Frost was woken up in the middle of the night by the insistent ringing of his mobile phone. He staggered out of bed and clicked on the light. Where the hell was the phone? The damn thing was in the room somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where he had left it. He eventually located it under the bed.
‘Frost.’ It had better not be a flaming wrong number.
‘Fortress Building Society, Inspector. Some one is withdrawing five hundred pounds from the cashpoint in Market Square right now. If you hurry, you can get him.’
‘Thanks,’ said Frost. ‘For a minute I thought it was bad news.’ He clicked off the phone and put it where he would forget it again.
Shit! Beazley would chew his privates off in the morning. He shrugged. There was sod all he could do about it, he’d just have to cross that bridge when he came to it. He lit up a cigarette and smoked for a while before crawling back into bed. He switched off the light, but was unable to sleep. His mind kept whirring round and round, reminding him of all the vital things he had to do and didn’t have time for. Why wasn’t flaming Skinner taking some of the load off his back?
He was still awake when the milkman rattled by at six and had just drifted off to sleep when the alarm went off at half past seven. It was still pitch dark outside.
Frost swept through the lobby on his way to the Briefing Room, yelling a greeting to Station Sergeant Johnny Johnson. ‘How’s it going, Johnny?’
Johnson slammed the incident book shut. ‘Our paedophile prisoners are complaining about the standard of their accommodation. They want bail.’
‘They want castrating,’ said Frost. ‘I thought Skinner was dealing with them.’
‘He’s had to go back to his old division.’
‘I wish he’d bloody stay there. I think we’d better oppose bail for their own safety. Let’s try and get them put on remand – oh, and when that nice Mr Beazley phones, you don’t know where I am.’
He pushed through the swing doors and into the Briefing Room, where he gratefully accepted a mug of steaming hot tea from Collier. He stirred it with a pencil and wiped the sleep out of his eyes, then turned his attention to the search team.
‘As you probably know, we’ve found the boy’s bike. It was hidden in some shrubbery outside that big empty office block on Denton Road. I’m pretty certain that’s where the boy was killed and that’s probably where the girl was killed.’
He paused as Johnny Johnson came in and handed him a memo from Forensic. He scanned it, then waved it aloft. ‘Forensic have confirmed it. The boy was killed there – the grit matches. There’s a metal trellis running up the side of the window by the balconies. I reckon something was going on inside that the boy wanted to see, so he climbs up the trellis, gets a grip on the balcony rail and is hanging there, ready to haul himself over, when our friendly neighbourhood murderer hears him and smashes his knuckles with a stick, making the kid lose his grip and fall. The fall didn’t kill him, so while he’s lying there, moaning with pain, the bastard comes down and bashes the kid’s skull in.’
‘Why?’ asked Jordan.
‘Because the boy had seen something he should not have seen. He could have seen the girl being killed. There’s no proof of that at the moment, but I’m bloody certain Debbie Clark was killed there.’
‘So why didn’t the killer chuck the boy’s bike in the river along with the girl’s?’
‘Probably because he couldn’t find it,’ answered Frost. ‘It’s hard to spot in daylight – at night it would have been impossible. It was too well hidden. I’m banking on this sequence of events, but if anyone can come up with anything better, let me know. I’m not too proud to pinch it as my own.’ He waved his cigarettes around, then lit up.
‘I reckon Debbie Clark was going to meet someone and she was a bit worried about it – bloody rightly so, as it turned out – so she asked her boyfriend to follow and keep an eye on her. Whoever she meets takes her into the office block. Thomas hides outside, then sees lights come on at one of the floors, so he climbs up the trellis to get a closer look, and gets his head smashed in for his troubles. The first thing we’re going to do is find out which floor he fell from. I want the patio on all four sides searched for traces of blood. The poor sod would have bled like mad, both when he hit the ground and when his brains were knocked out. When we find where he fell, we can then check the trellis for signs of him climbing – the greenery should be crushed or disturbed, which should lead us to the actual balcony he was hanging on to when he was helped down. We might find blood and prints on the rail. When we know the floor, we can search inside to see if there is any trace of the girl having been there. It’s going to be a cold, back breaking task and if you find anything, I’ll take the credit, which Skinner will then take for him self. I also want the surrounding area searched to see if we can find the brain-splattered blunt instrument that finished off the boy.’ He pinched out his cigarette and dropped it in his pocket. ‘All right. Let’s get going.’
It was PC Collier who found it. ‘Inspector!’
Frost came running over. Not only was the gravel stained and. flecked with blood, there were marks where the boy’s body had been dragged before being lifted. Frost shouted for the others to stop the search. ‘We’ve found it!’
They gathered round him as he moved over to the trellis. ‘This is where he climbed up – look.’ He pointed. ‘You can see broken stems where he trod on them.’ His eyes followed the ivy upwards. ‘I reckon he made it to the fourth floor – the plants seem undamaged above that point.’ He pointed to the blood marks. ‘Get them covered up and radio Forensic. Now let’s take a look inside.’
They clattered up the stairs to the fourth floor, a vast echoing barn of empty space stretching the entire width of the building. It was pitch dark – all the blinds had been closed. Frost jabbed a finger at Jordan. ‘Get on to that caretaker and ask him if the blinds should be shut in an empty building.’ He fumbled for the switches and clicked on the lights. ‘Now open the bloody things.’ He waited while the blinds were opened and daylight streamed into the barren area. Frost opened the door to the balcony and checked to confirm there were no more broken branches above this level. This had to be it. ‘Get Norton up here to check for prints and blood.’
While Norton went to work, Frost struck a match on the NO SMOKING sign and dragged at a cigarette. He moved to the balcony to watch, then looked out over the distant houses to the outskirts of Denton. What a dump the place looked. But dump or not, he wasn’t going to let the bastards chuck him out. But how was he going to stop them? Why the hell did he start fiddling his expenses? it wasn’t as if he needed the money. His thoughts were cut short. Morgan was calling him.
‘Guv!’ The DC had found something and was holding it aloft triumphantly.
