A Killing Frost (30 page)

   ‘If they do, I’ll arrest you like a shot,’ said Frost, ‘and that’s a promise. And if your wife comes back, you will let me know, won’t you?’

   ‘You’re wrong,’ said Lewis. ‘You are absolutely wrong.’

   ‘It won’t be the first time,’ said Frost, ushering him out of the cell. He watched Lewis go, a forlorn figure, shoulders hunched.

   At the door, Lewis turned. ‘It was the germs,’ he said. ‘The germs killed my son so I killed her because of the germs.’

   Suddenly, for no reason he could think of, Frost began to have doubts. Grave doubts.

Station Sergeant Johnny Johnson looked up and switched on his ‘How can I help you?’ smile as the two men approached the inquiry desk in the lobby.

   ‘Detective Superintendent Barrett and Detective Constable Fussell, Manchester CID,’ announced the older of the two, a thick-set man in his late forties. ‘Would you let DCI Skinner know we’re here?’

   ‘I’m afraid DCI Skinner is out with a search party at the moment, Superintendent,’ Johnson told him. ‘Could anyone else help?’

   Barrett frowned. ‘He knew we were coming and now he’s bloody out?’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling and gave a scoffing snort. ‘Flaming typical. It’s about the body you found - Emily Roberts.’

   ‘Ah - Inspector Frost is handling that at the moment, sir.’

   Barrett frowned again. ‘Frost? Scruffy Herbert - always got a fag in his mouth?’

   ‘Yes, the one with the George Cross,’ said Johnson, unwilling to let this fat sod from Manchester bad-mouth Denton personnel. He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Inspector Frost, two officers from Manchester CID to see you.’

Frost took them to the Incident Room and showed them the clothes recovered from the lake in Denton Woods. Barrett examined them briefly, nodding as he did so. His DC was taking his time, checking each item carefully against a typed list. ‘They look like the girl’s clothes,’ be admitted grudgingly.

   ‘More than flaming “look like”,’ snapped Barrett. ‘They
are
her bloody clothes.’

   ‘But still no proof they came from the body.’

   ‘What do you want, flaming jam on it? You’re not the Crown bleeding Prosecution Service looking for ways not to prosecute, you’re a detective flaming constable, and the way you’re going on, you’ll end your career in the force as a detective flaming constable. We’ve got a body that matches her description, we’ve got clothes that match those she was wearing. Of course they came from Emily Roberts. Give Inspector Frost the envelope.’

   Fussell fished a plastic envelope from his briefcase and handed it to Frost. ‘Hairs from her hairbrush.’

   ‘For DNA testing,’ said Barrett. ‘Then no one can moan we’ve got the wrong body. We’d like to have a look at it, by the way.’

   ‘You can take it home with you if you like,’ said Frost. ‘It’s not a pretty sight. I’d rather look at Skinner than the body - that will tell you the sort of shape it’s in.’

   Barrett grinned. ‘What do you think of your new DCI?’

   ‘Far be it for me to call a man a shitty bastard just because he is a shitty bastard,’ said Frost, ‘so I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ He unhooked his mac from the rack and slipped it on. ‘You might not feel like any lunch after this.’

Handkerchiefs clapped to their noses, the two Manchester detectives looked down at the remains. ‘And the pathologist reckons she was strangled?’ asked Barrett.

   ‘Yes,’ nodded Frost. ‘Broken bone in the throat, probably manual strangulation, but decomposition too advanced to see any ligature marks.’

   ‘Sexually assaulted?’

   ‘Again, decomposition too advanced to tell.’

   ‘I’ve seen enough,’ grunted Barrett. He turned to the DC. ‘Unless you want to make sure she’s dead?’

   Fussell grinned. ‘If the pathologist says she’s dead, sir, I’ll take a chance.’

   Frost signalled for the mortuary attendant to close the drawer. ‘Do you want to see where she was found?’

   Barrett nodded. ‘Yeah. It won’t tell us much, but while we’re here let’s take a look.’

The blue marquee was still mounted on the rail way embankment at the spot where the girl’s body had been located. It was guarded by a fed-up-looking, freezing-cold PC. ‘If you wanted warmth and excitement, son, you shouldn’t have joined the force,’ Frost told him. They stepped inside the marquee, where the smell of death and decay still clung tenaciously. They all stared at the marked area on the grass as if it could yield up some secret, then quickly backed outside. Frost’s mobile chirped. Skinner was back and wanted to see the two Manchester men.

Skinner ushered them into his office, then, before Frost could follow them, stepped outside and shut the door.

