A Killing Frost (13 page)

   ‘Then make it bloody snappy. My time is precious.’

   ‘Fifteen minutes at the outside,’ promised Frost, hanging up and making his way to the Incident Room, where Morgan and Collier were staring at a TV monitor showing juddering footage of late-night traffic.

   ‘Does it take two of you to look at one tape?’ asked Frost. ‘Have you done the building society cashpoint tape, yet?’

   ‘It’s next on the list, Guv.’

   ‘Do it now. Beazley’s shitting bricks.’ Frost looked at the cassette they were slotting into the video player with misgiving. It was old and battered and the tape looked almost white from constant recording and replaying. In the interests of economy, the building society used the same tape over and over again, even when it was past its best. He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk as Morgan switched the video player on and fast-forwarded to the previous night. ‘Just before and just after midnight,’ Frost reminded him as blurred black-and-white images raced across the screen and a digital clock at the top right-hand corner sped through the time.

   Morgan jammed the Stop button. ‘We’re here, Guv.’ He pressed Play.

   The clock said 23.50. The out-of-focus shape appeared of a woman withdrawing cash. The image was blurred and almost unrecognisable, but Frost felt sure it was the tom who had approached him in the car. He made a mental note to get her picked up in case she had seen whoever had used the cashpoint after her.

   ‘This is it, Guv!’ exclaimed Morgan.

   Frost groaned. The next image was unrecognisable. Probably a man in a dark coat with the collar up, his head bent low.

   The figure moved off and the screen briefly went blank - the CCTV was programmed only to record when someone was at the cashpoint.

   Then, with the clock showing 00.03, the same figure reappeared, face kept well down. The money was withdrawn and the figure moved off into the dark.

   ‘I think it’s the Pope,’ offered Frost. ‘Get Interpol on the phone. We’d better arrest him, just in case.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘Bleeding building society and its false economies.’ He turned to Collier, who was hovering behind him. ‘Any chance we could get the pictures enhanced?’

   ‘I doubt it, Inspector,’ Collier told him. ‘There’s hardly anything on the tape to enhance, and in any case, all we’d get would be an enhanced man with his face completely covered.’

   ‘Try it anyway,’ said Frost. ‘And find out the address of that tom. She might be our only hope.’ He rewound a few seconds and watched the man withdrawing cash again. ‘Why do they bother with CCTV, and then put in cheap flaming cameras with dirty lenses, not enough light and a clapped-out tape?’ He stood up. ‘Get a couple of stills printed out. I’ve got to have something to show Beazley, even if it’s flaming useless.’ He wasn’t going to enjoy that meeting.

   As he made for the door, Bill Wells came in. ‘Skinner wants to see you, Jack, and says it’s urgent.’

Skinner, his face still green and sweaty, jabbed a finger at a chair, instructing Frost to sit. In front of him on the desk was an opened, ancient-looking folder bulging with photographs and yellowing, dog-eared pages of typescripts. ‘I’m still feeling rough, so I’m off home to get my head down for a couple of hours. Keep a watching brief ‘on the search.’

   ‘Right,’ said Frost, standing to go.

   A finger wagged him back to the chair. ‘I haven’t finished. I want you to arrest a bloke for me. Just arrest him and get him banged up. I’ll do the rest when I come back.’ Skinner slid a forensic report across the desk. ‘Graham Fielding, your suspected rapist. They’ve done a DNA on the sperm sample from Sally Marsden and it wasn’t him. He’s in the clear.’

   ‘Shit!’ snorted Frost. ‘He was my odds-on favourite.’

   Skinner pushed the file over and Frost found himself staring at a black-and-white photograph of a young girl’s body, naked, her wide sightless eyes staring up into the sky, lying on her back amid long, straggling grass rimed with hoar frost.

   Frost stared and shivered. He felt cold. Freezing cold. He was back in time, a cutting wind sawing through his clothes as he stood looking down at the girl’s naked body . . . Deep in his brain a piercing bell was ringing, insisting that he knew who she was. But the name just wouldn’t come. ‘Who is she?’

   ‘Casey Turner. Fifteen years old. Raped, strangled and dumped in the old St Martin’s cemetery back in 1977.’

   Frost whistled softly as the memory flash- flooded back. Casey Turner. Of course. Fifteen-year-old Casey Turner. ‘It was Christmas Day,’ he said, half to himself. ‘The poor little bitch was killed on Christmas Day. I was on the case - still a sergeant then, of course. Bert Williams was in charge, but we never got any where. No suspects . . . nothing.’

