‘You were too smart for him,’ said Frost.
Again Skinner stared hard. Like Mullett, he was never sure when Frost was taking the piss. He again decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Thanks.’ He looked up as his office door opened, ready to snarl because no one had knocked first, but it was Mullett, who gave Frost his customary scowl, then beckoned Skinner to join him outside.
Jerking his head significantly at Frost, Skinner gave Mullett a quick thumbs-up sign to show that the dirty deed with the transfer form had been done. As the door closed behind them, Frost debated whether to press his ear against the door to find out what they were talking about, or take the opportunity to have a rummage through Skinner’s in-tray. He settled for the rummage, but had hardly started when the detective chief inspector returned. Frost pretended he was blowing cigarette ash from the in-tray’s papers.
‘Superintendent Mullett has kindly invited me to join him at his club later for a celebratory lunch,’ he told Frost, pulling the in-tray out of reach. ‘And I’m steering clear of oysters.’
‘What are you celebrating?’ Frost asked, knowing damn well it was his signing of the transfer request.
Skinner hesitated, his mind whirling in search of an alternative reason. ‘The… er… the way I tied up that stabbing case last night.’
‘And without any help,’ added Frost.
Skinner pretended not to hear. ‘Keep an eye on things when I’m out. We still haven’t found those missing teenagers and I’m getting bloody worried. Go and see how the search is going.’
‘They’re dead,’ said Frost flatly.
‘For once I agree with you,’ said Skinner. ‘As if we didn’t have enough on our plates…’
Back in his office, Frost was getting ready to check up on the search parties when PC Lambert from Control came in waving two sheets of paper. ‘The body on the railway embankment, Inspector. Manchester reckon it might be one of their missing teenagers.’
‘Good. They can have her,’ said Frost. ‘Wrap her up and stick her in the post. Anyway, you want Skinner, not me.’
‘Skinner’s gone out. He said you’d attend to anything that might crop up while he was away.’
Frost took the papers. The first was a fax from Manchester Police.
… The body of a girl – Unknown Corpse All Stations Request D107 – could be missing teenager Emily Roberts, 19, reported missing by her parents six weeks ago (Sept 22). Can you confirm time of death please? Photograph etc. following.
The other sheet was a colour printout of a young girl. Frost stared at it. There was no way he could associate the bloated, slimy, rotting body with this bubbling young girl, dark-haired and smiling, showing a perfect set of teeth. ‘The teeth look as if they match,’ he said, ‘but there was nothing left of the rest of her to compare. We’re waiting for the Maggot Man to give us an accurate time of death.’
He was halfway up the stairs to the canteen when Bill Wells called him back. He pretended not to hear, but the sergeant was persistent. ‘Gentleman to see you, Jack.’
Frost sighed. ‘I was going to get something to eat. Who is it?’
‘The Forensic Entomologist.’
Frost blinked. ‘Who?’
‘The Maggot Man.
‘Shit,’ said Frost.
Frost wasn’t enjoying his meal, but the Maggot Man, bubbling over with his sole topic of conversation – detailed tit-bits about his profession – polished off his plateful with relish. ‘When a body decomposes it releases volatile compounds and that’s what attracts the flies.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Frost flatly, eyeing the piece of meat on his fork with distaste.
‘Blowflies and maggots thrive on putrefying flesh.’
‘Whatever turns them on,’ muttered Frost, pushing his unfinished meal away.
‘But,’ continued the Maggot Man, ‘when the odours of decomposition disappear, the flies leave the corpse, so by calculating the age of the maggots and the larvae and working back we can accurately pinpoint the precise date of death.’
‘Did I tell you the joke about the bloke who drank the spittoon for a bet?’ asked Frost.
‘What’s up with the Maggot Man?’ asked Wells. ‘He looked green when he left here.’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Frost. ‘He was all right until I told him my joke.’
‘Not the spittoon joke – you didn’t tell him the spittoon joke?’ Wells was horrified.
