The Murder Map

by Danny Miller

‘Sorry are you, sunshine, is that right? You could have taken PC Simms’s leg off with that thing.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a bear trap.’

  ‘It was old enough to be one, when bears roamed Denton Woods. How long have you been up the tree?’

  Dellinpile raised his eyes from his bootlaces, still unable to look the DI in the face, and examined his ragged nails that had chipped black nail varnish on them. ‘A few days. Three or four.’

  Frost leaned across the table and got in his face. ‘Bear traps, digging pits, sleeping up in tree houses. Anyone would think you’re feral, raised by wolves, a sort of Home Counties Mowgli. But you’re not, are you? You’re a well-educated and well-to-do lad from fine upstanding stock. Your father is Sir Malcolm Dellinpile, the renowned surgeon at King’s Hospital. Your mother was the lady mayoress of—’

  ‘I know who they are.’

  ‘So where did you learn all this, then?’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘All this Trapper John stuff. Without being too judgemental, most kids in Cure T-shirts and black eyeliner can barely get the cap off the Evo-Stik to sniff it, never mind construct reasonably sophisticated tree houses. I mean, we’re not talking the des res of the Swiss Family Robinson, but it wasn’t bad.’

  Dellinpile managed to look both proud and ashamed. ‘I learned it at boarding school. They made us spend half the week camping in the grounds, which were considerable. Joining the army cadets was obligatory. Almost everyone who went there ended up at Sandhurst, then a commission and off to foreign lands to kill people and spread their despicable imperialism.’

  ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  ‘What?’ He blew out a blast of air that flapped his lips. ‘No, of course not.’ Dellinpile raised his black spiky head and looked up at Frost, saw he wasn’t joking. He glanced around to Clarke, and saw she wasn’t smiling, either.

  Frost said, ‘Tell us about the caravan.’

  ‘What caravan?’

  ‘The caravan that you covered, camouflaged, just like you did the pit I fell into.’

  Degsy shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’ve been in the woods for three, four days. You’ve set up traps, were building a little tree house for yourself, had made the woods your home – and about a hundred yards from your tree, there was a cream caravan. Not big, two berths. But big enough to notice.’

  Dellinpile shook his head.

  Next to the plastic evidence bag was an A4 Manila envelope. Frost opened it up and laid out the four Instamatic photos that had been taken of the inside of the caravan.

  Gordon Alistair Dellinpile’s purposefully pale and introspective face now looked bleached and bloodless, as he inspected the carnage in the photos.

  ‘What are these? Who is this?’ Dellinpile’s voice was now threaded with genuine fear.

  ‘This – this is who we found in that caravan.’

  ‘So … What’s this got to do with me? I just wrote a letter to the police … That’s what this is about, right? The letter? I’ve said I’m sorry … I really—’

  ‘That’s enough, Gordon. We’re not interested in apologies, you can save those for the judge at sentencing.’

  Dellinpile stifled some tears, snorted back up some snot from his runny nose, and really did look distressed.

  Frost didn’t let up. ‘We found a bow and arrow in your rucksack, up in your tree. Sounds like a kid’s toy, but it isn’t, this one looks like a proper one. And a large hunting knife.’

  ‘I’d never use it … It’s just a tool for cutting wood and things.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘The plan was to forage, maybe snag a squirrel or rabbit if I couldn’t get to the shops, skin it and cook it.’

  Clarke joined in. ‘Learned that at school, did you, snagging squirrels and skinning them? How about the bear trap and the pit? Bit big for squirrels and rabbits?’

  ‘It was … it was …’

  ‘What, Gordon?’ pressed Clarke. ‘A prank? A bit of a public-school lark?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that …’ He pointed at the photos. ‘… I couldn’t do that.’

  Gordon Alistair Dellinpile’s head swivelled from side to side, trying to find an understanding face between Frost and Clarke. All he got was hard stares. His shoulders went first, juddering up and down as the tears began to fall.

  ‘I’m going to terminate this interview,’ said Frost. ‘And I would suggest that you make use of that phone call and contact your father. Tell him to get the most expensive lawyer he can find.’

