A Touch Of Frost (10 page)

Dawson froze, staring at the detective in open-mouthed incredulity. “Am I hearing you correctly? You thought this woman, this thirty-year-old woman, was my daughter? My wife and I have been worried sick because you told us our daughter had been raped and beaten, and all the time . . . all the time it was a thirty-year-old woman!”

All Frost could do was shuffle his feet, mumble how sorry he was, and wish that Dawson would push off home so he could face his own humiliation in private.

With a sudden lunge, Dawson grabbed Frost by the lapels of his coat. “Sorry? Is that all you can say?” Then, with a look of contempt, he pushed him away and wiped his hands down the front of his coat. “You stupid, bloody incompetent fool, I’m not going to soil my hands on you.” He took his wife’s arm and led her out. At the main doors he paused. “Find my daughter, you bastard,” he said, and then they stepped out into the dark.

Frost flopped down on the bench, which was still warm from Mrs Dawson, and fumbled for his cigarettes. Opposite, on the wall, a large red-and-white sign frowned its disapproval: No Smoking . . . ! Please! His hand returned from his pocket, empty. “As you’ve said please,” he said aloud.

He heard someone clearing his throat. He looked up and there was Webster. “Did you hear all that, son?”

Webster nodded.

“A stupid, incompetent fool!” Frost repeated. “And he’s right . . . that’s just what I am.”

From his inside pocket he again took out the photograph and studied it. He would have to start thinking of Karen as a schoolgirl again, far too young for boys, too young to keep contraceptives in her handbag. So who was the anonymous victim, and why the fancy dress?

He pushed himself up from the bench. “Come on, son, let’s nip up to ward C3 and see what we can find out.”

“It isn’t our case,” protested Webster.

“I know, son. My trouble is I’m such a nosey bastard.”

Sue Harvey was waiting for them by the door of C3, a small side ward with only four beds. “The doctors are with her now,” she whispered, pointing to the end bed, which was screened off by curtains.

After a few minutes the curtains jerked open and a small Asian doctor in a white coat emerged, followed by the night nurse. Behind them, on the bed, a white huddle, absolutely motionless. The night sister whispered something to the doctor and pointed to the two detectives. He examined them with tired eyes, then walked over.

“How is she, Doc?” asked Frost.

“Still unconscious. She has been punched, kicked, and badly beaten. There are two fractured ribs, a broken nose, fracture of the jaw, and hairline skull damage. In addition, she has severe bruisings, and contusions all over her body. There are external marks on the throat, which is badly swollen, indicative of manual strangulation; also, of course, internal bruising. I imagine she was rendered unconscious, then repeatedly kicked and punched while she was lying on the ground.”

“Would the beating have been before or after she was sexually assaulted?”

The doctor frowned and looked puzzled. “Sexually assaulted? Who said she was sexually assaulted?” He turned to the night sister and spread his hands in appeal. “Did I say she was sexually assaulted?”

It was Frost’s turn to frown and look puzzled. “Are you saying she wasn’t raped?”

“Raped? If my patient had been raped, do you think I am such a damn fool I would not have mentioned it?”

Frost shook his head, then wiped his face with his hands. He just couldn’t believe this! “You’re quite sure, Doc? You wouldn’t like to nip over and take another look?”

Indignantly, the little man pulled himself up to his full height. “Are you questioning my competence, Inspector? I have examined her. There are definitely no signs of recent sexual congress, nor of any attempt of forced sexual congress. You obviously cannot take in what I am saying, so you will please excuse me. I have other patients to attend to.” He pushed past them, bustling out of the ward, his white coat flapping behind him.

Frost scratched his head and tried to make sense of this unexpected development. “Not raped? He stripped her off but didn’t rape her. It’s like unwrapping your Mars bar then not eating it.”

“Perhaps he was disturbed before he could actually do it,” suggested Webster.

“Disturbed?”

“The bloke who made the anonymous phone call—perhaps he barged in on them at the crucial moment?”

Frost rubbed his chin. “I can’t buy that, son. I had a quick look at her clothes. There was no blood on them, which means he kicked and punched her after he’d stripped her. If he had time to kick her, he had bags of time for the old sexual congress.” He shrugged. “Still, it’s not our case anymore. Let Inspector Allen solve it.”

