Night Frost

by R D Wingfield

  ‘I don’t cut corners. Aged around fifteen.’ He snapped his fingers and demanded: ‘Dental records!’ Miss Grey passed him across a small typed card with marked diagrams. He studied it then handed it back. His spatula clicked on the teeth checking extractions and fillings. ‘From the dental record I can identify the body as that of Paula Bartlett, aged fifteen years and two months. Some traces of blood in her mouth.’ He wiped the mouth with a swab and dropped it into a container held out by his secretary.

  ‘She anticipates his every move,’ Frost whispered to Gilmore. ‘I bet he doesn’t have to tell her when to thrust or withdraw.’

  Gilmore couldn’t even pretend to smile.

  Frost fidgeted with impatience as the pathologist plodded on, the swollen neck now receiving his painstaking scrutiny, fingers carefully prodding and probing.

  ‘Dr Maltby said death was due to manual strangulation,’ prompted Frost. Why was this man so bloody slow?

  ‘If I was one of Dr Maltby’s patients,’ murmured the pathologist, his nose almost touching the neck, ‘I’d insist on a second opinion on everything he told me.’ To his secretary he said, ‘Signs of manual pressure applied to neck.’

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘So that’s what killed her.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what killed her when I have completed the autopsy,’ said Drysdale, crushingly. ‘For all I know, there are eight bullet wounds in the stomach. Just keep quiet.’

  Frost gave his watch a pointed stare, sighed deeply then went outside for a smoke. Gilmore was happy to join him. Even with the extractor fan working full blast, the atmosphere in the post-mortem room was foul and would worsen when Drysdale used the scalpel to open the body up.

  The porter brought them two mugs of tea and gratefully accepted a cigarette from the inspector. Through the swing doors they could see the autopsy proceeding. A bone saw screamed and Gilmore turned his eyes away, his teeth gritted against the noise.

  ‘Perhaps we could browse while we wait,’ requested Frost. ‘Have you got a Susan Bicknell in stock?’

  The porter flipped open his ledger and ran a nicotine-stained finger down the entries. ‘Suicide? Came in this afternoon? This way.’

  They followed him to the refrigerated section. On a small side table near the door was a polythene bag containing a folded Mickey Mouse nightdress, a black and gold kimono and, separately wrapped, a Snoopy watch. Snoopy’s paws pointed to 4.29. ‘Her things,’ announced the porter laconically, jerking his thumb.

  He stopped in front of one of the bank of metal drawers, checked the name tag and pulled it open. Sliding on rollers, a sheeted body silently emerged. When the sheet was removed the girl was seen to be naked. A red label tied to her big toe seemed an obscene addition as if some joker had put it there for a laugh. Needle marks were clearly visible on her left arm.

  The porter folded the sheet and stared down in disapproval. ‘I hate seeing them so bloody young.’

  ‘Give my colleague a hand to turn her over,’ requested Frost.

  Gilmore hesitated, then steeled himself and complied. He wasn’t prepared for the hard coldness of the flesh and nearly let her fall back. The porter gave him a scornful look. ‘She can’t hurt you. She’s dead. Bloody hell . . . look at that!’

  Now she was turned, they could see it. All across her buttocks, fading but still visible, deep, criss-cross lines of red weals and smudges of pale yellow bruises. They were the marks left by a thrashing, a vicious thrashing, from a whip or a cane. At least twelve weals could be counted. Frost winced. ‘It hurts just to look at it. Who the hell could have done this?’

  ‘That bloody stepfather,’ snapped Gilmore. ‘I’d like to meet him on a dark night.’

  A firm shake of the head. Frost couldn’t buy that. ‘She was fifteen years old, for Pete’s sake. She’d never submit to that.’

  A sniff from the porter who offered his worldly-wise opinion. ‘I reckon she was kinky. Perhaps she enjoyed being beaten.’

  ‘Maybe, but not as hard as this. She’d have been yelling blue murder after the first cut . . . and yet she took more than twelve of them.’

  ‘She could have been into bondage as well,’ offered Gilmore. ‘Strapped down while it was done to her. Some women like that.’

  Frost’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Blimey, Gilmore, what sort of women do you go out with? I never have such luck. I only have to blow in their ear-hole and they think I’m a pervert.’

