Night Frost (22 page)

   And then the radio was calling them. "Can you get over to The Old Mill right away?" asked a harassed-sounding Bill Wells. "I had to call Charlie Alpha away to help with this pub fight. Mrs. Compton’s seen someone prowling about the grounds."

Tuesday night shift (3)

The smell of burning oil from Frost’s clapped-out Cortina grew stronger as Gilmore roared the car up the hill. "I can see the sod!" yelled Frost. A hunched shape was moving across the lawn towards the house. Gilmore braked violently, slewing the car across the gravel driveway, and flung open the door. The sound of breaking glass shivered the silence, followed by the shrill urgency of an alarm bell.

   "There he goes!" said Gilmore as something darted back across the lawn and was swallowed by shadow. "I’ll cut across that field, round to the side of the house. You nip that way to the end of the lane and cut him off as I flush him out." Frost, his running days long past, listened without enthusiasm, and was still fumbling with his seat belt as Gilmore streaked away into the darkness.

   The radio called to report that the alarm at The Old Mill was ringing. "Yes, we know," said Frost.

   Gilmore, out of breath, was clinging to a tree, sucking in air for dear life as Frost eventually ambled over. Frost lit a cigarette and pushed a mouthful of smoke in the sergeant’s direction. Gilmore fanned it away and, at last, between gasps, was able to croak, "Where were you?"

   Frost ignored the question. "Did you see him?"

   Gilmore’s head shook in tempo with his panting. "No. I told you to head him off."

   "I must have misheard you," said Frost. "Let’s go to the house and see what he’s done." He spun round abruptly as a figure crashed towards them out of the black. "Who the hell’s this?"

   "Did you get him?" It was Mark Compton, flourishing a heavy walking stick.

   "He was too fast," panted Gilmore. "We thought your wife would be here on her own."

   "That’s probably what that swine thought," snapped Compton. "I changed my schedule. I’ve just got in." He led them back to the house and through to the lounge where curtains billowed from a jagged hole in the centre of the large patio window. Glass slivers glinted on the carpet. The cause of the damage, a muddied brick, probably from the garden, lay next to what looked like a bunch of flowers. Frost picked it up. It wasn’t a bunch of flowers.

   "My God!" croaked Compton.

   It was a funeral wreath of white lilies, yellow chrysanthemums and evergreen leaves. Attached to it was an ivory-coloured card, edged in black. A handwritten message neatly inscribed in black ink read simply, and chillingly,
Goodbye
.

   "The sod doesn’t waste words, does he?" muttered Frost, passing the wreath to Gilmore. He stared out at the empty, dead garden, then pulled the curtains together. The night air had crept into the room and that, or the wreath, was making him feel shivery. "Did you see anything of the bloke who did it?"

   "No. Jill said she’d heard someone prowling around, but I couldn’t spot anyone. I thought she’d imagined it, then the glass smashed, then the damned alarm. I saw someone running away, but that was all."

   "And you’ve no idea who it might be?"

   "I’ve already told you, no."

   Frost scuffed a splinter of glass with his shoe. "He’s going to a great deal of trouble to make his point. He must really hate you . . . or your wife."

   "There’s no motive behind this, Inspector," insisted Compton. "We’re dealing with a nut-case."

   "Mark!" His wife calling from upstairs.

   "I’m down here with the police."

   Gilmore pushed himself in front of the inspector. "A quick question before your wife comes in, sir. Simon Bradbury—the man you had the fight with in London . . ."

   "Hardly a fight, Sergeant," protested Compton.

   "Well, whatever, sir. It seems he’s got a record for drunkenness and violence . . . and now we learn that his wife—the lady you obliged with a light—has given him the elbow. Any reason why he might believe you were the cause of her leaving him?"

   Compton’s face was a picture of incredulity. "Me? And Bradbury’s wife? I lit her damn cigarette over four weeks ago and that is the sum total of our relationship. You surely don’t think Bradbury’s responsible for what’s been happening here? It’s ridiculous!"

   "The whole thing’s bloody ridiculous," began Frost gloomily, quickly cheering up as the door opened and Jill Compton entered in a cloud of erotic perfume and an inch or so of nightdress. Her hair hung loosely over her shoulders and while Frost didn’t know how breasts could be called 'pouting', pouting seemed a good word to describe Jill Compton’s breasts as they nosed their way through near-transparent wisps of silk.