   ‘I’ve got a suspect now,’ smirked Skinner. ‘A red-hot, bloody one hundred per cent cast-iron suspect.’ He pulled a report from an envelope and gave it to Frost.

   ‘
DNA Test Result
,’ read Frost. He looked puzzled and checked the date at the top of the form. ‘It’s a recent sample. What’s it got to do with an ancient murder?’

   Skinner leant back in his chair and gave a smug smile. ‘It’s got everything to do with it. When the lab tests DNA samples, they compare them with their database of old DNA material to see if they can match it. It cleared your suspect of rape, but it matched the DNA from sperm samples and flecks of skin from under Casey Turner’s fingernails where she clawed her killer some thirty years ago.’

   Frost shook his head in wonder. ‘Flaming hell. After all this bleeding time Fielding must have thought he’d got away with it.’ He looked again at the photograph. Details of the case were charging back fast and furious. The girl’s grief-stricken mother had had a complete nervous breakdown. One bitterly cold night she’d cleaned the house from top to bottom, cut her husband’s sandwiches for the next morning and put them on the kitchen table ready for him to take to work, then, in only a thin frock and no coat, had wandered out to chuck herself off the top level of the multi-storey car park in town. Frost had had to go and break the news to the husband that he had now lost a wife as well as a daughter.

   His thoughts were interrupted by Skinner, who was grimacing and rubbing his stomach. ‘I’m off home. Now just bring him in. Don’t question him - this is my case, not yours.’

   ‘Right,’ nodded Frost, tucking the folder under his arm.

   ‘And don’t sod it up!’ barked Skinner.

   ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ said Frost, pulling a pen from his pocket and scribbling on a scrap of paper. ‘I always forget I’m not supposed to sod things up.’

   He left Skinner scowling after him. ‘You think you’re so bleeding clever, sunshine, but just wait until tomorrow. Your days in Denton are numbered.’

Back at his desk, Frost opened the file and flipped through the yellowing pages of type script. It was all coming back. His brain started churning over the events of that awful Christmas morning, all those years ago . . .

   They’d only been married a few months and it should have been their first Christmas together, but at eight o’clock on Christmas morning the phone rang. Frank Gibson, the DS who had drawn the short straw for Christmas Day, had been rushed off to hospital with suspected appendicitis and Frost, as standby, was called in to fill the gap. When he told his wife, her fury knew no bounds. Their first Christmas together was going to be ruined. In tears, she threatened to chuck the Christmas dinner she had planned for so long in the dustbin.

   She had one hell of a temper. By God, she was a feisty firebrand in those days and a little cracker to boot. Absolutely beautiful, and she adored him as much as he was crazy about her. So how did it all go wrong? How did the poor cow end up dying in that pokey hospital room, her only visitor a man she had long since fallen out of love with?

   Much of it was his fault. Too much time spent on the job and not enough with her. And the promotion she had dreamt of for him had not happened until it was too late . . . until she was dying in that lousy hospital. He rubbed his scar. Until that toe-rag fired the bullet at him and he’d been given a George Cross and promoted to inspector. But by then the cancer was too far gone and when he tried to tell her his news, she couldn’t take it in. He felt his eyes misting over and lit up a cigarette. He smoked and stared out of the window as memories came flooding back.

  
The station was dead and yawningly empty, the phones were quiet and the flaming heating wasn’t working properly. He had phoned home a couple of times, trying to make the peace, but she had slammed the phone down on him. And then a phone bell suddenly ripped through the silence. Some drunk with enough fright in his voice to sound genuine was saying, ‘There’s a stone-dead naked tart in St Mary churchyard.’ Before Frost could answer, the man had hung up. There was no one else to send and it was probably warmer outside than in this freezing station, so he wound his scarf around his neck and went out to check. Let it be a bloody hoax, he kept telling himself. Let it be a bloody hoax. But it wasn’t.

  
Lying in the straggling overgrown grass of the old churchyard, amongst the lop-sided, moss-covered headstones of the long dead, was a recent dead, a very recent dead, a young girl, cold as ice, stark naked, a crumpled dress at her fret, staring wide-eyed up at a clear Christmas sky. Somewhere in the distance church bells were ringing.

