"Night Frost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wingfield R D)

BURN WILL BE YOU, YOU BITCH.

‘Where’s the envelope?’ demanded Gilmore. This case was looking a little more worthy of his attention now. Jordan handed over another plastic bag containing a manila envelope, 9 inches by 4 inches. The address, typed in capitals, read: MRS COMPTON, THE OLD MILL, LEXING. It bore a first-class stamp and had been posted in Denton the previous evening. He motioned for Jordan to continue.

‘Next she heard this roaring sound from outside. She opened the lounge curtains and saw the summer house on fire, so she dialled 999.’ He closed his notebook.

Frost drained his mug and dropped his cigarette end in it. ‘This is getting nastier and nastier. It started off with heavy-breathing phone calls, now it’s death threats. Right, Jordan. Nip down to the village and ask around. Did anyone see anything… any strange cars lurking about someone stinking of petrol.’ As the constable left, he stood up. ‘Buttock-viewing time,’ he told Gilmore. ‘We’re going to chat up Mrs Compton.’

Gilmore followed him out of the kitchen, along the waxed wooden-floored passage and into the lounge, a large, high-ceilinged room which had a rich, rustic, new- sacking smell from the dark chocolate-coloured hessian covering its walls.

Jill Compton, standing to receive them, looked much younger than her twenty-three years. She wore a gauzy cobweb of a baby doll nightdress which hid nothing, and over it a silken house-coat which flapped open so as not to spoil the view through the nightdress. Her hair, fringed over wide blue eyes and free-flowing down her back, was a light, golden corn colour. She wore no make-up and the pale, china doll face with a hint of dark rings around the eyes gave her a look of vulnerability. She smiled bravely. ‘I’m sorry I’m not dressed.’

‘That’s quite all right, Mrs Compton,’ said Frost, and there was no doubting the sincerity in his voice. ‘It’s a sod about your summer house.’

‘It could have been the house,’ she said, her voice unsteady. ‘Did you see that letter?’

Before Frost could answer the front door slammed and a man’s voice called, ‘Jill – I’m home! Where are you?’

‘Mark!’ She ran out to meet her husband.

‘Damn!’ grunted Frost. ‘The buttock-squeezer’s back!’ Mark Compton was twenty-nine and flashily good- looking. Fair-haired, a bronzed complexion, although slightly overweight from good living, he looked like a retired life-guard out of Neighbours. Gilmore hated him instantly for his looks, his money, his perfectly fitting silver-grey suit, his arm around Mrs Compton, but most of all for his hand caressing her bare arm.

‘A letter? My wife said there was a letter threatening to kill her.’

Frost showed it to him. His face went white. ‘Why are we being persecuted like this?’ He sank down into a leather armchair. His wife dropped down on his lap and snuggled up to him.

‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Frost. ‘Why?’ He and Gilmore were sitting, facing the Comptons, in a large leather settee. He fumbled for his cigarettes. ‘Whoever’s doing this must have a reason.’

‘Reason?’ said Compton ‘There’s no bloody reason. It’s the work of a maniac.’

‘We’ve been receiving a spate of complaints about poison pen letters. “Did you know your wife’s been having it off with the milkman?” – that sort of thing. I’m wondering if it could be the same bloke.’

‘We’ve had death threats, Inspector, not stupid poison pen letters.’

‘Run through the main course of events again,’ said Frost. ‘Just for the benefit of my new colleague here.’

Mark Compton slipped his hand under Jill’s house-coat and gently stroked her bare back. ‘OK. As you know, we run a business from this place… Jill was on her own one night when this bugger phoned.’

‘What sort of business is it?’ interrupted Gilmore.

‘Dirty books,’ said Frost.

Compton glowered. ‘We’re fine art dealers,’ he corrected. ‘Mainly rare books and prints, a small proportion of which might be termed erotica, and manuscripts, but not many. There’s over a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of stock upstairs.’

Gilmore whistled softly to show he was impressed. ‘Safely locked up, I hope?’

‘We couldn’t get insurance if it wasn’t,’ Compton replied icily. ‘Your Crime Prevention Officer has given us the once-over and was quite satisfied. We’ve got a sophisticated alarm system with automatic 999 dialling. If anyone tried to break in, they’d set off the alarm at your police station.’

‘Books and manuscripts,’ said Gilmore, ‘and a wooden building. I shouldn’t think the insurance company were too happy about that?’

Mark Compton pointed to metal roses dotting the ceiling. ‘Automatic sprinklers in every room, a condition of the policy.’

‘So not too much danger from fire?’

‘An ordinary fire, perhaps, but if some stupid bastard starts pouring petrol all over the place like they apparently did with our summer house…’

Frost’s head came up sharply. ‘How did you know that, sir?’

‘The fireman outside told me. It’s not a state secret, is it? I am entitled to know the methods maniacs use to destroy my property.’

Frost smiled and switched his attention to the woman. ‘Tell us about the phone calls.’

The recollection made her shudder. ‘It started about two weeks ago. The phone kept ringing in the middle of the night. Every time I answered it, the caller hung up. It was frightening. This place is so isolated. I was terrified.’ Again she shuddered. Her husband moved his hand up to cup and squeeze her breast in reassurance. In case Gilmore hadn’t spotted this, Frost drew it to his attention by a sharp dig in the ribs with his elbow. Gilmore pretended not to notice and, trying to keep his eyes well above breast level, he asked Jill to continue.

‘The next morning a black Rolls Royce came up the drive. It was a hearse, with a coffin in the back!’ She was shaking uncontrollably. Mark squeezed her tighter and she clung to him. At last she was able to continue. ‘Two men dressed all in black got out and knocked. They said they were undertakers and had come to collect the body of my husband. I think I screamed.’

‘Some stupid, sick bastard’s idea of a joke,’ cut in Compton angrily. ‘Fortunately I came home a couple of minutes later. Jill was having hysterics. Then the phone rang. The Classified Ads section of the local paper checking details of my obituary notice which had just been phoned in. Apparently I had died suddenly as the result of a tragic accident. Just imagine if Jill had taken that call.’ She blinked up at him and buried her face in his chest. ‘Later that day, just to complete this hilariously funny sick joke, a firm of monumental masons sent me a quotation for my headstone. That was when I called in the police… not that it did us any damn good. The next day our ornamental pond was full of dead fish. They’d been poisoned. The maniac had poured bleach in. Then he phoned me.’

Gilmore’s head shot up. ‘Phoned you?’

‘He said, “Dead fish first, dead people next.” Then he hung up.’

‘Did you recognize the voice?’ asked Gilmore.

‘Of course I didn’t recognize it. Would we be sitting here wondering who it was if I did?’

Gilmore flushed. It would almost be worth his job to smack the smug bastard one in the mouth. ‘Can you describe the voice, sir?’

‘It was obviously disguised. Very soft, almost a whisper. You couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Things came through the post – newspaper cuttings, obituaries of people called Compton, or reports of killings or sudden deaths with the victim’s name crossed out and our name written in. Charming little things like that.’

‘Right,’ said Gilmore. ‘Whoever is doing this must hate you. Any suggestions?’

‘Don’t you think we’ve racked our brains, trying to think of something?’ barked Compton. ‘There’s no rhyme nor reason behind this. I keep telling you, this is the work of someone with a sick mind.’

‘Sick minds or not, sir, they’ve got to have a reason for picking on you in the first place.’

Jill Compton caught her breath and her eyes widened as if a thought had suddenly struck her. ‘Mark… that man who tried to pick a fight with you!’ She rose from his lap and sat on the arm of the chair.

Her husband frowned. ‘What man?’

‘In London – the security system exhibition.’

A scoffing laugh. ‘That was over a month ago.’ To the detectives he said, ‘A bit of nonsense. It’s got nothing to do with this.’

Then why did you look guilty when she mentioned it? thought Frost. ‘Let’s hear about it anyway, sir. Suspects are pretty thin on the ground at the moment.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with this,’ insisted Compton. ‘We’d gone up to London for an antiques fair at the Russell Hotel. This security system exhibition was on at the same time at a different hotel – I forget the name…’

‘The Griffin,’ his wife reminded him.

‘That’s right… Anyway, Guardtech, the firm that fitted up the alarm systems here, had sent us an invitation, so we looked in for a couple of hours. I was in the bar. Jill had gone off somewhere.’

‘I was powdering my nose,’ she told him.

‘Well – whatever. This woman comes up to me and asks for a light. Suddenly, her drunken lout of a husband staggers over and accuses me of trying to take his wife away from him. I didn’t want any trouble, so I turned to go. He swings a punch at me, misses by miles and falls flat on his face. It turned out he was a salesman for Guardtech security systems. Their sales manager came over and apologized. Said this chap was insanely jealous of his wife and had been knocking back the free booze all day, just spoiling for a fight with anyone.’

‘Do you remember his name?’ asked Gilmore, hopefully.

Compton shook his head.

‘His name was Bradbury, darling,’ said his wife, looking proud that she could supply important information. ‘Simon Bradbury.’

‘Something like that,’ grunted Compton begrudgingly. ‘But you’re wasting your time going after him. He lives in London.’

While Gilmore scribbled the name in his notebook, Frost stood up and wound his scarf round his neck. ‘We’ll check him out, anyway. If anything else happens, phone the station right away.’

Mark Compton’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. ‘You’re just walking away? For God’s sake, man, my wife’s life has been threatened. I want round-the-clock protection.’

Frost shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ll get an area car to make a detour from time to time, just to keep an eye on the place, but we haven’t got the resources for twenty-four-hour surveillance.’

Compton’s voice rose to a shout. ‘Bloody marvellous! Well, let’s make one thing clear. If the police won’t do anything, then I will. If he lays one finger on my wife, and I catch the bastard, I’ll kill him with my bare hands, and that’s a bloody promise.’

The Fire Investigations Officer was sitting in the back seat of the Cortina. waiting for them. He declined a cigarette, pleading a sore throat. ‘I think I’m coming down with flu, Jack. Half the watch are off with it.’

‘Tell me what you’ve found and then push off,’ said Frost. ‘I don’t want to catch it from you.’

The fireman passed across a plastic envelope. Inside was a chunk of burnt wood with a snail’s trail of a dirty grey waxy substance dribbled over it. ‘Candle grease from an ordinary household candle. And I’ve found several scraps of burnt cloth. My guess is that the fire was set off by a stump of candle burning down to some inflammable material – possibly rags soaked in petrol.’

Frost handed the envelope back. ‘How long would a fuse like that take to burn down?’

The fireman scratched his chin. ‘Depends on the length of the candle, but I shouldn’t think they’d use a full one, not in that situation. Too much risk of it toppling over or getting blown out. The more reliable way is just to use a stump, the shorter the better and then you’re talking an hour maybe a lot less.’

‘But if they did use a full-length one?’

‘Four and a half hours top whack.’

Frost chewed this over and stared up at the black- clouded sky through the windscreen. ‘How good is that sprinkler system in The Mill?’

‘Damn good.’

‘Even if petrol was used again?’

‘It would definitely keep it under control until we got here.’ His nose wrinkled and his eyes widened as he dived into his pocket for his handkerchief, but too late. His violent sneeze rocked the car.

‘Thanks a bunch,’ grunted Frost. ‘Flu germs are all we bleeding need.’

The Cortina bumped down the puddled lane on its way back to Denton. An agitated Gilmore, concerned about his delayed meeting with the Divisional Commander, was fidgeting impatiently, willing the inspector to drive faster. Frost seemed to be driving by remote control, his mind elsewhere, his cigarette burning dangerously close to his lip. They were approaching the gloomy Denton Woods before Frost spoke. ‘What did you think of Jill Compton?’

‘A knock-out,’ admitted Gilmore.

Frost wound down the window and spat out his cigarette. ‘Did you see how he was groping her? I thought she was going to get his dick out any minute.’ He shook another cigarette from the packet straight into his mouth. ‘When you get a chance, son, find out where Compton was last night and if there’s any way he could have started that fire.’

‘Compton?’ Gilmore was incredulous. ‘Why should he destroy his own property?’

‘I don’t know, son. I don’t like the sod. He’s a bit too bloody lovey-dovey with Miss Wonder-bum for my taste – almost as if he wants to shout out for our benefit how devoted he is.’

Gilmore was unimpressed. ‘I thought he was genuinely devoted.’

‘Maybe so, son. I’m probably way off course as usual, but check anyway.’ The car was now speeding down the hill leading to the Market Square. ‘I’ll drop you off at the station. If Mullett asks, you don’t know where I am.’

The radio belched static, then Control asked for Mr Frost to come in please. ‘What’s your position, Inspector?’

Frost looked through the window at the row of shops and the turning just ahead leading to the police station. A bit too close to Mullett for comfort. ‘Still at The Mill, Lexing, investigating arson attack.’

‘Would you call on Dr Maltby, The Surgery, Lexing. One of his patients received a poison pen letter this morning and tried to kill himself.'

‘On my way,’ replied Frost, spinning the car into a U-turn.

‘Is Detective Sergeant Gilmore with you?’ asked Control. ‘Mr Mullett wants to see him right away.’

‘Roger,’ said Frost.

‘He also wants to see you this morning without fail,’ added Control.

‘Didn’t get that last bit,’ said Frost. ‘Over and out.’ He slammed down the handset and turned off the radio.

Lexing was a small cluster of unspoilt houses and cottages, nothing later than Victorian. Perched on the hill to the north was the mill they had just visited and leaning against the front door of Dr Maltby’s cottage was the same bike they had seen outside the Comptons’. And, sure enough, it was Ada Perkins who let them in.

‘What did the doctor say, Ada?’ asked Frost confidentially. ‘Are you pregnant or is it just wind?’

‘Not funny,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve just done the hall so wipe your muddy boots.’

She ushered them into the surgery. Maltby, a grey-haired, tired-looking man in his late sixties, wearing a crumpled brown suit, was seated at an old-fashioned desk and was furtively stuffing something that chinked into his top drawer and slamming it shut as he popped a Polo mint in his mouth. The waft of peppermint-tinted whisky fumes hit Gilmore as Frost introduced him.

‘This is Dr Maltby, son. He’s got the steadiest hands in the business. He can take a urine sample and hardly spill a drop.’ In spite of this build-up the hand that Gilmore shook didn’t seem at all steady.

Maltby squeezed out a token smile. ‘I’m not much fun this morning, Jack. I’ve been up half the night – patients are dropping like flies from this damned flu epidemic. And now this. I said someone would kill themselves if you didn’t stop these poison pen letters and now it’s happened.’

‘Calm down, doc,’ said Frost, scraping a match down the wooden wall panelling. ‘Just give me the facts, and slowly – you know what a dim old sod I am.’ He slumped down in the lumpy chair reserved for patients and wearily stretched his legs, puffing smoke at the ‘Smoking Can Kill’ poster.

‘Ada found him,’ said Maltby.

‘Found who, doc? Don’t forget I’ve come in in the middle of the picture.’

‘Old Mr Wardley,’ said Ada. ‘He lives next door to me. I do his cleaning once a week when I’ve finished at The Mill. I got no reply when I knocked so I used the spare key he gave me. No sign of him downstairs. “That’s strange,” I thought. “That’s very strange.” So I called out, “Mr Wardley, are you there?” No answer.’

‘Get to the punchline, Ada,’ prompted Frost, impatiently. ‘I went upstairs and there he was on the bed, fully dressed.’

‘I’m glad his dick wasn’t exposed,’ said Frost.

She glowered, but carried on doggedly. ‘His face was deadly white, his flesh icy cold, just like a corpse. So I dashed straight over to the doctor’s and he came back with me.’

Frost cut in quickly and poked a finger at Maltby. ‘Now your big scene, doc.’

The doctor rubbed his eyes and took over the narrative. ‘He’d swallowed all the sleeping tablets in his bottle. He was unconscious, but still alive. I phoned for an ambulance and got him into Denton General Hospital. I think he’ll pull through.’

‘Good,’ nodded Frost. ‘I like happy endings. So, in spite of your big build-up, no one’s actually killed themselves?’

‘Not for the want of trying,’ said Maltby.

‘Was there a suicide note?’ asked Gilmore.

‘I didn’t see one,’ said the doctor.

‘So why did you say it was suicide? It could have been accidental.’

‘You don’t accidentally take an overdose of sleeping tablets at nine o’clock in the morning with all your clothes on,’ Maltby snapped irritably.

‘All right,’ murmured Frost. ‘Show me the poison pen letter that made him do it.’

‘We couldn’t find the letter,’ said Maltby, ‘but this was on his kitchen table.’

He handed the inspector a light blue envelope bearing a first-class stamp which had missed the franking machine and had been hand-cancelled by the postman. The name and address were typewritten. Frost checked that the envelope was empty before passing it over to Gilmore who compared the typing with that on the envelope received that morning by Mrs Compton. Gilmore shook his head. ‘Different typewriter.’ Frost nodded. He knew that already. He also knew that the envelope and the typing were identical to the two poison pen letters in the file in his office. ‘An empty envelope, doc. Why should you think it was a poison pen letter? Why not a letter from the sanitary inspector about the smell on the landing?’

A pause. But it was Ada who broke the silence. ‘If you don’t want me any more, doctor, I’ve got lots to do.’ She clomped out of the room.

As the door closed behind her, Maltby unlocked the middle drawer of his desk and took out a sheet of white A4 typescript. ‘This came in an identical envelope.’

He handed it to Frost who read it aloud. ‘ “Dear Lecher. Does your sweet wife know what filthy and perverted practices you and that shameless bitch in Denton get up to? I was watching again last Wednesday. I saw every disgusting perversion. She didn’t even draw the bedroom curtains…” Bleeding hell, this is sizzling stuff,’ gasped Frost. He read the rest to himself before chucking the letter across to Gilmore. ‘What’s cunnilinctus, doc – sounds like a patent cough syrup.’

‘You know damn well what it is,’ grunted the doctor. He looked across at Gilmore who was comparing the typing with that on the envelope addressed to Wardley. ‘The same typewriter, isn’t it, Sergeant.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Gilmore. ‘The “a” and the “s” are both out of alignment. How did you come by it, doctor? It wasn’t addressed to you, was it?’

‘I should be so bloody lucky,’ said Maltby. ‘One of the villagers received it and asked me to pass it on to the police. For obvious reasons he doesn’t want me to tell you his name.’

‘We’ve got to talk to him,’ insisted Frost. ‘We need to find out how the letter writer discovered these details.’

Maltby shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. There’s no way I can tell you.’

Frost stood up and adjusted his scarf. ‘Well, we’ll let our Forensic whizz kids have a sniff at the letter and envelope, but unless people are prepared to co-operate, there’s not a lot we can do.’

‘You’re going to do something, though?’ insisted Maltby.

‘We’ll have a look through Wardley’s cottage and try and find the letter. I’ll have a word with him in the hospital. How old is he?’

Maltby flicked through some dog-eared record cards. ‘Seventy-two.’

‘I wonder what he’s been up to that made him try to kill himself.’ At the door he paused. ‘What do you know about the Comptons, doc?’

‘Seem a loving couple,’ said Maltby, guardedly.

‘Yes,’ agreed Frost, ‘too bloody loving. They were nearly having it away on the dining table while we were there. Know anyone who might have a grudge against them?’

Maltby shook his head. ‘Ada told me what’s been happening. I can’t think of anyone.’ The phone rang. He lifted the receiver and listened, wearily. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Keep her in bed. I’ll be right over.’

Back in the car Frost gave the volume control on the radio a tentative tweak. ‘… Mr Frost report to Mr Mullett urgently.’ Hastily he turned it down again. ‘I get the feeling its going to be a sod of a day, son.’

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Monday afternoon shift

Police Superintendent Mullett, Commander of Denton Division, gave his welcoming smile and nodded towards a chair for Gilmore to sit down. They were in Mullett’s spacious office with its blue Wilton carpet and the walls, with their concealed cupboards, panelled in real wood veneer. A striking contrast to the dark green paint and beige emulsion decor of the rest of the station.

He turned the pages of Gilmore’s personal file and nodded his approval. This was exactly the sort of man they wanted in the division, young, efficient and ambitious. He looked up as Station Sergeant Bill Wells tapped on the door and walked briskly in.

‘Mr Frost has gone home, sir,’ Wells announced. ‘I phoned his house, but there was no answer.’

Mullett tugged the duty roster from his middle drawer. Just as he thought, Frost was clearly marked down for afternoon duty.

‘He was on duty all last night and most of this morning, sir,’ explained Wells. ‘He’s probably grabbing some sleep.’

Mullett sniffed his disapproval. What was the point of having duty rosters if they were blatantly ignored? The envelope from County marked Strictly Confidential glowered up at him from his drawer as he replaced the roster. Frost was really in trouble this time.

‘I want to see the inspector the minute he gets in, Sergeant. .. the very minute.’ Let Frost try to wriggle out of this one.

‘I’ve left instructions, sir. I’m off home myself now.’ Wells yawned loudly and rubbed his eyes to show how tired he was.

Again Mullett snatched up the roster and jabbed his finger on the afternoon shift which showed that Wells was the station sergeant on duty until six o’clock. He studiously consulted his gold Rolex wrist-watch. Half-past three!

‘I’m on again at eight o’clock tonight, sir,’ explained Wells. ‘I’m filling in for Sergeant Mason. He’s down with the flu.’

Mullett flapped a hand impatiently. He didn’t want all the fiddling details. ‘If you must alter all the shifts around, Sergeant, do me the courtesy of letting me know.’ He grunted peevishly as his red biro neatly amended the roster. ‘I can’t run a station in this slipshod fashion.’

Wells bristled. There he was, working all the hours God sent, doing double shifts, and all this idiot was concerned with was his lousy duty roster. ‘This virus thing is making it impossible, sir. We need more men.’

‘We have one extra man,’ beamed Mullett, nodding towards Gilmore. ‘And I’m sure, like me, he would like a cup of tea.’ He flashed his teeth expectantly.

‘Tea?’ spluttered Wells. ‘I’ve got no-one I can spare to make tea, sir. As you know, the canteen’s closed…’

Mullett didn’t know the canteen was closed and he wasn’t interested. ‘Two teas,’ he said firmly, ‘and if you can find, some biscuits… custard creams would be nice.’ What a sullen look the man gave him as he left. He would have to speak to him about it. He swivelled his chair to face Gilmore. ‘I’m having to plunge you straight in at the deep end, Sergeant. You’ll be working split shifts with Mr Frost, so you’re on again tonight.’

‘Tonight?’ echoed Gilmore in dismay.

‘That presents no difficulties, I hope?’

‘No, sir. Of course not.’ God, Liz would raise hell over this.

‘Good. One other thing.’ Mullett cleared his throat nervously and hesitated as he carefully picked his words. ‘If, when you are working under Mr Frost, you notice anything that you feel should be brought to my attention, you will find I have a very receptive ear.’ He lowered his eyes and began fiddling with his fountain pen.

Gilmore pulled himself up straight in his chair. ‘Are you asking me to spy on the inspector, sir?’

