Fatal Frost (DI Jack Frost)

by James, Henry

  ‘Well?’ Clarke prompted.

  ‘A tussle ensued. They’d used candles to light the pavilion and in the upset a curtain caught fire. They were spotted from the main school building by a matron doing the rounds. The girls were all caught but the boys, of course, got away …’

  Drysdale pulled the sheet over the body and slid it back into the deep freeze.

  ‘The punishment delivered by the then headmistress was ingeniously cruel,’ Frost continued. ‘They were, of course, initially caned. Expulsion should naturally have been their punishment, but they were allowed to remain at the school. However, they were starved of education, the ultimate humiliation for intelligent girls like that.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Drysdale asked. He and Clarke were both intrigued by Frost’s story.

  ‘The girls were given a choice: either be expelled and their disgrace laid bare for all to see, or accept demotion within the school. They would be removed from the top class where they all sat, to the lowest set where they’d learn nothing. The parents would be baffled by their lack of exam success but would never know the reason, unless the girls revealed their scandalous behaviour.’

  ‘But surely they could swot up in their own time?’ said Clarke.

  ‘Yes,’ added Drysdale. ‘If they were clever enough they could catch up at home.’

  ‘Ah, if they went home – but these girls were boarders, remember. All of their free time was strictly supervised. Most of it from then on was spent pointlessly copying out pages from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A further edge to their punishment.’ He paused. ‘The girls opted unanimously for demotion. They came from respectable backgrounds and couldn’t face the humiliation and the shame it would bring to their parents.’

  Clarke shook her head in dismay. ‘So what happened to them?’

  Frost rubbed his eyes before continuing. Clarke and Drysdale could have no idea of the personal resonance this tale had for him. ‘They formed a pact to exact a double revenge: on the institution that had inflicted this punishment on them – the Catholic Church – and on those who had got them caught – the boys. They called themselves the School of the Five Bells.’

  ‘Sounds like a pop group.’

  ‘You’ve got the racket part right – though only metaphorically. The Five Bells allude to the five church bells in St Jude’s. They used to ring them during air raids in the war – not that Denton was ever bombed. My mother told me they all thought the Luftwaffe had its eye on the old cotton mill … Anyway I digress. The ringing of the bells was a muster call of sorts, and being five girls—’

  ‘And let me guess,’ Clarke leaped in eagerly. ‘The tattoo – the “5” shape – is a sign of membership.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ she asked, flummoxed.

  ‘Let’s just say, I’ve been making enquiries.’

  ‘And what exactly did this School of the Five Bells get up to? Are we seriously talking witchcraft?’

  ‘No … not in the same league by any stretch, if indeed witchcraft is behind the death of Tom Hardy.’ Frost sighed. ‘No, the Five Bells was no more than some silly schoolgirl prank that went wrong, ending in the pointless suicide of one of the girls, and if Samantha really did top herself, then that’s where any similarity ends.’

  ‘So, first things first – what happened to you last night? Thought you were coming over?’ Clarke asked Frost on the way out of the lab to the car. Though she already knew from the smell of him and the fact that he’d slept all the way from the station to the lab that he’d spent the night at Eagle Lane.

  ‘Must have dozed off,’ Frost said quietly. ‘Besides, you said yourself, it was late …’

  Clarke positioned herself between him and the passenger door of the Escort.

  ‘Look, Jack, I don’t quite know how to say this … so I might as well just come out and say it. The other night I met someone. A man.’

  Clarke registered the resigned look in Frost’s tired eyes as he took in what she’d said. She instantly regretted it.

  ‘Oh,’ he said simply. He moved forward to get into the car and she stepped aside with a sigh, both disappointed and sad.

  ‘I thought you should know,’ she added.

  ‘About time you met someone your own age.’ He smiled wanly.

  Clarke had been playing this scene in her mind ever since the night with Danny but it was not going how she’d imagined. His polite acceptance, encouragement even, was infuriating.

  She started the car and pulled away with a jolt. Frost was thrown forward, losing his cigarette in the process. He let out a stream of expletives.

  ‘Look, if you don’t like my driving, wear a bloody seat belt! Better still, drive your bloody self.’

