A Killing Frost

Chapter 8

Frost woke up suddenly and reached out for an alarm clock that wasn’t there, his hand flapping in empty space. Where the hell was he? His paper-strewn office desk juddered into blurry focus and he remembered the abortive stake-out of the night before. Gawd. He’d have to face Mullett and Godzilla Skinner about that – and flaming Beazley, of course. He’d forgotten that Beazley would be spitting blood at the news that another five hundred pounds of his money had found its way into the blackmailer’s pocket in spite of a police stake-out which was intended to prevent any possibility of such a thing happening.

He shuddered at the thought, then winced as his splitting headache went into overdrive. He had a stiff neck and it hurt him to move his head. The perfect start to the day.

From the corridor outside came the persistent sound of clanging buckets as the cleaners sloshed their mops down the corridor, making the station reek of bleach and pine disinfectant, punctuated by the yells of the drunks in the cells demanding to be let out on bail, and Bill Wells yelling for them to shut up.

‘The Denton-nick flaming dawn chorus,’ he muttered to himself as he stood up and stretched to relieve the aches and pains in his back. Then he staggered out to the washroom, where he splashed cold water over his face and gave his chin a quick buzz with the electric razor. He studied the dishevelled, crumpled face that peered back at him from the steamed-up mirror and rubbed an easily satisfied hand over his chin. ‘Close enough for jazz,’ he muttered.

Passing the door of the Incident Room, he could hear the buzz of many voices inside. He opened it a crack and peeked in. Skinner was addressing the assembled search party. He closed it quickly before he was spotted and hurried to the lobby, where Bill Wells, bringing his logbook up to date, looked up and nodded a greeting. ‘How did it go last night?’

‘A bleeding disaster,’ said Frost. ‘Taffy Morgan got clonked and taken to hospital, but that was the only laugh we had.’

‘Skinner’s been screaming blue murder, Jack. He wants to see you about unauthorised over time and taking the new girl away from the job he gave her.’

Frost sniffed. The siren aroma of sizzling sausages and bacon was fighting its way through pine disinfectant and bleach, trying to lure him up to the canteen for breakfast, but he thought he’d better make a move and get away before

Skinner’s briefing ended. He was a bit too fragile to face Skinner at this unearthly hour of the morning.

‘I’m off out,’ he told Wells, speeding back to his office.

He was winding his maroon scarf round his neck when he heard the clatter of many foot steps down the corridor. The morning briefing was over. The search party was making its way to the car park to resume the hunt for the two missing girls and the boy. He was glad it wasn’t his case any more. He doubted Debbie, for one, would still be alive. If she had run off with her boyfriend, she would have let her mother know by now, just to reassure her. He was glad Skinner would be the one to have to break the news to the parents when the bodies were found. The parents. This reminded him that Debbie’s father and the other paedophiles were waiting to be questioned, Again, thank God it was Skinner’s case. And then there was Graham Fielding, the Christmas killer. But they were all Skinner’s concerns, not his. Fatso had some uses, after all.

He opened his office door and his heart sank as he came face to face with Godzilla.

‘My office,’ snapped Skinner, turning on his heel, not even checking if Frost was following or not.

Skinner’s office was sparsely furnished; most of the furniture had been removed, ready for the decorators. Frost sat down opposite a simmering detective chief inspector.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you were up to, Frost? You don’t bloody authorise over time – I do. And what do we get for our overtime money? We get a bloody fiasco of a stake-out and chummy gets the five hundred quid anyway. You let that Welsh twit watch the most likely cashpoint and he gets himself knocked unconscious, but not unconscious enough for us to be spared his bleeding useless company for long…’

Frost did his usual trick in such circumstances. He switched off his ears and let his eyes wander over the contents of Skinner’s in-tray. He was extremely interested in the ‘Request for Transfer’ form which lay on the top of the heap of papers. It was the second such form he had seen in so many days. Who the hell was requesting a transfer? Was it the new girl? Had Skinner succeeded in driving the poor cow out of Denton? He shifted his position so he was nearer the in-tray and able to read the details, but Skinner forestalled him by pulling the form from the tray and sliding it into his desk drawer, which he locked. What’s so bloody secret about a ‘Request for Transfer’ form? thought Frost.

