Night Frost (44 page)

   "Did you think of sending for a doctor?" asked Frost.

   "A doctor?" Bell frowned and his hand flicked away the question as futile. "It would have been no use. She was dead."

   He paused. The only sound in the room was the slight rustle as Gilmore turned the page of his notebook. Bell’s head twisted to the sergeant, as if suddenly realizing that every thing he was saying was being taken down. "I didn’t know what to do. I was so frightened . . . so appalled. I tried to think. I had to find somewhere to hide the body and I suddenly thought of that crypt. I thought it would at least be a Christian place of burial for the poor child." At this Frost gave an involuntary snort of derision, but Bell didn’t care what Frost thought. This was the statement that would be read out in court, the statement the jury would hear. "That night, I took the poor child’s remains out to the car and drove to the cemetery. As reverently as possible I put her in the crypt. I said a prayer for her. I never meant to hurt her."

   "Before you did that, you reverently burnt the poor child with a blow-lamp," said Frost. "What sort of kindly, Christian act was that?"

   He bowed his head. "Genetic fingerprints. I’d read some where you could positively identify a sperm sample. I was trying to destroy the evidence."

   "The newspapers?" prompted Frost.

   "I wanted it to look as if she hadn’t finished her round, so I took the newspaper she had brought and put it in her bag, meaning to dump it somewhere with the bike. As I was passing Greenway’s cottage, I noticed his paper sticking out of the letter-box, so I took that as well." He waited until Gilmore’s pen had finished writing this all down before adding, "I bitterly regret the pain and anguish I caused Paula’s family. It was an accident. I shall live with the scars for the rest of my life."

   Frost stood up and took him by the arm. "So will the poor cow’s parents, sir." They helped him on with his coat and led him out to the car.

Mullett was angry. He paced up and down Frost’s tiny office, shaking with rage. "I’ve told you time and time again, Frost, catching the criminal isn’t enough. We’ve got to be able to prove our case in court. What on earth did you think you were doing?"

   "I thought I was solving a murder case," answered Frost. He didn’t expect praise, but he was unprepared for Mullett’s fury.

   "By slipshod, unorthodox methods? By sneaking official evidence from the evidence cupboard? Planting it in a suspect’s house? For heaven’s sake, man, don’t you realize the risk?"

   "Risk?" asked Frost.

   "What other solid evidence do you have against him apart from his own admission?"

   "Nothing yet," said Frost.

   "Has he signed the statement he’s given you?"

   "Not yet. It’s being typed now." He nodded towards Gilmore who was typing at speed and pretending not to listen to Frost’s bollocking. He ripped the last page from the machine and hurried from the room.

   "What if he refuses to sign?" demanded Mullett. "What if he decides to plead not guilty in court and claims that the statement was obtained by means of a trick . . . by the planting of false evidence? If this all blows up in our faces, Inspector, I’m distancing myself from the whole affair. It was done behind my back, against official instructions and contrary to my specific orders. Don’t expect me to carry the can for your shortcomings. Don’t expect me to stand by you."

   "I’d never expect that, sir," said Frost, and he had never sounded more sincere. He looked up anxiously as Gilmore came back, the statement in his hand. "Well?"

   "He signed it," said Gilmore, slipping the typescript in a folder.

   "He can still retract it," snapped Mullett, cutting short Frost’s audible sigh of relief. "And then we haven’t got a shred of legitimate evidence against him."

   "We’ve got quite a bit, sir, actually," said Gilmore. "Forensic have just phoned an interim report. They’ve turned his house over and found strands of the girl’s hair on the plush velvet headboard of the bed. Bell had changed and washed all the bedding, but there’s definite traces of blood on the mattress corresponding to the girl’s blood group."

   "Oh!" said Mullett, sounding almost disappointed.

   "That’s . . . good news. Perhaps more than you deserve, Inspector, but good news." He took the statement from Gilmore and ran his eye over it.

   "I almost feel sorry for the poor sod," said Frost.

   Mullett’s eyebrows arched. "You feel sorry?"

   "A choice young naked piece of nooky offering herself. I wouldn’t like to bet I’d have turned my nose up at it," said Frost. "Just his rotten luck she turned out to be a teaser."

   "That’s just Bell’s version. You surely don’t believe it?"