  
Bert Williams, the DI in charge of the case, was a dead loss; drunk most of the time and always letting others do all the work. Williams was out of his depth with the Casey Turner murder although even a good copper wouldn’t have had any luck solving it. They had no suspects. Nothing. And all their leads fizzled out.

  
The DI couldn’t face breaking the news to the family, not that they would have appreciated a man unsteady on his fret, reeking of whisky. Williams had taken another swig from his hip flask behind a crumbling stone angel in the hope that it would bolster his courage to face the dead girl’s family. But it didn’t. ‘You do it, Jack. You’re so much better at this sort of thing than I am . . .’

   Frost sensed someone looking over his shoulder. Taffy Morgan.

   ‘That’s an ancient case, Guv.’ He picked up the photograph of the body and shook his head sadly. ‘She’s only a kid.’

   Frost took the photograph back. ‘Christmas morning. Christmas bloody morning. Get your coat, Taff. We’re going to arrest the bastard who killed her.’

He let Morgan do the driving, his brain still in the past.

   Reinforcements were still being drafted in, so he had to make the call to the girl’s house on his own. He had parked outside, in the road, for some fifteen minutes, smoking to delay the moment when he would have to knock at the door. Get it bloody well over and done with. He snatched the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it out of the window, stepped out of the cur and knocked at the front door.

   From inside the house came the sound of cheerful music on the radio - Frank Sinatra singing ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. . . Casey’s mother opened the door, looking happy and excited . . .

   ‘That’s the house, Guv.’ Morgan’s voice snatched him roughly back to the present and he had to shake his head to get rid of the ghosts of the past. It was like waking from a realistic nightmare.

   Taffy parked the car in front of the driveway. Frost studied the house. A nice-looking, three bedroomed property no more than ten years old, fronted by a small, neat lawn, in the centre of which an incongruous palm tree flourished. In honour of the palm tree, the house was called
The Oasis
.

   As they scrunched up the gravelled path, a dog barked frantically inside. Frost stood back and let Taffy thumb the doorbell. The dog sounded hungry.

   From inside the house a child’s voice yelled at the dog to shut up. The door opened. A dark-haired boy, about ten years old, frowned up at them.

   ‘Who is it?’ called a man from upstairs.

   ‘Is that Mr Fielding? Could we have a word, please?’ called back Frost. ‘Denton police.’

   A dark-haired man in his late forties thudded down the stairs. ‘Police? Who am I supposed to have raped now?’ he grinned.

   ‘Casey Turner,’ said Frost.

   A puzzled frown, then the man’s head snapped back as if he had been hit. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened in shock. He shook his head as if to compose himself, his tongue flicking over dry lips. ‘Who?’ he croaked, trying to keep his voice steady.

   ‘Might be a good idea if we came inside for a few minutes,’ answered Frost. ‘Rape isn’t some thing you discuss on the doorstep.’

   ‘Yes, of course, but I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’

   ‘Who’s at the door, Graham?’ called a woman from the back of the house.

   ‘It’s the police, Mum,’ the boy answered before Fielding could stop him. ‘They say Daddy raped a girl.’

   ‘It’s all right, dear,’ cut in Fielding hurriedly. ‘Just that old business again.’

   ‘But they cleared you of that,’ she called.

   ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘They’re just tidying up the paperwork. Just routine.’ He snapped at his son, ‘Go out and play - now!’ He waited as the boy sullenly shuffled off, then beckoned the two detectives into the lounge and firmly shut the door. ‘Now, perhaps you’ll tell me what the hell this is all about.’

   ‘You know what it’s all about, don’t you, son?’ purred Frost, giving his deceptively friendly smile. He took the black-and-white photograph from his mac pocket and held it up to Fielding’s face. ‘Casey Turner, fifteen. Never got her Christmas presents. You stripped her, raped her, beat her up and killed her. Christmas Day, thirty years ago.’

   ‘This is preposterous. Me? You’re trying to make out I killed this girl?’ blustered Fielding, pushing the photograph away. ‘I don’t know her. I’ve never seen her.’

   Frost sank down into one of the armchairs. ‘Before you tell us any more porkies, let me tell you what we’ve got.’ He balanced the photograph on the arm of the chair, then pulled out a photostat of the DNA test report. ‘As you know, you very kindly gave my Welsh colleague here a DNA sample following that rape in the car park.’