‘You are listening to me, I hope?’ barked Skinner.

‘Every word,’ said Frost, ‘and I agree with you all the way.’

He hoped this was the right response.

Skinner stared hard at him. ‘And you don’t take that girl away from doing my work, do you hear?’

‘Loud and clear,’ nodded Frost. His policy was to agree with everything, then go his own way.

He slid his chair back and stood up. ‘If that’s all…’

‘That’s not bloody all,’ snarled Skinner, his hand waving Frost back to his seat. But he’d run out of steam. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to think of something else, but he had covered everything in the tirade Frost had closed his ears to. ‘Just make sure you obey my orders to the letter in future. Comprende?'

‘Absolument pas,’ said Frost.

He stuck his head round the door of the Incident Room to find Collier seated in front of a monitor, watching CCTV footage of late-night traffic the previous night. Collier pressed the Stop button when Frost came in.

‘More traffic about last night than we thought, Inspector,’ he reported, showing Frost the list of registration numbers he had noted down.

‘What do “L” and “V” mean?’ asked Frost.

‘That means it’s a lorry or a van, Inspector. All the rest are private cars.’

‘He won’t have come in a lorry or a van,’ said Frost. ‘Concentrate on the cars. We got the tape from the building society yet?’

‘There isn’t a tape, Inspector.’

Frost gaped. ‘Why not?’

‘We took the CCTV tape out yesterday for examination. They didn’t replace it.’

‘You are bloody joking?’ croaked Frost.

Collier shook his head. ‘I’m not joking. They didn’t replace the tape.’

Frost stared at him incredulously. ‘The stupid bleeding sods.’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do about it except swear, I suppose, and that’s not my style. Carry on, son.’

Collier returned to the monitor and started the video again. A mustard-coloured Volkswagen Beetle sped across the screen. Frost’s eyes dimmed as he remembered… He’d had a mustard Beetle before he was married. He used to take his young wife-to-be out into the depths of Denton Woods. The larks they had got up to in that old car. They were mad about each other then, so what went wrong? Why did it all go sour? Why did she die hating him? Why?… Why?

It must have been his flaming fault. Couldn’t he do anything bloody right?

‘You all right, Inspector?’ asked Collier, concerned.

‘I’m fine, son,’ grunted Frost. ‘Just fine.’

He told Bill Wells about the ‘Request for Transfer’ form on Skinner’s desk. ‘It’s not Kate Holby, is it?’ he asked.

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Wells. ‘It would have come through me first, surely?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Frost. ‘And why would he lock it in his drawer if it was her?’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘It must be him – Skinner. Perhaps there is a God after all, and he’s not staying.’

‘He’s been on the blower to the decorators, chasing them up to do his office. He wouldn’t do that if he was leaving.’

Frost shrugged and shook his head. He’d exhausted all possibilities. He picked up Wells’s phone. ‘I’d better ring the hospital to see how Taffy is. I want to find out if I can spend his wreath money.’ He dialled. ‘Hello Nurse. Is that the morgue? Do you have the body of a Welshman – little bloke, big dick? You’ve got lots of little men? Right, I’ll hold on while you check the other bit.’

Wells looked concerned, then grinned when he saw that Frost still had the phone rest down. ‘You nearly had me going there, Jack.’

Frost dialled the hospital and spoke to the Ward Sister. ‘He’s being discharged as we speak,’ he told Wells. ‘I’ll go and pick him up.’

He was driving Taffy – who was rabbiting away about one of the young nurses on the ward – back to the station when the radio paged him. It was PC Lambert from Control.