   She smiled to greet Frost then she caught her breath. "Oh my God!" She had seen the wreath. Her entire body began to tremble. Mark put his arms round her and held her tight. "I can’t take much more of this," she sobbed.

   "You won’t have to, love," he soothed. "We’ll sell up and move."

   "But the business . . ."

   "You’re more important than the bloody business." He was squeezing her close to him, his hands cupping and stroking her buttocks, and Frost hated and envied him more and more by the second.

   From somewhere in the house a phone rang. It was 00.39 in the morning. Everyone tensed. The woman trembled violently. "It’s him!" she whispered. Her husband held her tighter.

   "I’ll take it," Frost barked. "Where’s the phone?"

   Mark pointed up the stairs. "In the bedroom. We switched it through."

   Frost and Gilmore galloped up the stairs, two at a time. The bedroom door was ajar. Inside, the room held the sensual smell of Mrs. Compton. Frost snatched up the onyx phone from the bedside table and listened. A faint rapid tapping in the background. It was the sound of typing. At this hour of the morning? And indistinct murmurs of distant voices. Frost strained to listen, trying to make out what was said. There was something familiar . . . Then a man s voice said, "Hello . . . is there anyone there?" and he flopped down on the bed in disappointment. The caller was Sergeant Wells.

   "Yes, I’m here," replied Frost. "Sorry if I’m out of breath. I’m in a lady’s bed at the moment."

   "Got a treat for you, Jack. Another body."

   "Shit!" said Frost. The only body he was interested in just now was Mrs. Compton’s. "What’s the address?" He snapped his fingers for Gilmore to take it down.

   "The body’s out in the open. It was dumped in a lane at the rear of the corporation rubbish tip."

   "Ah," said Frost. "Sounds like a job for Mr. Mullett. I’ll give you his home phone number."

   "Don’t mess about, Jack. Jordan and Collier are waiting there for you. Could be foul play, but I’ve got my doubts."

   "Collier? You’re pushing that poor little sod in at the deep end?"

   "I had no-one else to send. Both area cars are ferrying the wounded down to Denton Casualty after the pub punch-up. There’s blood and teeth all over the floor down here."

   "Excuses, excuses," said Frost, hanging up quickly. "Why do I always get the shitty locations? Rubbish tips, public urinals . . . I never get knocking shops and harems." Well, he was in no hurry for this one. He stretched himself out on the bed and inhaled Jill Compton’s perfume. "Nip down and tell the lady of the house I’m ready for her now," he murmured to Gilmore. "And ask her to wash her behind. I don’t fancy it with her husband’s sticky finger-marks all over it."

   "Don’t you think we should hurry?" asked Gilmore.

   "I can’t work up much enthusiasm about a body in a rubbish dump." Reluctantly, he hauled himself up from the soft, still warm bed and had a quick nose around. Other people’s bedrooms fascinated him. His own was cold, cheerless and strictly functional, a place for crawling into bed, dead tired, in the small hours, and out again in the morning to face a new day’s horrors. But here was a bedroom for padding about, half-undressed, on the soft wool carpeting, and for making love on the wide divan bed with its beige velvet headboard. By the side of the bed, a twin-mirrored, low-level dressing table where pouting-breasted Jill Compton would splash perfume over her red-hot, naked body, before sprawling on the bed, her hair tumbled across the pillow, awaiting the entrance of her rampant, adulterous sod of a husband.

   He shook his head to erase the fantasy and walked across to the wide window to look out, across the moonlit garden. The wind had dropped and everything was quiet and still. "Any chance the bloke we saw could have been the husband?"

   "The husband?" Gilmore’s eyebrows shot up. What was the idiot on about now? "Smashing his own window? Scaring the hell out of his own wife?"

   "I just get the feeling there’s something phoney about this."

   "I don’t share your opinion," sniffed Gilmore. "And in any case, there was no way it could have been the husband. He was with his wife when the window was smashed."

   "Then I’m wrong again," shrugged Frost.

   Downstairs, husband and wife were in close embrace, the shortie nightdress had ridden up to pouting breast level and hands were crawling everywhere.

   Frost scooped up the wreath and passed it over to Gilmore. "We’ll see ourselves out," he called.

   They didn’t hear him.

Police Constable Ken Jordan, his greatcoat collar turned up against the damp chill, was waiting for them at the lane at the rear of the sprawling rubbish dump. The lane was little more than a footpath with rain-heavy, waist-high grass flourishing on each side. In the background the night sky glowed a misty orange.