‘Show me,’ said Frost, holding out his hand. It was a spent match. ‘I just used that to light my fag, you prat. Now make yourself useful for a change. Go downstairs and wait outside. I want to know if anyone would have been able to hear the poor cow when she screamed her bleeding head off, begging the bastard to stop.’ He ordered the blinds to be shut again, as they would probably have deadened the sound on the night.
Minutes later, Morgan phoned to say he was positioned outside. Frost yelled, ‘Mullett is a sod!’ at the top of his voice. The sound echoed around the empty floor. He phoned Morgan. ‘Well? Did you hear that?’
‘No, Guv – and I was listening.’
‘Without me telling you to,’ said Frost. ‘Get back up here.’
As he thought – from the double-glazed fourth floor, the poor girl could have screamed and screamed until the whole floor echoed to her pleas, and no one outside would have heard her, even if anyone was about in this remote area.
Norton reported marks on the rail, but no distinguishing prints. ‘If he was gripping the rail, Inspector, and someone then cracked his knuckles, he would have released his grip, his hand would have slid open and smeared whatever prints were there.’
‘No matter,’ shrugged Frost. ‘We know he was here, prints or not.’
‘There’s specks of blood. I’ll get Forensic to match it.’
‘If you want,’ said Frost. ‘We know whose blood it will be.’
Jordan reported back. ‘The caretaker said the blinds are never shut, Inspector.’
‘Then the killer shut these,’ said Frost. ‘That clinches it. The boy would have seen the lights come on and then the blinds close – that’s why he shinned up here.’
The searchers, now at the far end of the floor, had found nothing, except for a few bits of ancient rubbish.
Frost dug his hands in his pockets. ‘She was here. The poor little cow was stripped, beaten and raped. She screamed her bleeding head off and no one heard. All right, let’s retrace our footsteps. Let’s assume she came in by the main entrance…’
‘She couldn’t do that, Inspector,’ Collier pointed out. ‘The time lock. She wouldn’t be able to get in after four and she left home at half seven.’
‘Good point,’ said Frost. ‘Bloody good point. You’ve shot my theory right up the fundamental orifice, but…’ He stopped. ‘There must be some way of overriding the time switch. Supposing some silly sod got themselves locked inside the building and wanted to get out? Phone the caretaker and ask him. The rest of you, downstairs.’
As they clattered down the stairs, Frost yelled after them, ‘Keep your grubby paws off the hand rail. If he had a spark of bleeding decency, our killer would have left prints.’
The lobby by the main entrance where Frost had been the previous night was the only part of the building that was fitted out. Its floor was covered with heavy-duty green carpeting and it was equipped with visitors’ chairs. Frost nodded at the two ivory phones on the reception desk. ‘Check them.’
‘Wiped clean,’ reported Norton. ‘But the phones are dead, so they could have been cleaned months or more ago.’
‘Right, now check the lift-summoning button and the button inside for the fourth floor.’
Norton checked and shook his head. ‘Blurred prints all on top of each other. I reckon the caretaker uses it every day.’
‘You’re bleeding useless,’ said Frost. ‘Check the handrail to the fourth floor.’
Collier hurried down the stairs. ‘The caretaker says you can set and un-set the time switch from the lobby. The switch box is under the reception desk.’
Frost bent and looked. There it was. A white switch box with buttons setting ‘on’ and ‘off’ times and days of the week. A green button was marked ‘Emergency Override’.
Frost called Norton over. ‘See if you can get any prints off that. The rest of you, search this place from top to bottom. See if you can find some trace – anything – that the girl was here or that something dodgy was going on, or can find the weapon that knocked the boy’s brains out. I know she was bloody well here, but I can’t bloody prove it… Apart from that, I’ve got this case tied up.’ He shook his head. ‘Whoever killed her knew this place. He knew how to get in – how to work the time lock. He knew he could do what he liked with her and she wouldn’t be heard. But why did she come? It must have been someone she trusted… or thought she could trust. Her father? That bastard – he’s involved in this somehow. We know he had it in for the boyfriend.’
‘Perhaps Debbie saw her dad kill Thomas Harris and had to be silenced, Guv?’ offered Morgan.
Frost rubbed his scar. The cold in the unheated building was making it ache., ‘She wasn’t just killed, Taff, she was beaten and raped.’ Would a father kill his own daughter? The sort of bastard who could hand photographs of his young daughter in the nude to a gang of paedophiles would certainly be capable of it, and if he lusted after her, he might be capable of rape, but the beating? He hadn’t faced Clark with the photograph yet. Something else on the long list of vital things he wasn’t doing.
His mobile phone rang.
It was Bill Wells from the station.
‘Jack, you’ve got to get this sod Beazley off my back. He’s doing his nut. He wants you and he’s blaming me for not getting you to contact him. He’s taken my name, address and number and is going to report me to the Home Secretary; the Queen, the Prime Minister, Carol Vorderman, the bloody lot. He’s not going to wait much longer.’
Frost groaned. Yet another addition to the long list of vital jobs he just didn’t have time for.
‘As soon as I can, Bill, I promise you. As soon as I can.’ That was a bleeding lie for a start. He’d put it off as long as he could. He switched the phone off and dropped it back in his mac pocket, then yelled for PC Collier.
‘Leave what you are doing, son, and come with me. We’re going back to the nick. There was another withdrawal from the cashpoint last night. Pick up the CCTV footage from Fortress and get more CCTV videos of cars in the vicinity at the time. A common factor must show itself up.’
Frost waltzed through the doors of the station. ‘Honey, I’m home,’ he called to Bill Wells, who had now taken over from Johnny Johnson.
‘Your dinner’s in the oven and there’s a gentleman here to see you,’ said Wells, nodding to a man sitting on the bench opposite his desk.
Frost groaned. It was Lewis. ‘I’m rather busy, Mr Lewis,’ he began as the man rose to meet him.
‘I want to be arrested,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ve killed my wife.’
‘We’ve been through all this, Mr Lewis,’ began Frost, edging for the door.
‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Frost. ‘Just absent minded. As soon as you remember where you put the pieces, come and see me.’ He put his hand on Lewis’s arm and gently led him to the doors. ‘You go home now, Mr Lewis.’
‘She’s dead,’ said Lewis softly. ‘I killed her.’
‘I know,’ nodded Frost. ‘And you can’t prove it. It’s a sod, isn’t it?’ He propelled the man through the doors and firmly pushed them shut behind him. ‘He’s getting to be a bleeding nuisance,’ he told Bill Wells.
‘He might be telling the truth, Jack.’
‘She’s in London, drawing money out of the bank on her cash card. Bit difficult to do that when you’re cut up in little pieces.’
‘Someone’s been drawing cash. It could be Lewis.’
‘It could be Elvis bleeding Presley, but it isn’t,’ snapped Frost. ‘It’s her.’ He said it as if he was convinced. Why were bleeding doubts still gnawing away?
'Have you seen Beazley yet?’ asked Wells. ‘I get palpitations each time the phone rings.’
The phone rang. Wells stepped back and looked at it apprehensively.
‘You’d better answer it,’ said Frost. ‘It might be Tom Champagne.’
It was Beazley.
‘He’s on his way to you now, Mr Beazley,’ croaked Wells. He moved the phone away from his ear as a stream of invective poured out. The tirade stopped. ‘On his way now, Mr Beazley, I promise you.’ He hung up quickly and looked appealingly at Frost. ‘Please, Jack.’
‘I want to have a word with Clark,’ said Frost. All right – it was a delaying tactic. But he did have to talk to him.
‘Why can’t I have bail?’ demanded Clark.
‘Where would you go?’ asked Frost. ‘Your wife won’t have you back with her.’
‘The house is in my name,’ said Clark. ‘She’ll do what she is damn well told.’
‘You don’t like people going against your wishes, do you?’ said Frost.
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’
‘You told your daughter she wasn’t to go out with Thomas Harris. She went against your wishes. Now she is dead and the boy is dead.’
Clark stared at Frost, eyes wide, mouth open. ‘Are you suggesting I killed… killed my own daughter? I’m not saying another word unless my solicitor is present.’
Staring back at Clark, Frost took the childhood photograph of Debbie from his pocket and thrust it in Clark’s face. ‘Is this your daughter, Mr Clark?’
‘You know damn well it is. Where the hell did you get it from?’
‘It was on the computer of your paedophile chums. Did you share it around so they could all dribble over it?’
The colour drained from Clark’s face. He took the photograph and gaped at it in disbelief. ‘Inspector, you’ve got to believe me.. . I never… I…’ He shook his head. ‘Wait… I did send it to one of our group. This was long before I knew of their… our special tastes. I was proud of her. I was just showing her off. This was years ago… I never dreamt…’
I don’t believe you, you sod, thought Frost. I don’t flaming well believe you. He took the photograph back. ‘On the evening Debbie went missing, you told me you stayed in. Your wife tells me this is not true. You left the house shortly after Debbie did and didn’t return until almost midnight.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Clark. ‘I lied. I was with some of our group.’
‘You mean the paedophiles?’
Clark nodded. ‘Some new photographs had been downloaded. We were to collect them. I couldn’t tell you. They will vouch for me. I promise you, they will vouch for me.’
Yes, thought Frost. All those lying bastards would stick together. He yelled for Bill Wells to let him out. ‘I’ll speak to them, Mr Clark. Let’s see if they can lie as well as you can.’
‘Get them to confirm it later, Jack,’ pleaded Wells. ‘Beazley’s going to be back on that phone any second.’ The phone rang. ‘I’ll bring them in now, sir,’ said Wells, hanging up and scooping up some papers. ‘Mullett wants the overtime returns,’ he said before dashing off.
While Frost waited, he glanced at the pages Wells had been working on. It was a list of keyholders for various properties to be updated. He was about to push it away when a name caught his eye. He snatched up the page and studied it closer. ‘Bloody hell!’ He waved the page at Wells when the sergeant came back.
‘This keyholder. It’s our flaming butcher. The one who reckons he turned his wife into mincemeat.’
Wells looked at the page and nodded. ‘That’s right. Why?’
‘What is he the keyholder of?’
‘His butcher’s shop.’
But he was kicked out of there nearly a year ago.’
‘He’s still the keyholder. The landlord couldn’t get anyone else and he just stayed on by default. Why?’
‘Why didn’t you bloody tell me this before? If I wanted to cut up my wife and dump her remains, what better place than an empty butcher’s shop?’
Wells twitched his shoulders. ‘Never gave it a thought, Jack. But you yourself said he was fantasising.’
‘Because more bits of body than the odd foot or ankle would have turned up otherwise. He’s dumped her in that bloody shop, Bill, I just know it. Do you have a spare set of keys here?’
Wells unlocked a drawer and pulled out a box full of labelled keys. ‘Here you are.’ Frost snatched the keys and made for the door.
‘Where are you going, Jack?’
‘To take a bloody look.’
‘But Mr Beazley…’
‘He can bloody wait.’
As the door slammed behind him, the phone rang and rang…
As he drove to Lewis’s old butcher’s shop, his mind began whirring yet again as he went through all the things he had to do. Jan O’Brien, the other missing teenager: she was a pupil at the same school as Debbie Clark. Was it just a coincidence? Probably. It was the obvious school for Denton girls of her age to attend.
Had Jan run away from home, as she had done so many times before? Was she shacked up somewhere with a new boyfriend? Possibly, but that didn’t explain her mobile phone found near where the drunk heard a girl screaming. No. She was in trouble somewhere, serious trouble, but they had no idea where the hell she was. She could be still in Denton, or miles away, or – and he shuddered at the thought – she could be dead. Could it be the same killer who murdered Debbie and Thomas? Another body to be slashed and sliced open on the autopsy slab?
But this was all speculation. He’d have to look in on her parents to see if there had been any contact. It was a forlorn hope, but people didn’t always bother to tell the police when a missing person suddenly returned.