‘Inspector, Mr Beazley from the supermarket has phoned. He’s heard about – his words – the balls-up last night. Leaving out the swear words, he wants to see you right away. He says if you’re not there in fifteen minutes he’s getting his money back from the building society and suing the police for the rest.’

‘All right,’ sighed Frost. ‘As he’s asked nicely, I’m on my way.’

The customer car park was filling up so he drove round the back to the staff car park. ‘Try and look as if you’re at death’s door, Taff,’ he said. ‘I want to get a bit of sympathy.’

Morgan stepped out of the car and surveyed the staff car park, then nudged Frost and pointed. ‘Cor. Look at that, Guv. I had one of those years ago. Smashing little cars – mine was pillar-box red.’

Frost looked where Morgan was pointing. He stopped dead. It was a mustard-coloured VW Beetle.

He slipped back into the driving seat. ‘Hold on a minute, Taff.’ He radioed the station. ‘Tell Collier I want the registration number of that bilious yellow VW Beetle we picked up on CCTV last night.’ He waited, then nodded. ‘Thanks.’ It was the same car.

‘That car, Taff, was logged coming into and leaving the town centre at the time the money was taken last night. If our luck’s in, we’ve found the bloke who clouted you round the head. Let’s find out whose it is.’

The brown-overalled delivery man humping empty boxes down the stairs was most helpful. ‘The Beetle? Yeah… I had one years ago. Great little cars. That one belongs to Miss Fowler – Beazley’s secretary.’

Frost’s eyes glinted. He was getting excited now. ‘A woman, Taff, not a man. That tom said she saw a woman at the Fortress cashpoint. I had an idea it was an inside job and someone who hated Beazley, and that’s her to a flaming T. He’s always yelling at the poor cow. And come to think of it, she was there when I told Beazley we wouldn’t be doing a stake-out last night… that’s why she took a chance.’

‘You need more than a car to prove it’s her, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘She could have had all sorts of reasons for driving at night.’

Frost bowed his head in thought, then took out his mobile phone. ‘If I’d taken that amount of money out, Taff, I wouldn’t want to be caught with it on me. You know what I’d do?’

Morgan blinked, thought for a second, then shrugged. ‘No idea, Guv.’

‘Then I’ll tell you, my little Welsh sexpot. You can pay money into those cashpoints as well as taking it out. I’d withdraw Beazley’s five hundred quid and I’d immediately pay it into my own Fortress account. Then if I was stopped by a little Welsh prat, I’d have nothing on me.’ He dialled his contact at the building society A quick conversation was followed by a thumbs up. ‘She paid a thousand quid into her account just after midnight, last night, Taffy. So who’s a clever boy then?’

Morgan frowned, blinked and shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, Guv.’

Miss Fowler looked up from her typing and smiled a greeting. ‘Mr Beazley is most anxious to see you, Inspector Frost.’

‘Not half as anxious as I am not to see him,’ said Frost. ‘But actually, Miss Fowler, it’s you we’ve come to see, and I think you know what it’s about.’

‘Oh?’ Her tight little smile did nothing to hide her concern. ‘I can’t think what you mean, I’m afraid, Inspector.’

Frost switched on his deceptively friendly smile. ‘It’s about Mr Beazley’s money, love. You were seen at the Fortress Building Society cashpoint just after midnight last night, and the night before.’

The smile flickered weakly. She found her keyboard of great interest. Then she straightened up and shook her head sadly, managing a brave smile. ‘I knew. I just knew.’

‘Knew what, love?’ asked Frost.

I knew you’d be the one to find me out. The minute you walked through that door, I knew it would be you.’

Frost looked around the typing pool. The other secretaries were straining their ears to pick up what was going on. ‘Is there somewhere we could go? Somewhere more private?’

