, watching puffs of cigarette smoke drift like clouds across the star-spangled ceiling. “OK, son, if you’ve got any theories, let’s have them.”

“Well,” Webster began, ‘if she has been kidnapped…”

“Kidnapped!” snorted Frost, reaching out for the exercise books. “I wish she had been, son. A nice kidnapping case might make Mullett forget I hadn’t done his lousy crime statistics.”

“The man Debbie Taylor saw…” said Webster.

Frost sighed deeply. “Yes. I wish she hadn’t seen him, son. That bloody man messes up all my theories. My theory is that Karen comes home, finds the house empty, and decides it would be a good opportunity to do a bunk.”

“Run away, you mean?”

“That’s right. Teenagers run away from home all the time, especially when their parents are always rowing like those two charmers downstairs.”

“The father’s a swine,” retorted Webster, ‘but the mother’s all right.”

“All right?” cried Frost. “Her daughter’s missing and she still finds the inclination to polish our buttons with her knockers as we have to squeeze past her into the bedroom? We could have had a quickie behind the door if we played our cards right. The pair of them aren’t worth a toss, my son. Karen’s run away, but give her a couple of cold nights and no clean knickers and she’ll soon come crawling back to finish her essay about saving the world from poverty.”

“But the man…”

Frost ran his teeth along his lower lip. “Yes, son, what about the man?” He crossed to the window, noticing that the curtains were open. Debbie had said she saw the man closing them. He opened the window and hurled out his cigarette, then leaned forward and peered along the drive, which sloped down to the main road, trying to locate the spot where Debbie would have been standing when Karen left her. Reluctantly, he was forced to agree that if there was a man, young Debbie would have been able to see him from the road. He withdrew back into the room and closed the window.

“If it was a kidnap,” said Webster, thoughtfully, ‘then how would the man know Karen would be home from school early?” He thought for a second, then answered his own question. “Suppose he was one of her schoolteachers?”

“The teachers are all women,” said Frost, poking another cigarette in his mouth, ‘though a couple of them have got moustaches. The only man is the caretaker, but he’s pushing seventy.” His fingers found a gap in his mac pocket. “Sod it!”

“What’s up?” asked Webster.

“There’s a hole in this pocket. My lighter must have dropped out. Now when did I use it last?”

“About five minutes ago. It’ll be near the bed.”

Frost went down on his knees and began patting the thick pile of the shag carpet. As his hand explored the area beneath the bed he touched something. He dragged out a small metal case covered in pale-blue leatherette. The legend on the lid read The Intimate Bikini Styler for That Sleek Bikini Line. Flicking open the lid, he looked inside. “Here’s a weird-looking electric razor, son.” He passed it over to Webster, who nodded curtly.

“They’re called Bikini Stylers.”

“I know that,” said Frost, still searching for his lighter. “It’s printed on the lid, but I’m none the wiser.”

Webster looked embarrassed. “Some of these modern bathing suits that girls wear… the bottom half is cut very low… they expose parts of the lower stomach… the very low lower stomach.”

Frost looked at him blankly, then his eyebrows rocketed up as the penny dropped. “You don’t mean…? Are you trying to tell me that women actually shave themselves down there before they put their bathing drawers on?” He stared hard at Webster. “You’re having me on.”

“It’s a fact,” Webster insisted “My wife uses one.” His eyes glazed reflectively. “She looked a cracker in a bikini.”

Frost regarded the dainty shaver, shaking his head in awe. “Now I’ve heard everything. I wish the hospital had one of these when I had my appendix out. Before the operation they sent in a short-sighted nurse with a Sweeny Todd cutthroat. That was the first time in my life I really prayed.”

He snapped the lid shut and poked the case back under the bed, wondering what a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl would be doing with a thing like this.

“By your left foot,” called Webster, pointing to the missing lighter.

Frost retrieved it, lit up, and flopped back on the bed. He yawned. “I could stay here all night, son, especially if young Karen, all fresh, sweet, and clean-shaven, would slip under the sheets beside me.” He turned his head and saw the photographs. Two of them on the bedside cabinet, propped up against a tiny Snoopy digital alarm clock.

He sat up to examine them. One showed Karen in the white ballet dress from the wardrobe, standing en pointe, hands outstretched, looking demure and sweet. The other was a beach scene, brilliant sky, silver sand. Two girls -one, young Debbie minus her glasses, flat-chested in a one-piece dark-blue bathing costume, looking as embarrassed as if she were stark naked; next to her, smiling with the sensuous mouth she had inherited from her mother, Karen Dawson, long-legged, well-developed, posing in a white two-piece swimsuit that caressed and stroked every curve of her young body. An entirely different Karen from the scrubbed schoolgirl in the other photograph.

“No sign of five o’clock shadow,” muttered Frost, looking closely before handing the prize over to Webster.