  ‘When you’ve quite finished your voyeurism . . .’ The pathologist glowered disapproval, his gown stained and carrying the taint of the grave into the clean coldness of the refrigerated section.

  Back to the autopsy table where the body had been crudely stitched and the secretary was writing out neat labels for jars of removed organs. ‘She was trussed up and put inside the plastic sack within three or four hours of being killed,’ said Drysdale watching Gilmore note this information down. ‘Cause of death manual strangulation.’

  ‘That’s what Dr Maltby said,’ beamed Frost.

  Ignoring him, Drysdale plunged on. ‘The killer’s two hands went round her throat like this.’ Obligingly, his secretary allowed herself to be used for a demonstration and stood still as he grabbed her throat, sinking his thumbs deep into her larynx. ‘The girl would have struggled desperately, fighting for her life. I imagine she grabbed his wrists, trying to break his grip but her killer, his hands still tight round her throat, swung her from side to side and smashed her head against a wall, probably hard enough to make her lose consciousness.’ He swung Miss Grey from side to side as illustration, but spared her the banging of the head. She looked disappointed as he released his grip, but carried on labelling jars of human offal.

  Indicating blood-matted hair and a discoloured area on the scalp Drysdale invited them to inspect the damage.

  ‘If she struggled, doc,’ asked Frost, ‘wouldn’t she have marked him . . . scratched him . . . gouged out chunks of flesh?’

  A tight smile. ‘If you’re hoping for pieces of tell-tale flesh under her fingernails, I must disappoint you, Inspector.’ He lifted the girl’s misshapen right hand and displayed the fingernails. They were bitten down to the quick.

  ‘Damn,’ said Frost.

  Carefully Drysdale lowered the hand to its original position. ‘Clear evidence of sexual intercourse just before she died.’

  Frost nodded glumly. He had expected this. ‘Rape?’

  ‘I think so,’ replied the pathologist blandly.

  ‘You think so?’ echoed Gilmore, incredulously. ‘You only think so.

  ‘There is evidence of bruising that could suggest intercourse took place against her will . . .’

  ‘Then she was raped,’ cried Gilmore.

  ‘If I might be allowed to continue,’ grated Drysdale. ‘The girl was a virgin. She could have submitted willingly, but have been tensed instead of relaxed. This might account for the bruising. Equally, she could have been raped. There is no magic way of knowing at this stage.’

  ‘If she submitted willingly, doc,’ said Frost, ‘there would have been no real need to have wrung her neck afterwards.’

  ‘That’, snapped Drysdale, ‘is in your province, Inspector Frost, not mine. I give the medical facts. It’s up to you to speculate.’

  Frost nodded ruefully. ‘Then give me some facts on the way the bastard burnt her so I can speculate how to catch the sod.’

  ‘I was coming to that,’ said Drysdale testily. ‘As you can see, the genital area is badly charred. In my opinion this occurred very soon after death, within an hour, say.’

  ‘Dr Maltby thought it could have been done with a blow-lamp.’

  Drysdale frowned. ‘For once, Dr Maltby might have been right. To do that sort of damage you’d need something like a blowtorch.’

  ‘But why would anyone do it, doc? Is it a new kind of sexual perversion?’

  ‘I’ve come across something like this once before. A murdered rape victim, a thirty-eight-year-old prostitute. She was found in some bushes near
a railway embankment. The lower part of the body was badly burnt where her killer had doused paraffin over her and set it alight. It seems he had heard about genetic fingerprinting. You’ve probably read about it.’

  ‘No,’ said Frost. ‘I only read comics and dirty books.’

  ‘There’s a newly developed technique,’ lectured Drysdale, ‘that allows us to determine an individual’s genetic fingerprint from traces of body fluid – semen, say.’

  Frost’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean a dick print instead of a fingerprint?’

  The pathologist winced. ‘I wouldn’t put it as crudely as that, Inspector, but yes, by DNA testing we can positively identify the donor of a semen sample.’

  ‘So if I produced a suspect . . .’ began Frost, hoping Burton had traced the plumber.

  ‘If you produced a suspect, we could either positively incriminate him, or positively eliminate him, but he would have to supply us with a blood sample for comparison.’

  ‘I’ll get a blood sample for you,’ said Frost. ‘And if he won’t give us one voluntarily, I’m sure we can arrange for him to fall down the station stairs.’