‘Of course.’ She took her handbag from the desk drawer and snapped it shut, but not before Frost spotted the Fortress Building Society pass book. She nodded towards a frosted-glass door. ‘That office is empty. We won’t be disturbed.’ She stood up and beckoned one of the typists. ‘If Mr Beazley buzzes, Lynn, would you see what he wants? I’ll be with these gentlemen.’

‘How long will you be?’ asked Lynn.

Five to ten years at least, thought Frost.

He sat at the empty desk in the office. Miss Fowler sat facing him, while Morgan stood by the window.

For a while she was silent, shoulders sunk, head bowed, staring at the top of the desk. Frost said nothing, waiting for her to speak.

At last she looked up. ‘It was to pay that bastard back for all the years of humiliation I’ve suffered from him. I was loyal to him, but he didn’t give a damn about how he hurt people. He’s a sadistic swine. I didn’t even want the money. I gave it all away. I’ve given him years of loyal service. You’ve seen how he treats me…’

Frost sighed deeply. ‘If there was any justice in this world, love, the court would award you thousands of quid from the poor box for what you did, but there ain’t no justice.’

‘What will happen to me? Will I go to prison?’

‘I don’t see how it can be avoided, love,’ said Frost. ‘The courts don’t take kindly to black mailers. They hate them almost as much as they hate people who smack armed burglars.’

She stared at him, then leant back in her chair and blinked in bewilderment. ‘Blackmail? What blackmail?’

‘Please don’t play silly buggers,’ pleaded Frost. ‘You know bloody well what blackmail.’

She stared again. Then the light dawned. ‘You don’t think it’s me who’s been poisoning the food? You surely don’t think it’s me?’

It was Frost’s turn to look puzzled. ‘What money are we talking about, then? You paid a thousand pounds into the cashpoint last night

…’ His eyes widened. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been fiddling the books?’

She bowed her head.

‘How much?’

She didn’t answer. Her body shook as she broke down and sobbed.

Frost took his handkerchief from his pocket, saw the state of it and hurriedly put it back. ‘How much?’ he repeated.

She just shook her head.

Frost turned to Taffy Morgan. ‘Wait outside for a minute.’

Morgan frowned. ‘Outside?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Frost, pointing. ‘The other side of the flaming door. Out!’

He waited until a puzzled Morgan left, then turned back to the woman. His voice softened. ‘All right, love. How much did you pinch?’

She wiped a hand over her face to dry the tears. ‘I don’t know. It’s been over years. Something like ten… fifteen thousand pounds.’

‘Can you get it back without anyone knowing?’

She blinked at him, not comprehending. ‘Put it back?’

He leant across the desk and lowered his voice. ‘Listen, love, there’s only you and me here. If you can get the money back without any one knowing, I’m prepared to forget all about it.’

She sniffed back the tears and shook her head. ‘I’ve given it all away… animal charities, Help the Aged Cancer Research…’

‘You got any savings, love, or is there anyone who would lend you the dosh?’

‘My savings!’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘They would nowhere cover that, and there’s no one who would lend me that sort of money. I couldn’t repay it anyway.’

‘Could you borrow it from a bank?’

‘With what security? I don’t own my own house. Mr Beazley does not believe in paying lavish salaries.’

Frost slumped back in the chair and shook his head sadly. ‘That, love, as we say in the trade, is a sod. I can’t help you. I’ve got to make it official.’

She rummaged in the depths of her handbag and found a ridiculously small handkerchief, which became quickly sodden as she dried her eyes. ‘What will happen to me?’

‘You’ll be charged, then, more than likely, released on bail until the trial.’

‘And will I have to go to prison?’

‘I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a distinct possibility.’

She let the handkerchief fall into the waste paper basket. ‘I couldn’t face prison. I’d rather die – I’d rather kill myself than go to prison.’

Frost kept quiet. What could he say? That it wasn’t as bad as people made out? Because it bloody well was, especially for a woman like her.