The detective constable winced. Anything prurient and Frost flogged it to death. But the photograph certainly showed the girl in a different light. Unlike the inspector, Webster wasn’t convinced the girl had left home of her own accord. There was one way to check, of course. He asked Frost to get off the bed, then he rummaged under the pillow and pulled back the bedclothes.

“I don’t think you’ll find her in the bed,” said Frost. He had pulled out the drawers of the bedside cabinet and was rummaging through the contents.

“I was checking to see if her pyjamas were there,” sniffed Webster. “If she’d done a bunk I would have expected her to take them with her. They’re not here.”

“But that doesn’t mean she’s taken them with her,” said Frost, pushing the drawers shut. “She might be like Marilyn Monroe and wear nothing in bed but her aftershave.” He lifted the top sheet and brought it to his nose. “Tell you what, though, my hairy son, she wears a pretty sexy perfume in bed… smells like that stuff farmers use to get pigs to mate. Mullett’s wife smothers herself in it.”

Webster took a sample sniff. It certainly was pretty heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old. He was reassessing young Karen by the minute. “Could we check the bathroom to see if her toothbrush and stuff have gone?” he asked. “No girl would run away without her toothbrush.”

“Good idea,” said Frost, “I’m dying for a pee.”

The first door they tried led to the Dawsons’ bedroom, a vast room with a canopied bed, the walls covered in some kind of padded velvet. The next door opened on to the bathroom, fully tiled in red Italian marble. It contained a large circular sunken bath that could have doubled as a swimming pool. The bath had taps made of gold, as did the matching sink basin. A red carpet matched the tiles, and all the towels matched the carpet.

Frost surveyed the bath in awe. “If I had a bath like that, son, I’d definitely have to get out if I wanted a pee.”

The bathroom cabinet was concealed behind a mirror over the sink. Webster opened it and was searching through its contents when the door burst open and Dawson charged in. He reacted angrily when he saw what Webster was doing.

“Who gave you permission to go through our private possessions?”

“We’re checking to see if your daughter’s toothbrush is still here, sir,” said Webster patiently. He had found two toothbrushes in a beaker, one red, the other green. He showed them to Dawson. “Do either of these belong to Karen? It is important, sir.”

“Karen’s brush is orange.” He pushed Webster out of the way and rummaged impatiently through the cabinet. “It should be here somewhere.” He yelled for his wife to come up. “Karen’s toothbrush he snapped as she entered the bathroom, ‘where is it?” He moved so she could get to the cabinet.

Standing on tiptoe, she peered inside, moving things out of the way.

“It should be here,” she said.

“I didn’t ask where it should be,” Dawson told her sarcastically, “I asked where it was. Apparently, it’s important.”

“It isn’t here,” Clare said eventually. “None of Karen’s stuff is here her toilet bag, flannel, toothpaste…”

Webster leaned against the wall and folded his arms. Annoyingly, it looked as if Frost’s theory was correct. The girl had run away.

“If Karen took her toilet things with her,” Frost told the parents, ‘it does rather suggest she went of her own free will.”

Dawson’s face reddened to match the Italian tiles. “Are you suggesting Karen has run away from home? You’re an idiot, man. A bloody idiot. You don’t know my daughter. She loved her home. She wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Lots of teenagers do it, Mr. Dawson,” said Webster. “Not necessarily because of anything to do with home. There could be trouble at school… or an upset with a boy friend.”

Dawson regarded the detective constable as if he were an imbecile. “A boy friend? My Karen? She’s only fifteen, for God’s sake, a mere child! And what about that man Debbie saw? What is he supposed to be, a mirage… a teenage sex fantasy?”

“I’m not convinced she saw anyone, sir,” Frost said. “She had doubts herself.” He buttoned up his mac to show he was ready to leave.

“So you intend doing nothing?”

“Not a lot we can do,” said Frost. “We’ll issue her description, circulate her photograph, ask everyone to keep an eye open for her. I don’t think she’ll be away for long.”

They heard a phone ringing. Dawson snapped his fingers for his wife to answer, but when Frost suggested the caller might be Karen, he dashed out to answer it himself.

Frost sat down on the toilet seat and lit up his thirty-eighth cigarette of the day. He gave the woman a friendly smile. “Anything you want to tell us while your husband isn’t here, Mrs. Dawson?”

Her face went white, then she pretended to be puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Frost shrugged. “Then it’s my mistake, Mrs. Dawson.” He stood up as her husband returned. “It’s for you, Inspector Denton Police Station. You can use the phone in Karen’s room.”

The caller was Bill Wells. To Frost’s delight, he could hear the noise of the party in the background. There was still a chance he would make it.

“Hello Jack,” Wells intoned in his usual gloomy voice, “Can you talk freely?”

“Yes,” confirmed Frost.