  The pathologist’s smile wavered. Like many people, he never knew when Frost was being serious or when he was joking. ‘Unfortunately, Inspector, it wouldn’t work with this poor girl. Even without the burning, the advanced stage of decomposition of the body precludes any possibility of carrying out the test.’

  ‘This bastard’s having all the luck,’ moaned Frost. ‘Anything else, doc?’

  Drysdale made a mental note to include in his complaint to the Divisional Commander his displeasure at the way Frost chose to address him. ‘Yes.’ He held out his hand and clicked his fingers. Miss Grey gave him a large sealed jar full of squishy, lumpy brown unpleasantness dotted with green. ‘The stomach contents. She hadn’t had time to digest her last meal before she died.’

  Frost screwed his face and turned his head. ‘Tell me what it is, doc, so I can make a point of not ordering it.’

  ‘Something with chips and peas. You’ll get a detailed analysis some time tomorrow. My report will be on your desk by noon.’

  ‘Do you feel like eating, son?’ asked Frost as they climbed back into the car. ‘Something with chips and peas?’

  ‘No,’ said Gilmore. All he felt like doing was going to bed and sleeping the clock round.

  Five o’clock. Cold, raining steadily and still dark.

  Tuesday morning shift (1)

  They got back to the station at 5.15. A less than happy Sergeant Bill Wells was still on duty wearing his greatcoat against the cold of the unheated lobby.

  ‘Still here?’ asked Frost.

  ‘Yes, still bloody here. But I’m going home at six on the dot whether anyone relieves me or not. I’ve had it up to here.’ His hand indicated a point well above his head. He spun round to Gilmore. ‘And I’ve got enough to do without keeping on answering calls from your bloody wife demanding to know when you’re coming home.’

  ‘When did she phone?’ Gilmore asked.

  ‘Do you mean the first time, the second or the third? The last one was ten minutes ago.’

  Gilmore hurried off to the office to use the phone and Wells accepted a cigarette from Frost. ‘She sounded well sozzled, Jack,’ he confided. ‘You could smell the gin over the phone.’

  ‘They’ve not been married long,’ said Frost. ‘She’s suffering from night starvation.’

  ‘Tough!’ grunted Wells, pulling his phone log over. ‘Couple of messages for you. Jill Knight phoned from the hospital. The old lady is still in intensive care. Doubtful if she’ll regain consciousness. And Arthur Hanlon says one of the neighbours spotted a blue van parked at the back of Clarendon Street just before midnight.’

  ‘Clues are pouring in thick and fast,’ said Frost, trotting off down the corridor.

  In the office Gilmore was making apologetic noises down the phone. ‘I know, love . . . I’m sorry. What time will I be back?’ He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and looked enquiringly at Frost.

  ‘Let’s pack it in now,’ said Frost. ‘Grab a few hours’ sleep and be back about twelve.’

  Gilmore nodded his thanks and assured Liz, cross his heart, he’d be with her in fifteen minutes.

  On the way out Frost pushed open the door to the Murder Incident Room. Burton was slumped by the phone, half asleep. Frost gave him a shake. ‘Come on, son. I’ll take you home.’

  Burton smothered a yawn. ‘I’ve located the firm that did the work at the cemetery, but I won’t be able to get the plumber’s name and address until their offices open at nine.’

  ‘That’s what I want,’ mused Frost. ‘A nine to five job, an expense account with no limit and a sexy secretary with no knickers.’ He sighed at the impossibility of his dream. ‘Leave a note for your relief to follow it through. Let’s go home.’

  The Cortina was juddering down Catherine Street, Gilmore fighting sleep at the wheel, Frost slumped with his eyes half closed at his side and Burton yawning in the back seat. They passed a row of shops; one, a newsagent’s, had its lights gleaming. Burton in the back seat stirred and peered through the car window. ‘That’s where Paula Bartlett worked.’

  ‘Pull up,’ yelled Frost. Gilmore steered the car into the kerb. The name over the shop read G. F. Rickman, Newsagent. ‘Let’s chat him up,’ said Frost. With a searing scowl at Burton for not keeping his big mouth shut, Gilmore clambered out after him.

