A Killing Frost (36 page)

   ‘Is that how that nurse screamed when you cut her up?’ asked Frost.

   Lewis stopped sobbing. ‘She killed my little boy,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

   ‘Let’s get you to the car,’ said Frost, pushing himself to his feet and bending as he tried to drag Lewis up. Suddenly, catching Frost off balance, Lewis plunged back into the shop, dragging Frost with him, and made a desperate lunge for the knife on the floor, almost toppling Frost as he grabbed it. One hand handcuffed, the other out of action, Frost swung out his foot, catching Lewis on the side of his head. Lewis went limp and the knife clattered to the ground. The butcher was out cold.

   Totally drained, Frost slithered down beside the unmoving Lewis and rummaged in his pocket for a cigarette. Then he remembered that his lighter was buried amongst the offal.
Sod it
. His matches were in the car, so was his radio. He lifted one of Lewis’s eyelids and just saw the whites of his eyes. The man was definitely unconscious. He unlocked the handcuffs, made it to the car and radioed for back-up.

The little Asian pharmacist in the twenty-four-hour chemist’s was anxious to get Frost - and the smell of him - out of his shop as quickly as possible. ‘Your wrist is not broken, only badly sprained,’ he said, strapping it up tightly and selling Frost some extra-strong painkillers. ‘Should be prescription only, but for you, Inspector Frost, I make an exception. Do not take more than six in any twenty-four hours.’

   The pharmacist cleaned the cut on Frost’s face with something that stung like mad; then slapped a sticking plaster on it. He held open the shop door and ushered Frost out, before hastily snatching an air-freshener from a shelf and spraying it liberally around.

The tablets, extra flaming strong or not, didn’t seem to be having much effect on the pain, neither did a shower and change of clothes have much effect on the aroma. The smell of death clung tenaciously.

   Frost got back in the car and drove to the butcher’s to see how things were going. It was bloody painful driving, but it would be just as painful sitting behind his desk.

   He parked behind the generating van that was pumping electricity to light up the inside of the butcher’s so that Harding and his forensic team, plus SOCO, could see what they were doing and what it was they were smelling.

   He’d had more than enough of the inside of the place so he stayed in the car and smoked, gritting his teeth against the throbbing agony of his sprained wrist. Bloody hell - it wouldn’t have hurt as much as this if it had been broken.

   After the second cigarette, Harding, the head of Forensic, staggered out, tearing the white filter mask from his face before being violently sick in the gutter.

   ‘I hope you’re going to clean that up before you go!’ called Frost. ‘Someone’s dog might eat that!’

   Harding raised a green, sweaty face and forced a grin, mopping his brow as he approached the car, talking to Frost through the open window.

   ‘It’s the body of a woman, Inspector - bits of one foot missing - almost certainly the bits you’ve been finding in Denton Woods. Throat cut, stab wounds all over her. Been dead a couple of weeks, I reckon.’

   ‘That fits!’ nodded Frost. ‘It’s the nurse who lived next door.’ He turned his head at the lights of an approaching car, which slid to a halt behind him. Sandy Lane of the
Denton Echo
got out. ‘Put a bit of rotting meat out and the bleeding vultures soon arrive,’ muttered Frost as Lane approached the car.

   ‘Understand you’ve found a body, Jack?’ He sniffed and screwed up his face. ‘What’s that bloody awful smell?’

   ‘It’s my new aftershave,’ said Frost. ‘It stops randy reporters from putting their hand on my knee.’

   ‘Well, it’s working for me,’ said Lane, flapping a hand in front of his nose. Who is it, Jack? Is it the other missing teenager?’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Sod it. Too flaming late to make the London dailies.’

   ‘If you’d given me some decent whisky,’ replied Frost, ‘I’d have kept the body on ice until a more convenient time.’

   ‘But is it the missing girl’?’ insisted Lane.

   Frost shrugged. ‘She hasn’t been identified yet.’

   ‘Don’t sod me about, Jack. I’ve been up all night and I’m tired.’

   Frost smiled up at him. ‘That whisky you gave me was like cat’s pee.’

   ‘All right,’ sighed Lane. ‘Two bottles of Johnnie Walker.’

   ‘It’s not the missing schoolgirl,’ said Frost. ‘We are working on the possibility that it may be connected with our investigations into a nurse reported missing from Denton General Hospital.’

   ‘Cause of death?’

   ‘Off the record, multiple stab wounds. For the record, we are awaiting the result of the post mortem, but suspicious sods that we are, we suspect foul play.’ After Taffy Morgan’s foul-up with the press, Frost was treading on eggs.