“What’s the score with Karen Dawson?”

“Zero. Her old man thinks she’s been kidnapped, but my bet is she’s done a bunk.”

“Don’t be too sure she’s all right, Jack. We might have found her.”

Frost caught his breath. Suddenly he felt cold and apprehensive.

“Might?”

“We’ve had an anonymous phone call. A man. He says there’s a girl’s body in Denton Woods. I think you’d better take a look.”

Dawson poked his head round the door. “Anything wrong, Inspector?”

“No,” said Frost. “Just something we’ve got to look into. I might be back to you later on, sir. If there’s any news, that is.”

Tuesday night shift (4)

Upstairs, the party was throbbing away louder than ever and showing no signs of breaking up. Wells heard stamping, shrieking, roars of laughter, and the sound of glass smashing. A load of bloody hooligans, he thought as he tried to hear what the caller was saying. “I’m sorry, sir, bit of a disturbance outside. Would you mind repeating that?”

The man sounded out of breath and was barely whispering into the phone.

“I’ve found a body. In Denton Woods. A girl.”

Wells stiffened. Another body! Just when he was praying for a nice, quiet, peaceful night. With his free hand he knuckled the panel to Control and, when Ridley opened it, signalled for him to listen in on the extension.

“A girl’s body, you say, sir?” He picked up his pen, ready to write down the details.

“That’s right. A young girl.. ‘. a kid.”

A kid! The sergeant’s first thought was of the previous call he had logged. Karen Dawson, fifteen, missing from home since this afternoon.

“I see, sir. And where exactly is she?”

“I told you. In Denton Woods. Off the main path, behind some bushes.”

“Where in the woods, sir? We’ll have to have the exact location.”

A pause, then a click and the line went dead. The caller had hung up.

Wells replaced the receiver and cursed. “Damn!”

“Sounded a nutter to me,” called Ridley, hanging up the extension.

Wells nodded. They were always receiving bogus calls from cranks with a grudge against the law, who took delight in wasting police time and money. But you couldn’t take chances. It had to be assumed that all calls were genuine until proved otherwise. “What cars have you got?” he asked the controller.

Ridley didn’t need to consult his map. With half the strength drinking themselves stupid upstairs, only two cars were available, and one of them, PC Shelby’s patrol car, was failing to respond. This was not untypical of Shelby! “There’s only Charlie Alpha, Sarge, and that’s on the way to a domestic on the red-brick estate.” A ‘domestic’ meant a family row or disturbance.

“Forget the domestic,” he was told. “I want Charlie Alpha to divert immediately to Demon Woods.” He vented his annoyance by kicking the leg of his desk. “One bloody area car! How am I supposed to cover a division of this size with one lousy area car?”

Shutting his ears to the sergeant’s moans, Ridley thumbed the transmit button and called Charlie Alpha. While he waited for the response, he asked, “Exactly where in Demon Woods, Sarge?”

“How the hell do I know?” snarled Wells. “I’m not a bloody mind reader! You heard what he said off the main path, behind some bushes.”

A burst of static from the loudspeaker. “Charlie Alpha to Control. On our way to domestic on the red-brick estate in response to your previous message, over.”

“Forget the domestic, Charlie Alpha. Proceed immediately to Denton Woods and initiate search. Anonymous report of young girl’s body behind bushes, off main path. Over.” He waited, his thumb hovering over the transmit button, for Charlie Alpha to request the precise location.

“Would you give us a more precise location, Control? There are main paths running the length and breadth of Denton Woods.”

“That is all the information we have, Charlie Alpha,” replied Ridley in an aggravatingly reasonable voice. “Over and out.” He heard the door open behind him as Wells came into the room.

“But there’s four hundred acres of woods, miles of paths, and thousands of bloody bushes.. Charlie Alpha pointed out.

Wells was getting fed up with this. He snatched the handset from Ridley. “Then you’ll be spoiled for bloody choice, won’t you, Charlie Alpha? Just go and look for her and don’t bloody argue!”

“Over and out,” said Charlie Alpha hurriedly.

Ridley stuck the marker for Charlie Alpha in the green-coloured expanse of Denton Woods on his wall map. “They’ll need some help, Sarge. Should we break up the party?”

Wells pinched his nose and gave it some serious thought. It was tempting, very tempting, and it would serve those noisy sods right to be turfed out into the dark and cold to search the woods. But if the call turned out to be a hoax and he had deployed half the force on a fruitless search, all on overtime, he’d never hear the last of it. Mullett would grind on and on about it for weeks. On the other hand, if it was genuine and he ignored it -He groaned. He was in a no-win situation.

To play it safe, he decided to phone Jack Frost. It might be his missing schoolgirl, and if the inspector wanted more men, it was up to him to ask for them. He picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Dawson house. “Denton Police here, sir. Sorry to trouble you, but