Mullett looked pained. ‘If you consider that what I have suggested constitutes spying, Sergeant, then of course you will forget I ever said it.’ He closed the green cover of the detective sergeant’s personal file. ‘You are promotion material, Sergeant, but to promote you, I need a vacancy.’

He stared hard at Gilmore. Gilmore stared back, holding Mullett’s gaze, then gave a tight smile and nodded.

They understood each other.

They were still smiling smugly at each other when Wells crashed in with the tea.

‘This will be your office.’ Detective Constable Joe Burton, stocky, twenty-five years old and ambitious, tried to keep the resentment out of his voice as he showed the new detective sergeant around. Gilmore stared in amazement. The poky room he was expected to share with that scarecrow, Frost, was a complete shambles with papers and files everywhere but in their proper place, dirty cups perched on the window ledge and the floor littered with cigarette stubs and screwed-up pieces of paper that had missed the target of the waste bin. ‘And this is your desk,’ added Burton.

The spare desk, the smaller of the two, was awash with papers and ancient files. Gilmore’s jaw tightened. His first job would be to put this pigsty into some semblance of order. The internal phone rang. At first he couldn’t locate the instrument which was buried under a toppled stack of files on Frost’s desk.

‘Control here,’ said the phone. ‘Got a dead body for you – probable suicide. 132 Saxon Road. Panda car at premises.’

Gilmore scribbled down the details. He could fit it in on his way home. He told Burton to come with him.

On their way out to the car-park, they passed Mullett who was talking to a scowling Sergeant Wells. ‘You should be off duty, Gilmore.’

‘Possible suicide, sir. Thought I’d better handle it personally.’

Mullett beamed. ‘Keenness. That’s what I like to see. A rare commodity, these days. All some people think of is getting off home.’ His pointed stare left Sergeant Wells in no doubt as to who he was referring to.

Wells kept his face impassive. ‘Crawling bastard!’ he silently told Gilmore’s retreating back.

Rain hammered down on Frost’s blue Cortina as it slowly nosed its way down Saxon Road, a street of two-storey terraced houses in the newer part of Denton. He spotted a police patrol car at the far end and parked behind it. One last drag at his cigarette, then out, head down against the rain, as he butted his way up the path to number 132.

A worried-looking woman opened the door. Behind her, the bitter sound of sobbing. She looked enquiringly at the scruffy figure on the doorstep who was fumbling in the depths of his inside pocket. ‘Detective Inspector Frost,’ he said, showing her a dog-eared warrant card.

She peered doubtingly at the card. ‘I’m just a neighbour. Do you want to see the parents?’ She inclined her head towards the back room from which the sobbing continued unabated.

‘Later,’ he said. And he wasn’t looking forward to it.

Up the stairs to the girl’s bedroom where a white-faced uniformed constable stood outside. This was PC John. Collier, twenty years old. Collier, still very green and usually working inside the station with Wells, had been pitched out on patrol because of the manpower shortage. He hadn’t yet got used to dead bodies.

The bedroom door opened, releasing a murmur of angry voices. DC Burton came out. He seemed relieved to see the inspector and carefully closed the door behind him.

‘What have we got?’ asked Frost, shaking rain from his mac.

‘Suicide, but our new super-sergeant is treating it as a mass murder.’

‘He’s new and he’s keen,’ said Frost. ‘It’ll soon wear off.’

The bedroom was small, neat and unfussy, with white melamine furniture and pink emulsioned walls. A glowering Gilmore was watching Dr Maltby, red-faced and smelling strongly of alcohol, who was pulling the sheet back over the body on the single bed. Gilmore scowled at Frost’s entrance. He’d asked for a senior officer. He didn’t expect this oaf. ‘I thought you were off duty,’ he muttered.

‘They dragged me out of bed. So what’s the problem?’ Gilmore opened his mouth to speak but the doctor got in first. ‘There’s no problem, Inspector. It’s a clear case of suicide.’ He jerked his head towards a small brown glass container on the bedside cabinet. ‘Overdose of barbiturates. She swallowed the lot.’ He glared at Gilmore as if daring him to contradict.

‘You don’t look very happy, Sergeant,’ observed Frost, wondering why the man had requested a senior officer to attend a routine suicide.

‘There was no suicide note,’ Gilmore said.

‘It’s not obligatory,’ snapped the doctor. ‘You can commit suicide without leaving a note.’ He was tired and wanted another drink. What he didn’t want was complications. ‘It’s suicide, plain and simple.’ He moved out of the way so the inspector could get to the body.

‘I’m glad it’s simple,’ said Frost, pulling back the sheet, ‘I’m not very good when things are complicated.’ Then his expression changed. ‘Oh no!’ he said softly, his face crumpling. ‘I never realized it was a kid.’

‘Fifteen years old,’ said Gilmore. ‘Everything to live for.’

She lay on top of the bed. A young girl wearing a white cotton nightdress decorated with the beaming face of Mickey Mouse. Over the nightdress was a black and gold Japanese-style kimono. Her feet were bare, the soles slightly dirty as if she had been padding about the house without socks or shoes. A Snoopy watch on her left wrist ticked softly away. It seemed wrong. Almost obscene. Mickey Mouse and Snoopy had no place with death.

Frost gazed down at her face, trying to read some answers. A pretty kid with light brown hair gleaming as if newly brushed, spread loosely over the pillow. Gently, as if afraid to wake her, Frost touched her cheek, flinching at the hard, icy cold feel of death. ‘You silly bloody cow,’ he said. ‘Why did you do this?’

He switched his attention to the bedside cabinet. Standing on top of it was a bright red, twin-belied alarm clock, its alarm set at 6.45, a pair of ear-rings, a Bic pen, an empty, brown pill bottle and, over to one side away from the bed and almost on the edge of the cabinet, a tumbler with an inch of water remaining. Frost crouched to read the label on the pill container. Sleeping Tablets prescribed for Mrs Janet Bicknell.

‘They were prescribed for the mother,’ Gilmore explained. ‘There were about fifteen or so left. The kid got them from the bathroom cabinet.’

Frost sank down on the corner of the bed and lit up a cigarette. ‘Any doubts it’s a suicide, doc?’

‘If the post-mortem shows a lethal dose of barbiturates in her stomach, no doubts whatsoever. If you could speed things up, Jack, I’d like to get off home. I’ve had one hell of a day.’

‘Right,’ said Frost. ‘How long has she been dead?’

‘Rigor mortis hasn’t reached the lower part of the body yet. That and the temperature readings suggest she’s been dead some nine to ten hours.’

Frost checked his watch. It was now a few minutes past five. ‘So she died between seven and eight o’clock this morning?’

‘She was still alive at half-past seven, this morning,’ interjected Gilmore.

‘Then she was dead pretty soon after,’ snapped the doctor. His head was throbbing and Gilmore was getting on his damn nerves.

‘Slow down,’ pleaded Frost. ‘Let’s take it step by step, starting with her name.’

Gilmore opened up his notebook and read out the details. ‘Susan Bicknell, fifteen years old. In the fifth form at Denton Comprehensive.’

‘And who found the body?

‘Her stepfather, Kenneth Duffy.’

‘Stepfather?’

‘Yes. Her father died two years ago. Her mother married again in March.’ Gilmore paused, then added significantly, ‘He’s a lot younger than the mother.’

‘Ah,’ said Frost. ‘I’m getting the scenario… teenage girl, randy young stepfather. But let’s get the doc out of the way first. I don’t want to shock him with our rude talk.’

‘I’ve got nothing more to tell you,’ said Maltby, dropping a thermometer in his bag and snapping it shut. ‘You’ll have my written report today. Any joy with our poison pen writer?’

‘No,’ Frost told him. ‘I’ll go and see Wardley in hospital when I get a chance.’ The doctor lurched towards the open door. A curse as he appeared to miss his footing on the stairs.

‘He’s drunk!’ hissed Gilmore.

‘He’s tired,’ said Frost. ‘The poor bastard is over worked. He never refuses a call day or night and people take advantage of him.’ He whispered something to Burton who chased after Maltby and called, ‘Give us your keys, doc. I’ll drive you home.’ Maltby handed them over without a murmur.

‘Follow on in the Panda and take Burton back to the station,’ Collier was told. Frost lit up another cigarette. ‘So what’s on your mind, son?’

‘The suicide note’s missing,’ said Gilmore.

‘What makes you think there was one?’

Gilmore steered the inspector across to the bedside cabinet. ‘One ballpoint pen.’ He pointed. On the floor, by the bed, was a pad of Basildon Bond writing paper. ‘One notepad.’

‘So she had the means to write a suicide note,’ said Frost. ‘But it doesn’t follow she wrote one. I don’t have to do a pee just because I pass a gents’ urinal.’

‘Look at the glass with the water in,’ continued Gilmore. ‘Right on the edge of the cabinet. If she was lying in bed when she took the pills, she’d have replaced the glass on the side nearest to her. If she took them before she lay on the bed, she’d have put the glass somewhere in the middle.’

‘I’m sure this is all significant stuff,’ Frost said, ‘but I’m such a dim sod I can’t see it.’ He wandered over to the window and opened it to let out the smell of tobacco smoke. In the darkened street below, the street lights were just coming on.

Gilmore sighed inwardly. He knew the man was thick, but surely he didn’t have to explain every detail. ‘I’m saying the glass was moved by someone else. I’m saying she left a suicide note and weighed it down with the glass. The stepfather found the body, saw the note and because it implicated him, he destroyed it. There’s two sets of prints on the glass. I’m laying odds they’re the girl’s and the stepfather’s.’

Frost squinted at the glass. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said Gilmore. ‘I’ve got a feeling about the step father. He’s hiding something. I just know he is.’

Frost nodded. Feelings and hunches were things he knew all about. His eyes slowly traversed the room. Yes, there was something wrong. He could sense it too. ‘All right, son, let’s go and have a chat with the stepfather.’ He pitched his cigarette out of the window and closed it, then took one last look at the still figure on the bed before covering her with the sheet.

They were in the lounge, a large, comfortable room with heavy brown velvet curtains drawn across a bay window. From the other room the heart-breaking sound of sobbing went on and on. Frost stared gloomily at the blank screen of a 26-inch television set and wished they could get this next part over. He looked up as the stepfather, Kenneth Duffy, a dark-haired, boyish-looking man, in his late thirties, came in.

Duffy’s eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks glistening wet. He had been crying. Drying his face with his hands, he dropped heavily into an armchair opposite the two detectives. ‘My wife’s too upset to talk to you.’

‘I quite understand, sir,’ murmured Frost, sympathetically. ‘I know you’ve already explained everything to my colleague, but I wonder if you’d mind telling me. I understand you’re a van driver with Mallard Deliveries?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it was you who found Susan?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was so low they had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘I found her.’

‘What time would this be?’

‘Time? This afternoon… just after four. She was on the bed. I touched her. She was cold.’ He broke down and couldn’t continue.

Frost lit a cigarette and waited until Duffy was ready to go on. ‘Tell me what happened this morning. Right from the beginning.’

‘Susan always got herself up… made her own breakfast. She had a half-term holiday job in the new Sainsbury’s supermarket… shelf-filling and sometimes helping out on the check-out. She had to clock in at eight and left the house at half-past seven. I’d wait until I heard the front door slam, then I’d get up.’

‘You wouldn’t come down until after she had gone?’

‘I don’t start work until 8.30. We’d only get in each other’s way.’

‘I see,’ said Frost, wondering if there was more to it than that, if Susan was deliberately avoiding being alone with her stepfather.

‘I heard her going up and down the stairs this morning, but now I think of it, I never heard the slam of the front door. She always slammed it when she went out. Today she must have gone back upstairs to her bedroom. I came down a little after 7.30, washed, dressed and went to work.’

‘And you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?’

‘No. There was nothing to suggest she hadn’t gone to work.’

‘You didn’t look in her bedroom before you left?’ asked Frost, looking for somewhere to flick his ash.

‘I had no reason… but in any case, she hated people going into her room when she was out. So I went to work and my wife went to work and Susan was upstairs dying.’ Again he broke down.

‘So what made you go into her bedroom at four o’clock this afternoon?’ asked Frost.

‘I’d finished early and was home just before four. I phoned Susan at Sainsbury’s to remind her about the groceries we needed and they told me she hadn’t been in to work all that day. I suddenly remembered I hadn’t heard that front door slam. I went upstairs and looked in her bedroom.’ He knuckled the tears from his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He was apologizing for crying. Frost gave a sympathetic nod and made a mental note to check with Duffy’s firm about him finishing early.

‘Have you any idea why Susan should want to take her own life?’

‘There was no reason – no reason at all.’

‘Was she worried about anything?’

‘She seemed a bit edgy over the last couple of days. We thought something had gone wrong at school… a row with a friend or something… nothing serious.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘Stacks of them – no-one steady.’

‘She must have had some reason for killing herself,’ Frost insisted. ‘Family trouble, perhaps? Girls don’t always get on with their stepfathers.’

‘We got on fine,’ insisted Duffy. ‘She was happy at home… doing well at school… everything was right for her.’

‘If everything was right,’ said Frost, ‘she’d still be alive.’ He stared at Duffy until the man had to turn his head away. ‘We couldn’t find her suicide note.’

The knuckles of Duffy’s hands whitened as he gripped hard the arms of the chair to try to stop his body from shaking. ‘There wasn’t one.’

‘My colleague here is pretty certain there was.’

‘If there had been a note, I’d have found it.’

‘Of course,’ said Frost, treating Duffy to an enigmatic smile. ‘Of course you would.’ He studied the glowing end of his cigarette, then casually asked, ‘Was she pregnant?’

‘Pregnant? Girls don’t kill themselves these days just because they’re pregnant.’

‘It depends who the father is,’ snapped Gilmore. Duffy’s head came up slowly, angry patches burning his cheeks. He sprang to his feet, fists balled. ‘What are you suggesting? What filth are you bloody suggesting?’

Frost stepped between them and pushed Duffy back into the chair. ‘We’re suggesting nothing, Mr Duffy. The post-mortem will tell us if she was pregnant, in which case we might want to talk to you again.’

‘I’d like to talk to Susan’s mother,’ said Gilmore. ‘No!’ Duffy leapt from the chair and stood by the door to bar their way.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Frost. ‘It won’t be necessary.’ He jerked a thumb at Gilmore. ‘Let’s go, Sergeant.’

Gilmore glared at Frost. Right, you sod. Mullett wants the dirt on you, I’ll find it for him. With a curt nod at Duffy, he followed the inspector out. The sobbing from the kitchen was much softer, weaker. The mother had cried herself to exhaustion.

Outside in the car they watched as a hearse pulled up to collect the body for the post-mortem. Two undertakers in shiny black raincoats slid out the coffin.

‘Well?’ asked Gilmore, impatiently. ‘What do we do about it?’

‘We do nothing,’ said Frost. Before Gilmore could protest, he explained. ‘Look, son, just on a hunch and without any evidence, you expect me to believe that Duffy’s been having it away with his unwilling, fifteen-year-old, schoolgirl stepdaughter.’

‘Yes,’ replied Gilmore, biting off each word, ‘that’s exactly what I expect you to believe.’

Frost took a long drag at his cigarette. ‘If it’s any consolation, son, I agree with you all the way. I reckon he put Suzy up the spout and that’s why she killed herself and that’s why stepdaddy destroyed the suicide note. But we could never prove it. She never made a complaint and now she’s dead.’ He wound down the car window and jettisoned his cigarette end into the gutter. ‘There’s sod all we can do about it.’

‘You want proof?’ said Gilmore, his hand on the car door handle. ‘I’ll get you proof. Let me go and talk to the mother. She must have noticed something.’

‘No!’ Frost grabbed Gilmore’s hand and pulled it away from the handle. ‘You do not breathe a word of this to the mother. Don’t you think the poor cow’s suffered enough? Let it drop, son. That’s the end of it.’

Gilmore stared at the rain. ‘So the bastard gets away with it?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Frost. ‘The bastard gets away with it.’ He started the engine.

The undertakers were sliding the coffin into the back of the hearse.

The light in the upstairs bedroom window went out.

The rain bucketed down.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Monday evening shift

The internal phone grunted and gave its peevish ring. Automatically Wells picked it up and said, ‘No, sir, Inspector Frost hasn’t come in yet… Yes, sir, the minute I see him.’ He banged the phone down and stamped his feet to try and restore his circulation. It was freezing cold in the lobby. The central heating had broken down and wouldn’t be repaired until the following day at the earliest. How he envied all those lucky devils who were down with the flu and were tucked up in their nice warm beds and didn’t have to put up with Mullett bleating every five minutes. He consulted the wall clock. Twenty to ten. Only ten lousy minutes of the shift gone. Still, it was only half a shift. Sergeant Johnnie Johnson was to relieve him at two. So only another four freezing hours of this.

A roar of poncey aftershave as the new chap, Detective-newly-promoted-to-bloody-Sergeant Gilmore marched up to the desk. ‘Where’s Inspector Frost?’

‘No idea,’ beamed Wells, delighted to be so unhelpful. Gilmore scowled at the clock. Frost was ten minutes late already. ‘How do I get a cup of tea?’

‘You make it yourself. The canteen’s closed. The night staff are all down with flu.’

Gilmore scowled again. Detective sergeants didn’t make the tea. He would find DC Burton and get him to do it. As he turned to go he bumped into a woman wearing a red raincoat with the hood up over her head. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, stepping out of her way.

‘Yes, madam?’ asked Wells; Then he recognized her and his voice softened. ‘What can we do for you, Mrs Bartlett?’

‘I’ve got to see Inspector Allen. It’s very urgent. I’ve news about Paula…’

Gilmore stopped dead. Paula? Paula Bartlett? Of course, the girl on the poster, the missing school kid. ‘Perhaps I can help, madam. I’m Detective Sergeant Gilmore. I’m handling the case in Mr Allen’s absence.’

She looked up at him, eyes blinking behind heavy glasses, a dumpy woman in her early forties. Her usually pale face was flushed with excitement. ‘Wonderful news. Paula’s alive. I know where she is.’

‘Mrs Bartlett…’ began Wells guardedly, but Gilmore took her by the arm and drew her away to one of the benches. ‘Where is she, Mrs Bartlett?’

‘In a big house, overlooking the woods.’

His hand shaking with excitement, Gilmore scribbled this down.

‘Where did you get this information from?’ called Wells from the desk.

Gilmore scowled. He was handling this. He didn’t want any interference from the sergeant.

She turned towards Wells. ‘From Mr Rowley. He’s a clairvoyant.’

Gilmore’s heart sank. ‘A clairvoyant?’

She nodded earnestly. ‘He phoned us. He told us things about Paula that no-one would know. He said he suddenly had this mental picture of Paula in a tiny room… a tiny attic room. She was being held prisoner. He described the room, the house, everything.’

‘I see,’ said Gilmore. He stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a moment.’ He crossed over to Wells and lowered his voice. ‘Do we know a clairvoyant named Rowley?’

‘No,’ grunted Wells. ‘But we know a nut-case called Rowley who thinks he’s a clairvoyant. He spots the girl in about fifty different places every bloody week.’

‘Shit!’ said Gilmore. He returned to the woman, who was waiting expectantly. ‘I don’t think you should raise your hopes too high,’ he began, but she was in no mood for pessimism.

‘Paula’s alive,’ she said simply. ‘You’re going to find her and bring her back to me. I’ve got the full details here.’ She pressed a sheet of folded notepaper into his hand.

The lobby doors crashed open and Frost barged in. ‘It’s peeing cats and dogs out there,’ he announced, tugging off his scarf and flapping rain-water all over the papers on Wells’ desk. ‘Oh heck!’ He had spotted Mrs Bartlett walking across the lobby with Gilmore. He turned quickly and pretended to be studying a ‘Foot and Mouth Restriction Order’ poster on the wall. It was cowardly, but he couldn’t face her. He felt like a cancer specialist trying to avoid a terminally ill patient anxious for reassuring news. There was no reassuring news. The girl was dead. He knew it.

‘Everything all right, Mrs Bartlett?’ called Wells. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she smiled, pulling the red hood over her hair. ‘This gentleman here is going to bring Paula home for me. I’ve got her room all ready.’ She gave Gilmore a look of such implicit trust, he didn’t have the heart to contradict her. He opened the lobby door and watched as she crossed the road in the rain to hurry home and wait for her daughter.

‘Poor bitch,’ murmured Frost. ‘She comes in two or three nights a week.’

‘You might have warned me,’ Gilmore snapped angrily to Wells.

‘You never gave me the chance,’ said Wells happily. To Frost he said, ‘Mr Mullett wants to see you.’

‘Sod Mr Mullett,’ said Frost.

‘That’s what I say,’ said Wells, ‘but he still wants to see you.’

In direct contrast to the arctic conditions in the rest of the station, Mullett’s office was a hothouse with the thermostat on the 3-kilowatt convector heater set to maximum. But the heat did nothing to soften the expression on his face which was pure ice as he waited for Frost, who was already nearly a quarter of an hour late.

A half-hearted rap at the door. Unmistakably Detective Inspector Frost. Even his knock was slovenly. Mullett adjusted his chair to dead centre, straightened his back and curtly said, ‘Enter!’

The door opened and Frost shuffled in. What a mess the man looked. The shiny suit with the loose buttons, creased and crumpled where it had received a soaking from last night’s rain and had then been dried over a radiator. His tie was secured with a greasy knot that looked impossible to undo and Mullett was sure that the shirt was the same one the inspector had been wearing for the past six days. Why was this flu virus perversely selecting all the best men for its victims and leaving the rubbish unscathed?

Frost flopped into a chair. ‘Take a seat,’ said Mullett a split second too late. His lips tightened as he unlocked the middle drawer of his desk and removed the envelope from County HQ.

Frost watched warily, wondering which of his many transgressions had come to light. He adjusted his face into a pre-emptive expression of contrition and waited.

‘I’ve never been so humiliated and ashamed in all my life,’ began Mullett.

No clue here. Mullett had used these opening remarks many times before.

‘That an officer in Denton Division – my division – should be detected in forgery.’

Forgery? Frost’s mind raced. He had often forged Mullett’s signature on those occasions when his Divisional Commander’s authorization had been required and Frost knew it would not be forthcoming. But the last occasion was months ago.

Mullett pulled out a wad of papers from the envelope and detached the Strictly Confidential County memo. The rest he pushed across to the inspector.

Frost’s heart dropped with a squelch into the pit of his stomach. He recognized them immediately. His car expenses. His bloody car expenses, back like an exhumed corpse to accuse him

‘Ah – I can explain, Super,’ he began, frantically trying to dream up an excuse that would satisfy Mullett.

But Mullett was in no mood for explanations. He snatched up the receipts for the petrol Frost was claiming to have purchased during the month. ‘Forgeries!’ he snapped. ‘Twelve different petrol stations, but identical handwriting. Your handwriting, Inspector.’ He waggled the receipts under Frost’s nose and Frost could see that someone in County had done the Sherlock Holmes with his expense claim and had ringed in red ink all the similarities in the handwriting of the various receipts.