‘I was fed up with hearing about the sex life of blowflies. Who cares how a bluebottle gets its flaming leg over? Get on to Manchester and tell them that the six-weeks death date has been confirmed, so it looks as if we’ve got their missing teenager – and tell them not to send the parents down to identify her – there’s nothing to bloody identify. Send us something for DNA matching.’ He buttoned up his mac. ‘I’d better go and give the search party my moral support.’
The sliding panel behind Wells slid open and Lambert called to Frost, ‘Inspector, phone call from a farm worker – Flintwells Farm – he reckons he’s found two bodies.’
Frost picked his way through a ten-acre field of corn, half of it cut and strewn with straw ready for bailing. A cloud of choking dust and the smell of diesel fumes hung over the area, through which he could dimly make out a combine harvester and a tractor towing a high-sided trailer alongside. He stepped gingerly through the stubble and approached the vehicles. A leathery-faced farmer in threadbare faded corduroys and a battered trilby hat was yelling at the driver of the combine harvester, who seemed unconcerned at the tirade.
‘Couldn’t you have waited until you’d finished the bloody field before phoning the police? We’re never going to get it done now before it bloody rains.’ He spun round at Frost’s approach. ‘Who are you?’
‘Police,’ announced Frost, flashing his warrant card.
‘About bloody time,’ moaned the farmer. ‘Get these bloody bodies out of here so we can finish cutting the corn.’ He pointed a thumb up at the darkening sky. ‘If that lot comes down before we’re finished, I lose the lot.’
‘Tough,’ said Frost unsympathetically. ‘Was it you who phoned?’
‘No, him.’ The farmer jerked his head up at the combine-harvester driver towering above them both in the driving seat.
The driver, a, ruddy-faced, dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, shouted down to Frost, ‘You won’t be able to see them from down there. You’ve got to be high up.’ He pointed over the uncut corn to the far end of the field, where an embankment was heavily overgrown with bushes and shrubs and straggling grass. On top of the embankment, traffic roared past on the road to Denton. ‘There’s a naked body just behind that bush between the two trees. There’s another body about ten yards to the right. Want me to show you?’
‘No,’ said Frost. ‘You stay there.’ The only way to reach the embankment was by trampling across the uncut corn.
‘I want compensation for any damage,’ called the farmer.
You wait until half the clod-hopping Denton police force come trampling through your corn. That’s the time to talk about compensation, thought Frost as he headed over the field. And a fat chance you’ll have of getting any.
He clambered up the embankment. Why can’t people dump bodies on level flaming ground? he asked himself, looking back as the tractor-driver shouted and signalled that he should go more to the right.
He nearly tripped over the girl; she was well hidden in the long grass. It was Debbie Clark. She was on her back, naked, staring sightlessly at the rain clouds which were getting darker and darker. He gently touched her face. Icy cold and damp. So what the hell did he expect – warm, vibrant flesh? He shook his head in sadness. Twelve bleeding years old. ‘What bastard did this to you, my love?’ he muttered. He looked up at the road above, where traffic was speeding past. She had probably been chucked down here from a car or a van.
Pushing his way through the long dank grass which made his trousers wringing wet, he soon found the boy’s body. Again, it would h
ave been dropped from the road – it had rolled down and become wedged by the thick stem of a bush, intertwined with bramble. Thomas Harris, fully dressed, also was on his back. There was blood on his face, his trouser knees were jagged and torn, and the flesh beneath the holes was covered with bloody abrasions. His face was badly bruised and swollen. Frost looked up again at the road above. Traffic was still speeding past. No one looking down from the road would have been able to see the bodies – they would have been completely obscured by overgrown grass, brambles and bushes. They had both been dead for days.
He tugged out his mobile and called the station, requesting SOCO, Forensic and the full murder team. As he waited, smoking, the first heavy drops of rain plopped on his head. He shucked off his mac and draped it over the boy to stop the blood being washed away from his face. Within minutes he was drenched.
A thin line of police officers in yellow water proofs, backs bent, were painstakingly carrying out a fingertip search of the area. The road above the embankment had been closed and more police were carefully searching through the grass verge. Frost, sitting in his car after having returned home to change out of his rain-soaked clothing, watched the forensic team erecting marquees to protect the bodies. He grudgingly admired the efficiency and thoroughness of the operation, but thought it a complete waste of manpower and time. Whoever dumped the bodies would have been in and out of the car or van in a matter of seconds and would hardly have left any impression on an area where junk, accumulated over the ages, was lying thick and plentiful. Rusty tin cans, spent matches, scraps of paper would all have to be logged and grid- referenced, then filed away unread. A waste of everyone’s time.
