Winter Frost (6 page)

   
"Looks like the Queen bleeding Mum," said Hughes, now staring ahead. "It's down there!" He directed Morgan down a side street lined with parked cars. "That's the place!" He indicated a three-storied building with a multitude of bell pushes alongside a front door which was swinging ajar. A couple of lights shone weakly from upstairs windows. Morgan parked behind a dark brown car which had its tyres slashed and the windscreen and side windows shattered. "Nice neighbourhood," he muttered. Hughes leapt out and bounded into the house. Morgan followed cautiously and slowly. If there was trouble, let Hughes have it. Some of these toms had long sharp fingernails and very short tempers.

   
He trotted behind Hughes, up uncarpeted stairs to the first landing where three doors faced them, each bearing a card affixed with a drawing pin showing the name of the occupant. Hughes stopped outside the end door. The card read 'Lolita'. As he pounded it with his fist, it swung open. He charged in. The woman lying on the bed didn't look up. "Where's my wallet, you cow!" She didn't move. He went over and shook her, then let out a cry and stared in horror and disgust at his hands. They were red and sticky with blood. "Flaming hell." He backed away from the bed, wiping his hands down the front of his jacket. "Flaming hell!"

   
Morgan elbowed him out of the way. She was lying on her back, on top of the bedclothes, eyes wide open. A trickle of blood from her mouth had dribbled down to her chin. All she wore was a white bra and white panties, the panties heavily stained with blood which had oozed from a deep gash in her stomach. She didn't look very old . . . in her mid-twenties at the most. Very gently, Morgan felt for a pulse in her neck. No sign of life, but the flesh was still warm. She hadn't been dead very long.

   
As he fumbled for his radio to call the station there was the slamming of the door and a clatter of running footsteps behind him. He spun round and dashed to the top of the stairs. Hughes had gone.

There were too many people packed into too small a space. The single bar electric fire screwed on the wall, the dials of its prepayment meter spinning madly, belted out its one kilowatt of heat making the room a sweat-smelling oven.

   
"Turn that bloody thing off before we all cook," ordered Frost. He opened the window, but the blast of cold night air that was sucked in immediately turned the room into a fridge. He slammed it shut and looked again at the still figure off the bed.

   
Dr McKenzie, the police surgeon, overtired and overworked, had paid his flying visit on his way to a terminally ill patient and had officially pronounced her dead, probably within the hour. Confirming death was all he was paid to do—let Drysdale, the snotty-nosed Home Office pathologist, who was paid ten times as much for far less work, determine the cause of death. There was little love lost between Dr McKenzie and Drysdale.

   
It was a tiny cubicle of a room. The original rooms had been subdivided with plasterboard partitions to pack in as many short-stay tenants as possible. There was just room for the bare essentials: a single divan, a plastic-coated chipboard bedside cabinet supporting a phone, also with a prepayment meter, and a narrow simulated pine wardrobe.

   
Morgan, whose shamefaced, mumbled apologies had been cut short by Frost, had been sent off with a couple of uniforms to look for the runaway Hughes.

   
And as if there weren't enough people in the tiny room, Liz flaming Maud had put in an appearance. Frost forced a smile, but could have done without her. She smiled back, but inwardly she was seething. No-one had bothered to tell her about the murdered prostitute. She had only found out by accident when she realized everyone else was missing. She was looking after Inspector Allen's cases, one of which was Linda Roberts, the tortured and murdered prostitute. This new killing could well be by the same man, so this should be her investigation, not Frost's, and as soon as she could drag him away to have a word in private she would demand he hand it over to her. In the meantime she was full of contempt for DC Morgan. "It's beyond belief! A key witness—probably a prime suspect—and he just lets him run off."

   
Frost wasn't too concerned. "Hughes can't get far. We've got his car and we know his address. He's probably just round the corner spewing his guts up."

   
"That's not the damn point!" snapped Liz. "The man's bloody useless."

   
"He's better than nothing," said Frost, who had suddenly found an unexpected soft spot for Morgan now that the DC had finished the long and tiresome outstanding crime statistical return for him. Let Morgan do all the paperwork and he could be as bloody inefficient as he liked.

   
Frost gave a grunt of annoyance as he was jostled to one side by Harding from Forensic who was chalking around some splashes of blood on the floor by the bedside cabinet. No sooner had he moved than he was jostled again as the photographer moved in to do his stuff. There were too many people in too small a space and he could have done without Liz Maud breathing down his neck.

   
He squeezed against the wall and again looked through the red and black plastic handbag from the bedside cabinet. It contained close on £300 in crumpled five and ten pound notes, a lipstick, a powder compact, and three packs of condoms. He kept diving his fingers down the various compartments hoping to find some kind of identification but there was nothing. They had no idea who the dead girl was. He shuffled past Harding and bent over the bed to stare down at the pale face. "Who are you, love?" he asked as his eyes travelled from the blood round her swollen nose and mouth, down to the gouts and thin snail trails of blood which patterned her bare stomach and stained the white panties.

   
Once again he checked her hands which were just starting to feel cold to the touch. No cuts or marks which would indicate she had tried to defend herself against her attacker's knife. Her long, scarlet-painted nails were unbroken, but her wrists showed bruising where she had been gripped tightly by her assailant. He needed the bloody knife and a team was out searching for it in rubbish bins, drains, gutters, hedges . . . Her killer would not want to be found with it on him, and would have dumped it at the first opportunity. Frost had also radioed through to the station asking them to give Hughes's car a thorough going-over. A bloodstained knife in the glove compartment would do wonders to narrow the field of suspects!

   
He looked up hopefully as Jordan and Simms came back. They had been sent knocking on doors in the building to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything, or perhaps knew the name of the dead woman. "No joy," reported Simms. "Too late for most toms and the rest must have scarpered when they heard us arrive."

