Winter Frost (51 page)

Hill Lane was narrow, rutted and steep, and tested the car's springs to the limit. A bumpy, uncomfortable ride, so it was almost a relief when the lane petered out to a muddied footpath and they had to get out and walk, fighting their way, heads down, against a driving wind. A dank and desolate area with hostile branches and brambles scratching and tearing as they sloshed their way through rain-filled pot-holes. The lane twisted and started getting steeper. "Are you sure this is right?" asked Frost. "It doesn't seem to be leading anywhere."

   
"It's definitely up here somewhere, guv," Morgan told him. "Not easy to reach, the lady said."

   
"Ladies never say that to me," said Frost. "Ah . . ." They had reached the summit and were looking down on the untidy sprawl of the smallholding, mud dotted with piles of rubbish and battered corrugated sheeting.

   
Rusty wire held in a few scrawny chickens who squawked in protest at the invasion of the two detectives. From somewhere behind the chicken shed they could hear a goat bleating. The small house looked neglected with boarded-up windows, peeling paint and sections of guttering hanging limply down like a broken arm.

   
As they scrunched their way down a swampy cinder path, Morgan screwed up his face in disgust. "What's that smell, guv?"

   
Frost indicated a small brick outhouse with a corrugated iron roof. "That's an earth privy—a wooden seat and a bucket. If she offers us rhubarb and custard, say no."

   
There was no knocker or bell push on the cracked front door so he thumped with his fist. They waited. Nothing.

   
"Perhaps she's out," suggested Morgan, wishing they'd never started this.

   
"Perhaps she's filling up the chamber pot," said Frost, stepping well back. "You take over the knocking."

   
Nervously, Morgan gave the door a tentative rap, then tried to look through the window, but the thick grime barely let him see through to the drawn, dirt-heavy curtains and all he saw was his own blurred reflection. He hammered the door again. "Police—open up."

   
"Clear off!" An old woman's voice. The upstairs window had opened.

   
Morgan hopped back quickly as a bucketful of something nasty splattered down. "I don't think she's too keen to see us, guv," he muttered.

   
"It's just her way," said Frost as the window slammed shut again. He gave the door a savage kick. "Open up, missus, or we'll kick the bloody door in."

   
The window again creaked open. "Go away. I'm sick." The voice was weak and quavering.

   
"You'll be a bloody sight sicker if you don't let us in," bellowed Frost.

   
They waited as footsteps slowly descended the stairs, then countless bolts were drawn and the front door slowly creaked open.

   
She was very old, leathery skin, wispy grey hair, wearing a bloodstained sacking apron over a faded floral dress. Her deeply wrinkled face was dirt-grimed and she studied Morgan's warrant card suspiciously with red-rimmed eyes, then jerked her head for them to come in.

   
Frost peered into the dark depths and sniffed gingerly. The earth privy seemed preferable. He took one last lungful of cold, clear air, then stepped inside. "Thanks."

   
They followed her over the bare boards of a dingy passage, their noses assailed by a mixture of smells, stale fat, ancient food, paraffin, and a lurking, earthy odour of something worse.

   
She led them into the kitchen, a smelly little room with a tiny window too high to see out of and too dirty to let much light in. A Primus stove stood on a rickety rusted metal stand next to a chipped, brown-stained sink piled high with dirty dishes encrusted with ancient food. Hanging from a nail on the wall, a recently killed, scrawny chicken dripped blood from its beak on to the gritty stone floor. She sat herself down at a scarred-topped wooden table, picked up a lethal-looking kitchen knife, wiped it on her sacking apron and started hacking away at the corpse of another plucked chicken which lay beside a pile of feathers. "Sit down, if you like," she grunted.

   
Frost glanced around. None of the chairs looked particularly appetizing. "No thanks. You used to live in Beresford Street?"

   
"Yes."

   
"When was that?"

   
"A long time ago."

   
"When did you move here?"

   
"A long time ago."

   
Frost raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. "Can't you give us some idea of dates?"

   
"No." The knife crashed down like a guillotine blade and the severed head of the chicken dropped into a bin half-filled with food debris.

   
"Where's your son, Mrs. Aldridge?"

   
For the briefest of moments the old woman froze, then the knife began sawing away as she dismembered the bird's legs. "Haven't got a son." The yellow, muddy legs joined the neck in the bin. She hacked off blooded chunks of meat and dropped them in a battered saucepan.

   
"Come on, love," said Frost, through clenched teeth. "You had a son when you lived at Beresford Street."

   
"My son is dead," she said bluntly, wiping blood from the knife with her sacking apron then dragging some carrots and onions towards her. The vegetables looked as if another wash under the tap wouldn't do them any harm.

   
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Frost, not sounding it. "When did he die?"

   
"A long time ago."

   
"What, five, ten, twenty years?"

   
"I don't remember."

   
"Let's have a look at his death certificate and we'll be off."

   
"Don't know where it is." She began slicing the vegetables, the knife a blur, barely missing her fingers as she pushed them under the blade.

   
"Then where is he buried?"

   
"Don't remember." A handful of sliced vegetables were tossed on top of the blooded chunks of meat in the saucepan.

   
Frost was losing patience. "Come on, missus. You might forget a lot of things, but not where your only son was buried. Was it in Denton?"

   
She pulled more vegetables towards her. "I'm old. I forget things. It might have been, or perhaps he was cremated somewhere."

   
"Well, that narrows it down," snorted Frost. He tried a different tack. "What was his name?"

   
A sad smile. "Boy. I called him Boy."

   
"What was his proper name?"

   
She raised her head. "Boy. That was his proper name."