  George Rickman, plump and balding, was deeply engrossed in a study of the Page Three nude in The Sun. On the floor in front of the counter, stacked in neat piles, were the newspapers he had sorted and marked ready for the kids to take out on their rounds. The shop bell tinkled to announce a customer, old Harry Edwards from round the corner for his Daily Mirror and some fifty pence pieces for the gas. While he was serving Harry, the bell sounded again and two men he hadn’t seen before came in: one, in his early twenties, looking tired and irritable; the other, older, wearing a crumpled mac. They hovered furtively by the door, obviously waiting for the shop to empty before they approached. Rickman smirked to himself. Dirty sods. He knew what they were after.

  Harry shuffled out and the two men sidled across. Warning them to wait with a movement of his hand, Rickman darted over to the shop door and squinted through the glass to make sure no-one else was coming, then lowered his voice. ‘Who sent you – Les?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Frost, equally conspiratorial, wondering what the hell this was all about.

  ‘You can’t be too careful,’ said Rickman, unlocking a door behind the counter. He ushered them through. ‘Some of this stuff’s dynamite.’ He clicked on the light. The room was full of shelved books and magazines with lurid covers of naked, sweating, entwined men and women. In boxes on a table were stacks of soft porn videos.

  ‘Les said you had something special,’ suggested Frost, signalling to Gilmore, who was fumbling for his warrant card, to hold his horses.

  Rickman leered and tapped the side of his nose knowingly. He unlocked a cupboard. More videos, this time in plain white boxes with typed labels.

  ‘There’s everything here,’ he said proudly. ‘All tastes catered for – men with men, women with women, with kids, animals . . . any permutation you want. Fifty quid a time – return it undamaged and I’ll allow you twenty-five quid off your next purchase.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve got that much money on me,’ said Frost, reaching for his inside pocket.

  ‘I take Access . . . American Express . . . any card you like.’

  ‘What about this one?’ asked Frost.

  Rickman stared at a warrant card. His jaw dropped. ‘Shit!’ he said.

  A ting from the shop bell and a boy’s voice called, ‘Papers ready, Mr Rickman?’

  ‘By the counter. Take them and go.’ He waited until the bell signalled the boy’s departure. ‘Look, officer. I’m sure we can come to some understanding.’ He brought out his wallet and pulled out two £50 notes.

  ‘Give
the gentleman a receipt for a £100 bribe,’ said Frost, holding out his hand for the money. ‘I’ll read you the numbers.’

  Hastily, Rickman stuffed the banknotes in his pocket. ‘You misunderstand me, Inspector.’

  ‘I hope I do,’ replied Frost. ‘You’re in enough bloody trouble as it is.’ He read some of the labels on the videos and shuddered. They were very explicit.

  Rickman fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed sweat from his face. ‘I don’t usually indulge in this sort of stuff. Harmless soft porn, yes, but not the hard stuff. I met this bloke in a pub . . .’

  Frost cut him short. ‘Save your fairy tales for the officer down the station.’ He sent Gilmore to the car to radio for someone to collect Rickman and the books and videos.

  ‘You try and do people a good turn and this happens,’ moaned Rickman. ‘What bastard shopped me?’

  ‘We’ve been watching this shop for months,’ lied Frost. He had taken an instant dislike to the podgy newsagent. Some of the videos involved schoolgirls. He wondered if Paula Bartlett was tied in with this in some way. He stared at the fidgeting Rickman and slowly lit a cigarette. ‘We’ve found her, you know.’

  ‘Found who?’

  ‘Paula.’

  ‘Paula Bartlett . . . my news girl?’

  Frost nodded.

  ‘Is she . . .’ He steeled himself to say it. ‘Is she dead?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ His face was screwed tight in anguish.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘And you should see what the bastard did to her. It would make a good video for you to sell.’

  The shop bell thinkled again as Gilmore returned. He’d also asked Bill Wells to phone his wife and say he would be late, but had got short shrift from the sergeant.

  Frost sat on the corner of the ice-cream cabinet. ‘Tell me about Paula.’

  ‘A really nice, sweet kid,’ said Rickman.

  ‘They’re always nice when they’re dead,’ said Frost. ‘Tell me what she was like while she was still alive.’

  Rickman shrugged. ‘She was a nothing. A dull kid. A bit of a pudding. Never laughed. Hardly ever spoke. Did her work. That was all.’