   
"With all this activity you'll probably find most of the girls will steer clear of the place until it dies down," added Jordan. "They only rent these rooms by the week and they're not going to get much trade with the fuzz crawling all over the place."

   "
I'm sure the landlords keep meticulous records," said Frost. "I want names and addresses of all their tenants. We must know who this poor cow is." His radio paged him.

   
"Wells calling Inspector Frost."

   
"Yes?"

   
"That drunk—Harry Hughes. I sent a car round to the address he gave us. They've never heard of him."

   
Frost hissed annoyance. "The bastard! Get ownership details for his motor."

   
"I've already checked. The registered owner sold it for cash last week . . . never took the buyer's name and the car hasn't been re-registered."

   
"Shit!" hissed Frost. "Let's hope we can pick him up before he makes it home." He dropped the radio back in his pocket and revised his good opinion of Taffy bloody Morgan.

   
The phone on the bedside cabinet suddenly rang. No-one moved, then Harding reached out for it, but was stopped by Frost who crooked a finger to Liz. "You answer it. You're Lolita. If it's a client, get him round here. He might know her name."

   
Liz picked up the phone. "Lolita," she announced in what she hoped was a sexy voice. "Yes, I'm free at the moment. Why not come over . . . we could take our time . . . Good, I'll be waiting." She replaced the receiver and nodded. "He's a regular. He'll be here in five minutes."

   
Frost ordered all police cars to be moved from the street in case they scared the man off. They waited. Frost, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, lolled against the bedside cabinet, looking down at the dead girl on the bed. "How old do you reckon she is?" he mused. "Twenty—twenty-one? Three hundred quid in her handbag for one night's work and I've been slogging my guts out for three hours trying to fiddle a fiver on my car expenses. I'm in the wrong profession."

   
Liz Maud, at the window, was staring down into the windswept street. The punter should have been here by now. "I'm not sure that I fooled him."

   
"You fooled him," Frost assured her. "After hearing that sexy voice he won't be able to get his dick out fast enough—it made me feel the same."

   
She twitched a polite smile. A room with a blooded corpse on the bed wasn't the place for tasteless jokes. The street was silent and deserted. No sound of footsteps or a car. Then she stiffened. A shadow crept from around the corner. A man, walking briskly, making for the door of the flats. "It's him!" Frost joined her at the window. "What did I tell you . . . Look at the dirty sod, he's nearly running. Blimey, it's Mullett! Everyone hide!"

   
Only Collier took him seriously. The rest were too well versed in the inspector's dubious sense of humour to do anything but grin.

   
Footsteps tripping up the stairs. Liz stood by the bed, blocking the body from view. Simms and Jordan were on either side of the door, ready to grab. A tentative knock.

   
"Come in," husked Liz.

   
The door creaked open and a man smartly dressed in a dark suit and matching overcoat bounded eagerly into the room, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw Liz. "You're not . . ." he began, spinning round in alarm as the door slammed shut behind him and Jordan and Simms barred the way out. "What the hell . . . ?"

   
Frost stepped forward and flashed his dog-eared warrant card. "Police, sir. I'm afraid it's not going to be the erotic experience you were anticipating." But the man, the blood draining from his face, wasn't listening. He was staring over Frost's shoulder. He could see the girl. "Oh my God . . . !"

   
There was now no room to move so Frost took the man's arm to lead him outside to the landing. The man backed out, unable to tear his eyes away from the body. "Is she . . . ?" He couldn't bring himself to say 'dead'.

   
Frost nodded. "I'm afraid so. How well did you know her?"

   
"Know her?" The man waved his hands in protest. "I don't know her. This is all a mistake, officer. I was looking for somewhere else. I've come to the wrong place." He tried to move to the stairs, but Frost's grip on his arm tightened almost to the point of pain.

   
"Don't sod us about, sir. You phoned—you're a regular. What was her name?"

   
"Name? They don't tell you their real name any more than I tell them mine." He fumbled in his pocket. "She gave me this."

   
A cheaply printed business card, green ink on grey cardboard. "Lolita for Discreet and Lingering Naughty Fun—Denton 224435."

   
Frost took the card. "Lingering naughty fun? What's that—sado-masochism?"

   
The man flushed brick red. "No, it damn well isn't, just . . ." He fluttered his hands vaguely, ". . . fun."

   
"The poor cow didn't have much fun tonight," said Frost. "Any idea who killed her?"

   
"Of course not," spluttered the man. "Why on earth are you asking me?"

   
"Because at the moment, sir, you're all we've got. Did she mention any punters she was worried about?"

   
"I didn't visit her to discuss her life history, officer. I'm sorry. I can't help you. I want to go."

   
Frost's grip on his arm remained firm. "We can't always have what we want, sir. Fill me in on some background. How did you first get to know her?"

   
"I happened to be driving past King Street and saw her plying for hire with the other girls. She was a new face and didn't look quite so raddled as most of the others so I thought I'd give her a go. We came back here and afterwards she gave me her card: said I should phone her the next time."

   "How many next times were there?"

   
"Five . . . six . . . I didn't keep count."

   
Frost squeezed some life into his scar with his free hand. It was bitterly cold on the landing with the front door wide open. He gave the man his hard stare and noticed that he seemed to be avoiding his gaze. "I think you know something you're not telling us, sir."

   
"This is ridiculous. I don't know anything."

   
"Tell you what, sir, let's go back to the station. If we wait long enough you might remember something important."

   
"Look, officer . . . I can't get involved . . . I'm married. If my wife found out . . ."

   
Frost gave him a broad grin. "That's a good idea, sir. What about if I drive you home, we wake up your wife and I question you in front of her. It might jog your memory."

   
The man looked both frightened and angry. "You bastard!"