‘Flaming hell!’ gasped Frost. ‘Here we are, down to less than half-strength, working double shifts, and some lazy sod in County has got the time to go through a few lousy petrol receipts.’ He tossed the expense claim back on the desk. ‘If I was you, sir, I’d damn well complain.’

‘Complain?’ shrieked Mullett. ‘I’m in no position to complain. One of my officers, an inspector, fiddling his car expenses…’

‘I wasn’t fiddling,’ said Frost. ‘I lost the proper receipts and had to make copies.’

‘Copies! They weren’t copies. They were forgeries… and not even good forgeries at that!’

Frost switched off his ears as Mullett ranted on, his face getting redder and redder, his fist pounding the desk at intervals. He wasn’t interested in what Mullett was saying, he was only concerned at what Mullett intended doing about it. This could be the chop, the heaven-sent opportunity his superintendent had been dreaming about for years. Then something Mullett was saying penetrated his filtering mechanism.

‘This could have been the end of your career in the force, but much against the grain, I have interceded on your behalf with County. ..’

Interceded. Bloody hell, thought Frost. What’s the catch?

Mullett stuffed all the receipts back into the envelope and gave it to Frost. ‘Resubmit your expense claim, but this time with proper, genuine petrol receipts and nothing further will be said.’

Frost sat stunned. This was too good to be true. He slipped the envelope in his inside pocket. ‘Right, Super, leave it to me.’ He rose, ready to take his leave before Mullett came to his senses.

‘This is your last chance, Inspector. One more slip up – just one – and…’ But he was talking to an empty room. Frost had gone.

Mullett sighed deeply. He unfolded the Confidential memo from County and read it again. It pointed out that he, as Divisional Commander, had signed Frost’s expense claim, certifying that he had checked it and found it correct. How on earth was he expected to check everything he had to sign? It was most unfair. And what was more unfair was that in getting himself off the hook; he had to get Frost off as well. Damn. He returned the memo to his middle drawer and locked it, then phoned Sergeant Wells saying he wanted a briefing meeting with the night shift in ten minutes.

The murmur of conversation stopped abruptly and every one sprang to their feet as Mullett marched into the Briefing Room. He frowned. There seemed very few people in attendance. A quick count… eight in all, six men and two WPCs. No sign of Frost. He raised his eyebrows at Wells, querying the small turnout.

‘This is all there is, sir,’ he was told. ‘Two more down with flu, plus Bryant and Wilkes still in hospital after the pub punch-up last week. Collier’s on the desk in the lobby standing in for me.’

‘And Mr Frost?’

‘I did tell him, sir.’

Mullett’s lips narrowed. Typical Well, he certainly wasn’t going to wait for him. He looked around the room. The new man, Gilmore, smartly turned out, was in the front row. Next to him, a sullen DC Burton, all brawn and no brains. Burton was a good man to have at your side in an emergency, but he would never progress beyond the rank of DC.

Mullett shivered and rubbed his hands together briskly. It was damn cold in here. ‘Sit down, everyone, please. Well, what we lack in quantity, I’m sure we more than make up for in quality.’ He let the half-hearted ripple of laughter die. ‘Firstly, I’m sorry to tell you that Mr Allen has suffered a set-back and will not, be returning to duty for some time…’ His brow furrowed in annoyance as the door crashed open and Frost burst in.

‘The bloody canteen’s shut,’ announced Frost, looking round in puzzlement. ‘What’s everyone doing in here?’ Then he spotted Mullett. ‘The briefing meeting! Sorry, Super… I forgot…’

Mullett waited until Frost had found himself a seat right at the back. ‘I was just telling everyone the sad news about Inspector Allen.’

‘Sad news?’ echoed Frost, genuinely misunderstanding. ‘Bloody hell, he’s not coming back, is he?’

When the laughter subsided Mullett gave a tolerant smile. ‘He won’t be back for some time. I was about to explain that, in the meantime, you would be taking over his cases. Our resources are going to be spread very thinly, so I don’t want any wasted effort. We’ve got two people tied up in the Murder Incident Room on this Paula Bartlett case. What’s the current position?’

‘It’s more or less fizzled out,’ said Frost, striking a match down a filing cabinet. ‘I can’t see any progress there until the body turns up.’

‘Good,’ smiled Mullett, ticking off the first item on his pad. ‘Then on the basis of your assessment, Inspector, I’m closing down the Incident Room pro tem. This will release much-needed personnel to more urgent duties.’ He beamed as if that solved everyone’s problems, then frowned as he reached the next item on his list. ‘Another senior citizen burglary, over the weekend, Inspector?’

Frost looked up. ‘That’s right, Super. Old lady living alone. He got away with about?80 in used fivers.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Inspector,’ said Mullett, ‘but this would be the sixteenth such break-in in three weeks, the victims all senior citizens?’

Frost gave a vague shrug. ‘I haven’t been counting, but you’re probably not far out.’

‘I am exactly right,’ snapped Mullett. ‘Sixteen – all senior citizens, most of them robbed of their life savings. What are we doing about it?’

‘What the hell can we do about it?’ replied Frost. ‘He leaves no clues and nobody sees him. It doesn’t give us much to go on.’

‘What does he take?’ asked Gilmore. ‘If it’s jewe1lery have we got all the local fences covered?’

‘Good point!’ agreed Mullett.

‘Of course I’ve got the fences covered,’ replied Frost ‘Even a dim old twat like me thought of that. If anyone tries to sell any of the loot, I’ll be contacted. But he takes very little jewellery. He concentrates on cash – used notes Many of these old people mistrust banks. They keep wads of banknotes in the house. They stick it in the wardrobe or in the middle drawer of the dressing table under the condoms and the leather knickers. They think no-one will find it there – but it’s the first place he looks.’

‘You say there’s been no clues,’ said Mullett. ‘I understand people have spotted a blue van in the vicinity. That should give you something to go on. There can’t be that many blue vans in Denton.’

‘Sixteen burglaries,’ said Frost. ‘In two instances, we found neighbours who claim they saw a van parked in the vicinity late at night. One thought it was a small blue van, another a biggish van, dark-coloured, could have been blue.’

‘But it’s a lead,’ insisted Mullett. ‘Do a check on all blue vans.’

‘Do you know precisely how many blue vans there are in the Denton area alone?’ asked Frost, producing and waving a small notebook.

Mullett flapped a hand. He didn’t want to know, which was a relief to Frost as he had no idea himself, although he was fully prepared to pluck an astronomical figure out of thin air if Mullett called his bluff ‘It doesn’t matter how many there are, Inspector. We’ve got a computer. It can churn out the information in seconds.’

‘But the computer can’t check through it and knock on bloody doors and question people,’ said Frost. ‘That’s what us poor sods would have to do and it could take weeks – months – and still lead nowhere.’

Mullett gave Frost a vinegary smile. ‘It’s easy to be negative, Inspector. I offer suggestions, you offer objections. I’m getting a lot of flak from the press on this one. I want him caught now. That’s your number one priority. We haven’t got many men, but take as many as you like.’ He frowned with annoyance as Sergeant Wells’ hand kept flapping, trying to attract his attention. Not more of the man’s moans, he hoped. ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

‘With respect, sir. It’s all very well saying Mr Frost can have as many men as he likes, but I’ve still got a night shift to run and I’ve hardly any men to do it. This flaming flu epidemic doesn’t seem to have hit the criminal fraternity yet.’

‘I’m well aware of that, thank you, Sergeant, which brings me to my next point. We’re under strength so some things will have to go by the board. We are going to have to turn a blind eye to many of the minor crimes, even…’ and he flashed a paternal beam in Gilmore’s direction, ‘… suicides which look slightly doubtful. We will not go out of our way to look for trouble. I don’t want any arrests for drunkenness, rowdiness, soliciting, illegal parking, loitering – anything minor like that. We just haven’t got the time or the manpower.’ He smiled at Wells. ‘So that should lighten your load quite a bit, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ mumbled Wells, doubtfully.

‘Fine,’ said Mullett, closing his notepad and turning to go. Then he remembered one other item. ‘Oh – Inspector Frost. I had a visit from the vicar of All Saints and Councillor Vernon this morning. They are very worried at this current wave of mindless vandalism in the cemetery. There was another incident over the weekend. How are the patrols going?’

‘What patrols?’ asked Frost.

‘The anti-vandalism patrols I asked you to organize. I sent you a memo.’

‘I never got it,’ said Frost hastily. It was probably buried somewhere in his in-tray together with all the other stupid rubbish Mullett kept sending him.

‘And I spoke to you personally about it.’

‘Ah – so you did,’ agreed Frost, vaguely remembering Mullett chuntering something about graveyards, ‘but as you so rightly said, Super, we can’t waste time on these piddling trivialities.’

Mullett gave Frost a pitying shake of the head. Hadn’t the man any common sense? ‘There’s no such thing as a piddling triviality when a member of the town council is involved, Inspector. See to it right away – the vulnerable time seems to be between ten and midnight.’

‘I’ve got no-one to send,’ said Frost.

‘Then attend to it yourself, Inspector. These are difficult times, so we act as a team. We’ve all got to pitch in.’ Mullett looked at his watch and yawned. It had been a long day and it was freezing cold in the Briefing Room. Time for him to get home to bed.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Monday night shift (1)

Rain dripped down the upturned collar of Frost’s mac. ‘How long have we been here?’ he asked peevishly.

Gilmore wriggled his watch free of his sleeve. ‘Five minutes.’

Frost hunched his shoulders against the cold, penetrating drizzle and wound his scarf tighter around his face to blunt the teeth of the wind chewing on his scarred cheek. As he stamped his feet to try and bring some feeling to his frozen toes, his wet socks squelched in his shoes. ‘This is all a bleeding waste of time,’ he muttered, rasping a match on a weather-eroded headstone. The match splintered, then flared to show the moss-blurred inscription:

George Arthur Jenkins

Born and Died

Feb 6th 1865

Suffer the little children to come unto me

‘There’s one poor little sod who never drew his old age pension,’ he muttered moodily, letting the wind extinguish the match.

The sky was black and heavy with rain and the graveyard looked as lonely and as miserable as a graveyard should look at half-past ten on a cold, wet night. They were in the old Victorian section among weather-eroded angels who wept granite tears over the graves of long-dead children, and where overgrown grass straggled over the crumbling headstones and collapsed graves of their long-dead grief-stricken parents. Through the rain, way over on the far side, Frost could see the serried ranks of stark white marble marking the modern section, where the recently deceased slept an uneasy, decaying sleep. One of the cold marble headstones marked the grave of Frost’s wife. He hadn’t visited it since the funeral.

Detective Sergeant Gilmore, shutting his ears to Frost’s constant moanings, was squinting his eyes, trying to focus through the lashing rain to something over to the left, near an old Victorian crypt. Was it the wind shaking the ivy, or could he see someone moving about?

Frost peered half-heartedly in the direction of Gilmore’s pointing finger and grunted dismissively. ‘There’s sod all there. It’s the wind.’ He perched himself on the infant Jenkins’ headstone and sucked hard at his cigarette. ‘How long have we been here now?’

‘Eight minutes,’ replied Gilmore.

Frost ground his cigarette to death against the headstone and stood up. ‘That’s long enough. We’re going.’

‘But Mr Mullett said…’

‘Sod Mr Mullett,’ called Frost, scurrying back to the car. ‘If anyone wants to vandalize graves in this pissing weather, then good luck to them.’

Gilmore stared hard across the ranks of marble. The wind rattled the ivy again. There was someone there, he was sure of it. But a cloud crawled across the moon and it was too dark to see. When it passed, there was nothing.

The pub was packed, thick-fogged with eye-stinging smoke, and very noisy. Disco music belted out and voices were raised to overcome it. A group of teenaged girls, clutching vodka and limes, were shrieking with high-pitched laughter at the punchline of some dirty joke. No-one took any notice of the disc jockey framed by flashing disco lights up on the small stage, who was chewing a microphone to announce the next number. In counterpoint to the throbbing beat of the disco, a drunken Irishman in the far corner was singing ‘Danny Boy’ in a high tenor voice to a fat lady in black who had tears in her eyes.

Gilmore was edgy. His very first night on duty in Denton and they had disobeyed Mullett’s express orders. He decided he would choke his drink down and tell Frost he was going back to the cemetery, as ordered by his Divisional Commander, and would continue the surveillance on his own if necessary.

By waving a?5 note Frost managed to grab the attention of the barman who lip-read his order. As he waited, he let his professional eye wander over the throng. The girls with the vodkas were silent, poised ready to shriek anew as the next joke reached its climax. The drunken Irishman had fallen in mid-song and was face down on the table while the fat lady, no longer tearful, thumbed through his wallet.

The main doors were still swinging behind someone who had left hurriedly and Frost recalled a face, a blur in the crowd that had seemed alarmed at the entrance of the two detectives. It was a face he should know, but couldn’t place. He shrugged. What the hell. They were here for a drink, not to feel the collar of some petty crook.

The barman pushed the two lagers across and was back from the till with Frost’s change when the bar phone rang. He answered it, then, holding the receiver aloft, yelled, ‘Is there a Mr Frost here?’

Frost swapped worried glances with Gilmore. Who knew they were here? Flaming hell, had Hornrim Harry sent his narks after them to report on their every movement? Gingerly, be took the phone and pressed it tight against his face, his finger jammed in the other ear to deaden the background noise. The caller was mumbling and he couldn’t hear what the man was saying. ‘You’ll have to speak up,’ he shouted and then, as clear as a bell, he heard the words ‘dead body’. ‘Say that again?’

‘Seventy-six Jubilee Terrace. Upstars bedroom. The old girl’s dead. I think the husband’s killed her.’

‘How did you know I was here? Who’s this speaking?’ A click as the caller hung up. Frost swore to himself and slid the phone back across the counter. If it was someone’s idea of a joke, it wasn’t a very funny one. And that voice. He knew it. It went with the face he glimpsed leaving the pub as they came in. The harder he tried to remember, the further it slipped out of his grasp.

‘Trouble?’ Gilmore asked anxiously. It was always trouble with Frost. If it was Mullett who had phoned, he’d make it quite clear that he had obeyed Frost’s orders under protest.

Frost scooped up his change. ‘Knock back your drink, son. I might have another corpse for you to look at.’

The man on the bike tucked his head down against the rain as he took the short cut through the cemetery after his meeting with the vicar. This damn rain seeping through his mac wasn’t going to do his cold any good and he hoped he wasn’t in for a dose of this flu thing that everyone seemed to be catching. Row after row of headstones slipped silently past as he pressed down on the pedals. Graves and tombs didn’t frighten him, not even at this hour of night, but he would still be happier once he was out through the cemetery gates and on to the main road.

And then he nearly lost control of the bike as a sudden sound reverberated around the churchyard. A funeral bell. His head swivelled as he tried to locate the source. There! It was coming from the old Dobson vault! Someone had broken in and was tugging at the rope inside, tolling the bell installed some 150 years ago by old William Dobson who was terrified of being buried alive and wanted to be able to summon help should he awake in his coffin.

Through the rain he could see a light bobbing. He yelled and someone burst from the crypt, and hared off into the darkness.

He turned his bike and pedalled for all he was worth back to the vicarage where he called the police.

Jubilee Terrace was a cul-de-sac of Edwardian terraced houses and would soon be torn down when the next phase of the new town development was reached. Number 76, the fanlight still showing a light, was the end house standing next to a high brick wall which guarded an electricity sub-station. The rain had eased off slightly and the reflection of a lamp standard shimmered in a large puddle where the drain was blocked.

Gilmore knocked at the door and waited, his fingers drumming impatiently on the porch wall. No-one came. He knocked again louder this time.

The door to number 74 opened and a shirt-sleeved man looked out. ‘No use knocking there, mate. The old git’s as deaf as a post.’

‘Actually, it’s the lady of the house we want,’ said Frost. ‘Do you know if she’s in?’

‘She’s got no choice… she’s bed-ridden. Never goes out.’

‘I heard she was dead,’ said Frost.

‘Dead? You must have the wrong house, mate. He may be deaf but he makes a lot of noise. These walls are paper thin. I can hear them talking and rowing – if my luck’s out, I can even hear him gobbing down the sink.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve got their names right.’

‘Maskell – Charlie and Mary – he’s Charlie, she’s Mary.’

‘Oh, he’s Charlie!’ Frost pretended to make an alteration in his notebook, then, as soon as the man went in he dropped to his knees and squinted through the letter-box. A dimly lit hall papered in dreary, dark chocolate brown.

‘How can she be dead if he’s heard them talking?’ protested Gilmore. ‘This has got to be a wind-up.’

‘You’re probably right, son,’ grunted Frost, still at the letter-box. Then his nose twitched and he knew it wasn’t a wind-up. The bad breath of decay. He could smell death.

The detective sergeant took his turn to sniff then shook his head. ‘It’s damp and stuffy, that’s all.’

‘It’s more than that, son.’ He gave one more knock which shook the front door. Noises inside, but no-one came. ‘Let’s try the back way.’

A lowish wall muddied their trousers as they clambered over to land with a splash in a small back yard, a few square feet of puddled concrete containing a dustbin and an outside toilet, its gaping door hanging from one hinge. Ever the optimist, Frost tried the back door, but it was locked and bolted. A downstairs sash window, curtains drawn and no light showing, defied the efforts of Frost’s penknife.

‘Let’s leave it,’ said Gilmore, edging back to the wall. They were trying to break into someone’s house just on the say-so of an anonymous phone call.

But Frost wasn’t listening. He had now transferred his attention to the upstairs window. Difficult to tell from that angle, but it appeared to be open at the bottom. ‘Keep watch, son. Give a yell if anyone comes.’ He climbed up on top of the dustbin which seemed ideally sited for the purpose and heaved himself up on the outside toilet roof and then to the sill.

Yes, a gap at the bottom he could get his hand under. For a moment he hesitated. It all seemed too good to be true; the dustbin conveniently placed and the window invitingly open. But there was no turning back now. He lifted the window and dropped inside.

A pitch dark room. The torch he pulled from his pocket was on the blink, but its faltering light enabled him to steer a tiptoeing course through a maze of booby-trapped junk ready to topple at any moment – an old treadle Singer sewing machine, cardboard boxes gorged with useless items too good to throw away, the frame of a push bike and an old-fashioned pram from the late 1930s in pristine condition which, for some reason, made him think of the baby’s grave in the churchyard.

Cautiously, he turned the door handle. The door whined open.

A landing from which stairs descended to the hall. To his right a door with a crack of light showing from inside. He moved towards it. From downstairs came the sound of someone lumbering about and talking in the overloud voice of the deaf. Crockery clattered. The old boy was making tea or something.

The smell hit him as soon as he opened the door. And then he saw her. On the bed. An old woman, her head propped up with pillows. She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She was a shrivelled, mummified husk and had been dead for many months.

Shit! Just what he bloody wanted! He rammed a cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it, then steeled himself to walk across and lift the discoloured bed sheet which made a tearing noise as it parted from the body. The stains on the bedding weren’t blood. No signs of injury anywhere. There was something round the mouth. Mouldering food and a brown dribble of something still sticky. On a rickety card table alongside the bed was a cup of cold scummy tea and a plate of congealed food. Shit and double shit. He now knew what it was all about and wanted to get out of the room and back in the car and as far away as possible. The bloody cemetery was preferable to this.

Before he could get to the door he heard someone coming up the stairs. The old boy, talking away to himself.

He spun round, frantically looking for another way out There was a window behind thick, drawn curtains which belched death-scented dust. He parted them to scrabble at the window catch. But it was rusted in and wouldn’t budge.

A clatter of crockery then a tap at the door. ‘Your supper, love.’

Frost pressed himself tight against the wall, hoping the opened door would conceal him. The old man, tall and stooped, came in. A tray holding a bowl of soup and a plate of bread and butter rattled in unsteady hands. He frowned at the food on the card table then turned angrily to the husk in the bed. ‘You didn’t eat it!’ he shouted. ‘I cooked it for you and you didn’t eat it!’ Then his voice softened. ‘You know what the doctor said. You’ve got to eat to keep your strength up.’ He exchanged the old tray for the new and picked up a spoon. ‘You must try and eat some of this, love. It’s full of goodness,’ and he spooned soup over the gaping mouth, dabbing with a handkerchief as it dribbled down the shrivelled chin. He was deaf. He didn’t hear the thud of Frost’s footsteps down the stairs and into the street.

In the car, Gilmore listened incredulously, his face creased in disgust. ‘And he’s still bringing her food? Flaming hell!’

‘The poor old sod won’t accept her death,’ said Frost, sucking thankfully at a cigarette.

Before Gilmore could reach for the radio to inform the station, Frost’s hand shot out to stop him. ‘Forget it, son. We don’t want to get involved.’

A shocked Gilmore said, ‘You can’t just drive away and do nothing about it.’

‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ said Frost. ‘We’re supposed to be tomb-watching.’

‘But she’s dead. He’s probably still drawing her pension.’

‘Big bloody deal,’ grunted Frost. ‘I’ll try and live with it.’ And then the car radio which had been pleading urgently for attention to an empty car, tried again.

‘Control to Mr Frost. For Pete’s sake come in, please over.’

Frost snatched up the handset. ‘Frost.’

‘At flaming last, Jack!’ It was Bill Wells, the station sergeant. ‘Where are you?’

Frost looked out of the window on to Jubilee Street. ‘On watch at the cemetery, as ordered,’ he replied, trying to sound puzzled at such an obvious question.

‘No, you’re not, Inspector. If you were, you’d see the place was crawling with bloody police cars.’

‘Ah yes… there does seem to be some commotion at the far end,’ said Frost, signalling for Gilmore to put his foot down and get the damn car back to the cemetery at top speed. ‘What exactly has happened?’

‘Vandals breaking into a crypt.’

Right. ‘I’ll check it out and call you back.’ He switched off hurriedly and urged Gilmore not to heed the approaching red traffic light.

There was only one police car at the graveyard, its blue flashing beacon reflecting eerily off the rain-soaked marble markers. Gilmore parked tight behind it.

‘There!’ pointed Frost.

Ahead of them, right off the main path, was the Victorian crypt they had spotted earlier, an ugly little building, looking like a small, ivy-covered boiler house and guarded by tall, sharply spiked, cast-iron railings. Two marble angels with naked swords stood sentry on each side of the entrance gate where a uniformed officer, PC Ken Jordan, was talking to an old man in a flat cap who was supporting a push bike. Jordan left the man to meet the two detectives.

‘Who’s the old git with the running nose?’ asked Frost.

‘He’s George Turner, the churchwarden. He phoned us.’ Jordan filled them in on what had happened. ‘I’ve had a quick look around. No sign of anyone.’

‘Ah well,’ said Frost, anxious to get back in the car and the dry, ‘I’ll leave you to handle it.’ He jerked his head to Gilmore. ‘Come on, son.’

But Gilmore was rattling the heavy iron gates. They were held firm by the lock. ‘So how did he get in?’

‘There’s a couple of broken railings round the back,’ said Jordan.