And God, he still had to tell Thomas Harris’s parents that their son’s bike had been found, before they read about it in the press. It was definitely the boy’s, but he’d need a formal identification. But more importantly, he had to see Debbie’s mother to find out if she knew of any reason why her daughter would go to that deserted office block. And then there was the dreaded visit to bloody Beazley.
A policeman’s lot was not a flaming happy one. Why the bloody hell wasn’t Skinner down here to help?
The butcher’s! In chewing over all the other things he had to do, he had almost forgotten the flaming butcher’s, his main reason for coming out in the first place. Where the hell was he? He had been driving on autopilot. An angry tooting of a horn snatched him away from his self-pitying thoughts and back to his driving. Shit! He had nearly driven straight through a red light and had narrowly missed crashing into a petrol tanker whose driver was mouthing obscenities at him. He pretended not to notice.
He jerked his head from left to right, trying to find a landmark, and realised he was near Thomas’s parents’ house – so that would be his first port of call.
The boy’s parents were still numb from grief and shock. They sat side by side on a settee in the lounge, holding hands, staring into space. They seemed barely aware of Frost’s presence and he had to repeat each question several times before he got an answer. No, they knew of no reason why their son would have gone to the office block. Yes, Mr Harris would come down to the station to identify the bike. There were long moments of silence. Eventually, Frost mumbled his goodbyes and let himself out.
Then he headed to Jan O’Brien’s house. He didn’t have to ask if they had heard from the girl. As soon as his car pulled up outside, the mother came running out to ask if there was any news. ‘Not yet,’ said Frost, ‘but we’re pulling out all the stops trying to find her.’ That was a bloody lie. They’d looked everywhere while searching for the other two kids and that was it. Details had been circulated to all divisions with no results. The trail had gone cold and congealed. There was little more that could be done, especially with Denton’s limited resources.
‘She’s dead,’ sobbed Mrs O’Brien. ‘Like that poor Debbie Clark. She’s dead. I know it.’
‘We’ll find her,’ soothed Frost, trying to sound convincing. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll find her.’ Another bloody lie, but what the hell? He couldn’t tell her what he really thought.
Back in the car. Where next? Debbie Clark’s mother. Gawd, he was dreading this. His mobile rang: it was Bill Wells.
‘Jack, Beazley’s going ballistic.’
‘Soon, Bill. I’ve got Debbie’s mother to see, then I’m going to check Lewis’s old shop for pussy’s pieces, then I’ll see Beazley.’
‘The mother? You told me you were going straight to the butcher’s and that was your only call.’
‘I lied, Bill. Get off my back. I’m having a sod of a morning.’ He terminated the call and switched the phone off.
Outside the Clarks’ house, Frost sat in the car and smoked. It was his usual delaying tactic and this was something he definitely wasn’t looking forward to. Come to think of it, there was very little to look forward to these days. If Skinner got his way, which looked inevitable, Frost would be out of Denton in a matter of weeks. He’d have to see about selling his house and finding some where to live in Lexton. Lexton! A dump that made Denton look like Palm Springs. Bastard, bleeding Skinner. His mind skimmed over various painful deaths he could plan for the man, but none was drastic enough.
He yanked the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it through the car window. Debbie’s mother might be able to come up with some thing – anything to reinforce the sod-all they already had.
She took ages answering the bell. He could hear shuffling footsteps, as if someone was dragging themselves along, and when she opened the door he was shocked at her appearance. Mrs Clark had aged ten years since he last saw her: grey-streaked, uncombed hair sprawled over her shoulders, her eyes were unfocused, a cigarette dangled from her lips and there was the reek of whisky on her breath. She squinted red-rimmed, tear-stained eyes at him, her face screwed up as she tried to remember who he was.
‘Frost,’ he said. ‘Inspector Frost. How are you?’ Stupid question. He could see how the poor cow was.
‘How am I? On top of the effing world,’ she snapped. ‘How the bloody hell do you think I am?’ She turned and shuffled back up the hall. Frost followed, closing the front door behind him.
The hall was littered with unopened letters that had dropped through the letter box. Frost scooped them up and took them into the lounge, where Mrs Clark had slumped in an armchair. He quickly shuffled through the post in case there was anything addressed to Debbie or anything from vindictive cranks who took delight in writing abusive letters to bereaved families. Nothing.
Mrs Clark was clutching a photograph of a younger Debbie and was rocking from side to side, silently sobbing. Frost felt overwhelmed with pity for her – he was determined to get the bastard who had ravaged and killed her only child. ‘We think Debbie went to that deserted office block just outside Denton,’ he said softly. ‘Any idea why she would go there?’
She shook her head. ‘Ask my husband. He killed them both. He lusted after his own daughter. If he couldn’t have her, no one else could… that’s why he killed my lovely baby.’
Frost stood up to go. He had heard all this before. ‘We’re looking into that, Mrs Clark.’
She thrust the photograph she was holding at him. ‘I haven’t even got an up-to-date photograph. This is all I have.’ In the colour print, Debbie was no more than nine or ten. ‘That bastard… She was so beautiful… She wanted to be a model, but he wouldn’t let her.’
Frost sank down in the chair again. This was something new. ‘A model?’
‘She sent a photograph and they did a test. They wanted her. All he had to do was sign the consent form, but the bastard refused. He said models were involved in sex and drugs and he wasn’t having his daughter mixed up with that and this from a man lusting over pornographic pictures of young children. It was everything Debbie wanted and he refused. It broke her heart.’
‘Twelve’s a bit young to be a model,’ said Frost, handing back the photograph.
‘This was years ago when she was nine. It was for a mail-order catalogue for children’s clothes. He wouldn’t let her have any more photographs taken in case she applied again.’ She clutched the picture to her chest. ‘This is all I’ve got.’
‘Do you remember the name of this model agency?’
She thought for a while. ‘Dagmar – Digmar Child Modelling. Something like that. Why, is it important?’