The ward door was barged open by a wheeled stretcher manoeuvred by a theatre orderly who had come to collect the patient for surgery. Through the open door Frost suddenly spotted Detective Inspector Allen, with Sergeant Ingram at his side, purposefully advancing toward the ward. He had no wish to be around when Allen learned of his foul-up with the victim’s age, so he quickly looked for a way of escape. With a quick wave to Sue, he hustled Webster through a rear door, down some dimly lit stone stairs, then along another empty, winding corridor.

“You seem to know your way about,” commented Webster.

“My wife was in here,” explained Frost. “I used to come every day.”

The detective constable remembered being told that Frost’s wife had died recently and thought it best not to ask further questions. They turned right into the main causeway, which had wards leading off from either side.

Frost stopped and pointed. “Look! The place is crawling with filth tonight.”

Webster saw a young police constable, dark curly hair, small moustache, leaning against the wall, engaged in animated conversation with a ridiculously young night nurse who had a wisp of stray hair escaping from her cap. Webster scratched his memory for the man’s name; he had been introduced to so many people. Then he remembered. Dave Shelby, married with two young children but with the reputation of being woman-mad, or “crumpet-happy,” as Frost had crudely termed it.

Catching sight of the inspector bearing down on him, Shelby quickly whispered something to the girl, making her blush, then in a loud voice, said, “Thank you very much, Nurse.” She hurried off, giving an apologetic smile to Frost as she passed.

“Stay away from him, love,” Frost called after her. “He meets men in toilets after dark.” To Shelby, he said, “You want to try and stay off it for five minutes, son—it can make you go blind.”

Shelby grinned nervously. “Just passing the time, sir. I’m a respectable married man.”

“So was Dr Crippen,” sniffed Frost. “Anyway, what are you doing here?”

Shelby jerked his thumb at the glass-ported swing doors behind him. “I’m with the hit-and-run victim. They’re operating on him now.”

Frost squinted through one of the portholes. Not much to see. A huddle of green-robed figures, working silently. One of the robes was smeared with blood.

“Rather him than me. It looks like an abattoir in there.”

He looked over Shelby’s shoulder. Farther down the corridor all alone, an old lady was sitting. She looked bewildered and frightened.

“That’s the victim’s wife,” whispered Shelby. “She slept through it all. Didn’t even know her husband had got out of bed until a neighbour knocked to tell her he’d been run over.”

“Poor old cow,” muttered Frost. “What are his chances?”

Shelby gave a hopeless shrug. “His skull is smashed, he’s hemorrhaging internally, and he’s seventy-eight years old.”

“The car that hit him was supposed to have shed its licence plate,” said Frost. “Have we traced the driver yet?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m not really on this one. Mr Allen pulled the area car off to help with the search for the rapist.”

“That reminds me—” said Frost, staring closely at him “—have you been up to your larks tonight?”

Shelby started visibly. “What do you mean, sir?”

“The woman who was attacked. You haven’t been in Denton Woods tonight with your little truncheon at the ready?”

A wave, of relief seemed to wash over the constable. “No, sir,” he said, forcing a smile. “It wasn’t me.”

But you have been up to something, my lad, thought Frost, and for a minute you thought I was on to it. Well, I’m not on to it. I’m not that clever . . . I can’t even tell the difference between a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl and a thirty-year-old woman.

They had to pass the old lady on their way out to the car. She reached up and clutched at Frost’s arm. “My husband—” she said “—they’re operating on him. He is going to be all right, isn’t he?”

“Of course he is,” beamed Frost. “He’s going to be fine.” He gave her a reassuring pat.

They walked on.

“Why raise her hopes?” asked Webster. “He’s going to die.”

“Then you bloody tell her,” said Frost.

“I can’t give you any sort of description,” said the man. “I never saw him.”

“You must have seen something,” said Wells. “How are we supposed to arrest him if we don’t know what he looks like?”

The phone rang.

“Answer that, would your Ridley,” yelled Sergeant Wells. “I’m attending to someone.”

The man he was attending to had been robbed at knife-point while drawing cash from the automatic cash dispenser at Bennington’s Bank. “He stuck a knife in my back,” said the complainant, “then he grabbed the money and ran. By the time I’d plucked up courage to look around, he’d gone.”

“Was he short, tall, fat, thin, white, yellow, or what?” asked Wells.

“All I can tell you is he was a bloody fast runner,” said the man. “He went off with my money like a dose of salts.”