‘Show me,’ demanded Gilmore. They followed Jordan to the rear of the crypt. Next to a stand-pipe supporting a dripping tap, two of the cast-iron railings had been broken away leaving a gap wide enough to squeeze through. They squeezed through, Frost reluctantly bringing up the rear, and marched round to the entrance to the crypt.

The door, solid oak some 3 inches thick, bore a crudely sprayed skull and crossbones in still-wet purple paint. It should have been secured by a heavy duty padlock and hasp, but the screws fixing it had been prised out of the door jamb and the door yawned open.

‘Vandals!’ bawled Turner. ‘I’d horsewhip them till they screamed for mercy.’

‘Ah well,’ said Frost, flumbling for a cigarette, ‘not much harm done.’

‘What I want to know,’ continued Turner, ‘is where were the police who were supposed to be on watch? Something should be done about them. They should be taught a lesson.’

Frost nodded his agreement. ‘They should be flogged until they screamed for mercy, then castrated without an anaesthetic.’

‘Aren’t you going to look inside?’ asked Turner. ‘They might have done some damage.’

‘Right,’ grunted Frost, without enthusiasm. The old man leading, and guided by Jordan’s torch, they went in, down two steps to the stone-floored chamber.

Jordan’s torch prodded the darkness. It was a very small chamber with some six ornate, black-painted Victorian coffins stacked on stone ledges along the walls on each side. From the roof the bell rope was still quivering.

‘I’ve never been inside a crypt,’ observed Gilmore. ‘I thought it would be bigger.’

‘What for?’ asked Frost. ‘They aren’t going to get up and bleedin’ walk around, are they?’ His nose twitched. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘I can’t smell anything,’ said Turner, ‘but then I’ve got a cold.’ To prove it he foghorned into a large handkerchief.

‘It smells like a corrugated iron urinal in a heat-wave,’ Frost said. ‘When did you bung the last corpse in?’

‘The crypt hasn’t been used since 1899,’ he was told.

‘It’s coming from over here,’ said Jordan, his torch sweeping the floor.

‘There!’ called Frost, grabbing the torch and directing it towards the far corner. The light bounced off a large, bulging bundle wrapped in black polythene sheeting, criss-crossed with 2-inch wide brown plastic adhesive tape and tied with cord.

‘That didn’t ought to be here!’ said Turner.

As they dragged it to the centre of the floor it trailed foul-smelling liquid. Frost bent down and prodded it gently with his finger. The bundle felt cold and squelchy and the stench of putrefaction belched out. Frost’s pen-knife slashed open the plastic sheeting. So strong and sickening was the smell that they all had to retreat back to the door to inhale the clean, rain-washed night air.

They steeled themselves to go back in. Holding his breath, Frost cut the slit bigger and peeled back some of the, plastic. A gas-bloated putrefying face looked up at him.

PC Jordan gagged, his hand shaking so much that he nearly dropped the torch. Frost snatched it from him and handed it to Gilmore. ‘If you’re going to throw up, Jordan, do it outside. It stinks enough in here as it is.’ Gladly, the constable charged up the steps. ‘Are you all right, Sergeant?’

Fighting hard to control his stomach, Gilmore nodded. If the inspector could stand it, so could he.

Jordan returned, white and sweating, wiping his mouth. ‘I hope you haven’t desecrated someone’s grave?’ said Frost sternly. Jordan didn’t answer. He hadn’t looked and he just didn’t care.

‘Nip upstairs,’ Frost told Gilmore, ‘and radio through to the station. Tell Sergeant Wells we’ve found a body in the churchyard. When he stops peeing himself laughing and saying, “But the churchyard is full of bodies,” tell him “ha-bloody-ha” from me and I want a doctor, Forensic, Scene of Crime Officer and a gross of air fresheners.’

The mobile generator grunted and coughed before chugging away contentedly, and the Victorian vault was bathed in electric light for the first time in its life. Duck boarding had been placed down the centre of the steps and over the floor and footsteps clacked as they crossed it. Frost stood outside, keeping well out of the experts’ way as they measured and photographed, took samples and dusted for prints. The body remained tied up in the sheeting awaiting the arrival of the police surgeon.

A cursing as someone stumbled unsteadily down the path. Frost grinned to himself happy to see that Dr Maltby was still on duty and not that jumped-up, toffee-nosed sod, Slomon.

‘Welcome to the boneyard, doc.’

Maltby waved his bag and lurched over. ‘What have you got for me this time?’

‘Body in a sack. It’s past its best.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ said Maltby, following the inspector down the stone steps. ‘Any progress with my poison pen writer?’

‘Give us a chance, doc,’ pleaded Frost. ‘I’ve been tripping over corpses all day.’

Maltby dropped to his knees and bent over the body ‘Well, he’s dead,’ he announced.

‘I should hope he is,’ grunted Frost. ‘if I smelt like that, I wouldn’t want to live.’

Gilmore snorted his disgust. Frost seemed to thrive on bad taste remarks.

‘By the way, Jack,’ said the doctor casually as he gently prodded the puffy flesh through the torn opening in the plastic, ‘you know that dead girl – the suicide…’

‘What about her?’ asked Gilmore.

Pointedly addressing Frost, the doctor continued. ‘Tear up the report I did on her. I’m writing a new one.’

‘What was up with the old one?’ asked Frost.

‘I missed something. The morgue attendant tipped me the wink. He spotted it when he undressed her.’ He stood up and wiped his hands on a towel from his bag. ‘This one’s been dead at least eight weeks – possibly longer.’

‘What did the morgue attendant find?’ asked Gilmore. He knew there was something dodgy about that suicide.

Maltby’s head twisted to the detective sergeant. ‘There were marks on her buttocks – weals – about a week old, fading but still visible. She’d been quite severely beaten with a whip or a cane. And there were needle marks on her left arm.’

Gilmore’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And you missed it?’ He pulled the inspector to one side. ‘Surely you’re not going to let him get away with this?’

‘When you’ve made as many balls-ups as I have, son you don’t hesitate to help fellow sufferers,’ Frost told him.

Maltby snapped his bag shut. ‘I can’t tell you any more about this one unless you unwrap it.’

‘Might be best to wait for the pathologist,’ suggested the man from Forensic who had been hovering, ears flapping. ‘You know how fussy he is about bodies being left untouched.’

‘Sod the pathologist,’ snapped Frost. ‘It’ll be hours before he gets here. Cut it open.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Forensic, cutting through the cord to preserve the knots.

‘Must preserve the knots, doc,’ Frost explained. ‘The murderer might be a Boy Scout.’

‘We don’t yet know it’s murder,’ commented Forensic pedantically, as he delicately sliced through the plastic sheeting.

‘Bleeding hard to commit suicide and then tie yourself up in a parcel,’ sniffed Frost.

Forensic moved away. ‘All yours, doctor.’

As Maltby laboriously peeled aside the black plastic which tried to cling to the moist, rotting flesh, both Forensic and Gilmore found it necessary to move nearer the door and the sweet night air.

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘It’s a woman.’

Gilmore forced himself to look. He saw the bloated body of a female, stark naked, hunched in a foetal position, knees bent to breasts and trussed with string which bit deep into wet, oedematous flesh. The hair, stained and discoloured, looked dark, almost black.

‘She’s wearing shoes!’ cried Frost. He bent over. No tights or stockings, just flat-heeled brown shoes, tightly laced over swollen naked flesh. ‘I want photographs.’

The doctor moved to one side to let Ted Roberts, the burly Scene of Crime Officer, take photographs, then began a close, careful examination, gently forcing open the mouth, then scrutinizing the neck. ‘She’s in too bad a condition, but I’d guess at manual strangulation.’ His examination continued downwards. He asked for the string to be cut so he could see the lower part of the body. He parted the legs slightly. ‘Dear God!’ he exclaimed, visibly startled at what he saw.

The lower stomach and genital area was a mass of blackened and charred weeping flesh.

Frost dropped on his knees beside the doctor and gasped. ‘Look at this, Gilmore. Some bastard’s burnt her.’

A fleeting glance was enough for Gilmore who stood well back, willing his stomach to keep calm while camera motors whirred and flash tubes crackled.

Maltby’s nose scraped the blackened area. ‘To do this sort of damage you’d need a blow-lamp.’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Frost. ‘Was it done before or after death?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I hope it was after.’

No longer hunched up, she looked smaller than Frost had first thought. ‘How old is she, doc?’

‘Young,’ Maltby told him, again exploring the mouth. ‘Fifteen. .. sixteen.’

‘Fifteen!’ echoed Frost. ‘And dead eight weeks?’ His head sank. ‘There ought to be a mole on the right shoulder, doc. Have a look, would you.’

Maltby moved some strands of hair and nodded. ‘Shit,’ cried Frost. ‘Shit and double shit!’ This putrid mess of tortured flesh was the missing newspaper girl.

They had found Paula Bartlett.

‘I didn’t see what he looked like,’ the church warden told Frost. ‘He just dashed off into the dark.’

‘Was he tall, short, fat, thin…? You must remember something. It’s bloody important. He’d just dumped a girl’s body in there.’

‘Just a dark shape, that’s all I saw.’ Then he hesitated. ‘I think there might have been more than one of them.’

‘More than one?’ yelled Frost. ‘Blimey, you kept that up your bloody sleeve.’

‘As I was pedalling up, I thought I heard voices – men’s voices.’

‘So why didn’t you tell us this before?’ demanded Gilmore.

‘Because I didn’t think it was important. I thought we were dealing with vandals, not a flaming murder. I didn’t hear what they were saying and I didn’t see anyone else.’

‘You’re a fine bloody help,’ moaned Frost. ‘A body dumped right under your nose and you see damn all! We’re looking for one or more men with no description.’

‘Don’t you blame me for the shortcomings of your lot,’ snapped Turner, picking up his bike. ‘If the police were doing their job, they’d have caught them. They were supposed to have two men on watch for vandals… so where the hell were they? Boozing in some pub, I imagine.’

Frost went cold. He hadn’t considered this aspect.

‘Bleedin’ hell, son,’ he muttered to Gilmore. ‘I’ve just given Mullett my head on a platter.’

By the time the pathologist and his secretary arrived, some forty minutes later, Forensic and Maltby had left and the mortuary squad were waiting outside, shuffling their feet impatiently, anxious to pick up the remains and get out of the rain. The pathologist was in a foul temper, furious that Frost had disturbed the body before he had a chance to see it and angry to learn that Maltby, who had been most rude to him after a clash of medical evidence in a recent court case, had done a detailed examination. ‘If I’m called in no-one, but no-one – let alone jumped-up general practitioners – touches one hair of the corpse, do you hear? All this clumsy handling has probably destroyed vital clues.’

‘Anything you say, doc,’ said Frost in his ‘couldn’t care less’ voice.

‘And don’t call me doc,’ snapped the pathologist, pulling on a pair of long, almost transparent rubber gloves..

Frost left him to it, wandering up the steps for a smoke. PC Jordan’s personal radio spluttered. Control wanting a word with Mr Frost. ‘How’s it going?’ asked Sergeant Wells.

‘The pathologist’s just turned up with his blonde secretary. They both went down the crypt and he started putting some rubberware on, so I discreetly left them to it.’

Wells gave a guarded laugh. ‘Mr Mullett’s at my side, Inspector. He wishes to speak to you.’

Frost waited apprehensively. He certainly didn’t want to speak to Mr Mullett.

The superintendent was bubbling over with fury and was almost shouting incoherently. ‘You disobeyed my orders, my express orders. Your incompetence has made us a laughing stock, an absolute laughing stock…’

Frost turned the volume down and let the superintendent rant away unheard. He couldn’t think of any way he could get out of this foul-up. His head turned as Gilmore emerged from the crypt.

‘Preliminary report from the pathologist. The body wasn’t dumped there tonight. It’s been in the crypt for at least six or seven weeks.’

Six or seven weeks? Frost frowned as he worried this through. So the kid must have been hidden there almost immediately after she was killed. So it was vandals Turner saw running away. They had nothing to do with the girl. The grin returned to his face as he turned up the volume of the radio where Mullett was still in full flow.

‘… If you had been doing your damn job you’d have caught the murderer in the act of dumping the damn body…’

‘Hold on, Super,’ Frost interrupted. ‘How could I have caught him in the act of dumping the damn body tonight when it’s been stinking the flaming vault out for eight weeks?’

So knocked off balance was Mullett by Frost’s explanation that he completely forgot that his orders had been disobeyed and ended up by apologizing. ‘Forgive me if I was too hasty, Inspector… the strain of work, you know.’

‘You’re forgiven, Super,’ said Frost grandly.

‘The family will have to be informed, of course.’

‘It’s half-past midnight,’ said Frost. ‘I was thinking of leaving it until the morning.’

But Mullett was adamant. ‘The press have already got hold of the story. The family mustn’t learn of it through the media.’

Frost groaned. Mullett was right, of course. ‘Right, sir. We’re on our way.’

The Bartlett house was in darkness, but a low-wattage light burnt hopefully in the porch.

Even as they walked up the drive to the front door, Frost kept hoping the girl’s parents would be out, preferably staying with friends in some other division so that someone else would have the pleasure of breaking the news. But an upstairs light clicked on to dash his hopes. Sleeping fitfully, the Bartletts must have been awakened by the slam of the car door.

It was the mother who opened the door, a dressing gown over her nightdress. Ignoring Frost, she looked over his shoulder to Gilmore, the young man she had seen earlier. ‘It’s about Paula, isn’t it?’

His face grim, Gilmore nodded.

‘You’ve found her? I knew you would. I told you you’d find her. Thank God!’ She was weeping with happiness.

Flaming hell! thought Frost. This is an unmitigated balls-up. That bleeding clairvoyant, I could tear his dick out by the roots.

Behind the woman, her husband, a sad-looking man, read the message in Frost’s expression, a message his wife was refusing to see. He moved forward and put his arm around her. She looked at him puzzled, not understanding why he wasn’t rejoicing with her… and then she looked at Frost again. And then she knew.

‘Do you think we might come in?’ asked Frost.

They were in Paula’s bedroom where everything had been left exactly as it was on the day she went missing. The bed was made, blue pyjamas folded neatly on the pillow and the alarm clock, wound each day ready for her return, set to ring at 6.45 so she wouldn’t be late for her paper round. From downstairs the heart-tearing wail of Mrs Bartlett, her grief for her daughter sounding uncannily like that of the mother of the fifteen-year-old who had killed herself. It reminded Frost that they had to visit the mortuary to see the marks on Susan Bicknell’s body. He felt in his inside pocket for something to jot a reminder down on and felt an unfamiliar wad of papers. His car expenses. Something else he had forgotten about. How the hell was he going to find the time to get the proper copies made that bloody County were demanding? He stuffed them back in his pocket and forgot about them again.

‘What are we doing here?’ asked Gilmore.

‘I don’t know,’ said Frost wearily. ‘I just wanted to have a think away from all the bloody crying.’ He looked around the room. Everything plain and simple, just like the dead girl. No posters, no pop records. On the bedside cabinet was a framed photograph of her mother and father. A small bookcase held some children’s books, her school textbooks, a Collins Concise Encyclopedia and a Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Inside the bedside cabinet, standing on its end, was a black and green Adidas nylon holdall. He unzipped it and looked inside. Some gym clothes, a track suit and a couple of exercise books. He stuffed it back again. On the floor by the cabinet was a wastepaper bin. The bin contained a crumpled Milky Way wrapper and a small cardboard carton that had once held a lipstick.

‘You’re right, son,’ he said. ‘We’re wasting our bloody time here.’

He opened the door and they went downstairs.

The crying went on and on.

They let themselves out.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Monday night shift (2)

Sergeant Wells stared glumly at the cold scummy tea left in the cup, palmed two aspirins into his mouth and flushed them down in a shuddering swallow. It was just a headache. He envied those lucky devils who had gone down with the flu virus and were tucked up in their nice warm beds, leaving mugs like him to do the extra duties they were being paid for. He had been on duty since half-past nine, no-one to help him, the heating on the blink, no canteen and Mullett demanding cups of tea or coffee every five minutes.

‘Two teas and a fairy cake, please, Sergeant.’ Wells jerked two fingers up at Jack Frost who came bouncing in with that aftershaved ponce, Gilmore.

Frost ambled over and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Bleeding cold in here, Bill. It was warmer down the crypt.’

‘Only the people who matter get heat. It’s like St Tropez in Mullett’s office. And he wants to see you’

‘He can’t get enough of me,’ said Frost, trotting off to the inner sanctum.

‘Gilmore!’ Wells called as the detective sergeant headed for the office. ‘Your wife phoned about two hours ago. Wanted to know when you were coming home.’

‘Thanks,’ said Gilmore. ‘if she phones again…’

‘If she phones again,’ cut in Wells, ‘you talk to her. I’m off in fifteen minutes.’ In any case, he wasn’t acting as messenger boy for a lousy jumped-up ex-detective constable.

It wasn’t cold in Mullett’s office. The 3-kilowatt heater purred happily, and Frost had to flght to keep awake in the hot room as he gave the Divisional Commander a brief update, sparing none of the details.

‘Burnt with a blow-lamp?’ gasped the shocked Mullett. ‘That’s depraved… You kept it from the parents?’

‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘And I want it kept from the press – that and the fact she was wearing shoes.’ There’d be the usual spate of nutters coming up with false confessions based on details they’d read in the papers.

‘And the pathologist is quite certain the body wasn’t placed in that crypt tonight?’ asked Mullett, reluctant to let the inspector off the hook.

‘The poor little cow was dumped weeks ago… that’s why she’s stinking to high heaven now.’

Mullet winced and moved his chair back slightly. Frost’s description of the advanced state of decomposition had been so graphic, he was sure he could smell it. Or perhaps the stench was clinging to that dirty old mac Frost insisted on wearing. Frost took a cigarette end from behind his ear and pushed it into his mouth. He struck a match on his fingernail. Mullett sighed deeply. This case would get extensive press and TV coverage. He daren’t risk exposing this slovenly, foul-mouthed lout to the media as typical of the Denton constabulary.

He cleared his throat. ‘I have decided to take full executive control of this case, Inspector.’

The lighted match paused an inch from the end of the cigarette. ‘Executive control?’

‘Yes. You will be responsible for the day-to-day routine, but under my direct control. Do you understand?’

I do all the work and get the bollockings when things go wrong, and you take all the credit when they go right, thought Frost grimly. ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said aloud.

‘I’ve promised the Chief Constable an early result. This must be our number one priority. What do you need to achieve an early result?’

‘A lot of bloody luck and some more men.’

‘We can’t have any more. Normal schedules will have to go by the board. Everyone will have to follow my lead – work that little bit harder, push themselves to the limit.’ He yawned and glanced at his watch. Time he was back home and in bed. ‘Everyone must pitch in. We’re all one big team.’ He gleamed white teeth at Frost in a crocodile smile as he stood up and slipped on his overcoat.

The phone rang. Mullett answered it and passed it over to Frost. The pathologist. He had a heavy schedule for the morning, so he was doing the post-mortem on the newspaper girl in an hour’s time.

‘I’ll be there,’ Frost said, yawning.

‘Good,’ nodded Mullett, moving to the door. ‘Well, I must try and snatch a few hours’ sleep so I can be fresh for the morning. Report to me tomorrow at nine and we’ll go over our plan of campaign.’ He clicked off the heater and, when Frost had left, turned out the light and locked the door. As he passed through the lobby he saw Wells moodily staring at the clock. The wretched man was – clock-watching. He would have a word with him about it in the morning. He responded with a curt nod as the sergeant called good night to him.

Miserable sod, thought Wells. It was 2.59 a.m. Sergeant Johnnie Johnson, who had the morning shift, was coming in three hours early to relieve him. Usually Johnnie was early, arriving a good five minutes before the start of the shift, but Wells wasn’t worrying yet. He began stuffing away his pens and notepads in the drawer to leave a clean desk for his relief. The phone gave a timorous, half-hearted ring. ‘Denton Police, Sergeant Wells speaking.’

‘Hello, Bill. It’s Doreen.’

The cold tea curdled in his stomach. Doreen. Johnnie Johnson’s wife. What the hell did she want at this time of the morning?

‘It’s John, I’m afraid, Bill. We’ve had to have the doctor in.’

That bloody hypochondriac! A headache and he thinks he’s got a brain tumour. ‘Oh dear, Doreen. Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘The doctor thinks it’s this flu virus that’s going around.’

One sniffle and the bastard’s down with flu… typical. ‘Terribly sorry to hear that, Doreen.’

‘… so he won’t be able to come in to work tonight, I’m afraid.’

‘Of course not. We wouldn’t expect him to. You tell him to stay away until he is really fit.’ He slammed the phone down. ‘Skiving bastard!’ Leaving the lobby unattended, he dashed off to Jack Frost’s office to have a moan.

Gilmore was on the phone as the sergeant came in. He had rung Liz, hoping there wouldn’t be an answer, but she was still awake, staring at the clock and complaining about being left on her own for most of the day and half the bloody night. It was three o’clock, and he was overdue for a meal break. He told her he was on his way and she said she’d rustle up a quick meal for him. Not that he felt like eating at this time of the morning, but he didn’t want another row. He was shrugging on his overcoat when Frost bowled in and immediately Wells started his moaning.

‘It’s not on, Jack. I was supposed to be relieved. I’ve already done a double-bloody-shift. I’m not fit myself, but I stagger in. And what thanks do I get?’

‘Bugger all,’ said Frost cheerfully, not really listening. ‘You can’t slope off yet, Gilmore,’ he called. ‘Post mortem on the girl in a hour.’

‘In an hour?’ croaked Gilmore, dropping into his chair with a crash. He reached for the phone to dial Liz before she started cooking.

‘And Mullett doesn’t give a damn,’ continued Wells.

Frost moved some files from his chair to the floor and sat down. ‘His door, like his bowels, is always open, Sergeant.’

‘Sod Mullett!’ snorted Wells.

‘The lobby phone’s ringing,’ said Gilmore, trying to concentrate on what Liz was saying.

‘And sod the phone,’ snarled Wells, stamping back to the lobby.

Frost had a half-hearted forage through his in-tray which was filled to overflowing, but was thankfully interrupted by a phone call from Forensic. A preliminary report on the black plastic sheeting used to wrap Paula Bartlett’s body. It was made up of black plastic dustbin sacks, the standard Denton Council issue for refuse collection, of which more than two million had been issued to households over the past twelve months. Further tests were under way.

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Frost, gloomily. ‘That’s narrowed it down to the whole of bleeding Denton.’

‘Actually it doesn’t,’ said Forensic. ‘Nearly all the councils in this part of England use an identical sack.’

‘Just when I thought it was going to be easy,’ Frost said, hanging up. ‘I’ll be in the Murder Incident Room,’ he yelled to Gilmore who was doing a lot of listening on the phone and didn’t appear to be saying much.

Two people only in the Murder Incident Room. DC Burton, a phone pressed tightly to his ear, his pen scribbling furiously, and WPC Jean Knight, a redhead in her mid-twenties who was waiting for the computer to finish a print-out.

‘Couple of odds and ends from Forensic,’ called Burton, waving his sheet of paper.