At last the two blue plastic marquees had been erected. ‘Starting to look like a bleeding camping site,’ muttered Frost as he picked his way over the trampled corn. The forensic photographer was busy snapping in the marquee where the girl’s body lay, so Frost moved to the other one, where Morgan, keeping out of the rain that was drumming on the tent roof, was looking at the body. ‘No sign of his bike, Guv. The girl’s was in the lake, but no sign of his.’
‘If we look for it, all we’ll find is more bits of flaming chopped-up leg. Let’s start looking for leg – we might find the bike,’ grunted Frost, bending down over the body. He lifted a skin- scraped hand, then turned it over. The knuckles were badly bruised and bloody. He dropped the hand, then lifted the head by the hair to feel round the back of the skull. It was wet and sticky. His fingers came away dark with the boy’s blood. He wiped them with a tissue. ‘He’s been hit hard round the back of his head. We’re not supposed to touch the body, so try and look surprised when Drysdale tells us.’
‘I thought Drysdale had retired, Guv,’ said Morgan.
‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Frost, brightening up. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’ Of course. It would be the roly-poly, bum-waggling Carol Ridley. He hoped he would be able to sweet-talk her into reinstating the promised leg-over.
The door flap opened and Dr Mackenzie, shaking rain from his trilby hat, pushed into the tent. ‘You’re getting to be my best customer, Jack.’ Then he saw the body and his face softened. ‘Is it the missing boy?’
‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘The girl’s in the other marquee.’
The doctor shook his head sadly. ‘When I see what these bastards do to kids, it always hits me, Jack. I suppose big-head Drysdale’s on the way?’ Mackenzie nursed a deep and well-nurtured hatred of Drysdale, the Home Office pathologist, who had once tried to discredit the doctor’s evidence in court.
‘It won’t be Drysdale,’ said Frost. ‘He’s retired. Just wait until you see who comes in his place. I’m on a promise of a bit of the other.’
Mackenzie grinned. ‘About time they got shot of that big-mouthed bastard. I’d love to do a post-mortem on him – I wouldn’t even bother to wait until he was dead.’ He dumped his bag on the grass and bent to examine the body.
A voice interrupted from the tent flap. ‘I’d be obliged, Inspector Frost, if you would not let any Tom, Dick or Harry maul the body before I’ve seen it.’
Frost turned his head and his heart sank. Drysdale, thin, austere and glowering, was standing by the tent opening.
Mackenzie stood up and glowered back. ‘I don’t consider myself to be any Tom, Dick or Harry.’ He snapped his bag shut and turned to Frost. ‘He’s dead. That’s all I’m paid to certify. I’ll take a look at the girl now.’ At the tent flap he paused. ‘I don’t envy you your bit of the other,’ he said.
Drysdale frowned after him. ‘What was that about?’
Frost shrugged. ‘No idea, Doc.’ He nodded a greeting to Drysdale’s faded-blonde secretary; who followed the pathologist into the marquee, her mackintosh running with rain. As Drysdale started his examination, she kept well back to avoid being snapped at for dripping rain all over the corpse.
‘You’re lucky to get me,’ Drysdale told Frost. ‘I was just finishing an autopsy over at Lexford, otherwise you’d have got that overweight woman.’
‘I don’t deserve such luck,’ muttered Frost bitterly.
‘Killed elsewhere and deposited here,’ dictated Drysdale to his secretary, her pen writhing over the loops and whirls of Pitman’s shorthand. ‘Probably thrown down from the road up there.’
Brilliant. Tell us something we don’t flaming well know, thought Frost.
Drysdale ran his hands down the boy’s trouser legs. ‘Both legs broken.’ He stared at the face. ‘He’s smashed up pretty badly. I’d say he’s had a fall – and from quite a height.’
‘You mean before he was dropped here?’ asked Frost.