  Dellinpile was then taken to his cell, crying and protesting his innocence of everything, apart from everything that he’d already confessed to being guilty of. Which was more than enough to bang him up in the cells for the night. They wanted to make him as uncomfortable as possible, what with PC Simms now limping around Eagle Lane with a bruised ankle. And Frost lurching around with the now familiar stiff upright gait, due to having freshly aggravated his back injury.

  Frost came through into the incident room, his Doc Martens leaving a trail of muddy prints on the grey carpet tiles. Most were far too busy to notice him. But those that did tittered with laughter at the sight of him, until the DI fixed them with a don’t-even-think-about-it death stare. He headed straight over to John Waters’ desk.

  ‘Got a job for you.’

  Waters turned, suppressed laughter, then asked, ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear? I fell down a hole.’

  ‘You look like you’ve been digging one.’

  ‘Never mind that. I want you to ring Longthorn pronto. Get as much information as you can about the comings and goings of all their staff in the last … say, six months. Pay special attention to those who left recently. But mum’s the word, this is just between me and you.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  ‘You need to talk to a Dr Graham Edmunds, the head honcho there. Tell him we’ve just discovered Conrad Wilde’s frequent visitor at Longthorn, Kevin Wheaton, murdered in Denton Woods.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not looking for one of the patients?’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe the lunatics have taken over the asylum.’

  Waters jotted down the info. Frost glanced up and saw Superintendent Mullett approaching.

  ‘Just like they have in this place,’ muttered the DI as he made his way over to the superintendent. It was 5.30 – Mullett was usually seen easing himself into his maroon Audi 4000 S about this time for the leisurely drive home back to leafy North Denton.

  ‘Still here, sir?’

  Mullett looked Frost up and down, and took a deep measured breath, as if trying to calm himself – count to ten, man. He gave his habitual withering stare of disgust at Frost’s familiar less-than-orthodox attire of battered bomber jacket and equally battered cords. To Mullett, the DI looked like his only business in a police station was to be lined up in an ID parade, not leading an investigation. But what really got Mullett’s goat were the obnoxious pillar-box-red scarf and cherry-red Doc Martens. All of which Frost was wearing now, and covered in mud.

  Getting Frost out of the pit, for his rescuers, had proved tricky, and messy, and funny. Watching the DI trying to scramble up the walls had elicited laughs from most of the Eagle Lane uniforms present at the scene. Frost swore revenge on them all. Eventually, they had to use a rope tied around his chest to pull him up, which at times made him look like the losing side in a tug of war. Still, all in the line of duty.

  ‘I need a word, please, Jack.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘If you even so much as look at one of the chairs in my office, much less try and sit on one, I’ll have your badge and your pension.’

  ‘Fair enough, sir.’

  Clive Banes sat in his white panel van, a full-size Bedford CF. It had been good to him over the years. Even acted as a home at one time or another, when he’d travelled up and down the country looking for ‘interesting projects’ to busy himself with. Sleepi
ng in it was no problem. He’d learned you could stretch out in it quite happily, no problem at all. And having never really had a real home, the mobility of the van had the obvious advantages of one without any of the drawbacks. Home and creature comforts, he didn’t miss any of those, had never really known them. And for some reason, the van offered an anonymity that cars lacked – any car – with its particular colour, make and model. People just didn’t take any notice of white vans. You could follow someone for hours in one. And in worker’s overalls, a yellow high-vis vest, a hard hat, and with a tool belt around your waist, you quite literally didn’t exist.

  So as he watched Charles Wilkes lock up his premises, he was sure that the painter hadn’t noticed him. Wilkes pulled a ring of keys out of his coat pocket and doubled-locked what looked like a heavy mortice lock. Banes saw the red box on the wall above the door, a burglar alarm. Banes was many things, but a skilled burglar he was not. He was missing the services of Kevin Wheaton already, he thought, with a not completely ironic smile on his mouth.

  Wilkes had his dog with him, the lively and yappy Jack Russell. Banes liked dogs, definitely more than cats. The scratches and bite marks on the inside of his wrist from his last encounter with a cat, in West Norwood, were still unusually red and livid. But this dog, the Jack Russell, alarmed Banes as much as the red box above the door. It looked noisy.