   
"Would Boy be buried in a garden in Nelson Road?" Her head dropped. The hand holding the knife shook for an instant before she steadied it and slowly and deliberately gave all her attention to cutting up more vegetables, although already there seemed to be more than enough in the saucepan. "No."

   
"Only we found a body." He was watching her closely.

   
"Nothing to do with me." Chop, chop, chop.

   
"Do you have any living relatives who might have better memories than you?" Taffy asked.

   
"There's no-one."

   
"What about Boy's father?"

   
"Dead. Everyone's dead."

   
"What was his name?"

   
"Don't remember."

   
"How old was your son when he died?"

   
"Don't remember."

   
Frost was getting fed up with this. They were getting nowhere and he wanted to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of this tiny, dirty scullery. "Just bloody concentrate. We found a skeleton of a man in a garden in Nelson Road. We're trying to establish who he is. Could he be your son?"

   
She gave the saucepan a shake. "No."

   
Frost dug into his mac pocket and pulled out the wrist-watch. He thrust it at her. "Is this your son's watch?"

   
She jerked her head away. "No."

   
"Look at the damn thing before you say no."

   
"Don't have to. Boy couldn't tell the time. He didn't have a watch." She rose painfully from her chair and unhooked the other chicken from the nail and started to tear out its feathers. "I want you to go now. I've got work to do." The knife crashed down, completely severing the chicken's head and nearly splitting the table top in two. The old girl wasn't as frail as she looked.

   
She followed them out to the front door and banged it shut behind them. They could hear bolts slamming home.

   
Frost's nose twitched. "Doesn't fresh air smell funny." He shivered and tightened his scarf. After the fetid fug of that kitchen, the cold cut like a knife.

   
They trudged down the path. Morgan nodded at the potato ridges in the kitchen garden. "She must be as strong as a horse, guv."

   
"She smells like one," grunted Frost.

   
"I mean, all on her own, digging the garden, tending the chickens and the goat. She must be as old as the Queen Mum."

   
"I was wondering who she reminded me of," said Frost.

   
"What's our next move?"

   
"We forget it, Taffy. She probably killed her son, but we're never going to prove it. We let it drop."

   
But Morgan wouldn't let it drop. He kicked a lump of the dug-over earth. "She could have more bodies buried here, guv."

   
Frost groaned. "What the hell are you on about now?"

   
"Where did she get the money from to buy this place? The council said they'd heard the old boy who used to live here had died, but they had nothing official. Perhaps she killed him, buried him, then pretended he'd sold it to her. I reckon we should dig the place up."

   
Frost's hand flicked this suggestion aside. "We've got enough flaming dead bodies without digging around to find more, Taffy."

   
"If she killed her son and the old boy, guv, she should be made to pay."

   
"The old cow's pushing ninety. She lives in a shit-house. Prison would be like the Mayfair Hilton in comparison. How is that making her pay?" He sighed. "Sod it, Taffy. I hate it when you're keen. All right, you can do the ferreting. Get the old boy's name from the town hall and find out if he was still in the land of the living after he was supposed to have sold the place . . ."

   
It was chicken casserole for lunch at the canteen, but Frost didn't fancy it. He grabbed himself a sausage sandwich and was half-way into it when he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be attending the post-mortem of Sarah Hicks. Dropping the remains of the sandwich in his pocket, he dashed down to the car and was still wiping crumbs from his mouth as he charged into the autopsy room to be greeted by a scowling Drysdale. "Just made it, doc," he panted. "I thought I was going to be late."

   
"You are late," snapped Drysdale. "I said two o'clock."

   
"Oh," said Frost. "I could have sworn you said twelve minutes past." He shuffled on a green gown. "If you could speed it up, doc, I've got lots to do." He hoisted himself up on a stool and watched as the pathologist took a scalpel and scratched a preliminary red line down the stomach. Suddenly it hit him. Only a few hours ago he had been talking to the poor cow. Only a few days ago he had sat on this same stool while Drysdale performed the autopsy on little Vicky Smart. Someone was killing toms, someone was killing little girls, and he was supposed to be leading the hunt for the killers, but was getting absolutely nowhere. All his brilliant theories had proved false, all his dead cert leads had fizzled out. He no longer had any faith in his rogue cab driver theory, expecting it to blow up in his face like all the others. The responsibility was too bloody great. He was out of his depth. The pillow case flaming burglar was more his mark and he was getting nowhere with that case either.

   
"Are you still with us, Inspector?"

   
He snapped out of his mournful reverie. Drysdale was talking to him. "Sorry, doc. What was that?"

   
"I said the condition her arteries were in, she could have suffered a heart attack at any time."

   
Frost nodded gloomily. It didn't make him feel any better.

Four o'clock in the afternoon, dark as night outside and the pub was already crowded. The autopsy had depressed him and the awareness of his own inadequacy hung heavily over him. He couldn't face going back to the station without a drink inside him.

   
As he pushed his way through to the bar a familiar raucous laugh made him stop and turn. Leaning across the bar, chatting up the bespectacled barmaid, was Taffy Morgan clutching a beer glass. His back was to Frost, but some sixth sense told him he was being observed. Morgan turned and started guiltily. "You looking for me, guv?"

   
As good an excuse as any. "Yes," lied Frost, "I've been looking everywhere."

   
"Sorry, guv. I was so busy getting the gen on that old farmer, I didn't have time for any lunch, so I popped in here for a quick sandwich."

   
"Yes," grunted Frost, "I saw you drinking it. You can buy me one now, a pint!" He sipped the beer as the DC filled him in.

   
"I've tracked down that old boy's family, guv," he began. "It looks as if I was wrong about her killing him. The old girl bought the place from him for £3,500 in 1957—paid cash apparently. The old boy died in his bed three years later. They showed me the death certificate."