‘It probably isn’t,’ shrugged Frost, scribbling the name down on the back of an old envelope. Important or not, they had sod-all else to go on. ‘You wouldn’t have any papers about them – an address?’
‘He threw them away. Tore them up in front of her and threw them away in case she tried to go back to them. He threw everything away.’
‘Where did Debbie go to get the photographs taken? Was it local?’
‘It was somewhere not too far away, I think. She did it all without telling us and when the papers came for signature he tore them up.’
‘And how did Debbie take all this?’
‘I told you. It broke her heart. I tried to comfort her. I said, “Wait until you’re sixteen, my love. You won’t need his consent when you’re sixteen.”’ She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing again. ‘She’s never going to be sixteen. She’s dead.’
Frost lit up a cigarette and dribbled smoke through his nose, waiting for her to calm down. This could be a lead or, more than likely, another blind alley, but it had to be investigated. ‘And as far as you know, she never made contact with the agency again?’
‘No. She was terrified of him… the way he screamed and shouted. The hypocritical bastard.’ She pushed herself up and shuffled over to the sideboard to pour herself half a tumbler of Johnny Walker. ‘Join me?’
‘No thanks, love.’ Frost stood up again. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own. You should have someone with you.’
‘I should have my daughter with me, but she’s dead.’ She drained the whisky and hurled the glass into the empty grate. ‘She’s bloody dead.’ Sobs racked her body.
‘I know, love, I know,’ said Frost sadly. ‘I bloody know.’
Back in the car, he switched his mobile phone on and it buzzed angrily and flashed its lights.
‘Yes, Bill?’ said Frost, as if he didn’t know what it was all about.
‘Jack, what the hell are you playing at? Beazley’s chewing my privates off. He’s been on to Mullett so he’s chewing his off as well. I said you were on your way.’
‘I’m on my way to the butcher’s shop, then I’ll be straight back.’ He cut the sergeant’s protests short by clicking off the phone and dropping it in his mac pocket.
As he cut through the back streets to avoid traffic congestion, his mind started racing again over all he had to do and all his doubts and worries bubbled to the surface. It was getting too much and he wasn’t up to it. He was a sergeant, bumped up to an inspector because some junkie pumped a bullet in his head. He rubbed the scar, which was aching again. Sod that bleeding medal. Without it he would still be a sergeant, and not a bleeding good sergeant at that, but other people would then be making the decisions he was having to make and would be doing a much better job of it. Too many flaming bodies and not a single flaming clue.
His radio crackled. ‘Inspector Frost, come in please. You are required urgently at the station.’
Yes, so Mullett could give him a bollocking. He switched the radio off and coasted the car down a back street, past a row of boarded-up shops, their doors scrawled with ancient graffiti. The area was dead. Even the graffiti writers had stopped coming.
The butcher’s shop was on a corner, its facade completely boarded up. The key clicked in the lock and turned easily. As he pushed open the door, the smell of death hit him like a wall. The sickly, cloying, stomach-churning stench of a long-dead body. He stepped back and closed the door. Shit. Just what he bloody feared. He took a lungful of fresh air, then pushed the door wide open, steeling himself before moving tentatively inside. With everything boarded up, the place was in pitch darkness. He fumbled for a light switch and clicked it on. Nothing. Of course, the supply would have been cut off long ago.
Scrabbling in his mac pocket, he located his torch. At first it wouldn’t work – he’d been meaning to change the battery – but a couple of shakes and a bang made it flicker reluctantly to life and give out a feeble yellow beam which threatened to die at any minute. He steered the beam around the shop. The light bounced off white tiled walls, then picked out another partly open door which led to the refrigeration room. That was where the smell was coming from. He wished he still had some of that Vicks to shove up his nose, but all he had was an inadequate handkerchief which he clasped to his face. Gritting his teeth, he took a tentative step into the dark, watching the torchbeam creep across a blood-smeared, tiled floor, then his stomach heaved. In the corner was a heap of rotting, green, slimy putrescent flesh, crawling with maggots and dotted with bloated bluebottles.
He crashed his way outside and was violently sick, leaning against the wall of the shop as his stomach churned and churned. Even out in the open he could still smell and taste that stench. It was much worse than the first girl’s body they had found. That had been out in the open. This was in a confined space. So he was right: Lewis was a nutter. He had killed his wife and cut her up as he would an animal carcass. He shakily lit a cigarette, but after one puff threw it away. The smoke reeked of death. Wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, he fished out his mobile to call the station. Let the boys from SOCO and Forensic throw up their dinners. Why should he have all the fun?
Bill Wells answered the phone. ‘Flaming heck, Jack, where have you been? We’ve been calling and calling – ’
Frost impatiently cut him short. ‘I know, but – ’
But Wells wouldn’t listen. ‘She’s here, Jack.’
Frost frowned. ‘Who? Who are you talking about?’
‘Mrs Lewis. The butcher’s wife. She’s alive and well. The Met managed to trace her. She wants to talk to you.’
Frost stared at the phone in disbelief. ‘Say that again.’
‘Mrs Lewis isn’t dead… and to prove it, she’s here! She wants to see you about her husband.’
‘On my way,’ croaked Frost, his mind in a whirl. If she was alive, then who the hell was rotting away in the refrigeration room, stinking the place out? He lit up another cigarette to delay the moment when he would have to go back and take a closer look. He shuddered. Maggots. How he hated maggots.
This time the smell seemed even stronger and the beam from his torch even weaker. He had almost to stick his nose in the rotting mess to see what it was. A quick flick of the torch on to the heap told him. Stupid bloody fool!
He hurried out, slamming the refrigerator-room door firmly behind him and staggering out to the street to suck down lungfuls of fresh air. He shook his head and laughed at his flaming stupidity. He would have expected Morgan to make such a mistake – but not that he himself would have jumped to the wrong flaming conclusion. The remains weren’t human. They were fly-blown animal carcasses – just what he should have bloody well expected from a butcher’s shop that had been abruptly closed. A shiver ran down his back as he realised what a prat he would have looked had he called out the full murder team to look at a couple of dead pigs.
