Night Frost (10 page)

   "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 matinée," 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."