   "Blimey, Jordan, what’s that pong?" sniffed Frost, inhaling the sour breath of the town’s decaying rubbish. "It’s not you, I hope?"

   Jordan grinned. He liked working with Frost. "Pretty nasty one this time, sir. The body’s a bit of a mess."

   "I only get the nasty ones," said Frost. "Let’s take a look at him."

   They followed Jordan, stumbling in the dark, as he led them down the narrow path, the wet grass on each side slap ping at their legs, "The old lady died, sir—at the hospital. I suppose you know."

   "Yes," said Frost. "I know."

   The lane curved. Ahead of them sodium lamps gleamed and flickering flames of something burning bloodied the haze. The tip was perimetered by 9-foot high chain link fencing, giving it the appearance of a wartime German prisoner of war camp.

   Behind the wire fence, towering proud through streamers of mist, rose mountains of black plastic rubbish sacks and chugging between them, pushing, scooping and rearranging the landscape, a yellow-painted corporation bulldozer splashed through slime-coated pools of filthy water. As it demolished heaps of rubbish, rats scampered and scurried, their paws making loud scratching sounds on the plastic sacking. The smell was stale and sickly sweet like unwashed, rotting bodies.

   Frost wound his scarf around his mouth and nose as he nodded towards the bulldozer. "I didn’t know they worked nights."

   "It’s this flu virus," explained Jordan. "Half of the work-force are off sick and the rest have to do overtime to keep ahead. It was the bulldozer driver who spotted the body."

   "Then sod him for a start," said Frost.

   "This way, sir." Jordan led them off the path, trampling a trail through the lush, sodden grass to where a pasty-faced PC Collier stood uneasily on guard over rusting tin cans and a tarpaulin-covered huddle.

   Frost lit up a cigarette and passed around the packet. Everyone took one, even Collier who didn’t usually smoke. Frost looked down at the tarpaulin and prodded it with his foot. "I can’t delay the treat any more." He nodded to Collier. "Let’s have a look at him."

   Collier hesitated and didn’t seem to want to comply.

   "You heard the inspector," snapped Gilmore. "What are you waiting for?"

   Keeping his head turned well away, Collier fumbled for the tarpaulin and pulled it back.

   Even Frost had to gasp when he saw the face. The cigarette dropped from his lips on to the chest of the corpse. He bent hurriedly to retrieve it, trying not to look too closely at the face as he did so.

   Jordan, who had seen it before, stared straight ahead. Gilmore’s stomach was churning and churning. He bit his lip until it hurt and tried to think of anything but that face. He wasn’t going to show himself up in front of the others.

   The body was of an old man in his late seventies. There were no eyes and parts of the face were eaten away with bloodied chunks torn from the cheeks and the lips.

   "The rats have had a go at him," said Jordan.

   "I didn’t think they were love bites," said Frost. He straightened up. "Still, we’re lucky the weather’s cold. Did I ever tell you about that decomposing tramp in the heat-wave?"

   "Yes," said Jordan hurriedly. Frost was fond of trotting out that ghastly anecdote.

   "Did I tell you, son?" said Frost, turning to Gilmore. "The hottest bloody summer on record. I can still taste the smell of him."

   "Yes, you told me," lied Gilmore.

   The dead man, the exposed flesh yellow in the over-spill of the sodium lamps, lay on his back, lipless mouth agape, staring eyeless into the night sky. He wore an unbuttoned black overcoat, heavy with rain, which flapped open to reveal a blue-striped, flannelette pyjama jacket which bore the bloodied paw marks of the feeding rats. The pyjama jacket was tucked inside dark grey trousers which were fastened by a leather belt.

   "Do we know who he is?"

   "Yes, Inspector." Collier came forward. "It’s that old boy whose daughter-in-law reported him missing from home last week. He was always walking out and sleeping rough."

   "I bet the poor sod has never slept as rough as this," observed Frost. "Sergeant Wells said you think it’s foul play?"

   "His face looked battered, sir," said Collier, pointing, but not looking where he was pointing.

   Frost haunched down, slipped a hand beneath the head of the corpse and lifted it slightly. He dribbled smoke as he stared long and hard at the mutilated face, then stood up, wiping his palm down the front of his mac. "That’s just where the rats have been tucking in, son. There’s no other marks . . . see for yourself."