Even with the car windows open and the wind blowing through, he could still smell the reek of rotting meat on his clothes.
Mrs Lewis was overweight and in her late forties, with dark-brown hair and a raw-meat complexion; she looked like a typical butcher’s wife. Nicotine-stained fingers circled her third cup of police tea and the ashtray was full of cigarette stubs.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded as Frost came in. ‘Bloody police knocking on my door. The neighbours must think I’m a prostitute or something.’
Only if they need glasses, thought Frost. Aloud he said, ‘Sorry about this, Mrs Lewis. Didn’t the Met explain what it was all about?’
‘No they bloody well didn’t. Dumped me in a police car and drove me straight here.’ She pushed her cup away. ‘And after all that I’m left sitting here drinking cat’s pee.’ She snatched at the cigarette Frost offered her. ‘I never used to smoke, but he drove me mad. So what the hell is this all about?’
Frost lit up for both of them. ‘Your husband came in here and told us he had killed you and cut you up into little pieces.’
Her mouth sagged, the cigarette clinging to her lower lip. ‘Again? And you bloody well believed him?’
‘He was most insistent,’ said Frost. ‘Trouble was, he couldn’t remember where he had dumped all the bits. We didn’t believe him, but we had to take it seriously, just in case…’
‘He’s round the twist,’ she said. ‘He always was a bit weird, but he went right over the top when we lost our little boy.’ Her voice faltered and she stared hard at the table top. ‘My lovely little Matthew…’ She shook her head, pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed her eyes. ‘Might not have been quite so bad if I could have had any more kids, but I couldn’t. I was as upset as he was, but I didn’t get any comfort from him. He started blaming me for Matthew’s death. Said I should never have let him go to the hospital. Meningitis – he had meningitis. So what was I supposed to do – leave him at home? He reckoned it was the hospital that killed him. All right, I know he loved Matthew – loved him a bit too much, if you ask me – but he was taking his death out on me. Then he started being rude to the few customers we had in the shop, and when the landlord kicked him out he really went weird muttering to himself, sharpening his bloody knives over and over. I used to be friendly with the woman next door. She was a paediatric nurse and that was enough for him – he blamed nurses for Matthew’s death. She soon stopped coming over, he frightened her so much.’
Frost nodded sympathetically. ‘You’ve had it rough, love.’
She dropped her sodden handkerchief into her handbag and snapped it shut. ‘Can I go now?’
Frost nodded. ‘Yes. Thanks for coming.’ He held the door open for her.
‘So how do I get back to London?’ she asked.
‘See the nice sergeant in the lobby,’ Frost told her. ‘He’ll either arrange a car or give you the money for your train fare.’
At the doorway she paused. ‘I used to love him once. But he changed…’
Frost nodded. Hadn’t this happened with his own wife? God, how they had loved each other at the beginning and how they had hated each other at the end. He shook his head and wiped his hand over his face. It was all my fault, he told himself. If only… He mentally compared the beautiful young cracker he had married with the drawn figure, her lovely dark hair now streaked with grey, dying in the hospital side ward, where she could be wheeled out on a trolley and taken down in the lift to the mortuary without alarming the other patients. All my sodding fault.
As he pushed his way through the swing doors, he could hear Bill Wells explaining to Mrs Lewis that he just didn’t have the transport or the cash allocation to get her back to London, while she was explaining to Wells that that scruffy inspector had told her he would do it, so he had bloody well better do it, and bloody soon. Frost backed out and decided to use the rear exit.
Mullett’s gleaming blue Porsche was parked by the exit, reminding Frost that he should have reported to Hornrim Harry ages ago. There was a gleaming pearl-grey Mercedes sprawled across two parking places next to the Jaguar, with the registration number BEA 001. Bloody hell. He must be here, chewing the privates off Mullett. Frost quickened his step. He nearly made it. He was climbing into his battered Ford when Mullett’s voice roared out from an open window: ‘Frost! My office – now!’
Sod it!
Beazley, his face brick-red with anger, was chomping on one of his outsize cigars, and the corpses of two other cigars lay in Mullett’s ash tray. The office reeked of cigar smoke.
Mullett was equally angry ‘I sent for you ages ago, Frost!’
‘I was just about to come in when you called,’ lied Frost, drawing himself up a chair as far from Beazley as possible. He lit up and flipped the spent match in the general direction of the ashtray.
‘Coming to see me?’ shrilled Mullett. ‘You were getting into your car.’
‘Just checking the mileage for my car expenses,’ said Frost. ‘You know I like them to be dead accurate.’
‘Never mind your bleeding car expenses,’ snarled Beazley. ‘What happened to that brilliant suggestion of yours to catch the sod who’s pinching my money? You said it was bleeding foolproof. Another five hundred quid up the Swanee last night. I might as well leave the bleeding money in the street for him to pick up.’
‘I’m sorry Mr Beazley,’ said Frost. ‘We now have other priorities. I’ve got three kids’ bodies in the morgue and another teenager gone missing.’
‘Sod your other bloody priorities,’ roared Beazley. ‘I’m your number-one priority. I want the blackmailer caught, I want all my money returned and I want it done now.’ He poked a finger at Mullett. ‘I’m holding you responsible as well, Superintendent. Your Chief Constable is in the same lodge as me and he’ll be interested to learn how incompetent Denton Police Force is.’
Everyone seems to be chummy with our flaming Chief Constable, thought Frost, flicking ash on the carpet.
Mullett, white as a sheet, tried to calm the man down. ‘No need for that, Mr Beazley. Inspector Frost will have a full surveillance team round those cashpoints tonight.’
‘OK,’ said Frost, pushing himself up from his chair. ‘But I’ll nip round and see the dead kids’ parents first and tell them Mr Beazley wants priority over the search for their killer, and I’ll try and talk them out of going to the press, because it would be bad publicity for Mr Beazley and his supermarket…’
Beazley leapt up, sending his chair flying. He mashed his cigar to death. ‘If you dare – ’
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ cut in Frost, ‘but I can’t speak for the murdered teenagers’ parents.’