   ‘Was she raped?’

   ‘The bit I saw wasn’t raped,’ answered Frost, ‘but then it was only her hand.’

   Lane’s eyes widened. ‘The bit you saw? You mean she was dismembered . . . cut into pieces?’ He jerked a thumb. ‘And in a butcher’s shop?’ His face brightened. ‘Wow! We’ve got a terrific story here, Jack. The London papers would die for this. Give me some details?’

   ‘That’s all you’re going to get for now, Sandy, but you can say that a forty-six-year-old man is helping us with our inquiries. We’ll be issuing a press release after the autopsy and after we’ve had positive identification.’

   ‘Three bottles of whisky, Jack?’

   ‘Piss off.’

   Lane grinned, waved his goodbyes and went back to his car. As he pulled out, a gleaming black Rolls Royce purred round the corner and filled Lane’s vacated parking space. It was Drysdale, the Home Office pathologist. ‘Where’s my little fat roly poly?’ muttered Frost to himself as he stepped out to meet him.

   ‘Mucky one for you this time, Doc,’ said Frost.

   ‘Your ones usually are,’ sniffed Drysdale. ‘Lead the way, please.’

   ‘Follow your nose,’ said Frost, taking a deep breath as he bade a temporary goodbye to fresh air and led the way in, followed by the pathologist and his faded blonde secretary

   The harsh emergency lighting hammered off the white tiled walls. Seeing the mess made the smell seem stronger than ever. Frost found a cigarette and lit up, only to be stopped by Drysdale.

   ‘Put that out, Inspector,’ he snapped. ‘I can’t smell what I want to smell.’

   ‘Whatever turns you on, Doc,’ muttered Frost, spotting a box of face masks on a chopping block and slipping one on thankfully. Drysdale disdained the offer and his secretary, following her master’s lead, shook her head, although she was looking distinctly green.

   Even with the mask on, the smell seeped through. There were too many people inside the tiny room, making it hotter than ever. ‘The bleeding place seemed twice the size in the dark,’ muttered Frost to himself. ‘Everyone wait outside,’ he called. ‘The doc can’t appreciate the bouquet with all you sweaty sods in here.’

   They needed no second bidding. With the lights streaming down, the scene looked even gorier than before. Forensic and SOCO had done a good job of sorting out the bloody pieces, which were laid out on green polythene sheeting like a macabre jigsaw puzzle. The head and limbs had been sawn from the trunk, which was naked. The hands and feet had been sawn from ‘the limbs. Parts of the foot were missing - obviously the pieces that had been turning up in Denton Woods. The throat had been slashed, the stomach split and organs removed. It was like something out of Jack the Ripper

   ‘Is she dead, Doc?’ asked Frost.

   Drysdale, who didn’t appreciate Frost’s humour, gave him a cold glare and bent down to examine the carnage more closely. He prodded the trunk with his finger.

   ‘She’s been dead between one and two weeks.’ His secretary briefly took away the handkerchief she had clasped to her nose and scribbled the great man’s findings down in her shorthand notebook. ‘Collect some of those maggots for the entomologist. He’ll be more precise.’

   Drysdale straightened up and consulted his wristwatch. ‘I can fit in a post-mortem at three this afternoon. Get the body to the mortuary, with the other bits of foot you tell me you have found. Stress to the attendant I do not want it washed or cleaned in any way until I say so.’ He pointed to the tiled floor. ‘And get samples of dried blood from all parts of the floor and walls . . . mark the location of each and take photographs. I need to confirm if any of it is human, which could mean she was killed in here.’

   ‘Sure, Doc,’ nodded Frost, hoping he could remember all this. ‘So, for the record, cause of death?’

   ‘She more than likely died from the many knife wounds - her throat’s been cut, but I’ll need to do the autopsy to determine if that was the prime cause. Three o’clock, Inspector. And I’d be obliged if, just for once, you weren’t late.’

   ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ said Frost.

Frost’s cigarette was alight the minute his foot touched the pavement. The rest of the team were huddled in their cars, most of them smoking. He watched the rear lights of Drysdale’s Rolls disappear round the corner, then called out, ‘As you’ve been so good, I’m letting you go back inside again.” He issued Drysdale’s instructions about getting the body over to the morgue, together with the other parts they had found previously. ‘He wants the matching set. And the flaming prat wants maggots and blood samples from all over the walls and floor and every bloodstain photographed. It would be easier to ask Lewis where he killed her, but Drysdale wants to do it the hard way.’