   ‘I know this Superintendent Barrett,’ he said, keeping his voice down. ‘He’s a real right slimy bastard.’

  
Takes one to know one
, thought Frost.

   ‘He’s going to try to dump this case on us,’ Skinner continued, ‘and we’re not going to have it. We’ve got enough on our plates. She was killed on his patch and the body dumped here, so it’s his case, not ours. We’ll give them what assistance we can, when we can and if we can, which probably means bloody never, but our stuff takes priority.
Comprende?
’

   ‘
Toute suite
,’ nodded Frost.

They were in Skinner’s office, seated round his desk drinking mugs of Sergeant Johnson’s instant coffee. The atmosphere crackled and sizzled with the unconcealed animosity between Barrett and Skinner. Barrett had various maps and papers spread over the desktop. ‘This is a more recent photograph. We found it in her digs.’ He passed Skinner a colour photo of a girl in her teens, her fair hair in a ponytail. Skinner gave it barely a glance before flipping it across to Frost.

   ‘Lovely-looking girl,’ muttered Frost, finding it hard to eliminate from his mind the way she looked now.

   'Emily Roberts,’ intoned Barrett. ‘Nineteen years old. Guess where she was born?’

   ‘I don’t play guessing games,’ said Skinner.

   ‘In the fair city of Denton,’ smirked Barrett.

   Skinner scowled. ‘You kept that bloody quiet. Weren’t we supposed to know?’

   ‘We’ve only just found out ourselves. Her parents emigrated to Australia some six months ago and we’ve had one hell of a job trying to contact them. Emily didn’t want to go. There was a family row and she stayed behind. She didn’t keep any of their letters, so we didn’t have an address. The Melbourne police managed to trace them and they are on their way over here. She was born in Denton. The family moved to Manchester some five years ago when she was fourteen. After her parents emigrated, she moved in with a girlfriend who had a flat. She worked in Tesco’s on the check-out. The night she went missing she told her flatmate she was meeting her boyfriend at a local disco. She left at around seven thirty and that was the last an saw of her. The boyfriend said he waited all evening, but she never turned up. He left the disco with his mates around midnight and went straight home.’

   ‘You checked his alibi, I hope?’ asked Skinner. 

   Barrett whiplashed a ‘Do you take me for a complete prat?’ look across the desk. He turned to his DC. ‘No. We forgot to do that, didn’t we, Constable?’ Back to Skinner. ‘Of course we bloody well checked it out. All his mates confirmed it and we checked out a lot of his movements on CCTV.’

   ‘Any footage of the girl on CCTV?’ asked Frost.

   Barrett shook his head. ‘We checked the area near the disco and the centre of town. No sign of her.’ 

   ‘So how do you reckon she got to Denton?’ asked Frost.

   ‘Well she didn’t go by train. There are CCTV cameras in the booking hall and on the platforms. We’re working on the theory that she went by car, either voluntarily or she was abducted and taken to Denton, where she was assaulted and killed and the body was dumped.’ 

   Skinner flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Without evidence to the contrary, I’m working on the theory that she was killed on your patch and her body was brought to Denton and hidden where we found it. Denton was just the dumping ground - so it’s your case, not ours. We’ll see to the coroner’s inquest, but from there on the rest is up to you.’

   ‘Why should he kill her in Manchester then drive all the way to Denton to dump the body?’ asked Barrett. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

   ‘I’ve no idea,’ replied Skinner, ‘but as it’s your case, I’m not going to rack my brains to find out.’

   ‘Perhaps the killer got her in his car, tried to have sex, she resisted, so he killed her, panicked and drove like the clappers to get the hell out of there until he could get rid of her,’ offered Frost, sucking sugar from the end of the pencil he had used to stir his coffee.

   ‘I’ll go along with that,’ said Skinner, rising from his chair. ‘He killed her in Manchester and dumped her in Denton. So if you’ll excuse me - ’

   ‘Mind you,’ continued Frost, slipping the pencil back in his top pocket, ‘whoever killed her probably came from Denton.’

   Skinner glowered. If looks could kill, Frost’s body would be the next one on the mortuary slab. ‘And how do you make that out?’ he hissed.

   ‘You’d have to know Denton bloody well to find that bridge where he dumped the body - somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for weeks. It’s right off the beaten track.’

   As Skinner opened his mouth to shoot Frost down, DC Fussell said, ‘If he came from Denton, that makes it more than likely he took her to Denton to kill her.’

   Skinner decided to vent his rage on the DC. Smiling sweetly, he said through clenched teeth, ‘Forgive me, whatever your name is, but might I ask your rank?’