‘There’s always a chance Mr Beazley won’t press charges,’ he said. But even as he said it, he knew it was a forlorn hope. Beazley would delight in putting the poor cow through the hoop. ‘Come what may, he’s got to know, love.’

He pushed himself up from the chair, pausing on his way to the door to look out of the window at the cars, like toys, in the car park down below. The VW screamed out at him. A less unusual colour and she might have got away with it, at least for a while. Looking down at the Beetle, it once again churned up memories of early days with his young wife. If he had acted differently, or if they had had a kid… He shook away the thought, opened the door and called Morgan in. ‘Keep the lady company, Taff. I’m off to see Beazley.’

Beazley’s lower lip dropped in amazement. ‘Pinching my bloody money? Over ten thousand bleeding quid? The bitch! You try and be a good employer…’ He took an enormous cigar from his desk drawer, bit off the end which he spat in his waste bin, then lit up. ‘Well, that’s her bloody lot. The mealy-mouthed bleeding cow. Always so high and flaming mighty, and all the time she’s been sticking her grubby hands in my till.’

‘I take it you are going to press charges?’

Beazley pulled the cigar from his mouth and studied the glowing end. Frost noted it was still connected to his mouth by a thread of spittle, reminding him of the umbilical cord joining a space walker to his spaceship. Beazley stuck the cigar back in his mouth and let a writhing smoke ring drift lazily across the office. ‘Press charges? That won’t get my bleeding money back, will it? And giving other members of staff time off to testify in court? No bloody fear. She’s out on her arse.’ He gave a smug grin. ‘Ten thousand quid? It would have cost more than that to make the cow redundant. She’s out of here – and she can think herself bloody lucky.’ A worried frown deepened as a sudden thought struck him. He picked up his phone and stabbed a few keys. ‘If I sack someone for misconduct, can we avoid paying them their staff pension? What? Shit!! That’s a rule we’re going to have to get changed.’ He banged the phone down, then ground his cigar into his ashtray and glared at Frost. ‘Can you believe that? The bitch robs me and walks out of here with a flaming pension. Get her off my premises now. I don’t want to see her miserable face again.’

Frost pushed himself out of his chair and hurried to the door. He was doubly pleased. First, because Miss Fowler wasn’t going to prison, and second because, in all the excitement, Beazley had forgotten all about the latest withdrawal of five hundred quid.

A terrible scream interrupted his thoughts.

He dashed to the window. Six storeys down, in between the toy cars, lay a crumpled figure. People were running towards it.

There was red. Lots of red.

He sensed Beazley standing behind him, staring down in disbelief at the scene below.

Frost ran to the vacant office where he had left Miss Fowler, crashing into Morgan on the way. The DC was carrying a glass of water and seemed completely oblivious to the commotion outside. Frost barged him out of the way and flung the office door open. The room was empty. The window was wide open, the blind flapping. Behind him, Morgan was looking round the empty room, puzzled. ‘Where is she, Guv?’

‘Get an ambulance, you silly sod,’ screamed Frost. ‘Get a bloody ambulance…’

The ambulance took the body straight to the morgue.

Frost sat slumped in the passenger seat, listening to Morgan saying for the umpteenth time how sorry he was. ‘She said she felt faint, Guv. She asked for a drink of water. I had no idea – ’

‘You never leave a prisoner unattended,’ snapped Frost. ‘You should know that. Now bloody shut up!’ Why the hell am I taking it out on Taffy? he thought. If she’d told me she felt faint, I’d have done exactly the same thing. I should have warned Taffy. She said she’d rather die than go to prison. If she’d only waited a couple of minutes

…

‘I’m sorry, Guv,’ said Morgan yet again.

‘For Pete’s sake, shut up.’ Frost rammed a cigarette in his mouth. This had all the makings of another lousy day.

‘How did it go, Jack?’ asked Wells as Frost crashed through the lobby doors.

‘Don’t bleeding ask!’ he snarled.