Frost ambled over and poked a cigarette into Burton’s mouth, then offered the pack to the redhead who declined with a smile. ‘I know all about the dustbin sacks, son. I’m applying for two million search warrants.’

Burton grinned. ‘We can do a bit better than that, sir. Firstly, the padlock. Forensic reckon those screws were prised out at least twice before within the past couple of months and then hammered back.’

Frost’s cigarette drooped as his mouth fell open. ‘Twice before?’

‘Yes, sir. Someone could have got in on two or more different occasions, or it could even have been twice on the same day.’

‘Forensic always seem to think they’re being bloody helpful,’ said Frost. ‘Now I’m more mystified than ever.’ He looked up as Gilmore came in. ‘Did you hear that, son? The padlock to the crypt had been forced at least twice.’

‘Oh?’ said Gilmore, not really taking it in. His ear was still sore from the phone and his mind was full of Liz’s moans and complaints.

‘There’s more,’ announced Burton. ‘Forensic found a footprint.’

‘Ah,’ said Frost. ‘So we’re looking for a one-legged man.’

‘It wasn’t exactly a footprint,’ continued Burton patiently. ‘It was more a clump of mud that had fallen from the sole of a shoe.’

‘Where did they find it?’ asked Gilmore, stifling a yawn.

‘Top step, just inside the crypt door. Forensic reckon it was some eight weeks old which makes it round about the time the body was dumped.’

‘How the hell can they tell it’s eight weeks old?’ asked Gilmore.

‘Don’t ask!’ pleaded Frost. ‘Just accept it. You’ll be none the wiser if they explain. OK, Burton. We’ve got a bit of mud. How does that help?’

Burton pulled his notes towards him. ‘There were traces of copper filings and lead solder in the mud.’

Frost worried away at his scar with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘Copper filings and solder?’ If it had any significance, he couldn’t see it.

‘A plumber!’ called WPC Jean Knight from the computer. ‘They put central heating in my flat last week. They were forever sawing up lengths of copper tubing.’

‘A homicidal plumber!’ said Frost doubtfully. He ambled across to the shelf of telephone directories – pulled out the Yellow Pages for Denton and district There were some fifteen pages of plumbers – nearly three hundred firms. ‘At least it’s less than two million,’ he observed.

‘There’ll be more names under “Central Heating”,’ Burton reminded him.

There were nearly two hundred entries under ‘Central Heating’, although some of these were also entered ‘Plumbers’.

‘The gas company does central heating,’ added Jean Knight. ‘They’d employ plumbers as well.’

‘I’m losing interest already,’ said Frost.

‘It might not be a plumber at all,’ added Gilmore. ‘It could be someone, like Jean, who’s had central heating installed and that’s how the filings and solder got on their shoes.’

‘It might be a man with a length of copper tubing soldered on the end of his dick who’d popped into the crypt for a Jimmy Riddle,’ said Frost unhelpfully. Then he stopped dead and a smile crept over his face. ‘Or it might be a lot easier than we think.’ Excitedly he expounded his theory, the cigarette in his mouth waggling as he spoke. ‘We’re not looking for any old plumber. Our killer didn’t stagger into the cemetery with a gift-wrapped body just on the off-chance he’d find somewhere to hide it. He knew the crypt was there and he knew he could get into it. Now I’ve lived in Denton most of my life and I never knew we had a Victorian crypt in the churchyard… did any of you?’

Burton and the WPC shook their heads. ‘I visit cemeteries as infrequently as possible,’ said Burton.

‘Me too,’ said Frost. ‘I only go in one if I can’t find anywhere else to have a pee. But our plumber knew where to find it and knew he could get in it.’ He jabbed a finger at Gilmore. ‘How?’

Gilmore shook his head. He had no idea.

‘Right, son, let me mark your card. What was alongside the crypt, by the broken railings?’

‘A stand-pipe and a tap,’ said Gilmore, beginning to see what the old fool was getting at.

‘Exactly, sergeant. And they looked fairly new. So who would have installed them?’

‘A plumber,’ said Gilmore, ‘and he’d know how to get in through the broken railings.’

‘And he’d know how to use a blow-lamp,’ added Burton.

Frost chucked an empty cigarette packet into the air and headed it against the wall. ‘Another case solved. Get in touch with the vicar, find out who did the work, then bring him in for routine questioning and beating up.’ He yawned and looked at his watch. Nearly an hour to kill before the post-mortem. He was about to suggest sending out for some Chinese takeaway when the phone rang. Control for the inspector. Another burglary at a senior citizen’s home – old lady of eighty-one.

‘Damn!’ muttered Frost. He could have done without this tonight.

‘There’s worse to come,’ said Control. ‘The intruder beat her up. She’s not expected to live.’

Clarendon Street. Lights blinked out from quite a few of the houses where the occupants had been wakened by the police activity. Outside number 11 was an empty area car, its radio droning and no-one to listen, and behind that, an ambulance, engine running, rear doors open. As Gilmore parked the Cortina on the opposite side of the street, two ambulance men carrying a stretcher emerged from the house, closely followed by a uniformed constable. By the time they crossed the road the ambulance was speeding on its way to the hospital.

‘Anyone at home?’ yelled Frost down the passage.

A door at the head of the stairs opened. ‘Up here, Inspector.’ Tubby Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon beckoned them in.

A bedroom, its bed askew in the middle of the floor, the sash window open and Roberts, the Scene of Crime Officer, bending, engrossed in dusting the bottom edge of the frame for fingerprints. There were fragments of a smashed blue and white vase on the floor and the top centre dressing table drawer gaped open, its riffled contents spewing out.

By the dressing table a hooked-nosed woman in her mid-forties wearing a quilted dressing gown was talking earnestly to PC Jordan.

The scene was familiar. This burglar seldom varied his technique. A quick in and out job. Straight for the dressing table to grab indiscriminately whatever jewellery was instantly available, then, starting with the top centre drawer, he looked for the ‘cleverly hidden’ cache of notes which couldn’t be trusted to the bank and which were nearly always at the back of the top centre drawer. Then out again, the whole operation lasting a maximum of five minutes. A familiar scene, but this time with a difference. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the bedding and on the curtains.

‘How’s the old girl?’ asked Frost.

‘Not good,’ said Hanlon, honking loudly into a handkerchief and dabbing a sore-looking nose. ‘Stab wounds and a possible fractured skull. The ambulance men don’t think she’ll regain consciousness.’

‘Damn,’ muttered Frost, but his eyes were looking over Hanlon’s shoulder at the SOC man, who was offering an irresistible target. ‘Excuse me a moment.’ Frost tiptoed over and accurately jabbed a nicotined finger at the seam of the tight trousers. ‘How’s that for centre?’ he roared.

Roberts shot up, hitting his head on the window sill. He spun round angrily, only to grin when he saw Frost. ‘It’s you, Inspector. I might have guessed.’

Gilmore raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. A potential murder investigation and the fool was indulging in schoolboy games. Well, someone had to act responsibly. ‘What happened?’ he asked Hanlon.

‘The victim is Alice Ryder, a widow aged eighty-one. She occupies the top half of the house, a Mr and Mrs Francis live downstairs. Mr Francis is on night work – that’s the wife over there.’ Hanlon nodded towards the woman with Jordan. ‘She found the old lady.’ Sensing their eyes on her, the woman came over, anxious to relate her part in the drama.

‘I woke up about quarter-past three to go to the toilet and I noticed her light was still on. I was worried, so I went up to check. Her telly was going full blast and her bedroom door was open. I looked in…’ She paused, shuddering at the recollection. ‘There she was, on the floor and blood everywhere. I couldn’t get to the phone quick enough. She was terrified of anyone breaking in… she must have had a premonition.’ She wrapped her dressing gown tighter around her. It was cold in the room with the window open. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’

‘You didn’t see who it was who did it?’ asked Gilmore. She gave him a thin smile. ‘I’d have mentioned it if I had – just in case it was important.’

‘Sarcastic cow!’ seethed Gilmore when she had gone.

‘I thought she was quite nice,’ observed Hanlon, who was irritated at the way the new bloke kept trying to take charge.

‘I didn’t like her nose,’ said Frost, ‘or her dressing gown.’ He nodded to the SOC officer. ‘Surprise me. Tell me that this time he left fingerprints.’

Roberts shook his head. ‘He wore gloves, as always.’

‘Consistent bastard!’ snorted Frost. ‘All right, Ted, paint me a word picture. Let’s have a reconstruction.’

‘Right,’ said Roberts. ‘The old lady was in the front room watching the telly. Our intruder gets in through the bedroom window, but this time he was unlucky. She’d stuck that blue and white vase on the window ledge and as he clambered in, he knocked it over and it fell to the floor. The old lady heard it, came charging in to see what it was, so he went for her with this…’ Roberts clicked open his ‘evidence case’ and pulled out a sealed, transparent polythene bag. Inside the bag was a black-handled kitchen knife, its blood-smeared blade honed to razor sharpness. ‘It was on the floor, by the bed.’

‘You’re saying he had this knife in his hand when the old girl came charging in?’ When Roberts nodded, Frost shook his head. ‘I can’t buy that, Ted. If I was climbing through windows I wouldn’t want a lethal thing like that in my hand… I could cut my dick off.’

‘He wouldn’t carry it in his hand when he was climbing. He’d have it in a tool bag.’

‘All right,’ said Frost. ‘I’ll pretend to accept that for the moment. Then what happened?’

‘He stabs her, but she puts up a fight. He drops the knife in the struggle, punches her repeatedly in the face then finishes her off by smashing her skull in with a cosh or something.’

Frost’s finger prodded away at the scar on his cheek as he worried this over. ‘I can’t believe it’s the same bloke who did all the others. He’s never resorted to violence before.’

‘He hasn’t been disturbed before,’ offered Hanlon. ‘His other victims were damn lucky they never heard anything.’ He sniffed and dabbed his nose. ‘I think I’ve got the flu.’

‘No, you haven’t,’ said Frost firmly. ‘We’re too busy. Do we know what’s been taken?’

Jordan stepped forward. ‘Same as all the others. Bits and pieces of jewellery – Mrs Francis has given me a description – and money. Mrs Francis doesn’t know how much, but says the old lady always kept a fair amount of cash by her – a couple of hundred at least.’

‘I want this bastard,’ said Frost. ‘People who kill for a couple of hundred lousy quid are dangerous.’ He looked at the bed, knocked askew with splodges of blood all over the pillows and sheets. Someone must have heard or seen something. ‘Get as many men as you want from Bill Wells and start knocking on doors.’

‘I’ve already asked. He says he can’t spare anyone until the next shift.’

‘He’s bloody well going to have to. We’re not going to wait for her to die, Arthur, she might sod us about and linger. We’re going to anticipate. This is a murder enquiry as of now. I want a team knocking on doors, I want Forensic, I want someone by the old girl’s bedside night and day in case she can give us a description, if I’ve forgotten anything, I want that as well.’

While Hanlon radioed the station, he ambled over to the open window and looked out on to a small rain-puddled yard. Below him was the dustbin used by the man to gain entrance. It reminded him of the yard in Jubilee Terrace and the mummified corpse. What a bloody night this had turned out to be. First the mummy, then Paula Bartlett… Paula… Flaming heck! The autopsy! He daren’t be late for that. He was in enough trouble with the pathologist as it was.

He checked his watch. Ten to four. They could just do it if they ignored fiddling details like adverse traffic lights. ‘I’ve got to leave you to it, Arthur. Just solve the case and tie it all up before the end of the shift.’ He dashed across to the door. ‘Come on, Gilmore. We’ve got an autopsy to watch and ten minutes to get there.’

At four o’clock on a cold, dark, rainy morning, the mortuary lights gleamed across the driveway to the hospital and bounced off the black, supercilious shape of the pathologist’s Rolls Royce. Frost’s mud-coated Cortina shuffled in and parked alongside. ‘Don’t forget.. . ours is the one on the left,’ he reminded Gilmore.

The night porter, a gangling twenty-year-old with an embryonic moustache, snatched a cigarette from his mouth and dropped it to the floor as the two detectives walked in. He thought it was that toffee-nosed pathologist who had already rebuked him for smoking on duty.

‘Midnight matinee,’ said Frost, flashing his warrant card. ‘Paula Bartlett.’

‘We should get paid double for handling bodies in that condition,’ complained the porter, leading them through to the autopsy room which was in darkness apart from the and table where the overhead lights poured down on a mass of decomposing and charred flesh that was once a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. ‘Dockers get dirty money, so should we.’ He opened a side door and called, ‘Police are here, doctor.’

‘Overture and beginners, doc,’ yelled Frost, perching himself on a stool for a good view. Gilmore, not so eager, moved back out of the splash of light.

The pathologist, his faithful secretary in tow, entered, scowling. He found nothing about his job amusing. The smile would be wiped off Frost’s face when he read a copy of the report he was sending to his Divisional Commander complaining that the inspector had allowed every Tom, Dick and Harry to maul the body before he had had a chance to see it.

‘Do you reckon he sleeps with her?’ whispered Frost to Gilmore as the secretary adjusted the lights over the end autopsy table to her master’s satisfaction. ‘It must be off-putting, banging away at someone, knowing you’re shaking up her stomach contents and her internal organs.’

Gilmore pressed further back into the blackness, not wanting to get involved in Frost’s coarse asides.

While the porter turned on the extractor fan above the autopsy table, the pathologist allowed his secretary to help him on with his green gown and heavy plastic apron. He fiddled with a control under the perforated table top and as water gurgled and trickled, he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and flexed his fingers. He was ready.

First, he carefully examined the body from top to bottom, without touching any part of it. ‘Body of a female in advanced state of decomposition,’ he intoned. Miss Grey’s pencil zipped across the page of her notebook. He eased open the mouth with a spatula and shone a small torch inside. ‘Age about…’

‘We know how old she is, doc,’ Frost told him. ‘I even know her birthday. What I don’t know for sure is how she died.’

The pathologist’s eyes flashed. ‘Don’t interrupt!’

‘Sorry, doc,’ said Frost, quite unabashed, ‘but we’re operating at half-strength and I’ve got lots to do. Could you just give me the headlines? I’ll read all the boring bits in your report.’

‘I don’t cut corners. Aged around fifteen.’ He snapped his fingers and demanded: ‘Dental records!’ Miss Grey passed him across a small typed card with marked diagrams. He studied it then handed it back. His spatula clicked on the teeth checking extractions and fillings. ‘From the dental record I can identify the body as that of Paula Bartlett, aged fifteen years and two months. Some traces of blood in her mouth.’ He wiped the mouth with a swab and dropped it into a container held out by his secretary.

‘She anticipates his every move,’ Frost whispered to Gilmore. ‘I bet he doesn’t have to tell her when to thrust or withdraw.’

Gilmore couldn’t even pretend to smile.

Frost fidgeted with impatience as the pathologist plodded on, the swollen neck now receiving his painstaking scrutiny, fingers carefully prodding and probing.

‘Dr Maltby said death was due to manual strangulation,’ prompted. Frost. Why was this man so bloody slow?

‘If I was one of Dr Maltby’s patients,’ murmured the pathologist, his nose almost touching the neck, ‘I’d insist on a second opinion on everything he told me.’ To his secretary he said, ‘Signs of manual pressure applied to neck.’

‘Ha!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘So that’s what killed her.’

‘I’ll tell you what killed her when I have completed the autopsy,’ said Drysdale, crushingly. ‘For all I know, there are eight bullet wounds in the stomach. Just keep quiet.’

Frost gave his watch a pointed stare, sighed deeply then went outside for a smoke. Gilmore was happy to join him. Even with the extractor fan working full blast, the atmosphere in the post-mortem room was foul and would worsen when Drysdale used the scalpel to open the body up.

The porter brought them two mugs of tea and gratefully accepted a cigarette from the inspector. Through the swing doors they could see the autopsy proceeding. A bone saw screamed and Gilmore turned his eyes away, his teeth gritted against the noise.

‘Perhaps we could browse while we wait,’ requested Frost. ‘Have you got a Susan Bicknell in stock?’

The porter flipped open his ledger and ran a nicotine-stained finger down the entries. ‘Suicide? Came in this afternoon? This way.’

They followed him to the refrigerated section. On a small side table near the door was a polythene bag containing a folded Mickey Mouse nightdress, a black and gold kimono and, separately wrapped, a Snoopy watch. Snoopy’s paws pointed to 4.29. ‘Her things,’ announced the porter laconically, jerking his thumb.

He stopped in front of one of the bank of metal drawers, checked the name tag and pulled it open. Sliding on rollers, a sheeted body silently emerged. When the sheet was removed the girl was seen to be naked. A red label tied to her big toe seemed an obscene addition as if some joker had put it there for a laugh. Needle marks were clearly visible on her left arm.

The porter folded the sheet and stared down in disapproval. ‘I hate seeing them so bloody young.’

‘Give my colleague a hand to turn her over,’ requested Frost.

Gilmore hesitated, then steeled himself and complied. He wasn’t prepared for the hard coldness of the flesh and nearly let her fall back. The porter gave him a scornful look. ‘She can’t hurt you. She’s dead. Bloody hell… look at that!’

Now she was turned, they could see it. All across her buttocks, fading but still visible, deep, criss-cross lines of red weals and smudges of pale yellow bruises. They were the marks left by a thrashing, a vicious thrashing, from a whip or a cane. At least twelve weals could be counted. Frost winced. ‘It hurts just to look at it. Who the hell could have done this?’

‘That bloody stepfather,’ snapped Gilmore. ‘I’d like to meet him on a dark night.’

A firm shake of the head. Frost couldn’t buy that. ‘She was fifteen years old, for Pete’s sake. She’d never submit to that.’

A sniff from the porter who offered his worldly-wise opinion. ‘I reckon she was kinky. Perhaps she enjoyed being beaten.’

‘Maybe, but not as hard as this. She’d have been yelling blue murder after the first cut… and yet she took more than twelve of them.’

‘She could have been into bondage as well,’ offered Gilmore. ‘Strapped down while it was done to her. Some women like that.’

Frost’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Blimey, Gilmore, what sort of women do you go out with? I never have such luck. I only have to blow in their ear-hole and they think I’m a pervert.’

‘When you’ve quite finished your voyeurism…’ The pathologist glowered disapproval, his gown stained and carrying the taint of the grave into the clean coldness of the refrigerated section.

Back to the autopsy table where the body had been crudely stitched and the secretary was writing out neat labels for jars of removed organs. ‘She was trussed up and put inside the plastic sack within three or four hours of being killed,’ said Drysdale watching Gilmore note this in formation down. ‘Cause of death manual strangulation.’

‘That’s what Dr Maltby said,’ beamed Frost.

Ignoring him, Drysdale plunged on. ‘The killer’s two hands went round her throat like this.’ Obligingly, his secretary allowed herself to be used for a demonstration and stood still as he grabbed her throat, sinking his thumbs deep into her larynx. ‘The girl would have struggled desperately, fighting for her life. I imagine she grabbed his wrists, trying to break his grip but her killer, his hands still tight round her throat, swung her from side to side and smashed her head against a wall, probably hard enough to make her lose consciousness.’ He swung Miss Grey from side to side as illustration, but spared her the banging of the head. She looked disappointed as he released his grip, but carried on labelling jars of human offal.

Indicating blood-matted hair and a discoloured area on the scalp Drysdale invited them to inspect the damage.

‘If she struggled, doc,’ asked Frost, ‘wouldn’t she have marked him… scratched him… gouged out chunks of flesh?’

A tight smile. ‘If you’re hoping for pieces of tell tale flesh under her fingernails, I must disappoint you, Inspector.’ He lifted the girl’s misshapen right hand and displayed the fingernails. They were bitten down to the quick.

‘Damn,’ said Frost.

Carefully Drysdale lowered the hand to its original position. ‘Clear evidence of sexual intercourse just before she died.’

Frost nodded glumly. He had expected this. ‘Rape?’

‘I think so,’ replied the pathologist blandly.

‘You think so?’ echoed Gilmore, incredulously. ‘You only think so.

‘There is evidence of bruising that could suggest intercourse took place against her will…’

‘Then she was raped,’ cried Gilmore.

‘If I might be allowed to continue,’ grated Drysdale. ‘The girl was a virgin. She could have submitted willingly, but have been tensed instead of relaxed. This might account for the bruising. Equally, she could have been raped. There is no magic way of knowing at this stage.’

‘If she submitted willingly, doc,’ said Frost, ‘there would have been no real need to have wrung her neck afterwards.’

‘That’, snapped Drysdale, ‘is in your province, Inspector Frost, not mine. I give the medical facts. It’s up to you to speculate.’

Frost nodded ruefully. ‘Then give me some facts on the way the bastard burnt her so I can speculate how to catch the sod.’

‘I was coming to that,’ said Drysdale testily. ‘As you can see, the genital area is badly charred. In my opinion this occurred very soon after death, within an hour, say.’

‘Dr Maltby thought it could have been done with a blow-lamp.’

Drysdale frowned. ‘For once, Dr Maltby might have been right. To do that sort of damage you’d need some thing like a blowtorch.’

‘But why would anyone do it, doc? Is it a new kind of sexual perversion?’

‘I’ve come across something like this once before. A murdered rape victim, a thirty-eight-year-old prostitute. She was found in some bushes near a railway embankment. The lower part of the body was badly burnt where her killer had doused paraffin over her and set it alight. It seems he had heard about genetic fingerprinting. You’ve probably read about it.’

‘No,’ said Frost. ‘I only read comics and dirty books.’

‘There’s a newly developed technique,’ lectured Drysdale, ‘that allows us to determine an individual’s genetic fingerprint from traces of body fluid – semen, say.’

Frost’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean a dick print instead of a fingerprint?’

The pathologist winced. ‘I wouldn’t put it as crudely as that, Inspector, but yes, by DNA testing we can positively identify the donor of a semen sample.’

‘So if I produced a suspect…’ began Frost, hoping Burton had traced the plumber.

‘If you produced a suspect, we could either positively incriminate him, or positively eliminate him, but he would have to supply us with a blood sample for comparison.’

‘I’ll get a blood sample for you,’ said Frost. ‘And if he won’t give us one voluntarily, I’m sure we can arrange for him to fall down the station stairs.’

The pathologist’s smile wavered. Like many people, he never knew when Frost was being serious or when he was joking. ‘Unfortunately, Inspector, it wouldn’t work with this poor girl. Even without the burning, the advanced stage of decomposition of the body precludes any possibility of carrying out the test.’

‘This bastard’s having all the luck,’ moaned Frost. ‘Anything else, doc?’

Drysdale made a mental note to include in his complaint to the Divisional Commander his displeasure at the way Frost chose to address him. ‘Yes.’ He held out his hand and clicked his fingers. Miss Grey gave him a large sealed jar full of squishy, lumpy brown unpleasantness dotted with green. ‘The stomach contents. She hadn’t had time to digest her last meal before she died.’

Frost screwed his face and turned his head. ‘Tell me what it is, doc, so I can make a point of not ordering it.’