  He ignored her outburst. ‘The boy, Tom Hardy. He was killed by someone he knew, don’t you think?’

  Mind always on the job, she thought sadly. It’s almost as if he’s incapable of dealing with anything else. She glanced across at him, unshaven and ragged, chucking the bent cigarette out of the car window and fishing for a new one. She swallowed hard. Had her admission of a new lover driven a wedge between the private and the professional? Even if he cared, he was unlikely to let on, for now at least.

  ‘I suppose,’ she replied sullenly.

  ‘To pad about in your socks in someone else’s home suggests familiarity.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Though Frost’s train of thought didn’t. Or she felt unable at times to follow it – when the pathologist had tried to engage Frost in the lab he’d been quick to move on to the business of examining tattoos on dead thighs. She indicated to pull out on to the Rimmington Road and head back to Denton.

  ‘It reminds me of something,’ Frost said. ‘From the time we first started dating, Mary’s parents would always make me take my shoes off before I was allowed in the house. It’s a house-proud middle-class thing; everyone has to take their shoes off to avoid messing up the Wilton …’

  ‘Axminster.’

  ‘Whatever. The carpet.’

  ‘Clutching at straws a bit, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re probably right. I only thought of it because I was round there the other evening … Anyway, that’s irrelevant now. Let’s hope the bus driver remembers Tom Hardy getting off the bus. What’s the time – tennish? Waters should have cracked that by now.’

  ‘Look, Jack, one thing at a time, OK? The girl’s tattoo – are you saying Samantha Ellis is, was, practising witchcraft?’

  ‘It’s a stretch of the imagination to think a pretty little thing like that was a bona fide witch, I’ll grant you … But if Tom Hardy was killed in, let’s say, a sacrificial fashion, it makes you wonder. I spoke to the Ellis girl’s mother last night. Tom and Samantha were dating.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Clarke looked at Frost in amazement. ‘You think their deaths are linked? Or is it just coincidence?’

  ‘The boy was killed, we now think, on the Friday. The girl died on the Saturday. It’s possible she could have killed her boyfriend in some sadistic frenzy and then thrown herself off the train in remorse, but I think it unlikely. There’s more to it. There are others involved, wouldn’t you agree?’ He looked across at her, a keenness to discover the truth enlivening his weary eyes.

  ‘And hence the idea of the School of the Five Bells?’

  ‘Yes, but the original Five Bells didn’t do much except tattoo themselves; and rather poorly at that. The only harm was to themselves. One hanged herself after her mother caught her making a second tattoo with a pair of compasses and school ink. No, this is in a different league altogether.’ Frost lit another cigarette. He appeared to be having difficulty believing the conclusions his thoughts were taking him towards. ‘The boy’s heart,’ he continued, looking distractedly out of the car window, ‘the removal of it has to be part of some sort of ritual; pagan or Wiccan or Satanist – I’m not sure of the differences. But the motivation of the original Five Bells was revenge …’ He paused.

  Clarke glanced at h
im expectantly.

  ‘Revenge,’ he said to himself again. ‘Hardy was Ellis’s boyfriend. Maybe he’d betrayed her in some way and “the gang” killed him as a result; it’s all I can think of. The girl was pregnant, too …’

  Clarke now realized why Frost was so preoccupied; there had to be a connection.

  ‘So,’ she pondered, ‘if we’re dealing with witches or occultists, and we’re assuming Samantha Ellis was part of a group that murdered Tom Hardy, why would she end up dead herself?’

  ‘Who knows. Guilt?’

  ‘We need to know who else was in the gang. Not easy when all those we think so far are connected with it are dead. Unless there’s a connection with the original Five Bells?’

  ‘I have a file here that lists the members.’ Frost opened a foolscap wallet and began fiddling with loose sheets of paper. ‘None of the names are familiar, apart from one. Simpson, Parke, Lewis … not much use really.’

  ‘Which one is familiar? Why?’

  ‘Simpson … I … relative. Er … friend of a relative.’