In his office he thudded down in his chair and looked for something to hurl at the wall to give vent to his burning fury. She said she’d rather die than go to prison, so why didn’t he warn Taffy to be on his guard?

He looked up as Wells came in.

‘Morgan’s told me what happened, Jack. You can’t blame yourself.’

‘I do blame my bloody self.’ He shook a cigarette from the pack, stuck it in his mouth and passed another one over to Wells. ‘I expect there’ll be a bleeding inquiry.’

‘Bound to be, Jack, but they can’t blame you. You hadn’t charged her or arrested her, so she wasn’t in police custody. They can’t blame you.’

‘Maybe they can’t blame me, but I flaming well do. She said she’d rather die. I should have been on my guard.’

‘All right, so she said she would rather die. You had no reason to think she meant there and then. But if there is an inquiry, Jack, I wouldn’t mention that if I were you.’

Before Frost could answer, the door swung open and Skinner burst in. He glowered at the two men. ‘What’s this – a flaming mothers’ meeting?’ He jabbed a finger at Wells. ‘The lobby’s unattended. Why aren’t you there? And take that bloody cigarette out of your mouth.’

‘Just going,’ mumbled Wells, snatching at the cigarette and squeezing past Skinner, who watched him scurry down the corridor.

‘Bloody useless,’ he snarled, before turning to Frost.

‘Another of your sod-ups, I understand? A prisoner killed herself in police custody?’

‘She wasn’t a prisoner and she wasn’t in custody,’ Frost told him. ‘She hadn’t been arrested or charged.’

‘Hmmph,’ sniffed Skinner, as if it made no difference. ‘I’ve got some things to sort out with Superintendent Mullett this afternoon, so I won’t be able to attend the post-mortem of that body you found on the railway embankment. I want you to attend on my behalf and give me a report. And try not to balls it up, for a change.’ He spun on his heel and left the office.

Skinner was closing the door behind him when the sound of a soft, wet, juicy raspberry followed him out. He immediately charged back into the office to find Frost apparently deeply engrossed in paperwork. Frost looked up, eye brows raised, as if surprised at the DCI’s return.

All right, sunshine, thought. Skinner grimly. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face soon.

He closed the door, waited a minute or two, his hand hovering over the door handle, in case of a repetition, then made his way back to his own office.

Frost was on his way to drag Taffy Morgan from the canteen when Wells called after him, ‘Hold on, Jack.’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ he replied. ‘I’m late for the autopsy.’

‘It’s about the autopsy. Skinner wants the new WPC to attend.’

‘No bleeding way,’ replied Frost. ‘This is going to be a stomach-heaver. What’s left of the body stinks to high heaven – it’s almost liquid. It would be enough to put anyone off the force, let alone a nineteen-year-old probationer.’

‘That’s what Skinner wants, I reckon. He’s finding all the shitty jobs for her. Oh, and he said to get that stupid Welsh prat to do the archive collation in her place.’

‘Stupid Welsh prat?’ echoed Frost. ‘Mullett isn’t Welsh.’

Wells grinned. ‘You know what prat he means, Jack. And about the girl – you’ll have to take her. You can’t ignore an order.’

‘All right, I’ll take her, but she can wait in the car outside. There’s no way she’s being subjected to this.’

There were three cars outside the mortuary. Frost parked behind a blue Citroen and Kate Holby made to get out.

‘Hold on, love. Sit down a minute.’ He handed her his mobile phone. ‘I want you to wait out here and take any phone messages.’

‘DCI Skinner said – ’

‘I know what Skinner said, love. Have you ever attended an autopsy?’

She shook her head.

‘They’re super-shitty at the best of times, but this one is super-shiny de-luxe, which is why Skinner has ducked out of going and sent me instead. You don’t want to see it, I promise you.’

She stuck her chin out defiantly. ‘I don’t want favours shown to me just because I’m a girl. I want to be a good cop.’