   He beckoned DS Hanlon over. ‘Arthur, get on to the Electricity people. I want the current restored to this place so we can get the refrigeration room operational. Drysdale’s bound to discover one of her nipples is missing or something, and we’ll have to send some poor sod back in to fish it out, so let’s get it chilled down. And we’d better have a uniform guarding the doors in case souvenir hunters want a bit of ear-hole for their scrapbook.’ He raised his voice to address the others. ‘When you’ve finished, back to the station for breakfast - brains and liver on toast. And no pinching bits of meat for your dinner. It’s been counted.’

‘Superintendent Mullett wants to see you,’ called Wells as Frost pushed through the swing doors.

   ‘He can go and - ’ began Frost, then picking up the sergeant’s urgent face-twitching signal that the superintendent was within earshot, hastily amended, ‘He can be assured he’s only got to ask.’ He turned to see Mullett in the door way. ‘Oh hello, Super. Didn’t see you there.’

   ‘My office!’ barked Mullett, spinning on his heels and marching back down the corridor.

   ‘It’s the third door from the end,’ called Frost.

Mullett got up from his chair and opened a window wide as Frost entered.

   ‘Yes, there is a funny smell in here, Super,’ said Frost, flopping in a chair. ‘I noticed it the minute I came in.’

   Mullett frowned. ‘Hardly the time for cheap humour, Frost.’ He looked the DI up and down, scowling his displeasure. ‘You look a mess. You’re dishevelled, unshaven, and those clothes have seen better days.’

   ‘Sorry’ said Frost. ‘Next time I fight for my life in the bleeding dark I’ll put my best suit on.’

   ‘Your sarcasm about the incident is misplaced, Frost. This should wipe that smile off your face. I have just had our local radio station on the phone, wanting me to confirm that a suspect arrested this morning is in intensive care with his fingers smashed and severe concussion following a savage kick in the head.’ He repeated these last words to emphasise the seriousness. ‘A kick, Frost . . . in the head.’

   ‘Yes, I heard you the first time,’ said Frost. ‘I was defending myself. He came at me with a knife.’

   ‘To kick a man in the head, he would have to be down on the floor, Frost. You hardly needed to defend yourself when your assailant was on the floor.’

   ‘He was reaching for the bloody knife.’

   ‘You could have kicked it out of the way. The press are going to have a field day over this, and you can’t expect me to back you.’

   ‘That’s the last thing I would expect,’ said Frost. ‘I only had one free hand.’ He held up the strapped wrist. ‘This one was useless. I was groggy after hitting my head on the floor. This mad bastard had already taken a slice out of my ear and my cheek, just in case you think I cut myself shaving.’ He touched the sticking plaster and wished it was bigger.

   Mullett dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘Excuses, excuses. If Lewis dies . . .’

   His phone rang. Mullett frowned at it for daring to interrupt, then picked it up. ‘Mullett!’ The frown vanished. He straightened himself up in his chair, smoothing his hair and straightening an already immaculate tie. ‘Good morning, Chief Constable. Yes, I’ve heard, sir.’

   Mullett covered the mouthpiece with his hand and hissed to Frost, ‘He’s heard about your brutal arrest - I’m not going to cover up for you.’ Then back instantly to the phone. ‘Yes, sir. I’m dealing with that right now. I have Frost in the office with me . . . I - ’ He stopped dead. As if a switch had clicked, his expression changed. ‘I couldn’t agree with you more, sir . . . a very brave thing to do . . . tackling a man with a knife in the pitch dark . . . and he suffered minor injuries himself, did you know? Yes, sir . . . Funnily enough I was telling him that as you phoned . . . a credit to the Denton force.’

   Frost leant back in his chair and smirked.

   ‘One minor problem,’ Mullett went on. ‘I’ve had the local TV station on accusing us of police brutality . . . Yes, sir, I shall certainly put them in their place. As you know, sir, I back my men to the hilt.’ He ignored Frost’s exaggerated expression of disbelief. ‘His transfer request? . . . I’m doing my best to talk him out of it, sir, but his mind seems to be made up . . . Yes, sir, I’ll try again . . . I agree we need men like him in the division . . . Thank you, sir.’ He hung up and shuffled some papers on his desk, trying to reassemble his thoughts.

   ‘No need to talk me out of it, Super,’ beamed Frost. ‘To help you out, I’ll stay.’

   ‘The Chief Constable is unaware of your forgeries and your obtaining money by false pretences, Frost. If he found out, there would be no question of you staying anywhere in the force you would be out on your ear and nothing I could do would stop it.’