A Touch Of Frost (4 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well . . . we assumed . . .”

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

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

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

“Of course, Max . . . but she’s asleep.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear sweet Mother of God!

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

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

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

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

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

Police Sergeant Wells nudged Collier and nodded toward the lobby doors, which were opening very slowly. Jack Frost tiptoed in, obviously hoping to sneak upstairs to the party with out being noticed. Unaware he had an audience, he furtively crossed the lobby and pushed open the door leading to the canteen, letting a warm burst of happy sound roll down the stairs on an air current of alcohol.

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

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

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

“Flaming ear holes,” muttered Frost bitterly.

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

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

“Two more breakins, Inspector.”

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

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

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

Frost was only half listening. For some reason the face of Ben Cornish swam up in his mind, the dead eyes reproaching him for something he had overlooked. Then he realized he hadn’t told Wells who the body in the toilet was.

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

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

“I bet his mother took it badly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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