The phone kept ringing.

“Excuse me a moment, sir,” said Wells. He pushed open the door to the corridor and shouted, “Ridley!”

The toilet gurgled and roared, then Ridley appeared, doing up his belt.

“The bloody phone’s ringing,” snapped Wells. “You know I’m here on my own.”

“I’m entitled to go to the toilet, aren’t I?” argued the constable.

“Not when we’re short-staffed, you’re not.” He turned back to the man. “And how much did you say was taken, Mr Skinner?”

“Forty-five pounds. Nine five-pound notes.”

“Any idea where Mr Frost is?” called Ridley, holding the mouthpiece against his chest.

“You’re on Control,” snapped Wells. “You’re supposed to know where everyone is.” It was really getting far too much. Every available man had been commandeered by Mr Allen after the rape attempt in Denton Woods. Even young Collier had been roped in, leaving only Wells and the controller, PC Ridley, to run the entire station. He wasn’t good enough to go to their lousy party, but he was good enough to run a division almost single-handed.

“There’s been a robbery and a coshing over at The Coconut Grove. They got away with more than five thousand quid.”

“Hard bloody luck,” said Wells. “This gentleman’s lost forty-five pounds, and he was here first.”

The lobby doors crashed back on their hinges, and in bounded Frost in his party suit with the sodden trouser legs and his everyday mac and scarf. With him was the new bloke, the bearded ex-inspector Webster.

Ridley waved the phone. “Mr Frost!”

While Webster went on to the office to make a start on the crime statistics, Frost ambled over to Ridley. “Yes, Constable?”

“Robbery at The Coconut Grove, Mr Frost.”

“Sorry, I’m only doing bodies down public lavatories tonight,” replied the inspector. At Ridley’s look of reproach, he sighed and said, “All right. Take the details.” He crossed to the corridor and yelled, “Webster! We’re going out again.” Then he caught sight of Wells struggling to get a report form into the typewriter. “Everything all right, Sergeant?”

“No, it bloody well isn’t,” snarled Wells, “and I’m too busy for small talk.”

“I’ve seen a lady with rouged nipples,” said Frost.

“Are you going to take my details?” demanded the man who had been robbed.

“Just a moment, sir,” said Wells, waving him off as if he were intruding on a private conversation. “You saw
what
Jack . . . ??”

Before it had time to blink at being brought out into the light, the crime statistics return was stuffed back into the filing cabinet and Webster was once again behind the wheel of the Ford Cortina, driving off into the night. As the car skirted the woods, they could see the firefly dots of torches dancing among the trees, where Allen’s team continued its painstaking search.

The Coconut Grove was part of a large leisure complex development on the outskirts of Denton, just north of the woods. It consisted of clubs, bars, restaurants, bingo halls, a theatre, a sports pavillion, and myriad other amenities. The police suspected that it catered for the odd spot of prostitution on the side, but they hadn’t been able to prove anything. It was run by a dubious character called Harry Baskin whose other enterprises included a chain of betting shops.

Baskin had bought the land cheap. No-one thought he’d get planning permission for his leisure complex because, under the new town development plan, the area was designated for agricultural purposes only. But, to everyone’s astonishment, planning permission was granted. A couple of months later, the chairman of the planning committee resigned and retired to the Bahamas. Some cynics unkindly suggested that these two events were connected, but no-one said so to Baskin. People who got on the wrong side of Harry Baskin suddenly found they had become extremely accident-prone.

Harry Baskin! Webster wondered where he had heard that name before? “He runs some betting shops, doesn’t he?”

Frost nodded, “He has thirty-seven all over the country. He also has subtle ways of making reluctant losers pay up. The punter wakes up one morning to find his dog’s had its throat cut, or that his car has mysteriously self combusted . . . little nudges like that. No-one owes Harry money for long.”

Leaving the main road, they followed large illuminated signs which beckoned THIS WAY TO DENTON’S FABULOUS LEISURE COMPLEX. A sharp turn, and there it was, a cluster of buildings in gleaming black-and-white mock marble, spangled with tasteful neon signs . . . Bingo . . . Fish and Chips . . . Striptease. Most of the satellite buildings were in darkness, but Frost steered Webster across a car park to the rear section, which a discreet blue neon sign proclaimed to be THE COCONUT GROVE.