‘Listen, love, I’ll tell you what a good cop does. He does all the lousy stinking jobs that have to be done, but if he can get out of doing them, he bloody well gets out of doing them. I’ve seen strong men faint at post-mortems which were Mills and Boon stuff compared to this. I’ve come near to crashing out once or twice and I’ve seen hundreds. Skinner would love for you to go out cold. Well, I’m not going to let it happen. A good cop can lie his head off when it’s necessary. I shall tell him you watched it all the way without turning a hair. His disappointment will make my day.’

‘I still want to come inside,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Then I’m ordering you to stay in the car.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I know I can’t, love, so I’m saying “please”.’ He put on his appealing, heartfelt expression, which had never failed him before. It didn’t fail him this time. She stayed in the car.

The first thing that hit him when he pushed open the door of the autopsy room was the thudding sound of pop music. Bending over the autopsy table, a green-gowned, plump bottom was jiggling in time to the music. Flaming hell! thought Frost. A bit of a change from misery-guts Drysdale.

The second thing that hit him was the stench of putrefying flesh, a sickly smell that lingered for days and clung to your clothing and hair, no matter how much you scrubbed. There could be no doubt which body she was examining. Overhead the extractor fans were going full blast, but they were fighting a losing battle. Leaning against the tiled wall, looking as green as his gown, was the forensic photographer.

The pathologist turned at his approach. ‘Hardly Chanel No. 5,’ she shouted over the din of the music. When she saw that he couldn’t hear her, she turned the volume down and said it again. She pointed to a ball of cotton wool and a jar of Vicks VapoRub. ‘Stick it where you think it will do the most good.’

He grinned, pulled a couple of plugs of cotton wool, dunked them in the Vicks jar and gratefully inserted them in his nostrils. The pungent aroma made his eyes water, but mercifully over powered the smell of decaying flesh.

‘I started without you – I hope you don’t mind,’ she said.

‘With this one you can finish without me,’ he told her. The body on the slab was a disgusting mess. He wondered how she could possibly glean anything from it.

‘My name’s Carol,’ she said.

‘Jack,’ he told her. First-name bleeding terms now!

The scalpel slashed a path in the neck. ‘Hard to believe it, but I reckon she was a pretty girl once,’ she said.

Frost nodded. ‘I can believe it.’ He had seen the rotting bodies of too many pretty girls in his time with Denton CID. ‘Can you tell me any thing we don’t know?’

She gave him a knowing grin and lowered her voice so the photographer couldn’t hear. ‘I’m free tonight, did you know that?’

Bloody hell! thought Frost. A sex-starved pathologist propositioning me over a rotting corpse. I’ll be dating the undertaker’s daughter next. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven,’ he said. ‘But what about the body?’

‘Female, eighteen to twenty-three, about five foot four. She probably had quite a good figure. Been dead some four to five weeks, perhaps a little longer. The entomologist should be more precise. She looked after her teeth, so you’ll be able to identify her from her dental records and then get a positive ID from her DNA.’

‘Cause of death?’ asked Frost.

Carol pointed to the neck section she had opened with the scalpel to expose bone. ‘Look!’

Frost didn’t want to look that closely, but bent forward. Putrescence and slime. He was glad of the nose plugs. Then he saw what she meant and nodded. ‘The cicoid?’

‘Yes – it’s fractured. It would take quite a bit of pressure to do that. Mind you, a karate chop would do it, but the fracturing would be different. It’s invariably damaged with strangulation. I’d say manual strangulation, in this case. Even with a cadaver in this condition I’d expect to see ligature grooving, but there doesn’t seem to be any.’ She shrugged. ‘If the body was in any sort of decent shape, I’d be certain, but in this condition I can only say more than likely.’

She beckoned the photographer over and they stepped back so he could take photographs of the splintered neck bone.