‘Something with chips and peas. You’ll get a detailed analysis some time tomorrow. My report will be on your desk by noon.’

‘Do you feel like eating, son?’ asked Frost as they climbed back into the car. ‘Something with chips and peas?’

‘No,’ said Gilmore. All he felt like doing was going to bed and sleeping the clock round.

Five o’clock. Cold, raining steadily and still dark.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Tuesday morning shift (1)

They got back to the station at 5.15. A less than happy Sergeant Bill Wells was still on duty wearing his greatcoat against the cold of the unheated lobby.

‘Still here?’ asked Frost.

‘Yes, still bloody here. But I’m going home at six on the dot whether anyone relieves me or not. I’ve had it up to here.’ His hand indicated a point well above his head. He spun round to Gilmore. ‘And I’ve got enough to do without keeping on answering calls from your bloody wife demanding to know when you’re coming home.’

‘When did she phone?’ Gilmore asked.

‘Do you mean the first time, the second or the third? The last one was ten minutes ago.’

Gilmore hurried off to the office to use the phone and Wells accepted a cigarette from Frost. ‘She sounded well sozzled, Jack,’ he confided. ‘You could smell the gin over the phone.’

‘They’ve not been married long,’ said Frost. ‘She’s suffering from night starvation.’

‘Tough!’ grunted Wells, pulling his phone log over. ‘Couple of messages for you. Jill Knight phoned from the hospital. The old lady is still in intensive care. Doubtful if she’ll regain consciousness. And Arthur Hanlon says one of the neighbours spotted a blue van parked at the back of Clarendon Street just before midnight.’

‘Clues are pouring in thick and fast,’ said Frost, trotting off down the corridor.

In the office Gilmore was making apologetic noises down the phone. ‘I know, love… I’m sorry. What time will I be back?’ He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and looked enquiringly at Frost.

‘Let’s pack it in now,’ said Frost. ‘Grab a few hours sleep and be back about twelve.’

Gilmore nodded his thanks and assured Liz, cross his heart, he’d be with her in fifteen minutes.

On the way out Frost pushed open the door to the Murder Incident Room. Burton was slumped by the phone, half asleep. Frost gave him a shake. ‘Come on, son. I’ll take you home.’

Burton smothered a yawn. ‘I’ve located the firm that did the work at the cemetery, but I won’t be able to get the plumber’s name and address until their offices open at nine.’

‘That’s what I want,’ mused Frost. ‘A nine to five job, an expense account with no limit and a sexy secretary with no knickers.’ He sighed at the impossibility of his dream. ‘Leave a note for your relief to follow it through. Let’s go home.’

The Cortina was juddering down Catherine Street, Gilmore fighting sleep at the wheel, Frost slumped with his eyes half closed at his side and Burton yawning in the back seat. They passed a row of shops; one, a newsagent’s, had its lights gleaming. Burton in the back seat stirred and peered through the car window. ‘That’s where Paula Bartlett worked.’

‘Pull up,’ yelled Frost. Gilmore steered the car into the kerb. The name over the shop read G. F. Rickman, Newsagent. ‘Let’s chat him up,’ said Frost. With a searing scowl at Burton for not keeping his big mouth shut, Gilmore clambered out after him.

George Rickman, plump and balding, was deeply engrossed in a study of the Page Three nude in The Sun. On the floor in front of the counter, stacked in neat piles, were the newspapers he had sorted and marked ready for the kids to take out on their rounds. The shop bell tinkled to announce a customer, old Harry Edwards from round the corner for his Daily Mirror and some fifty pence pieces for the gas. While he was serving Harry, the bell sounded again and two men he hadn’t seen before came in: one, in his early twenties, looking tired and irritable; the other, older, wearing a crumpled mac. They hovered furtively by the door, obviously waiting for the shop to empty before they approached. Rickman smirked to himself. Dirty sods. He knew what they were after.

Harry shuffled out and the two men sidled across. Warning them to wait with a movement of his hand, Rickman darted over to the shop door and squinted through the glass to make sure no-one else was coming, then lowered his voice. ‘Who sent you – Les?’

‘Yes,’ replied Frost, equally conspiratorial, wondering what the hell this was all about.

‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Rickman, unlocking a door behind the counter. He ushered them through. ‘Some of this stuff’s dynamite.’ He clicked on the light. The room was full of shelved books and magazines with lurid covers of naked, sweating, entwined men and women. In boxes on a table were stacks of soft porn videos.

‘Les said you had something special,’ suggested Frost, signalling to Gilmore, who was fumbling for his war rant card, to hold his horses.

Rickman leered and tapped the side of his nose knowingly. He unlocked a cupboard. More videos, this time in plain white boxes with typed labels.

‘There’s everything here,’ he said proudly. ‘All tastes catered for – men with men, women with women, with kids, animals… any permutation you want. Fifty quid a time – return it undamaged and I’ll allow you twenty-five quid off your next purchase.’

‘I don’t know that I’ve got that much money on me,’ said Frost, reaching for his inside pocket.

‘I take Access… American Express… any card you like.’

‘What about this one?’ asked Frost.

Rickman stared at a warrant card. His jaw dropped. ‘Shit!’ he said.

A ring from the shop bell and a boy’s voice called, ‘Papers ready, Mr Rickman?’

‘By the counter. Take them and go.’ He waited until the bell signalled the boy’s departure. ‘Look, officer. I’m sure we can come to some understanding.’ He brought out his wallet and pulled out two?50 notes.

‘Give the gentleman a receipt for a?100 bribe,’ said Frost, holding out his hand for the money. ‘I’ll read you the numbers.’

Hastily, Rickman stuffed the banknotes in his pocket. ‘You misunderstand me, Inspector.’

‘I hope I do,’ replied Frost. ‘You’re in enough bloody trouble as it is.’ He read some of the labels on the videos and shuddered. They were very explicit.

Rickman fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed sweat from his face. ‘I don’t usually indulge in this sort of stuff. Harmless soft porn, yes, but not the hard stuff. I met this bloke in a pub…’

Frost cut him short. ‘Save your fairy tales for the officer down the station.’ He sent Gilmore to the car to radio for someone to collect Rickman and the books and videos.

‘You try and do people a good turn and this happens,’ moaned Rickman. ‘What bastard shopped me?’

‘We’ve been watching this shop for months,’ lied Frost. He had taken an instant dislike to the podgy newsagent. Some of the videos involved schoolgirls. He wondered if Paula Bartlett was tied in with this in some way. He stared at the fidgeting Rickman and slowly lit a cigarette. ‘We’ve found her, you know.’

‘Found who?’

‘Paula.’

‘Paula Bartlett… my news girl?’

Frost nodded.

‘Is she…‘ He steeled himself to say it. ‘Is she dead?’

Another nod.

‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ His face was screwed tight in anguish.

‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘And you should see what the bastard did to her. It would make a good video for you to sell.”

The shop bell tinkled again as Gilmore returned. He’d also asked Bill Wells to phone his wife and say he would be late, but had got short shrift from the sergeant.

Frost sat on the corner of the ice-cream cabinet. ‘Tell me about Paula.’

‘A really nice, sweet kid,’ said Rickman.

‘They’re always nice when they’re dead,’ said Frost. ‘Tell me what she was like while she was still alive.’

Rickman shrugged. ‘She was a nothing. A dull kid. A bit of a pudding. Never laughed. Hardly ever spoke. Did her work. That was all.’

Again the shop bell quivered and rung and an old woman shuffled in. ‘We’re closed,’ said Frost, taking her by the arm and steering her out into the street. He reversed the Open/Closed sign and rammed home the bolts.

‘Tell me about the day she went missing.’

‘I’ve already told all this to the other detective… the ferret-faced bloke. An absolutely normal day. She left as usual to go on her round and that was the last I saw of her.’

‘Had she complained about men molesting her… or following her?’ asked Gilmore.

‘Not to me, she didn’t. She hardly spoke a bloody word to me.’

Frost ambled over to the counter and glanced at the paper Rickman had been reading. He studied the naked Page Three girl, his cigarette drooping dispassionately. ‘How was young Paula set up? Well stacked, was she?’

‘No different to most of the other girls. They mature so bloody quickly these days… see them at fifteen you think they’re twenty. Mind you, Paula didn’t flaunt it. She used to wear loose woolly cardigans and things like that.’

‘Did she go out with any of the newspaper boys?’

‘No. Between you and me, I don’t reckon she’d ever been with a boy or knew anything about sex.’

Frost raised his eyebrows. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Something that happened three months ago. I’m in the shop sorting out the papers for the rounds. Only two of the kids were in, Diana Massey and Jimmy Richards.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Frost.

‘They were both in Paula’s class at school – both just turned fifteen. Anyway, I’m sorting out the papers when I realize they’ve both gone missing. Well, not that I mistrust anyone, but I keep the day’s takings in that other backroom there until I can get to the bank, so I sticks my head round the door and what do you think I saw?’

‘Tell me,’ said Frost.

‘Diana’s on the floor, jeans round her ankles, he’s on top of her, jeans ditto and they’re having it away on a stack of Radio Times. Fifteen flaming years old. Didn’t even stop when I yelled at them.’

‘I don’t think I would, either,’ observed Frost. ‘Anyway, I heard a gasp behind me. I turned and there was Paula Bartlett. She was staring at them horrified. She dropped her papers and just ran out of I shop. It was obvious to me she didn’t know what the hell they were up to. Innocent, that’s what she was.’

‘If our plumber lets us down, we’d better check out this Jimmy Richards,’ said Frost. ‘He might have acquired taste for innocent newspaper girls.’

While Gilmore was noting down the address, an area car drew up outside and two uniformed officers rattled the door handle. Frost let them in. ‘Stack of pornographic gear in the back,’ he told them. ‘Take it and our friend here down to the station and charge him under the Obscene Publications Act.’

Back to the car. Gilmore slammed the door, hoping this would wake up Burton who didn’t deserve to sleep after causing all this trouble, but to no avail. He was fastening his seat belt when the damn radio called for the inspector

Frost reached for the handset as Gilmore slumped back wearily, waiting for the worst.

‘Can you do a quick job for me, Inspector?’ asked Sergeant Wells.

‘No,’ replied Frost. ‘Gilmore’s got to get home. He’s left his wife on the boil.’

‘It’s on your way, Jack. Probably a false alarm. Number 46 Mannington Crescent. A pensioner, Mrs Mary Haynes. She lives there on her own, but yesterday’s milk is still on the doorstep and her cat’s meowing like mad inside. The milkman’s phoned us. He thinks something might have happened to her. Take a look, would you?’

‘This is uniform branch stuff,’ snapped Gilmore.

‘The only spare car is loaded down with your filthy books,’ Wells snapped back.

Frost sighed. ‘OK, Bill. We’re on our way.’

The houses in Mannington Crescent were just waking up. A milk float was outside number 46. They parked behind it and Frost shuffled over to the milkman and flapped his warrant card.

Relieved at their arrival, the milkman blurted out the details. ‘Might be nothing in it, but she’s usually so regular. She’d never go away and leave her cat and it’s meowing like hell in there and yesterday’s milk is on the step.’

‘Couldn’t she have run off with the lodger?’ yawned Frost, following the man to the doorstep.

‘She’s seventy-eight years old!’ said the milkman.

‘Well – hobbled off with the lodger, then?’

‘She hasn’t got a lodger,’ said the milkman.

Frost yawned again. ‘Another brilliant theory shot up the arse.’ He moved to one side to let Gilmore tackle the door.

Gilmore jammed his finger in the bell push. ‘The bell don’t work,’ said the milkman.

Gilmore hammered at the knocker.

‘I’ve already tried that,’ said the milkman.

Ignoring him, Gilmore hammered again. Silence. A look of smug triumph on the milkman’s face. ‘What did I tell you?’

Across the road a fat woman in a shortie nightie called, ‘Milkie! You haven’t left me any milk.’ The milkman signalled he was coming over and she waddled back into her house, acres of fat bottom wobbling below the hem of her nightdress.

Frost winced. ‘It must be my day for horrible sights. You’d better carry on with your round, Milkie. Thanks for phoning.’

‘What do you think?’ asked Gilmore, who was staring at the Cortina, where Burton, oblivious to all this, was still asleep on the back seat.

Frost looked up and down the street, hoping to see the reassuring sight of a uniformed constable who would take the responsibility from him, but no such luck.

The downstairs window was heavily curtained and held firmly closed by a security catch of some kind. Frost did his letter-box squinting routine, seeing only an empty passage with a pot plant drooping dejectedly on a side table. There was an open purse on the side table, a small bunch of keys alongside it. He straightened up wearily. It looked bad. The old dear certainly wouldn’t leave the house with out her purse and her keys. ‘We’ll have to break in.’

Gilmore picked up the bottle of milk from the step and used it to smash one of the coloured glass door panels. He put his hand through and turned the lock. They stepped inside.

The first door they tried led to the kitchen. From a dark corner two green eyes flashed, then a plaintive mew. Frost took some milk from the fridge, slopped it into a saucer and watched the cat’s frantic lappings. He tried the back door, but it was firmly bolted on the inside. Gilmore looked in the other downstairs room, a musty-smelling, rarely used lounge.

The cat finished the milk and waited expectantly, its tail swishing. Frost topped up the saucer. ‘Hundred to one she’s upstairs, son. Dead in bed. Nip up and take a look.’ As Gilmore’s footsteps thudded overhead, Frost found a tin opener on the draining board and opened a tin of Felix which he emptied on a plate for the cat.

A sudden yell from Gilmore sent him running. ‘Inspector! Up here. Quick!’

She was on the bed. She had been knifed repeatedly in the stomach and her throat was a gaping, open wound. The body was cold. Ice cold.

‘I know you’ve got no-one to send,’ Frost told a complaining Sergeant Wells, ‘but I want four of them.’ He pressed the handset against his chest so he couldn’t hear the sergeant insisting this was impossible. ‘I can’t manage with less than four. I need people knocking on doors before everyone leaves for work. Over and out.’ He clicked the switch, cutting off Wells in mid-moan and returned to the house.

Gilmore was waiting for him in the bedroom, anxious to show him a mess of blood on the carpet, hidden behind the open door. A lot of blood. On the floor, a crumpled heap that was her best black coat. ‘He was hiding behind the door. He slashed her as she came in to hang up her coat, then dumped her on the bed.’

Frost nodded glumly. Gilmore was probably right, but knowing where he killed her wasn’t going to help them catch the bastard. ‘Sod that bloody milkman,’ he said ‘We could have been in bed and asleep by now.’

Burton thudded up the stairs. He had been sent out to knock on doors. ‘Two things, Inspector. A woman across the road says the old lady visited Denton Cemetery every Sunday afternoon to put flowers on her husband’s grave. She saw her leave about three. The bloke next door – a Dean Reynold Hoskins – says the old lady knocked him up on Sunday afternoon just after five, all agitated. She reckoned someone had nicked her spare front door key which she kept hidden under the mat in the porch, but when Hoskins looked, there it was.’

‘Have you checked to see if it’s still there?’ Burton nodded and held up a bagged key. ‘Hoskins called her a silly cow and went back to his own house. She kept ranting on about it not being in the same place she’d left it.’

‘The poor bitch was right,’ said Frost. ‘There’s no sign of forcible entry, all doors and windows are internally secured. The killer must have let himself in through the front door. He was already in the house.’

Gilmore grunted begrudgingly. He couldn’t fault the inspector’s logic.

‘Right,’ continued Frost. ‘He got in after she went off to the graveyard at three. He wouldn’t have hung about after slicing her up, so we can assume he left fairly soon after five. Knock on more doors. People usually go deaf and blind when there’s been a crime but someone must have seen or heard something. And ask if it was general knowledge that she secretly kept a spare key under the mat.’

‘Right,’ said Burton, swaying slightly.

The poor sod’s dead on his feet, thought Frost. ‘I’ve got some more men coming soon, Burton. You can go home when they arrive.’

The detective constable shook his head. ‘I can hold on for a while, sir.’

Stifling a yawn, Frost wished there was someone to tell him to go home. He wouldn’t refuse. He turned his attention to Gilmore who was waiting to speak.

‘I’ve checked her purse,’ Gilmore told him. ‘Empty except for a membership card for All Saints Church Senior Citizens’ Club and a hospital appointment card. Nothing else in the house appears to be disturbed or taken.’

‘A few quid,’ said Frost. ‘I can’t believe the bastard ripped her up for the few quid in her purse.’ He let his gaze wander around the bedroom, which smelt stalely of blood and lavender furniture polish. He lit a cigarette and added the smell of tobacco smoke. On the wall above the veneered walnut dressing table hung a framed black and white wedding photograph, the bride in white and the groom in morning dress amidst a snow shower of confetti. That same bride was now in funeral black, eyes wide open and staring up at the yellowing ceiling. Her dress and the bed-cover were rusted with gummy gouts of dried blood.

‘That must be her grave-visiting dress,’ muttered Frost. Something brushed against his legs. The cat. He leant down and scratched its neck, then put it outside. Crossing to the window he twitched aside the curtain and looked down on the empty street where black clouds kept the morning dark. His head was buzzing. So much to do and he didn’t really feel he was capable of handling it.

An area car nosed into the Street and stopped outside the house. PC Jordan and two disgruntled-looking detective constables who had thought their shift was over climbed out. A second car brought Roberts, the SOC officer, with his cameras and flash-guns, and hardly had this pulled up when a green Honda Accord brought the two men from Forensic. Gilmore led them all up to take turns to view the body before sending the constables to join Burton, knocking at doors.

‘Find out if anyone saw a blue van,’ bellowed Frost as they left.

‘You haven’t touched anything?’ asked one of the Forensic men.

‘I haven’t even touched my dick,’ said Frost, giving his well-worn, stock reply.

The door knocker thudded. ‘The doctor’s here,’ called Gilmore, pushing Maltby up the stairs.

‘Bit of fresher meat for you this time, doc,’ said Frost as a bleary-eyed Maltby, his face flushed, squeezed between the Forensic men into the tiny bedroom.

‘I might have guessed it would be you again,’ growled Maltby, who seemed to be in a sour mood.

‘Three bodies in one shift,’ agreed Frost. ‘I’m beginning to suspect I’m on Candid Camera.’

The doctor grunted and bent over the body. His examination was brief.

‘She’s dead.’

‘I worked that out myself,’ said Frost. I offered her a fag and she wouldn’t reply. When did she die?’

Maltby took a pad from his bag and scribbled something down. ‘You’ve sent for the pathologist, I understand?’

‘That’s right, doc.’

‘Then let him answer your questions. He gets paid a lot more than I do. Found out who’s been sending those poison pen letters yet?’

‘Blimey, doc,’ moaned Frost. ‘It was only six hours ago when you last asked me. I haven’t even had a pee since then.’

Maltby blinked at the inspector. His eyes didn’t seem to be focusing properly. ‘Hours ago? Is that all?’ He felt for a chair and sat down heavily.

‘Are you all right, doc?’ asked Frost with concern.

‘Yes, yes, of course I’m all right.’ He grabbed the inspector’s arm and pulled him down, dropping his voice and engulfing Frost in Johnnie Walker fumes. ‘Did you know Drysdale’s put in a complaint about me, just because I examined that body in the crypt before he did? He phoned me especially to tell me.’

‘The man’s a bastard, doc,’ soothed Frost. He nodded towards the bed. ‘How long has she been dead?’

Maltby lurched over to the corpse and prodded the flesh. ‘Rigor mortis has come and just about gone. Some time Sunday evening, say. Anything else you want to know, ask Drysdale.’ With a sharp snap he closed his bag and bustled off. ‘God’s here,’ he bellowed from half-way down the stairs. A burble of exchanged frigid conversation and the pathologist swept into the bedroom accompanied by his secretary. He stared pointedly at the Forensic men who took the hint and retired downstairs.

‘Was that Dr Maltby who just brushed past me?’ he sniffed.

Frost nodded.

‘And he’s been mauling the body about, I suppose?’

‘He never touched it,’ said Frost. ‘He didn’t want to spoil your pleasure. If you could speed it up, doc.’

Drysdale gritted his teeth at the ‘doc’, but his eyes gleamed when he saw the body. He took off his long, black, expensive overcoat and handed it to his secretary. She, in turn, passed the coat over to Frost who screwed it into a ball, dumped it on a chair and sat on it. He shook a cigarette from his packet.

‘Please don’t smoke,’ snapped Drysdale, glad to have the chance of putting this oaf in his place. Methodically he examined every inch of the body, murmuring the results of his findings to the secretary whose pen translated the great man’s words into the loops and whirls of Pitman’s shorthand.

After fifteen long minutes, ignoring Frost’s repeated and over-loud signs of impatience, he straightened up to deliver his verdict. ‘She’s been dead approximately thirty-six hours.’

‘That’s what Dr Maltby said,’ grunted Frost. The pathologist smiled thinly. ‘Delighted to have my opinion confirmed by such an expert. The pattern of the bloodstains indicates she was standing upright when she was attacked. The killer would have come at her from behind…’

Frost wriggled in the chair. The overcoat buttons were biting into him. ‘He was waiting for her behind that door, doc. There’s a couple of lovely blood puddles there if you want to have a paddle.’

Drysdale allowed himself a brief look, then carried on. ‘The killer would have clamped his hand over her mouth – you can see the thumb pressure mark on the, left cheek?’ He moved away to allow Frost to inspect this if he wished, but Frost declined with a flick of his hand. He didn’t need a pathologist to point out something he had noticed as soon as he entered the bedroom.

The pathologist shrugged. ‘The killer then stabbed her three times in the abdomen with a knife. The blade would be single-edged, non-flexible, about 6 inches long – and – and razor sharp.’

‘Something like a kitchen knife, doctor?’ asked Gilmore who had returned after giving instructions to the door-knocking team.

‘Could very well be,’ accepted Drysdale.

‘There was a similar attack last night… an old lady in Clarendon Street. He left a knife behind.’

‘Clarendon Street?’ barked Drysdale. ‘Why wasn’t I called?’

‘You can have first crack at her as soon as she dies,’ replied Frost, ‘but at the moment she’s still alive.’ He related the details.

‘If you let me examine the knife,’ said Drysdale, ‘I’ll do some tests to confirm whether it could be the same weapon used to inflict these wounds.’

Frost scribbled a reminder about the knife on his discredited car expenses. ‘I’ll get it sent over. Carry on, doc. I’m sure you and your secretary want to get back to your bed… er, beds.’

Not noticing Frost’s lewd wink to Gilmore, Drysdale continued. ‘The killer jerked back her head, pushed the tip of the blade into her throat just there.’ His thumb pointed to the left-hand side of the gaping wound. ‘He twisted the knife so the blade was horizontal – that’s why the wound is much wider at that point, then slashed open her throat from left to right.’

Frost yawned openly. The pathologist was making a damn meal of this. She was stabbed from behind and dumped on the bed. He’d deduced that himself within seconds. ‘Would he have got blood on his clothes?’