The muscle at the side of Beazley’s mouth kept twitching. He was breathing deeply, trying to contain himself. ‘All right. I’ll give you until the end of the week. If you haven’t caught the sod by then I’ll see both of you are kicked out of the force.’ He stormed out of the office, slamming the door shut after him.
Mullett looked at Frost. ‘I want the blackmailer caught, Frost.’
‘Give me more men, more overtime.’ Mullett fluttered a hand. ‘Anything… anything… only get him caught.’ He flopped back in his chair and mopped his brow. ‘This is all your fault, and he’s blaming me as well.’
Frost beamed back at him. ‘There ain’t no justice, Super. I’ll go and see about the extra men and overtime…’
Never any peace. There was always someone waiting in his office. This time it was PC Collier, clutching a computer printout.
‘Whatever it is, bin it,’ said Frost as he sat down. ‘We’re all on overtime tonight watching the cashpoints again.’
‘It’s that child-modelling agency you asked me to try and trace, Inspector. I think I’ve found it.’
Frost took the computer printout. ‘Delmar Model Agency, 39 High Street, Melbridge.’ He looked up at Collier and nodded. ‘Well done, son. This could well be the one.’
‘Turn the page, Inspector,’ said Collier. Frost flipped the sheet over and whistled softly. They used to have a studio in the office block on Denton Road. ‘Bloody hell!’ He unhooked his scarf and wound it round his neck. ‘Come on, son, let’s pay them a visit.’
‘They went out of business a couple of years ago, Inspector. The owner died. No list of employees, no records anywhere.’
‘Shit!’ said Frost. He drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘Whoever worked there must have paid tax. Go to the tax office. Tell them it’s a murder inquiry. They should have a list of employees somewhere.’
‘They could be filed under name, Inspector, not workplace.’
‘You’re probably right, son, but ask them any way.’
Leaving Collier, he nipped up to the canteen for a quick cup of coffee and a bacon roll and spotted DS Hanlon nursing a cup of tea at a table with other members of the search party that had been scouring Denton Woods for Jan O’Brien. They all looked tired and fed up. Frost dumped his tray on the table beside the sergeant. ‘I take it you haven’t found anything, Arthur? Any body – especially Skinner’s – would be a bonus.’
Hanlon gave a weary grin. ‘We’ve searched those flaming woods so many times, Jack. I know every blade of grass off by heart.’
Frost found it hard to swallow the bacon in his roll. It reminded him of the maggoty carcasses in the butcher’s. He pushed the plate away, took a swig of tea and lit a cigarette. He filled his lungs with smoke, then slowly exhaled. ‘She’s not there, Arthur. We’re wasting our time. Send most of the team home and let them have a kip. I’ll be wanting volunteers to stake out the cashpoints again tonight.’
‘You’ve got the overtime agreed, I hope?’ asked Hanlon. ‘Only last time…’
‘Mullett’s agreed,’ nodded Frost. ‘He’s terrified Beazley’s going to report him to his Masonic buddies, so the sky’s the limit.’ Then he remembered the modelling agency. ‘Go and see Jan’s parents, Arthur. Ask them if their daughter ever wanted to be a model, or was ever contacted by the Delmar Model Agency. She went to the same school as Debbie Clark. Talk to the teachers, the kids… did she ever say any thing about modelling or about a modelling agency?’ He filled Hanlon in on the details. ‘Not much of a lead, Arthur, but it’s all I’ve got.’
Frost staggered up the stairs to bed just after three in the morning. The stake-out had been a complete waste of time. They had waited, shivering in the wind and rain until a couple of minutes before midnight, when the Fortress computer people phoned to say that five hundred pounds had just been withdrawn from a cashpoint at Frimley, a small town some three miles from Denton. Frost had phoned the Frimley police who sent a car round, but far too late. They had staked out the cashpoint in case the blackmailer returned after midnight to make a second withdrawal, while Frost and his team covered the Denton cashpoints. At two o’clock, cold and dispirited, he had decided to call it a night.
In his dream Frost was running for dear life. The figure chasing him had a knife. A long knife. He crashed through a door, heart pounding, and found himself inside the refrigerator room at the butcher’s. The light was on, the white-tiled walls were smeared with fresh blood and crawling with maggots. On the floor were newly slaughtered lambs, their throats bleeding on to the white tiles. His pursuer was at the door. There was no way to lock it. He leant against it. The man out side started pounding at the door, which shook with the blows. The door crashed open…
He awoke, dripping with sweat and panting, his heart hammering. Bloody hell, you can stick these sort of dreams, he thought. What about the ones with the naked nymphos, which have been missing from the agenda for far too long? He clicked on the bedside lamp to check the time. Half past four in the morning. He had been asleep barely an hour.
Suddenly the pounding started again. He sat up in bed. It was coming from his front door.
He staggered from the bed to swish back the curtains and look out into the darkened street below. The blue light of an area police car was flashing. Shit! What the hell had happened now?
He padded down the stairs and opened the front door. He vaguely recognised the officer standing there – it was someone from Traffic, but he couldn’t think of his name.
‘Sorry to knock you up, Inspector, but your phone’s off the hook.’ He pointed to the hall table.
‘So it is,’ grunted Frost, replacing the phone on its base. ‘So kind of you to wake me up at half past flaming four in the morning just to tell me that.’
The officer grinned. ‘PC Lambert from Control is anxious to talk to you, Inspector. He says it’s urgent.’
‘At half past four it had better flaming well be,’ snarled Frost.
It was cold in the hall. Frost slipped his mac over his pyjamas before phoning the station. ‘This had better be good, Lambert,’ he yawned into the mouthpiece. ‘Who’s dead, Mullett or Skinner? Please say it’s both.’
‘The charge nurse from Denton General Hospital has phoned, Inspector, worried about one of their nurses. She hasn’t reported for duty
‘Then tell them to sack her,’ grunted Frost.