  Clarke swung into Eagle Lane car park at speed. The entrance was partly obstructed by a white Ford Transit bearing the legend Baskin Construction & Co. Two bare-chested men were already repairing the car-park wall hit yesterday by the skip lorry. Had Frost been paying attention to Clarke he would have noticed a flicker of shock cross her face as she recognized the fair-haired one, with the sunburnt shoulders.

  Oblivious, he lit another cigarette. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘where the rest of the Five Bells are now.’

  Clarke frowned. Her mind was elsewhere. Here was the last place she’d expected Danny to turn up. He’d told her he was a farm labourer.

  ‘OK?’ Frost said, patting her thigh.

  The intimacy took her by surprise. It was the most physical contact there’d been between them in over a week. She tried to drag herself back to the business in hand. ‘So, what now then?’

  ‘We need to find out two things. One, where exactly Tom Hardy was heading on Friday evening, and secondly, who Samantha’s close friends were, which should lead us to the other four member of the Five Bells. And friend or not, the one we need most is Tom Hardy’s sister, Emily. She’s the key.’

  ‘Let’s hope she’s alive, then,’ Clarke said, rooting around in her handbag for her sunglasses.

  Friday (2)

  THE TROUBLE WITH Frost, thought Simms as Waters accelerated down King Street, was that although he was undoubtedly a great copper, his lack of organizational skills left everyone else floundering. Take this morning, for example, when they got the call from the pawnbroker’s. Simms was happy to go – after all, he’d been working on the robberies anyway – but why lumber him with Waters? Simms liked the bloke, no question, although he didn’t like the feelings of inadequacy he provoked, being that much more senior and sharp with it. But Frost had shot off with Clarke and he didn’t want Waters left milling around under Mullett’s gaze, especially as Kim Myles had taken a shine to the big man. That rattled Simms too. It seemed everyone was getting some action apart from him …

  ‘Here?’ Waters nudged him. ‘Wilson’s Pawnbrokers?’

  ‘Yep,’ he confirmed, glancing across at the shop front. ‘Right shifty little sod, this bloke is. I’m amazed he came forward.’

  A bell chimed as they entered the dusty shop rammed full of bric-a-brac. At the back of the store, behind an enormous counter, sat a creased old man in waistcoat and green visor.

  ‘Wotcha, Sid,’ Simms called.

  ‘Very prompt of you, young man,’ Wilson replied. ‘My, look at you! Straight out of The Sweeney.’ Simms was growing increasingly tired of this joke. Why was it only him, out of the whole plainclothes division, who was constantly ribbed for his attire? He and Wilson knew each other well from his time on the beat.

  ‘Unlike you to be forthcoming with stolen goods?’

  ‘That ain’t fair. I have to take items on good faith. Can’t go suspecting every Tom, Dick and Harry, can I? I would never do any business. But come on, I ain’t stupid. When a bunch of kids come in ’ere with ten grand’s worth of jewellery, I knows something’s amiss.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Simms said in a placatory tone.

  ‘’Ere, who’s yer chum?’ Wilson said, having suddenly noticed Waters, who was nosing around some ancient taxidermy at the front of the store.

  ‘Him? Drafted in from East London. A specialist in thieving swindlers like you. You’d better watch out.’

  ‘Bit of respect. I’m due it. I’ll tell Mr Frost.’

  ‘Calm down. What exactly did they try to pawn?’ Simms took out his notebook.

  ‘Necklaces – two of ’em – one diamond and one pearl.’ Wilson opened his tobacco tin and with shaky hands began to fashion a roll-up. ‘Now, if it were just the pearls I might have let it go; he said they were ’is nan’s, but the styles were poles apart. I’ve got a nose for this sort of thing. Knew he was a wrong ’un …’

  ‘OK, these kids – description?’

  ‘Two of them, there were; hooded tracksuits and sunglasses. Only got a proper butcher’s at one. ’E was wearing – whatchercall’em – mirror glasses. I knew there was something fishy about it. I mean, it’s sunny as you like outside, but in ’ere it ain’t quite the same.’

  ‘Certainly isn’t,’ Simms replied, eyeing a sickly-looking spider plant on the counter. ‘This lad, anything else you can tell me?’