‘Yes. Possibly on his upper left arm, but almost certainly a considerable amount of blood from the throat would have gushed on to his right hand – the knife hand – and the sleeve of his coat or whatever he was wearing. He also stepped into the pool of blood when he carried the body across to the bed. You can see the imprints on the carpet.’

‘You mean the ones Forensic have ringed round in chalk? Yes, we did spot them, doc.’

‘How did blood get there?’ asked Gilmore, pointing to a patch of discoloration on the left-hand sleeve of the black dress. ‘That doesn’t fit in with any of the wounds.’

Annoyed that he had missed it, the pathologist studied the mark. ‘That’s where he wiped the blade clean of blood.’ He straightened up. ‘That’s all I can tell you for now, Inspector. You’ll have a full report when have completed the post-mortem.’ He looked around the room. ‘Has anyone seen my overcoat?’

The body had been carefully placed in a cheap coffin and man-handled down the narrow staircase for transport to the mortuary. The Forensic team had departed with their spoils and Frost, alone in the empty bedroom, sat moodily dragging at a cigarette and staring down at bare floor- boards. All the bedding had been stripped from the bed and the carpet and underfelt removed for examination. He stubbed out his cigarette in one of the little glass dishes on the dressing table. The young bride in the photograph, her face wreathed in smiles, beamed down happily through the shower of confetti to the stripped, bleak room where she died, alone and terrified.

He wandered downstairs, his feet clattering on the bare wood where the stair carpet had been taken away for examination. Gilmore and Burton and two of the uniformed men were in the kitchen drinking tea. ‘Any joy with the neighbours?’

‘No reply from most of the houses,’ said handing him a mug. ‘Probably gone to work. We’ll have to try again tonight. Three people saw someone suspicious hanging around yesterday afternoon.’

Frost’s head came up hopefully. ‘Did you get a description?’

‘I got three descriptions,’ Burton ruefully admitted ‘All different. One medium build, darkish hair who may or may not have a beard aged between thirty and fifty. He was walking up and down the street just after two, staring at windows. The next was a skinhead on a motor bike who kept going round and round the block and the third was a West Indian in a dark suit.’

‘And what did the West Indian do to arouse suspicion?’ asked Gilmore.

‘He just walked by, Sarge, minding his own business. I don’t think the lady I spoke to liked West Indians.’

Frost sipped his tea. It was lukewarm. ‘It’ll be a waste of time, but check them out anyway. Have we traced any relatives, or anyone who might be able to tell us if anything’s been pinched apart from her purse money?’

‘Not yet,’ answered Gilmore. ‘I’ll check with that senior citizens’ club she belonged to. They might be able to help.’

‘Good. What sort of woman was she? Did she get on well with the neighbours?’

Burton shook his head. ‘A cantankerous old biddy by all accounts, always finding something to complain about. No-one liked her much.’

‘We’ll have to find out what she’s been complaining about recently. Perhaps someone resented it enough to kill her.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s the moggie?’

‘The RSPCA bloke has taken it away,’ Gilmore told him.

‘I expect the little bleeder will have to be put down,’ gloomed Frost, swilling down the dregs of tea and pulling a face as if it were bitter medicine. ‘Tell me something to cheer me up.’

‘Forensic found a few alien prints dotted about,’ offered Gilmore. ‘One looked very hopeful.’

‘It’ll be from the sanitary inspector or her family planning adviser, anyone but the killer.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I’m too tired to think straight.’ He glanced across to Gilmore who was grey with fatigue. ‘Let’s call it a day. We’ll have a couple of hours’ kip, then back to the station at noon.’

Noon! The detective sergeant sneaked a look at his watch. That would give him about three hours’ sleep if he was lucky. He hoped Liz wouldn’t be awake, waiting up for him, spoiling for a row.

He sat tense in the car as Frost drove him back after dropping off Burton, expecting every radio message to be the one sending them out on yet another case. But none of its messages were for them, although one call rang a familiar bell. ‘Neighbours complaining of strange smells coming from 76 Jubilee Terrace.’

‘Must have been your aftershave,’ muttered Frost as the tires scraped the kerb outside 42 Merchant Street. He had to shake Gilmore awake.

The house was quiet when Gilmore got in. A plate of cold, congealed food stood accusingly on the dining room table. His supper. He scraped the food into the waste bin and dropped the plate in the sink.

Upstairs, Liz was sleeping. Even in repose her face was angry. He undressed and crawled into bed beside her, moving carefully for fear he would wake her and the row would start. Almost immediately he plunged into an uneasy sleep, full of dreams of bodies bleeding from knife wounds and all looking like Liz.

Frost slammed the car into gear and headed for home and bed. He nearly made it.

‘Control to Mr Frost. Come in, please!’

The plumber. The suspect in the Paula Bartlett case. Able Baker had picked him up. They were holding him, at the station.

‘On my way,’ said Frost, spinning the wheel for an illegal U-turn, deaf to the shouts from a minicab driver who had to brake violently to avoid a collision.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Tuesday morning shift (2)

Superintendent Mullett strode briskly into the station, pausing only to remove and shake the rain from his tailored raincoat. At 9.30 in the morning the lobby had a tired, slept-in look, which reminded him that he wanted to have a few words with Frost to ascertain his progress with the Paula Bartlett case.

‘Mr Frost in yet, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir,’ replied Wells, barely managing to camouflage a yawn. ‘He’s out on another fatal stabbing – an old lady in Mannington Crescent.’

Mullett’s forehead creased in anguish. ‘Oh no!’

‘Nasty one by all accounts,’ continued Wells. ‘Stomach ripped and throat cut.’

‘Send the inspector to me the minute he comes in, Sergeant. Do you know if he left a report for me on the Paula Bartlett case? I’ve got a press conference at two.’

‘I haven’t seen one, sir.’

Mullett sighed his annoyance. ‘How can I answer press questions if I’m not kept informed? It just isn’t good enough.’

‘We’re all overworked, sir,’ said Wells.

‘Excuses, excuses… all I hear are excuses.’ His eyes flicked from side to side, doing a brisk inspection of the lobby. ‘This floor could do with a sweep, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Wells, swaying slightly from side to side, trying to give his impression of a loyal, dedicated policeman almost dead on his feet from overwork ‘The thing is, with this flu epidemic. ..’

‘We mustn’t use that as an excuse to lower standards, Sergeant. This lobby is our shop window. The first thing the public see when they come in. A clean lobby is an efficient lobby… it inspires confidence.’ He paused and stared hard at the Sergeant. ‘You haven’t shaved this morning. A fine example to set the men.’

In vain Wells tried to explain about the double shift and that his relief sergeant was down with the virus, but Mullett wasn’t prepared to become involved in the trivial details of station house-keeping. ‘Excuses are easy to make, Sergeant. Those of us fortunate enough to escape the flu virus must work all the harder. Standards must be maintained.’

Waiting until the door closed behind his Divisional Commander, Wells permitted himself the luxury of an impotent, two-fingered gesture.

‘I saw that, Sergeant!’ rasped the unmistakable voice of the Chief Constable.

Wells spun round, horrified, then flopped into his chair, almost sweating with relief. Grinning at him from the lobby doorway was Jack Frost who had been hovering in the background, waiting for Mullett to leave.

‘You frightened the flaming life out of me, Jack.’

‘The man of a thousand voices but only one dick. So what’s been happening?’

‘Well, I’ve been working all bleeding night…’

‘Excuses, excuses, Sergeant… give me the facts, man.’ He pushed a cigarette across and lit it for Wells.

‘Rickman’s given us a statement.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘The porno video merchant. Says he bought them from a man in a pub… didn’t know his name. We’ve released him on police bail.’

‘What about my plumber?’

‘Interview Room number two.’

‘Thanks,’ said Frost, making for the swing doors. He paused. ‘This floor could do with a sweep, Sergeant.’

‘I’ll get you a broom,’ grinned Wells. The internal phone rang. Bloody Mullett again. Wells’ expression changed. ‘The canteen’s closed, sir. I haven’t got anyone who can make your tea.’ He jiggled the receiver, then slammed the phone down. Not interested in excuses, Mullett had hung up.

Outside the interview room an excited Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon ran forward to meet Frost. ‘We could be on to something here, Jack.’ He opened the door a crack so the inspector could see inside. A fat, balding man with shifty eyes in his mid-forties was slouched in a chair. He wore dark blue overalls over a beer belly.

‘He’s guilty,’ said Frost. ‘Never mind a trial, just hang him.’

Carefully closing the door, Hanlon continued. ‘Bernard Hickman, forty-four years old, married, no children. The day Paula went missing, Hickman was supposed to be working in the cemetery, installing that new stand-pipe by the side of the crypt. His time sheet says he started work at eight, but the vicar is positive he didn’t arrive until gone nine.’ He opened a folder to show Frost the time sheet.

‘Where does he live?’

‘63 Vicarage Terrace, Denton.’

Frost chewed this over. The area where Paula went missing was north of Denton Woods. Vicarage Terrace was some four or five miles to the south. ‘Has he got a motor?’

‘Yes. It’s in the car-park.’

Then Hickman could have driven and forced the girl into his car, raped and killed her and got to the cemetery by nine. But what was he doing north of the woods in the first place? The cemetery was in the opposite direction.

‘It wasn’t a chance encounter,’ suggested Hanlon. ‘It was planned. He’d seen the girl before and lusted after her. He knew where she’d be and waited for her.’

‘Lusted after her?’ said Frost, doubtfully. ‘Why her? The poor cow was a pudding.’

‘There’s no accounting for taste, Jack. Some men lust after the ugliest of women.’

Frost looked reproachful. ‘That’s no way to talk of the Divisional Commander’s wife.’ Hanlon froze in mid- laugh, alerting the inspector to danger.

‘Inspector!’ nd there was Mullett charging down the corridor. Please don’t let him have heard, pleaded Frost as he slid into his guileless smile. ‘Sir?’

‘Where’s your report for me on the Paula Bartlett case? I’ve got a press conference at two.’

‘Just about to interview a suspect now,’ said Frost, jerking his head at the interview room.

Mullett’s eyes gleamed. ‘A suspect? Already? Marvellous. That’s just marvellous. If we can tie this up in time for the press conference…‘ He beamed at the two men, then his expression hardened as Hanlon took out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. ‘I hope you’re not going down with this flu thing, Hanlon?’ he snapped accusingly. ‘We’re enough men short as it is.’ He turned on his heel and stamped off down the corridor.

‘You can’t even blow your blinking nose, now,’ moaned Hanlon.

‘Don’t breath your filthy germs over me,’ said Frost. ‘Let’s question our suspect.’

Hickman shifted his position in the hard, uncomfortable chair and stared unblinkingly at the nervous young uniformed constable, forcing him to look away. He smirked to himself, proud of his small triumph. ‘I could smash you with one hand,’ he leered.

‘Not if we handcuffed you first and gave him a truncheon,’ said a voice.

The tubby bloke had returned with a grotty-looking man in a shiny suit.

‘Detective Inspector Frost,’ announced the man, dropping into the chair opposite Hickman. ‘Like to ask you a few questions.’

‘I’d like to ask you one,’ said Hickman. ‘Why am I here? Or is it a state secret?’

‘You’re here,’ Frost told him, ‘because we’re investigating a very serious matter. I hope we can eliminate you from our enquiries, but if we can’t, you’re in dead trouble. So just answer my questions.’

‘Then ask,’ said Hickman. ‘Let’s get this bloody farce over.’

‘September 14th. I want to know everything you did. From when you got up, to when you went to bed.’

‘That’s over two months ago. How the hell can I remember that?’

‘Perhaps this will jog your memory,’ said Frost, pushing over a sheet of paper.

Hickman took the time sheet and stared at it in disbelief. ‘So this is what it’s all about? I fiddle an hour on my time sheet and the bastards call in the flaming Flying Squad! They can stuff their job. ..’

‘Your firm didn’t call us in,’ Frost told him, ‘and it’s a dam sight more serious than fiddling your time sheet.? Tell me what you did on that day.’

‘I was working at All Saints Cemetery, fitting a new stand-pipe. They were extending the burial section so the old piping had to be rerouted. On that day – it was a Thursday, I think – I’m ready to drive to work when the flaming car dies on me. I fiddle about with it – no joy. So I have to call in a mobile mechanic and walk to work. I got there an hour late, but it wasn’t my fault so why should I let the firm have the benefit?’

‘We’ll want the name and address of the mechanic.’ said Hanlon.

‘I’ve got it at home. Anyway, I worked until half-past twelve, nipped across to the pub for lunch, came back for more work and finished at six.’

‘So you were at the cemetery from nine until six,’ checked Frost. ‘Then what?’

‘In the pub for a few more drinks, home for dinner, then back to the pub until closing time. Supper at eleven, then bed, a bit of the other, and sleep.’

‘How can you be so sure about the bit of the other?’ asked Frost with genuine interest.

‘I’m a creature of habit. Every night without fail whether she wants it or not.’

Frost lit a cigarette and dribbled smoke from his nose. ‘How old is your wife?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘Ever fancied a younger bit of stuff?’

‘Like bleeding hell, I have,’ giggled the man. ‘Trouble is, they never fancy me.’

‘Big chap like you,’ said Frost, ‘that shouldn’t be a problem. You could force them to do what you wanted – whether they wanted to or not.’

Hickman’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t think I’m getting your drift.’

From a green folder Frost removed a colour photograph and slid it across the table. ‘Do you know her?’

Hickman stared down at the serious, unsmiling face of Paula Bartlett. ‘Never seen her before…‘ Then he recognized her. ‘Bloody hell! It’s that kid!’ Then he realized the implication and sprang up, sending the chair flying. ‘Just what the flaming hell are you accusing me of?’

A nervous PC Collier moved forward to restrain the man and was relieved when Frost waved him back. Frost snatched up the photograph and thrust it under Hickman’s nose. He spoke slowly and calmly. ‘I’ve just come from her post-mortem. I haven’t yet plucked up the courage to tell her parents what’s been done to her. So, no matter how loudly you scream and shout and bluster, you’re going to answer my bloody questions. Now sit down!’

His face sullen, Hickman pushed the photograph away and lowered himself into the chair.

‘That’s better,’ said Frost, beaming disarmingly. ‘Now tell us why we found fingerprints all over the inside of the crypt which match the fingerprints on your time sheet.’ No fingerprints had been found inside the crypt, but Hickman wasn’t to know.

‘The crypt? Is that where you found her?’ He leant back in his chair and smirked. ‘If I wanted to rape someone, I’d pick somewhere more romantic than a flaming coffin store.’

Frost’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who said she’d been raped?’

‘I’m not stupid. What have you been asking me questions about sex for if she hadn’t been bloody raped?’

‘And what were you doing in the crypt in the first place?’

‘About eleven o’clock we had this dirty great bleeding thunderstorm. Didn’t last long but it was bucketing down. There was no cover and I was getting drenched. I thought the crypt was a tool shed or something, so I forced out the screws with a claw hammer and stood inside the door. When the rain stopped, I hammered the screws back in and went on with my work.’

‘What do you think, Jack?’ asked Hanlon while Hickman’s statement was being typed, ready for his signature.

‘I’ve got an awful feeling the sod’s innocent. We’ll have to let him go for now, but check every bit of his story out. I want confirmation that his car was up the spout that day, witnesses who saw him working in the bone yard that day, and I want you to find out if it was peeing down with rain like he said.’

‘He knew about the rape,’ said Hanlon.

‘He thought she was raped in the crypt,’ said Frost, ‘but she was already dead and bagged when she was dumped there. He’s our only suspect, but I don’t think he did it – so let’s go and wipe the smile off our Divisional Commander’s face.’

Mullett pulled his overflowing in-tray towards him and flicked through the contents. No sign of the promised amended car expenses from Frost but a complicated-looking batch of multi-coloured forms from County requesting a detailed inventory of the station. He shook his head in dismay. County did pick the worst possible time for their returns. A tap at the door. He straightened his back, smoothed his hair and called, ‘Enter.’

A disgruntled-looking Sergeant Wells came in with Mullett’s cup of tea which he banged down rather heavily on the desk. ‘Could I have a word with you, sir?’

Mullett’s face fell. No more moans from the sergeant, he hoped. Everyone was overworked, but the solution was to buckle down and do that little bit extra, not keep whining about it all the time. He forced a creaky smile and pointed to the chair for Wells to sit.

The phone rang. Mullett glared at it, then frowned at Wells. He had specifically asked that all his calls be held. Wasn’t there anyone capable of obeying a simple order? ‘Mullett,’ he snapped, but immediately his expression changed, his back went straighter than straight and his free hand was adjusting his tie. The caller was the Chief Constable. ‘How are we coping, sir? Well – you’ve seen our manning figures… Yes, I appreciate Shelwood Division are in the same position as us… I see, sir… Well, if Shelwood can cope, then so can we…’

Wells gave a silent groan. The Chief Constable was playing Denton off against neighbouring Shelwood, knowing both Divisional Commanders were at daggers drawn in rivalry, each striving to be next in line for promotion.

Mullett swarmed on. ‘Yes, sir, this epidemic has hit us pretty badly too, but thanks to…’ and he gave a modest cough, ‘good leadership, marvellous team work and…’ He raised his voice and shot a significant glance across to Sergeant Wells. ‘… uncomplaining co-operation from the full team, we’re coping extremely well.’ He swivelled his chair around and lowered his voice. ‘Sorry if I sound a mite ragged, sir, but I’ve been up half the night. You’ve heard we’ve found Paula Bartlett’s body?’

‘Stinking to high heaven and raped.’

Mullett cringed. He hadn’t heard Frost come in. He spun his chair round and signalled frantically to the inspector to be silent. ‘Apparently the poor child was sexually assaulted, sir, although I don’t have the details at the moment.’ He glared to let Frost know whose fault this was. ‘However, we do have a suspect…’

‘No, we don’t,’ called Frost. ‘I’ve let him go.’ Mullett clamped his hand over the mouthpiece and his eyes spat fire. ‘Keep quiet,’ he hissed. Back to the phone. ‘Events seem to be moving faster than I thought, sir. I’ll come back to you.’ He smiled sycophantically until the receiver was safely back on its rest, then the smile snapped off. ‘You will not make comments when I am on the phone,’ he snarled at Frost.

‘Sorry, Super. I didn’t want you to make a prat of yourself with the Chief Constable.’

The inspector didn’t sound sorry and Mullett was irked to note the lighted cigarette wiggling in the man’s mouth. He expected people to ask permission before smoking in his office. In Frost’s case that permission would have been refused, but that wasn’t the point. However, he would see what Wells wanted first.

‘Sergeant Johnson is still away. I’m doing double shifts and I’m on again tonight, sir. It’s getting a bit much.’

Mullett tried to look sympathetic. ‘Don’t talk to me about double shifts, Sergeant. It goes without saying that no-one works harder than I do…’ He paused. He thought he heard a snort of derision from Frost. But the innocent look on the man’s face suggested he was wrong. ‘If Shelwood Division can cope without extra help, then so can we.’ He raised a hand to silence the sergeant’s protest. ‘A little extra uncomplaining effort and we’ll come out with flying colours. If you’ve got any problems, any worries, come straight to me. My door is always open.’ He beamed at the sergeant. ‘Perhaps you’d close it as you leave.’

Wells opened his mouth to reply, but thought better of it and accepted his dismissal. He resisted the temptation to slam the door behind him.

Without waiting to be asked, Frost slid into the vacated chair and yawned loudly, not bothering to cover his mouth. What a pig the man is, thought Mullett. ‘How are you coping?’ he asked.

‘We’re not coping,’ said Frost. ‘We’re struggling and sinking bloody fast.’

‘Shelwood…‘ began Mullett.

‘Sod Shelwood Division,’ chopped in Frost. ‘Shelwood haven’t got three major murder enquiries on the go.’

Mullett breathed on the lenses of his glasses and polished them carefully. With his glasses off, the blurred image of Frost didn’t look quite so scruffy. But when he replaced them, there was the man, creased, crumpled and slovenly in sharp focus. ‘The reason we are not coping, Inspector, is because of sloppiness and inefficiency.’

‘You’re doing your best, sir,’ said Frost generously.

Mullett glared. ‘No-one can accuse me of inefficiency, Frost. I prepare the rotas, but no-one sticks to them. I never know who is on duty and who isn’t. We’ve got to organize ourselves… allocate the tasks, use our resources to the best advantage. I’ve prepared new duty rosters.’ He pushed a neatly typed list across the desk. ‘And they will be strictly adhered to. I will not tolerate any deviation… any excuses.’

Frost picked up the roster and studied it. Like most of Mullett’s edicts, it was beautifully laid out, but would be impossible to adhere to.

‘We’ll all have to work that little bit harder,’ cajoled the superintendent, ‘but it won’t be for long. Mr Allen will be off the sick list next week and you’ll hand the Paula Bartlett case back to him. Other men are coming off the sick list all the time.’ He flashed his ‘be reasonable’ smile. ‘It will only be for a few days.’

Right, you sod, thought Frost. We’ll play it your way. He yawned and heaved himself up. ‘I see from the roster I’m off duty, so I’ll slope off home and get some kip.’

‘Wait!’ Mullett waved him back to his chair. ‘I need an update on the cases you are working on.’ He listened distastefully as Frost spared him none of the gory details of the stabbing and the post-mortem. ‘One victim’s still alive – so it’s only two murders.’

‘She’s eighty-one,’ said Frost, ‘and her skull’s fractured. The hospital don’t reckon she’ll pull through. I’m anticipating on this one.’

Mullett clenched his fist angrily. ‘Catching this swine must be our number one priority, even to the exclusion of other cases.’ He pulled his notepad towards him. ‘I’m holding a press conference at two on the Paula Bartlett case. No joy with your plumber?’

‘Not unless we can pick holes in his story, and I don’t think we will.’

‘A pity,’ said Mullett pointedly, as if it was Frost’s fault. ‘Have you told the parents yet that she was raped? I don’t want them to find out from the media.’

Damn! thought Frost. He’d completely forgotten this aspect. ‘No, sir. I don’t want to sod up your nice new roster, so as I’m off duty I’ll leave that for you.’

The Parker pen doodled in the air and dotted an imaginary ‘i’. ‘I’d do it willingly, Inspector. But you’ve got their confidence. They don’t want a stranger breaking such bad news. I’ll leave that in your capable hands.’

Frost smiled his ‘you bastard!’ smile. ‘Of course, sir.’

Mullett studied his list. ‘Only one case demands urgent attention. This maniac with the knife. He’s got to be caught before he kills again. That’s the case we deploy our manpower on. The rest can go on the back burner until we’re back to full strength.’

‘But what about Paula Bartlett?’ protested Frost. ‘She’s been murdered and raped – do we stick her on the back burner?’

Mullett nodded emphatically. ‘She’s been dead for over two months. The trail’s gone cold. Waiting a week until Mr Allen returns is sensible and won’t make the slightest bit of difference.’ At Frost’s continued hesitation, he added, ‘It’s a question of priorities, Inspector. Face facts! We haven’t the manpower to handle more than one major investigation. By concentrating our resources, I’m looking forward to an early arrest.’