   ‘Detective constable.’

   ‘Detective constable?’ echoed Skinner in mock surprise. ‘The way you were airing your unsolicited views, I thought you were at least a chief inspector.’

   Barrett leapt from his chair and thrust his face right up to Skinner’s. ‘If you’ve got sarcastic remarks to make, Skinner, make them to your own men. And if we’re talking rank, remember I’m a superintendent and you are a chief inspector. DC Fussell’s comment was valid and I agree with him. Wherever she was killed, the odds are she was killed by someone from Denton, as I will advise our chief constable. This will be a joint investigation and I expect - in fact, I demand - your fullest cooperation. And you will be up to your knees in shit if we don’t get it.’ He pushed various papers from his briefcase across to Skinner. ‘I’m leaving these with you. Keep me informed as to the progress of your investigation. We’ll do the same.’ With a jerk of his head for DC Fussell to follow him, he swept out of the office.

   Skinner gathered up the papers and thrust them into Frost’s hands. ‘You do not contradict me, do you hear? Next time, keep your bloody mouth shut,’ he snapped, his face contorted with rage.

   Frost smiled. One of the unforeseen bonuses of getting the boot from the division was that there were few other sanctions left that they could throw at him.

He dumped the papers on his office desk, sniffing as he detected the siren aroma of pork sausage, chips and beans wafting down from the canteen. He decided to take an early lunch.

   ‘Inspector!’ Sergeant Johnny Johnson was waving excitedly, a leathery-faced man in a boiler-suit at his side. ‘We’ve got the dead boy’s bike.’

   Frost hurried over. ‘What? Where is it?’

   ‘Out the back. In the exhibits shed!’ Frost frowned. ‘You’re not telling me it’s been there all the bleeding time?’

   ‘No,’ grinned Johnson. ‘This gentleman, Mr Harry Gibson, found it and brought it in for us.’

   ‘He brought it in?’ echoed Frost in disbelief. ‘He didn’t leave it untouched where it flaming well was?’

   ‘I had to touch it to bring it in,’ said Harry. 

   ‘Yes, silly me, of course,’ said Frost. ‘So where did you find it?’

   ‘You know that big empty office block just off Denton Road?’

   Frost nodded. He knew it. A speculative development company had plans for a business complex just outside Denton and the modern office block was to be its centrepiece. But the company ran out of money and went bust. The office block had remained empty ever since.

   ‘That’s where I found it.’

   ‘So what were you doing there?’

   ‘I’m a sort of caretaker for the liquidators. I repair broken windows when the kids chuck bricks, make certain the chain-link fencing is secure, cut back the undergrowth - that sort of thing.’

   ‘I don’t want a flaming job description,’ said Frost. ‘How did you find the bike?’

   ‘The grass round the outside of the fence was overgrown, so I decided to cut it back. I saw the bike and thought to myself,
That could be the bike the plods are looking for
, so I humped it on the van and drove it over here. I was wondering if there was any sort of reward?’

   ‘In heaven,’ grunted Frost, ‘not down here.’

   ‘It was very well hidden,’ continued Harry. ‘Whoever put it there didn’t want it found.’

   Frost chewed this over. ‘Right. Hang on here a minute while I go and take a look at the bike, then I want you to take me to where you found it - the exact spot.’ He jabbed a finger at Johnson. ‘And get someone to take his fingerprints. I bet they’re all over the flaming bike.’

   ‘What do you want them for?’ asked the caretaker. ‘I ain’t done nothing.’

   ‘For elimination,’ said Johnson. ‘Now come with me.’

The bike was propped up against the wall in the exhibits shed undergoing examination by Norton from SOCO, who was on his knees, taking scrapings from the tires. He straightened up and stretched as Frost approached. ‘It’s still wet from being left out in the open, Inspector. I’ll dry it off with a hairdryer and see if I can get any decent prints from it.’

   ‘It’ll be smothered with prints from the git who found it,’ said Frost. ‘It’s definitely the boy’s bike?’

   ‘No doubt about it, Inspector.’

   Frost stared gloomily at the bike, which told him nothing. ‘Let me know if you come up with anything. I’m off to look at where he found it.’

It was only mid-afternoon but it was already getting dark. The office building, some ten storeys high, looked stark and desolate against the night sky. The wind blowing round the top created a cyclone effect at ground level, where bits of rubbish and scraps of paper were lapping the building. The wind had managed to uproot the LUXURY OFFICE UNITS TO LET sign, which now lay on the ground.