Drysdale grunted his agreement.
‘And the fall killed him?’
‘No. He was still alive after he fell.’ Drysdale felt round the back of the head. ‘His skull’s caved in.’
‘From when he fell?’
Drysdale shook his head. ‘He fell face-down. Look at the abrasions, bruises and blood on he face and embedded grit.’ He touched the nose with his forefinger. ‘Broken. He fell face-down. He was hit on the head after he fell.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Frost asked.
Drysdale pointed. ‘See how the blood from the head wound has trickled down over the face and over the bruises and abrasions? The blow to the head was struck when he was face-down on the ground after the fall.’
Frost gave a grudging nod of approval. Drysdale might be a lousy, stuck-up bastard, but he knew his job.
The pathologist had now lifted the boy’s arms. ‘Both arms broken – from the fall, I imagine – he would have tried to save himself before he hit the ground.’ He took the hands and studied them closely, front and back. ‘Palms of hands badly bruised and abrased and embedded with particles of small stones or gravel. Arms broken, as I said.’ He turned the hands over and stared again. ‘Bad bruising across the knuckles and the back of the fingers. They’ve been hit hard – very hard, but the knuckles haven’t broken – by a stick or rod of some kind.’
Frost leant over Drysdale’s shoulder to get a closer look. ‘Deliberately hit? That must have hurt, Doc.’
Drysdale winced at the ‘Doc’. ‘The pain would have been excruciating. Death occurred some forty-eight hours ago.’
Frost nodded. ‘That ties in with the day he disappeared.’ He filled the pathologist in on the details of the disappearances.
Drysdale straightened up. ‘I’d like to see the girl now. When your people have finished you can remove this body to the mortuary.’
Frost led him to the other marquee, the secretary in hot pursuit. Drysdale snapped a finger at her in mute summons to provide a small sheet of plastic from his medical bag so he could kneel beside Debbie Clark’s naked body on the damp grass. He felt the throat. ‘Broken. Manual strangulation.’
Like the other poor cow, thought Frost.
Drysdale’s hands travelled down the rest of her body. ‘She’s been sexually assaulted – brutally assaulted. No sign of semen. Her assailant must-have used a condom. How ol
d did you say she was?’
‘Twelve,’ Frost told him. ‘A day off her thirteenth birthday. I’m going to get the bastard who did this if it’s the last thing I do. The courts will probably fine him ten quid and endorse his driving licence.’
Drysdale gave a sour smile. ‘Have photographs been taken of the body in this position?’
‘Yes, Doc.’
‘Would you turn her on her side, please. Her hands seem to be caught underneath her.’
Frost called in Morgan to help him and they turned the body on its side.
‘Her hands are tied together,’ said Drysdale.
‘Eh?’ Frost leant over. The girl’s hands were bound together at the wrists with twine which had cut deeply into the flesh. ‘Flaming hell!’ hissed Frost. ‘Look at her back!’
Her back was criss-crossed with blooded stripes.
‘She’s been beaten,’ said Drysdale. ‘With a thin cane or a riding crop.’
Drysdale took temperature readings, which weren’t of much help. ‘She’s been dead some forty-eight hours or more, the same as the boy.’ He stood up and held out his hands for his secretary to peel off his surgical gloves. ‘Get the bodies formally identified and I’ll do both autopsies at three. I’ve a very heavy schedule. It would be a welcome change if you were there on time.’ He snapped his bag shut and, with a curt nod, padded after his secretary back to his car.
Frost followed him out, then clambered up the embankment to the road, where Harding from Forensic was beckoning. Harding, who was taking photographs of a section of the fencing, pointed to a small particle of black plastic sheeting which had snagged and torn off on the rough woodwork of the fence rail. It was dead in line with the spot where the girl’s body had ended up.
‘That’s only been there for a couple of days, Inspector. I’ll lay odds the girl was dropped down from here. The body would have been wrapped in black plastic sheeting while it was transported, then lifted from the car or van, laid on the top of the rail, the sheeting pulled away and the body rolled down.’
Frost chewed this over. ‘If we managed to find the plastic sheeting, would you be able to say for sure that it was the one used?’
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