Frost pulled a cigarette stub from behind his ear and poked it in his mouth. ‘I’ll give it a whirl,’ he muttered doubtfully. He wasn’t happy at back-pedalling on the school kid. His every instinct screamed for him to go all out to find the bastard responsible. But Hornrim Harry was right for once. They didn’t have the resources for more than one big case and they weren’t going to get any help from County.

‘Good man!’ Mullett smoothed his moustache with his two forefingers. ‘But we must keep a high profile with the public. We mustn’t let them know we are marking time on the Bartlett case.’ His eyes gleamed and he snapped his fingers triumphantly. ‘I’ve got it! There’s a video somewhere that Mr Allen had made when the girl first went missing. I’m sure we could get the TV companies to run it again.’ The video showed a Paula Bartlett look-alike, wearing similar clothes and riding the identical bike along the route of Paula’s newspaper round. It was hoped it would jog someone’s memory, but it hadn’t been successful. As Paula did her round every day, same route, same time, there was much confusion in the minds of people who had come forward as to the actual day they had seen her. The usual reports of strange men in slow-moving dark cars, but none of the leads had led anywhere.

‘If it didn’t work when memories were fresh, I can’t see it working two months later,’ said Frost, ‘but I’ll arrange it if you like. I could do an appeal to the public.’

‘Leave it all to me,’ cut in Mullett hastily. ‘You’ve got far too much to do.’ There was no way he was going to let Frost appear on TV, slouching in front of the cameras in that terrible suit, retrieving half-smoked cigarettes from behind his ear. He beamed at Frost. ‘See the parents, then go and get some sleep. And remember, we concentrate only on vital things. Nothing else matters.’

Frost had almost reached the door when Mullett called him back, waving the complicated inventory return from his in-tray. ‘You might fit this in when you have an odd moment, Inspector.’

Frost’s gave the return a dubious stare. ‘It doesn’t look vital to me.’

Mullett’s smile didn’t waver. ‘Shouldn’t take you long, now that I’ve lightened your work load. County want it back this week.’

County can bleeding want, thought Frost morosely as he walked back to his office. He buried the inventory return in his in-tray, screwed up the new duty roster and hurled it at the waste bin, then kicked shut the door and sank wearily into his chair. In two minutes he was fast asleep.

RD Wingfield

Night Frost

Tuesday afternoon shift

Frost, cold and stiff from an uncomfortable sleep, staggered into the Murder Incident Room where Gilmore and Burton, seated at adjacent desks behind mounds of green folders, barely gave him a glance. They were transferring details from the folders on to roneoed forms which were then collected by WPC Jill Knight who fed them into the computer for collation.

A large-scale map of Denton, well-studded with coloured pins, had been fixed to the wall alongside the computer and Frost wandered over to take a look at it. The pins marked the scenes of all the recent senior citizen burglaries. On the far wall hung the map compiled by Inspector Allen showing the route of Paula Bartlett’s last paper round. A newly added black thumb tack pin-pointed the crypt where the body was found. A beefy little blonde WPC brought in another armful of green folders and dumped them on the desk.

‘You seem to have things well organized,’ said Frost.

‘Someone had to do it,’ grunted Gilmore who was in a sour mood. A little over three hours’ sleep and then treated to a dose of Liz whining and moaning at being left on her own so much and then, when he reported for duty, he had found Frost sprawled asleep in his office without having done a damn thing about getting the Murder Incident Room set up.

‘Thanks,’ acknowledged Frost. Organization was not his strongest point. ‘Well, the good news is that according to Mr Mullett’s new roster, we’re all off duty until tonight.

The bad news is, we’re far too busy to sod about with his rubbish.’ He wandered across to Burton and Gilmore, both occupied with their green folders. ‘What’s all this in aid of?’ He dropped a cigarette on each desk, then poured himself a mug of tea from Burton’s thermos.

Gilmore looked up from his folders. ‘I’m initiating a computer program. What it does…’

Frost’s hand shot up. If it was to do with computers, then he didn’t want to know. ‘Please don’t explain how it works, son, then I won’t have to pretend I understand what you’re talking about.’

But Gilmore explained anyway. ‘We’re feeding the computer with details from all the recent break-ins and burglaries and attacks involving senior citizens to see if we can build up some sort of pattern… why did the burglar pick on them, and so on.’

Frost peered over Jill Knight’s shoulder, watching the cursor fly across the monitor screen, leaving a complicated trail of facts and figures. ‘Any pattern emerging so far?’

‘A lot of the victims, seem to belong to senior citizens’ clubs,’ she told him.

‘Perhaps that’s the sort of club that senior citizens join,’ said Frost, unimpressed. He flicked through a file half-heartedly, then pushed it away and jabbed a finger at Burton. ‘You were going to check with the vicar about Mary Haynes.’

‘I left a report on your desk,’ protested Burton.

‘You know I don’t read reports. Tell me what it said.’

‘She’d been a member of the church senior citizens’club for nearly six years. No relatives as far as the vicar knows. She kept herself to herself, never invited anyone back to her place and didn’t have any close friends.’

‘That wouldn’t have been worth reading a report, for,’ commented Frost moodily.

‘There’s more,’ continued Burton. ‘She visited her husband’s grave at the cemetery on Sunday…’

Frost’s head shot up. The cemetery. That reminded him. ‘Get the car out – we’ve got to give her parents the good news that their daughter was raped.’

‘If I could finish,’ said Burton. ‘Her husband’s grave had been vandalized… swear words sprayed on with an aerosol. She had a row with the vicar about it. She was always having rows. I’ve started a list of people she quarrelled with, but it’s all trivial stuff.’

‘Follow it through anyway,’ said Frost. ‘Did anyone spot our famous blue van?’

‘No-one so far.’

A sudden thought. Something else he had forgotten. ‘Damn! We should have asked dry-cleaners to look out for bloodstained clothing.’

‘Already in hand,’ said Gilmore, smugly.

A messenger entered with a large envelope and a package for Frost. He ripped it open. The post-mortem reports from the pathologist, beautifully typed by his loyal secretary on expensive paper. Frost flipped open the first and skipped through it. It was for the suicide, the kid in the Mickey Mouse night-shirt, Susan Bicknell. Drysdale’s usual thorough job. He hadn’t missed the marks of the beating, but reported them without comment. His sole concern was the cause of death which was confirmed as barbiturate poisoning, probably self- inflicted. Signs of recent intercourse, but she was not pregnant.

He gave the file to Gilmore who studied it grimly. ‘She didn’t kill herself because she was up the spout, son.’

‘Then why did she?’

‘We’ll probably never know.’ Frost opened up the other folder. ‘I hope everyone’s had their lunch – because it’s stomach contents time.’ He quickly read the typed sheet. ‘Isn’t science wonderful? She’s been dead two months, yet they can tell us she died within half an hour of knocking back chicken and mushroom pie, chips and peas and – wait for it – a dollop of brown sauce.’

The plump blonde WPC pulled a face. ‘I had that for dinner yesterday.’

‘If you get raped and strangled, we’ll know there’s a connection.’ He studied the report again. ‘Paula must have had another meal. She’d never have eaten all that for breakfast.’

‘She was a growing girl,’ suggested Burton. ‘You’d be surprised what kids eat these days.’

‘She died within half an hour of eating,’ Frost reminded him. ‘The meal wasn’t fully digested. I saw it. I can show it to you if you don’t believe me.’ At Burton’s shuddering refusal, he continued. ‘If she had eaten it at home, she would have to be dead by half-past seven.’

‘We’ve got a witness who saw her at 8.15,’ said Burton.

‘Either the witness is lying, or mistaken, or Paula had another meal. A hot, cooked meal.’ He opened up the package. ‘I hope this isn’t the bloody stomach contents.’ They backed away as he plunged his hand inside but it was a polythene bag he pulled out. Inside were the shoes found on the body. He gave them to the blonde WPC and asked her to send them to Forensic. And that reminded him. ‘Bloody hell – I forgot to ask Forensic to send Drysdale the knife from last night’s stabbing.’

‘Already done,’ said Gilmore. What an inefficient lout the man was.

Frost nodded his thanks. Naked, but wearing shoes. Ate a hot meal. You couldn’t force a kid to eat. She must have gone willingly with her killer and that tended to rule the bald plumber out. But Mullett said they shouldn’t spend time on this case. Leave it for whizz-kid Allen. Sod Mullett. He’d do things his way. ‘Come on, the pair of you,’ he told Gilmore and Burton. ‘Let’s drive over the route she took for her paper round.’

There were a number of strange cars in the car park. Of course. Mullett’s press conference must be in full swing. Mullett would be telling them all about the suspected rape and he hadn’t broken the news to Paula’s parents yet. ‘We’ll call on them first,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it bloody over.’

Burton waited in the car and watched Gilmore and the inspector make the short dash through the rain to the Bartletts’ house. The girl’s father, who answered their knock, was stooped and grey-faced and seemed to have aged some ten years since the previous night. He showed them into the living-room where his wife sat staring into empty space. She forced a ghost-smile of greeting. Frost stood uneasily by the door, not knowing how to begin.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Mr Bartlett asked them.

‘We’d love one,’ Frost replied, hoping the mother would leave the room to make it. He wanted her out of the way while he broke the news of the sexual assault to her husband. But she sat, staring, unseeing, and didn’t move.

Her husband touched her shoulder. ‘Tea for you, love?’ She shook her head.

Frost left Gilmore to keep the woman silent company and followed the man into the kitchen. Bartlett filled an electric kettle from the tap. ‘She’s been like this ever since we heard.’

‘There’s something I must tell you,’ said Frost. He steeled himself to deliver the blow. The father steeled himself to receive it. ‘Your daughter was sexually assaulted before she died.’

The hand holding the kettle shook violently, splashing water all over the tiled floor. Gently, Frost took it from him and guided him towards a chair. Sobs, racked the father’s body.

His face sharing the man’s pain, Frost could only watch and wonder what the hell to say next. The sobbing brought Mrs Bartlett into the kitchen. She cradled her husband’s head in her arms and held him tight. ‘What is it, love?’ But head bowed, tears streaming, he couldn’t answer. She looked enquiringly at Frost who had to force the words out again.

‘I had to tell him that… that Paula was raped.’

Husband and wife clung together, clutching each other like young lovers, saying nothing, their closeness consoling each other. Ignored by them both, Frost fidgeted and wished he was miles away. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he told them, ‘your daughter was a virgin.’ Why the bloody hell did he say that? What possible consolation could it be that your daughter was a virgin before some bastard raped and choked the life out of her? He became aware that the father, his tears now of anger, was shouting at him.

‘Of course she was a virgin. She was only fifteen. A kid. She’d had no bloody life…’ And then he was sobbing again.

Hastily, Frost excused himself ‘I’ll be in the other room.’ In the living-room Gilmore, uncomfortable in a too-low chair, raised an eyebrow in query. ‘I sodded it up,’ Frost told him. ‘It’s the wailing bleeding wall out there.’ He flopped into a chair. No sign of an ashtray, but he had to have a smoke. He lit one up, offering the pack to Gilmore who declined.

Barely two puffs later the woman was back, her eyes red. She seemed surprised that they were still there. He pinched out the cigarette and stood up. ‘Two more things, Mrs Bartlett.’ She looked apprehensive. What further horrors could he inflict? ‘It’s just that we’re repeating the video made when Paula first went missing. It’ll be shown on the television news tonight.’

She nodded, relieved that it was nothing worse.

‘And – just for the record. Can you tell me what Paula ate on that last morning?’

‘Cornflakes and toast.’

‘You’re sure? She wouldn’t have cooked herself anything?’

‘Oh no. I was down here with her… cornflakes and toast. That’s all she ever had for breakfast.’ As they moved to the front door, she clutched the inspector’s arm. ‘When can we put her to rest?’

At first he didn’t understand what she meant, then realized she was asking about the funeral. ‘Not for a while, love,’ he said.

‘I’d like to see her,’ said Mrs Bartlett, her eyes blinking earnestly behind her glasses.

‘No, love,’ said Frost firmly.

‘Please…’ She gripped so tightly, it hurt.

He gently disentangled her fingers from his sleeve. ‘She wouldn’t want you to see her as she is now, Mrs Bartlett.’

‘I don’t care how she looks. She’s my daughter. She’s my daughter…!’

Her shouts followed them to the car. With the car door closed she stood in the doorway, still shouting, but they could only hear the rain thudding on the car roof. Then her husband appeared and led her back into the house.

‘That wasn’t an unqualified success, was it?’ sighed Frost, sticking the cigarette end back in his mouth. ‘She had cornflakes for breakfast, Burton. What do you deduce from that?’

‘That you were right, sir. She must have had another meal after she was abducted,’ replied the detective constable.

‘Precisely.’ He scratched the match down the car window. ‘You’re a fifteen-year-old virgin, Burton. You’ve been abducted and taken somewhere. Would you have an appetite for chicken pie, peas and chips?’

‘It depends how long I’d been without food. She might have been held for hours without having anything to eat.’

Frost thought this over and nodded. ‘Cooked food, so it’s got to be indoors. And if he’s keeping the girl hidden there for any length of time, he’s got to be alone in the house. Lastly, to get her from his car to the house, he must be pretty certain he won’t be seen. Which means the house has got to be remote.’ He blew the end of his cigarette and watched it glow. ‘The schoolmaster who usually gave her a lift. Is his house remote?’

Burton nodded. ‘It’s all on its own – miles from anywhere.’

‘Then we’ve got the bastard.’

What are you suggesting?’ asked Gilmore who was feeling left out of the discussion. This was typical Frost, plucking a suspect from thin air, then forcing the facts to fit.

‘I’m suggesting that bloody schoolmaster met her in his car and took her back to his house.’

‘The schoolmaster was at his wife’s funeral that day,’ Burton reminded him.

‘This was around eight in the morning. The funeral wouldn’t have been until ten at the earliest.’

‘But he didn’t have to go in the car and fetch her,’ said Burton. ‘She was due to call at his house with the paper anyway.’

‘He was impatient,’ said Frost, stubbornly. ‘Burning for a bit of the other and couldn’t wait.’

‘So impatient,’ scoffed Gilmore, ‘that he gives her chicken pie, peas and chips at eight o’clock in the morning before he has it away with her and then trots off to his wife’s funeral.’

Frost sank down in the car seat and expelled smoke. ‘All right, so that’s shot that theory up the arse. But I’d still like to have a word with this schoolmaster. Do you know where he lives, Burton?’

Burton nodded.

‘Then take us there. Follow the route the girl went. Point out the houses where she delivered. Show me where her bike was found.’

Burton backed out of Medway Road and cut through some side streets. Gilmore tried to orientate himself, but soon got lost. And then, after a few minutes, the area looked familiar and the car was splashing through Merchant Street. He looked up as the house flashed by, noting that the bedroom curtains were still drawn. Liz would be sleeping, making sure she would be fully refreshed, ready to renew her moaning when he finished his shift. God, what a cynic he was becoming. How he hated this lousy little town.

The car juddered over cobbles as it negotiated a steep hill, then cut through the market place, empty of shoppers in the heavy rain. The houses they passed became fewer and further between and soon they were skirting the woods.

‘She made her first deliveries here,’ said Burton as they crawled past a small, walled estate of some forty houses and maisonettes built by the New Town Development Corporation. ‘You don’t want to see the individual houses, do you?’

‘No,’ replied Frost, ‘just a general outline of the route.’

They left the estate and drove on to the Forest View area where old Victorian properties had been converted into flats, then they headed away from the wood, along bumpy lanes flanked by hedges, past little clusters of old cottages. Burton slowed down and stopped outside a green-roofed bungalow. ‘She made her last delivery there – the Daily Telegraph and a photographic magazine. The lady of the house saw Paula pedalling away down the lane about a quarter past eight. That was the last time she was seen alive.’

Frost stared at the bungalow, then signalled for Burton to drive on. The car sloshed in and out of puddles and turned into an even narrower lane where overgrown branches on each side slashed spitefully at the car as it squeezed through. Burton braked. ‘This is where we found her bike and the abandoned newspapers.’

They climbed out and stood looking down at a deep ditch running beneath an overhanging hedge. The ditch was brimful and covered with a thick layer of emerald green scum, through which the wheels of an upturned supermarket trolley protruded.

‘The bastard must have been waiting for her just about here,’ said Burton.

Frost nodded glumly. He had hoped that visiting the actual locale would give him some magic flash of inspiration. He stood in the pouring rain, looking down into the green slimy water, and decorated it with his discarded cigarette end.

Back in the car he asked Burton where the girl’s bike was. ‘Locked up in the shed at the station. The two newspapers she didn’t deliver are in the exhibits cupboard.’

‘Only two more houses,’ said Burton, as the car bumped into an extra deep puddle which sent a spray of dirty water all over the windscreen.

‘Mind what you’re doing,’ barked Gilmore, who hadn’t had a chance to put Burton in his place for some time.

Burton’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel, but he controlled his temper. He pointed up a small side lane which crawled up to a two-storeyed house standing on its own. ‘That’s called Brook Cottage. They would have had the Sun but she never made it.’

Brook Cottage looked a mite dilapidated. They could hear a dog barking as they passed.

The lane widened and passed through empty scrub land. After some minutes a red-bricked house lurched up in front of them. It was an old, solid-looking property and stood alone in extensive grounds. A shirt-sleeved man was working in the garden seemingly oblivious to the pouring rain. ‘She finished her round here,’ announced Burton as he switched off the engine. ‘The man in the garden is Edward Bell, Paula’s schoolteacher.’

Frost crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, then turned up the collar of his mac. ‘Let’s have a word with the bastard.’

The man, wrenching up weeds from the heavy soil, gave a cry of pain as the sharp thorns of a hidden bramble pierced his palm. He stared angrily at the bright red globules welling from the punctures. The damned briar was everywhere. As fast as you cleared it from one section it appeared somewhere else. Well, if it thought it was going to defeat him, it was making a damn mistake. He tore up a thick clump of grass and wrapped it round the briar as protection then pulled and tugged, swearing out loud as the bramble resisted. It took a great deal of effort but at last he tore it free of the rain-sodden earth and hurled it on to the growing pile of garden refuse. His hand was sticky with blood and rain and sweat. He sucked salt and mowed on to the next section, only dimly aware of the sound of slamming car doors and approaching footsteps.

‘Mr Bell?’

‘Eh?’ He straightened up and eased the pain in his back. There were two men, one dark-haired, young and neatly dressed, the other older, hair starting to thin, wearing a crumpled raincoat that had seen better days. The younger one held up a piece of plastic bearing a coloured photograph. ‘Police, Mr Bell.’

‘Is it about Paula?’ he asked. ‘Has she been found?’

‘Let’s talk inside,’ said the scruffy man.

The house was cold and unwelcoming. They passed through the kitchen, its sink and draining board stacked with dirty saucepans and crockery. On top of the fridge stood a half-bottle of lumpy milk. The room was a mess. It reminded Frost of home.

Muttering apologies for the untidiness, Bell opened one door, decided against it and took them into a musty-smelling lounge. Rain streamed down the patio window, blurring the view of the garden beyond. A miserable room. Frost would be glad to get out.

‘Not too cold for you, is it? I haven’t had the heating on. I suppose I should, but it seems pointless…’ Bell’s voice trailed off.

‘This is fine, sir,’ said Frost without conviction, winding his scarf tighter. He and Gilmore sat side by side on the beige Dralon settee, facing Bell who was squatting on a footstool, dripping rain on to the pink carpet.

Bell, who wore a rain-blackened checked shirt and baggy corduroy trousers, was in his late thirties. Thin and nervous-looking, his face was framed by unstyled light brown hair and a few tufts of a scraggy beard. A hint of dark rings around his eyes suggested he hadn’t been sleeping too well.

Unaware of Frost’s scrutiny, Bell unwrapped the blood stained handkerchief, studied his palm, then wrapped it again. Suddenly he remembered the reason for their calling.

‘Paula’s been found, you say? That’s splendid. How is she?’

Frost’s eyes flicked to Gilmore, who sat impassive. This was too naive. Surely Bell must have heard about the discovery of the girl’s body? ‘Don’t you read the papers, sir?’

‘Papers?’ He shook his head. ‘They don’t deliver papers here any more. The parents won’t let their children do it.’

‘Don’t you listen to the radio? Or talk to your colleagues?’

‘It’s half-term and I’ve been too busy in the garden these past few days to listen to the radio. So what has happened?’

‘Paula is dead, sir,’ said Frost bluntly, carefully watching Bell’s reaction. The man jerked back as if he had been hit, then his face crumpled.

‘Oh no. That poor child. Oh no!’ His grief and shock at the news seemed genuine.

Without taking his eyes from the teacher, Frost slowly lit a cigarette. ‘She was murdered, sir. Raped and murdered.’

Bell stood up. He took the soiled handkerchief from his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. Nervously, he paced the room. ‘She was only fifteen.’

‘Kids mature earlier these days,’ said Frost. ‘They have sex earlier, they get raped earlier, they get murdered earlier.’ He exhaled smoke and watched it disperse. ‘What sort of girl was she?’

The man dropped back on the footstool and thought for a moment. ‘Quiet. Didn’t mix much. An excellent scholar.’

‘Why did you start giving her lifts to school?’ asked Gilmore.

‘It was her parents’ request. Her newspaper round took her some five miles in the opposite direction. Sometimes the papers would be late which could make her late for school and they didn’t want her to miss any of her lessons. I would meet her at the top of the lane and give her a lift from there.’

‘What did you do about her bike?’ This from Frost.

‘It was one of those folding ones. I put it in the boot. She could then cycle home when school was over. This is all in your files

… I made a full statement to that other officer.’

‘What sort of things did you talk about when you drove her to school?’ asked Gilmore. ‘Did she mention boy friends, or crushes on any of the masters, or anything?’

Bell shifted his position to face the sergeant. ‘We hardly passed more than a few words. She was a quiet girl, and that suited me. When I’m driving, I like to concentrate, not talk.’

‘Was she a teaser?’ asked Frost.

His pale cheeks showed two red spots. ‘How the hell should I know?’

‘In the car, sir, you and her, close. The old knees rubbing together… flashes of elasticated knicker leg and tender young thigh all juicy and throbbing?’

Bell’s lip curled contemptuously. ‘I find you offensive, Inspector.’

Through a haze of cigarette smoke Frost beamed at him. ‘You’re not alone in that, sir. But I found it offensive when I saw what that sod had done to that kid, so just answer my questions.’

Bell stood up and towered angrily over the inspector. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting I am involved in this poor child’s death?’

‘Let’s just say you’re quite high on my list of suspects.’ In fact, thought Frost, you’re my one and only bloody suspect, so if it isn’t you, I’m nowhere. ‘Can you tell me your movements for the morning she went missing?’ His raised hand halted Bell in mid-protest. ‘I know you’ve told it all to the other bloke, but I’d like to hear it first-hand.’

‘It was the morning of my wife’s funeral. The hearse arrived from the undertakers at 9.30. The interment was at ten. I got back home a few minutes before noon.’

‘So, before the funeral, you were alone in the house until