‘She’s always been conscientious, loves her job, this is the first time she hasn’t turned up for night duty and she’s not answering her phone. They sent someone round to her house – it was in darkness.’
‘There’s a surprise. At four o’clock in the morning I’d expect every bleeding light to be on.’
A token chuckle from Lambert, who pressed on. ‘Three pints of milk on the doorstep and papers stuck in the letter box. They fear some thing might have happened to her.’
‘Like she’s gone off drinking milk and reading papers? Why the flaming hell did you wake me up to tell me this? It would be just as bleeding pointless at nine o’clock.’
‘She lives next door to Lewis, the butcher,’ said Lambert.
Frost’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the phone tighter. ‘A nurse?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘A paediatric nurse?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘Get back to the hospital and check if she was one of the nurses who looked after Lewis’s kid.’
He sat on the stairs and smoked. Lambert was back in five minutes.
‘Yes, Inspector, she was.’
A warning bell started tinkling softly in Frost’s brain. ‘It might be a coincidence, but I’d better check it out. Get on to Taffy Morgan. Drag him out of bed if necessary. Tell him to pick me up in ten flaming minutes or they’ll be finding parts of his legs and dick all over Denton Woods.’
Apart from the odd porch-light, the street was in darkness. Morgan parked the car outside the nurse’s house, then gave Frost a nudge to wake him. ‘We’re here, Guv.’
Frost shook himself awake, yawned, then climbed out of the car. ‘Right. Let’s take a look.’ He gave a passing glance to the butcher’s house next door, half expecting, even at that late hour, that the curtains would twitch.
There were three pints of milk on the doorstep and three morning papers protruding from the letter box, which Frost tugged out so he could poke his torch through. Its beam picked up a few letters strewn across the mat. He straightened up. ‘Just so we don’t make proper prats of ourselves…’ He hammered the door knocker. They waited. Nothing.
‘I don’t think she’s in, Guv,’ offered Morgan.
‘I wish I had your perceptive intuition,’ grunted Frost. He walked across the front garden to the window and slashed his torchbeam through the gap in the curtains. An empty room. So what did he expect to see – a pile of body parts on top of a nurse’s bloodstained uniform?
‘I suppose there’s no rear entrance to this place?’
‘Back-to-back houses, Guv.’
Frost returned to the front door and knocked again. ‘Never know your luck, she might have gone to the lavvy.’ After a couple of seconds of silence, he stepped back and nodded at the glass door panel. ‘Break the glass, Taff. We’re going in this way.’
‘What do I use, Guv?’ Morgan asked.
Frost pointed to the step. ‘One of the milk bottles.’
Morgan grabbed a milk bottle and used it as a club, smashing both the door panel and the bottle, which shattered, sending milk flying everywhere.
‘… first pouring the milk out, of course,’ said Frost mildly.
‘Sorry, Guv,’ said Morgan.
The door swung open as Frost stuck his hand through and turned the catch. He shone his torch on an expensive, milk-sodden carpet topped with milk-sodden letters. ‘If we don’t find a body, Taff, you’re in deep trouble.’ They skirted the mess and looked through all the rooms. Everything was as it should be.
‘What do you think, Guv?’ asked Morgan.
‘I think I’m a prat for letting Lambert talk me into this. We’re either going to have to pay for the smashed door, the ruined carpet and the bottle of milk you poured all over the bloody place, or lie our bloody heads off and say it was like this when we came.’
‘That last bit sounds good to me, Guv,’ said Morgan.
‘The first bit never stood a chance,’ said Frost.
It was gone five when Morgan dropped him off. The damn phone started ringing the minute he opened the front door. ‘Dr Shipman’s surgery,’ he grunted. ‘Do you want a house call?’
‘Too early in the morning for flaming jokes,’ said Station Sergeant Johnny Johnson. ‘The hospital have phoned again, Jack. They’re still worried about that nurse.’
‘Then book her in as a missing person. She’s only been gone a couple of days.’
‘It’s longer than that, Jack.’
‘There were only three bottles of milk on the step and there was nothing suspicious in the house.’
‘She was supposed to have gone off on holiday for two weeks, sharing an apartment with a nurse from another hospital. They’ve managed to get hold of the other nurse. Our one never turned up. She’d paid for the holiday and she never turned up. She was mad keen to go. All she’d been talking about was this flaming holiday and she never turned up.’
Frost tipped back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I agree with you, Johnny, it don’t sound too good. Bloody hell. We’ve got enough to flaming well do without this. Well, we can’t do any more tonight. I’ll send Taffy over to the hospital first thing tomorrow to get details.’ He hung up and trudged upstairs to bed.
He couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, smoked innumerable cigarettes, then gave the pillow a couple of punches and tried to concentrate on drifting off. It didn’t work. He kept thinking about the missing nurse. Supposing she didn’t know Lewis’s wife had left him? Supposing she drifted over one evening for a cup of coffee and a chat and Lewis and his bleeding butcher’s knife were waiting for her? He shook the thought out of his head. It was all conjecture.
He tried to focus on something more pleasant – that fat pathologist, for a start. He cursed him self for missing his flaming chance there – he bet she was hot stuff under the sheets. His attempt to conjure up a picture of the naked pathologist failed… all he kept getting was a bloodstained, maggot-ridden corpse.
He sat up straight in bed. Something was nagging away. Something important. Something he had missed.
Maggots! Why were there bloody maggots? The Maggot Man had said flies wouldn’t touch a long-dead body. The meat in the refrigeration room had been rotting for months, so why were there maggots?
He squirmed back on to the pillow and pulled the bedclothes over him. Whatever the reason it could wait until morning. He sat up again. Sod it. It couldn’t wait, not if he wanted to get any sleep. Another look at the alarm clock. Twenty- two minutes past five, pitch black and cold outside. If he got up and nosed around the butcher’s shop now, it would be too late to go back to bed after he’d found it was all a bleeding waste of time.
He swung his feet on to the floor and dragged on his clothes.
Please let it be a bleeding waste of time.