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.