  ‘Average height – about five nine, five ten, cropped hair. Crooked hooter.’

  ‘Crooked or broken?’

  ‘Like this.’ Wilson pushed his nose to the left.

  ‘Wait a minute – how old do you reckon he is?’

  ‘Dunno. Seventeen, eighteen?’

  ‘Hardly a kid, then.’

  ‘When you’re as old as me they’re all babies.’

  ‘What gives?’ said Waters, sidling up.

  ‘Martin bloody Wakely is what,’ replied Simms.

  Chris Everett peered through the plate-glass window of the estate agent’s. Fooling about outside the supermarket on the other side of the High Street were three kids on BMX bikes. Yesterday evening down the station he had drawn a blank; he’d not identified any of the juvenile delinquents who’d attacked him from the photos he was forced to wade through. Though of course had he recognized anyone he wouldn’t have said. Fortunately, neither the jeweller nor the newsagent had come up with anyone either, but Everett couldn’t help but feel the detective had expected more from him – perhaps because he had also seen the attack?

  Was he being paranoid or were those kids watching him? Wait a minute, were they the same three that had attacked him? They suddenly looked familiar. Or had he just seen them around a few times? Come to think of it, he’d definitely seen some very similar-looking kids yesterday, hanging around near his house.

  The thought hovered sickeningly at the back of his mind. Blackmail. They’d been hanging around outside for most of the morning. When the mugging was mentioned in the paper his name and occupation were printed, so it was easy enough for them to find out where he worked, where he lived. They weren’t stupid – a man carrying thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery around in a briefcase was clearly up to no good.

  Suddenly the kids made off in haste; Everett nudged the Lettings board aside and saw the reason – a bobby on the beat. Two smaller children on bikes loitering by the rack of supermarket trolleys took off after the others.

  ‘Chris, there’s a Mr Mullett on the phone for you.’

  It was the policeman whose house he’d valued. Not for the first time, he thought about cutting his losses and getting on a plane to Australia; holing up with his brother until things blew over. Although such action would throw Fiona into turmoil and probably make her suspicious, not to mention the effect it would have on the children, he might soon have no other option. The scales were tipping: he’d taken a risk too many.

  Friday (3)

  FROST WAS FAMISHED; he couldn’t remember the last time h
e’d eaten. Was it yesterday lunchtime at Billy’s Café? He’d not had a thing this morning before he’d left the station for the lab. Perhaps a sense of progress with his caseload had made his appetite resurface with a vengeance. They had certainly made some headway; there were leads to follow up … and yes, if he was honest with himself, he couldn’t deny a sense of relief on learning that Sue Clarke had got herself a boyfriend. At first he’d felt put out by her confession, but the feeling was fleeting. It was telling that he suddenly felt better disposed towards her than he had done for weeks, and as a result they were on their way out to get some early lunch. Maybe a liquid lunch.

  ‘Jack, wait a sec,’ Desk Sergeant Bill Wells called after him as he reached the front door. ‘You’ve got some visitors.’ He nodded towards the bench in reception. Frost instantly recognized the two scruffy children from the gypsy camp. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed them.

  Just then, Simms burst through the revolving door, almost colliding with Clarke. ‘Guv, we’ve had a breakthrough on the burglaries.’

  ‘Nothing all week and then bang – like buses.’ Frost swung round. ‘Kids, I’ll be with you in a sec. Derek, slowly now, what have you got?’

  ‘Sid Wilson, the pawnbroker, just gave a description of the kid offloading the gems; it was Martin Wakely.’

  ‘Martin Wakely? Bit big to be charging around on a BMX, isn’t he? I remember when his mum was up the spout with him. I was in uniform. I nabbed her shoplifting in Bejam’s when she was eight months gone. From the size of the bulge she had, you’d have thought she was pregnant with an elephant.’

  ‘He does have a younger brother, Gary. I just checked with Records. He’s fourteen.’

  ‘Has he? Interesting.’ This was starting to make sense; kids scooting around on bikes like little Dick Turpins, nabbing stuff and passing it to big brother to offload. ‘Did Sid take any gear off Wakely senior?’