  Banes got out of the van, made his way over the road and waited at the bus stop with Wilkes. There were five others forming a loose queue, but there was no tiresome conversation about waiting hours for a bus, then two turning up at once. They didn’t even make eye contact. The number 12 to Denton town centre arrived and everyone got on.

  Wilkes alighted from the bus at Market Square, and Banes followed him along a series of well-lit streets, full of people who’d knocked off from work, and young couples meeting up for dates.

  The Coach and Horses was on Mantle Street, two doors down from the Denton Repertory Theatre. And into the pub he followed Wilkes and the dog. Inside was a shock of red: red flock wallpaper, red carpet and red velvet-covered bench seating. The occasional respite from the red came in the form of the theatre posters on the wall, and framed signed photos of the ‘stars’ from the theatre who had popped in for a tipple of port and lemon. Everyone from Roy Hudd and Emu to a young Peter O’Toole had graced its stage and trodden its boards. It seemed to be the preserve of regulars. Charles Wilkes ordered his drink, a bottle of stout, chatted with the barman, who he was on first-name terms with, then settled at a table with a cluster of friends.

  Far from the curmudgeonly old git that Banes had witnessed on the doorstep with Parker, Wilkes was full of garrulous bonhomie. His voice was plummy and he seemed well educated. The more that Banes considered him, the more he suspected that he could well have been friends with Ivan Fielding. In fact, this might very well have been a pub that Ivan frequented. The crowd Wilkes was seated with looked like a cast of interesting characters: late ’50s Soho artists, wasted old writers, worn-out chorus girls, stage hands, resting actors gone to rack and ruin. All perfect company for an alky antiques dealer with a dark past. It was just the kind of demi-monde that Ivan Fielding would have sought out once he’d washed up near Denton.

  ‘… I said to him, dear boy, the only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future!’

  They all laughed as Wilkes took the credit for this lesser-quoted bon mot. But there was someone at the table who wasn’t laughing, not even smiling. It was in fact glaring at Banes with a positive snarling menace across its muzzle.

  The bloody dog. Whatever that sixth sense is, dogs have it, thought Banes.

  ‘What can I get you, my friend?’ asked the publican.

  The dog barked, pulled at his leash and snapped at Banes.

  ‘Plato!’ called out Wilkes, pulling the dog back and petting him till his barks subsided into a sustained low growl, like an engine left turning over. ‘What’s wrong with you, boy, what’s got into you?’

  The publican said to Banes, ‘He’s got the hump with you all right – what did you say you wanted?’

  Banes left the pub without saying a word.

  ‘Tucked under the bench in the caravan we found a black plastic Gola sports bag with tools in it, burglar’s tools, including a diamond-tipped glass cutter,’ said Frost.

  ‘Put all this together with the fact that he was best friends with Conrad Wilde, or like a son to him, and it looks like your theory is right, Jack.’

  The Denton DI gave an appreciative gesture to his Norwood counterpart, DI Garside, who, with Frost, was sitting in Superintendent Stanley Mullett’s office. (The super had insisted Ms Smith put newspaper down on Frost’s chair first.) Mullett considered the information before him, including from the scene-of-crime officers and Forensics reports, as well as other supporting evidence dredged up by Garside and his team investigating Florence Wheaton’s murder.

  Mullett put down the thickening case file and turned to the officers. ‘Do we think that the killer of Florence Wheaton and her son Kevin has Ruby Hanson?’

  Frost and Garside exchanged anxious looks. Frost said, ‘Until we get the post-mortem report on Kevin to confirm that the same weapon was used on mother and son, we don’t know for sure that it was the same killer. But from the initial inspection of the body, it looks like it.’

  Mullett met this with a murmur of accord. Frost knew it was the kind of due diligence he enjoyed.

  ‘As for Ruby,’ continued Frost, ‘Kevin Wheaton’s caravan was parked up in the woods, not far from the protestors who have embedded themselves there. Ruby’s father is the architect for the new housing development, so yes, there’s an undeniable connection.’