The photographer finished and returned to his wall position. Frost and the pathologist moved back to the body. She pointed. ‘The neck has been chewed and ripped – probably by a fox – which doesn’t help much.’

‘Was she sexually assaulted?’

Again she shrugged. ‘No way of knowing. I can’t even tell you if she was a virgin. She was naked when you found her, but I can’t say if she was stripped before or after death.’

‘No remnants of clothing under the body when we moved it,’ Frost told her.

‘Then almost definitely she was naked when she was dumped. The odds are she was sexually assaulted, but I can’t give you any proof.’

He tried not to watch as she cut, poked and probed the squelching tissue, but the body was a magnet for his eyes.

At last she straightened up. ‘This is a waste of time. I can’t tell you any more.’ She dictated some notes into a small cassette recorder, then called for the mortuary attendant to remove the body.

Frost waited for the overhead fans to cleanse the air before pulling out his nose plugs. Carol peeled off her surgical gloves and dropped them in a waste bin. She then shrugged off the green gown. Under it she was wearing a grey sweater and black slacks. The sweater was well filled and for a brief moment Frost’s thoughts were not of death and decay.

‘Seven o’clock, then,’ he whispered, feeling quite excited at the prospect.

She gave a conspiratorial nod. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

Outside, in the fresh air, he lit up a cigarette and inhaled a lungful of smoke. With a cry of disgust he snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and hurled it to the ground. The smoke tasted of Vicks VapoRub. He scrubbed his nose with his handkerchief, but to no avail. He could smell, he could taste, nothing but Vicks. Cursing loudly, he made his way to the car.

Kate was waiting for him. She looked up and smiled, glad her boring wait was over. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

‘Not as many laughs as I hoped,’ said Frost. The car radio was playing the local news:

… hunt for the three missing teenagers has entered its third day. The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Skinner, says there is no obvious link between the disappearance of Jan O’Brien, and Debbie Clark and her boyfriend Thomas Harris, who have not been heard of since they left home three days ago…

‘Switch it off,’ said Frost. ‘They’re dead.’

Kate turned and looked at him, her eyebrows raised in query

‘Just a feeling,’ he told her. ‘One of my fallible intuitions. But I reckon they’re dead. Stone-cold bleeding dead.’ He had had enough of death. He was glad it wasn’t his case any more.

‘How did you get on with the new pathologist?’ Wells asked as Frost passed through the lobby.

‘As pathologists go, she’s not a bad bit of crumpet,’ Frost told him. ‘I think she fancies me.’

‘Well, after looking at decomposing bodies all day, I reckon even you might look tasty.’

‘I’m taking her out to dinner tonight,’ said Frost.

‘Let’s hope she washes her hands first,’ grinned Wells.

‘Frost!’ Skinner’s acidic bawl echoed down the corridor and a moment later he strode through the door. ‘How is it you’re always talking, never working, when I see you, Sergeant?’ he snapped at Wells.

Wells quickly grabbed a pen and started totting up non-existent columns of figures.

‘How did the new tart like the post-mortem?’ Skinner asked.

‘She was brilliant,’ lied Frost. ‘I was ready to pass out, but she never turned a hair – not even when she saw the maggots.’

Skinner’s nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘She can see a few more, then.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mullett wants to see you in his office in half an hour. No excuses, Frost. You be there.’

‘What’s it about?’ Frost asked.

Skinner’s eyes glinted and he flashed a malevolent smile. ‘That’s what you’re going to find out,’ he replied as he marched back to his office.

‘Why do I get the feeling it’s not going to be something good?’ said Frost.

‘The bastard’s up to something,’ said Wells. ‘He’s been in and out of Mullett’s office all morning. When I took some papers in to him he was on the phone. He cut the conversation stone dead when I came in and didn’t start it again until I left.’

Frost remembered the transfer request he had seen in Skinner’s in-tray.

‘He’s leaving. That’s what it’s about,’ enthused Frost. ‘The bastard is leaving Denton.’