   "Yes, I do." He turned to Gilmore. "He said she’d put on lipstick. Do you remember when we searched Paula’s room—in her wastepaper bin?"

   Gilmore thought, then nodded. He remembered. "An empty lipstick packet!"

   "Plain little Paula never used make-up! The poor cow had a crush on him. She had it all planned in advance what she was going to do. And now she’s dead, his life is ruined and when it all comes out in court it will break her parents’ hearts. I thought I was going to enjoy bringing the bastard in on this one, but now . . ." He shrugged and pulled open his drawer for a packet of export only.

   Mullett gave an uneasy smile. He didn’t quite see what Frost was driving at. "Another crime solved, and that’s all that matters, Inspector."

   The phone rang. Gilmore answered it, then offered it to Mullett. "For you, sir. The Chief Constable."

   Mullett tugged his uniform straight and stiffened as he took the phone. "Yes, sir . . . we’ve got him . . . and he’s given us a full confession. And I modestly claim credit for our team work, sir. The good old Denton team have turned up trumps again." He listened and smirked, oblivious to the faces Frost was pulling behind his back.

   The other phone rang. Frost answered it. He listened and his face went grim. He snatched his mac from the hat-stand and jerked a thumb for Gilmore to follow. "Another Ripper victim. An old lady. The bastard’s nearly decapitated her."

It was like seeing the same tired B-movie over and over again. The tiny over-furnished room. The smell, a mixture of blood and of too many people packed in too restricted a space. The atmosphere was frowsty with sweat, aftershave and tobacco smoke. "Open a window," yelled Frost. "It stinks in here."

   Everyone was busy. The SOC officer, draped with an array of Japanese cameras and leather cylinders of lenses, blazing away with a Canon, the Forensic team, crawling over the carpet, the fingerprint man, whistling tunelessly to himself as he dusted away with his little brush, splashing white powder everywhere. Frost had almost to fight his way through to the corpse. "Everyone outside," he yelled. "You can come back in when I’ve finished." He waited while they shuffled out, then he approached the body.

   She sat in the rust and grey armchair, her dull eyes fixed on an old 19-inch black and white television set which, encircled by a stockade of knick-knacks and framed photo graphs, stood on a rickety coffee table. Frost touched the set. It was still warm.

   "It was still on when I got here," said Detective Constable Burton. "I switched it off."

   Frost nodded and haunched down to study the Ripper’s handiwork. A jagged gash on her neck had gouted blood which glinted stickily down the front of her brown floral dress. Blood from stab wounds in her stomach had leaked to form a puddle on her lap. Her left hand dangled down the side of the chair, the fist tightly clenched. His eyes travelled slowly up to her face, the wrinkled flesh bluish white against her sparse grey hair. He leaned closer to examine the hair, which was in untidy disarray. "What do you make of that, son?" Gilmore crouched down beside him.

   "He came on her from behind," said a familiar voice and they looked up at the slightly swaying figure of Dr Maltby who had been waiting in the bedroom. He nodded a greeting, then prodded a finger at her hair. "The killer came at her from behind, grabbed her hair and yanked up her head. Then he cut her throat. The head’s only hanging by a thread of flesh at the back of the neck, so I wouldn’t shake her if I were you."

   They backed gingerly away from the body, Frost carefully lowering himself into the matching armchair.

   "When he cut her throat," continued the doctor, "he sliced through her vocal cords in the process, so she wouldn’t have been able to scream, even if she wanted to."

   "I’m sure she bloody wanted to," said Frost, poking a cigarette in his mouth and passing the packet around. "I reckon the poor cow would have given her right arm to have been able to scream."

   Grunting his thanks, Maltby accepted a light and moved round to face the body. "The killer then came round to here and stabbed her four times in the stomach." He mimed four stabbing thrusts. "That done, being a neat and tidy person, while she was still bleeding to death and drowning in her own blood, he wiped the knife blade clean, just there." He indicated a wide smear on the skirt of the dress.

   Frost took this all in with a sniff. "I won’t ask how you deduced all that, doc, because I don’t suppose I’d understand a flaming word. Time of death?"