  ‘The one you have in custody?’

  ‘Gordon Alistair Dellinpile, who we’re holding as a suspect for the Kevin Wheaton killing, denies both the killing and the abduction – but admits to writing the letter that was addressed to you.’

  ‘Who signed “Ruby” in blood?’

  ‘Yes. But not Ruby’s blood, not even animal blood. It’s a vegetable dye. He lacks a credible alibi, but he seems to me an unlikely candidate for the abduction. He’s a loner. My gut feeling is that more than one person, at least two, are involved in the kidnapping. But I don’t want to turn him loose yet. I’ve been wrong before.’

  Mullett nodded. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Thought you would, sir,’ muttered Frost under his breath.

  ‘So how are we playing it?’ asked Garside.

  ‘A joint operation,’ said Mullett. ‘The killer of the Wheatons is obviously at large in the Denton area. We must find him before he kills again.’

  Garside assented. ‘We’ve been liaising with Suffolk police, and they’ve had a missing person just been reported by an ex-girlfriend of one Peter Allerton. He works at Longthorn Secure Hospital, in the canteen.’

  Frost and Garside focused on Mullett. Eventually he spoke. ‘What we don’t want is the spectre of Ivan Fielding and Conrad Wilde, and this business from 1967, to colour this case. At this stage I’m only interested in getting Ruby Hanson back home, and the Wheatons’ killer behind bars. Anything else is a distraction. Is that clear?’

  Both inspectors gave solid nods in deference to Superintendent Stanley Mullett’s clarity.

  Saturday (1)

  Frost was up before the wailing siren of his new digital alarm clock had time to pierce his subconscious. He’d replaced the old wind-up one – it was too easy to throw it across the room, which happened on a regular basis. This new one was plugged into the mains and could make tea for him, though he’d never put that function to use. The main thing was, it was too big to throw across the room.

  The gods were smiling on him this morning – the Metro started up first time, and he hadn’t bumped into Shirley, his neighbour from across the landing. He’d seen her collecting her two pints of full-cream, bending down in a revealing dressing gown, offering him a cuppa before he left. He’d alwa
ys declined, it was easy to do so in the mornings, always in a hurry, things to do, people to see, crimes to solve. Shirley would give a deep heaving sigh when he hinted at his heroics on the streets of Denton.

  The traffic was good, he beat every red light, and his parking space at Eagle Lane wasn’t taken. And everyone was present and correct for the morning briefing in the incident room. Frost stood at the board, where there was a new name written up in block capitals to accompany Ruby Hanson’s: KEVIN WHEATON.

  Frost briefed the team on the murder and told them they’d be working in tandem with DI David Garside from West Norwood CID. They were soon all up to speed on the case. And with the pictures of the horrific injuries that Kevin Wheaton and his mother, Florence, had sustained pinned up on the board too, everyone knew the killer had to be caught before he, literally, struck again.

  Frost was just about to answer questions about the possibility of the Wheaton murders being connected to Ruby’s disappearance, when Sue Clarke told him that Gail Hanson was on the phone, very distressed.

  ‘It came yesterday, the second post.’

  ‘Who else has touched it, read the letter?’

  ‘Just Richard.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  Gail Hanson turned away from Frost, couldn’t meet his eye. She went over to the window, perhaps hoping to see her daughter coming up the path. He repeated the question.

  ‘He’s gone into work,’ she said, still averting her eyes. ‘That’s where he keeps all his paperwork, so he can organize getting a loan from the bank, paying the money … doing what they want.’

  She collapsed rather than sat on the sofa and stared at what was on the smoked-glass coffee table before them.

  It was an unwrapped brown paper parcel that contained the head of Little Miss Lucy, the Cabbage Patch Kid doll that Ruby had with her when she was snatched off the street. It had been a present for her birthday, some five months earlier. And in the short life of faddish toys and children’s whims it had remained a favourite and a constant companion.

  It was a special-edition doll, quite rare and sought after. With its head had come a note typed on a sheet of white A4 copy paper. The text’s uniformity and lack of impression suggested to Frost that an electric typewriter or a word processor had been used to produce it.