   Gently, the doctor felt the woman’s legs. "Rigor’s fully developed and she feels cold. It would need rectal temperature readings to be precise, but I shall leave that treat to our pathologist friend . . . he can be the one to have her head fall off in his lap. At a rough guess she’s been dead fourteen to eighteen hours." He jerked back his sleeve to read his watch. "Say between nine o’clock last night and one o’clock this morning."

   Frost dropped to his knees and, very carefully, lifted the woman’s left arm. "Look at the way her fist is clenched."

   "Show me," said Maltby, lowering himself, none too steadily and kneeling on the floor. He took the hand and focused his eyes with difficulty. "Looks like a cadaveric spasm . . . you sometimes get it with violent death. Hello . . ." He looked closer. Something white. The corner of a piece of paper was protruding slightly. Frost snatched the hand and tried to force the cold fingers open.

   Maltby stood up and distanced himself from the operation. "Careful," he said. "You’ll have her damn head off."

   Frost snapped his fingers at Gilmore. "Hold her head, son."

   "Eh?" said Gilmore.

   "She won’t bloody bite you."

   Steeling himself, Gilmore took the head in his hands while Frost tugged at the tightly closed fingers. The head felt cold and as fragile as a blown egg. He gritted his teeth and willed the inspector to hurry.

   "The pathologist won’t like you interfering with his corpse," warned Maltby gleefully.

   "Sod the pathologist," muttered Frost, grunting as the fingers opened and the hand suddenly went limp. Gilmore almost cried out as the body seemed to quiver and he swore he could feel the head patting from the trunk. Carefully and very slowly, like a man building a tottering house of cards, he took his hands away.

   The piece of paper fluttered to the ground. It was a carefully folded £5 note. There was something else pressed tightly into the palm, leaving an impression in the flesh. Three pound coins.

   Frost placed the coins in his open palm and stared at them. They told him nothing. He retrieved the banknote from the floor, pushed all the money back into the dead hand and tried to close the fist around it so the pathologist wouldn’t know what he had done. But the dead hand remained limp and let the money drop.

   "You’ve done it now," called Maltby, moving quickly to the door. "If you’d asked me I’d have told you that you couldn’t put it back again."

   "I’ll throw the bloody head at you if you don’t hop it," bellowed Frost as the door clicked shut.

   Gathering up the money, he deposited it on the coffee table alongside the knick-knacks, then sank back in the chair. "All right, Burton, let’s have some details. I don’t even know the poor cow’s name."

   Burton flipped open his notebook. "Mrs. Julia Fussell, aged seventy-five, a widow, one son, married, two kids."

   Frost groaned. "Don’t tell me I’ve got to break the news to him."

   "He emigrated to Australia last year."

   Frost brightened up. "Good for him. Carry on, son. Who found her?"

   "Her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Beatrice Stacey. She knocked to see if the old dear wanted any shopping, didn’t get a reply, so let herself in with a spare key. I haven’t got much sense out of her. She’s having hysterics next door."

   "I’ll see her in a minute," said Frost.

   "The pattern’s the same as Mrs. Watson, yesterday," Burton went on. "No sign of forcible entry, apparently nothing taken—the bedroom’s undisturbed—and money left in her purse."

   A glum nod from Frost. He wandered over to the front door which was fitted with bolts top and bottom, and a security chain. "As you say, son, exactly the same as that poor old cow yesterday. He comes late at night, but she lets him in and then she calmly sits down to watch the telly so he can creep up behind her and cut her bloody throat." He examined the security chain. Quite a flimsy affair. "You said her purse was untouched. "Where is it?"

   Burton walked over to a small walnut-veneered sideboard and tugged open a drawer. Using his handkerchief, he took out a worn red leather purse and handed it to the inspector. "There’s eighty-five quid in there."

   Holding it by the handkerchief, Frost flicked through the banknotes. All new £5 notes, crisp and consecutively numbered. The numbers tallied with the note taken from her hand. He chewed at a loose scrap of skin on his finger as he thought this over. "Right. Try this out for size. It’s the same pattern as yesterday. The Ripper’s coming to fit a new security chain for her. She’s waiting for him, the money all ready from her purse. She lets him in, sits down, holding the money tight in her hot little hand, and watches the telly while the nice man fits the chain for her. But the nice man just creeps up behind the poor cow and cuts her throat, then he stabs her in the stomach, wipes his knife on her dress and off he goes, all happy."