Frost 2 - A Touch Of Frost Read online

  Tuesday night shift (1)

  A cold, clear autumn night with a sharp wind shaking the trees. The man in the shadows was trembling. The palms of his rubber-gloved hands were moist, and warm sweat trickled down his face under the mask. Soon he would be able to see her. To touch her. She wouldn’t see him, deep in the black of the moon shadow. She wouldn’t know he was there until it was too late.

  At first he thought it was a police trap. A girl, a young girl, in school uniform, walking all alone in Denton Woods at eleven o’clock at night. But how could the police know he’d be here? The other attacks had taken place miles away. And how could the police know it was the really young girls who turned him on. The police knew nothing. He was too smart for them. Far too smart. They had questioned him. They had cleared him. They had even thanked him for his co-operation.

  Even so, he hadn’t taken any chances. Only fools took chances. As always, he had carefully reconnoitred the area. Nothing. Nobody. For miles around there was no-one but him, and the girl. The girl! In that school uniform. Wearing those dark thick stockings. She couldn’t be much more than fifteen . . . a schoolgirl young and innocent, unaware of her developing body . . . just like the girl in the book, the book he had hidden away in his bedroom.

  What was that?

  He stood stock still, ears straining, his heartbeats booming in the screaming silence. He had heard something. Something moving. He tensed, ready to tear off the mask and run. It was only the mask that could give him away. Without it the police had nothing. No leads, no clues, nothing. Even if they brought him face to face with his victims, they couldn’t identify him. The first they knew of his presence was the sudden suffocating blackness as the cloth went over their heads, and then the pressure of his fingers on their throats, squeezing, choking. One of the girls . . . the second, or was it the third? . . . had managed to tear the cloth from her face. But all she saw of him, before his fists pounded her into unconsciousness, was the mask. The black hood that completely covered his hair, his face, his neck. The newspapers had dubbed him the ‘Hooded Terror’. Tomorrow’s headlines would read ‘Hooded Terror Strikes Again. Schoolgirl Latest Victim'. He liked reading about himself in the papers. It made him feel important.

  He slid deeper back into the shadows, his body tensed, his ears tuned. The sound again. A rustling, a snapping of twigs. His hand crept up to the mask as he listened, trying to make out what it was. Then a snuffling and grunting as something blundered through the undergrowth. Something small. An animal of some kind. A badger, perhaps, but definitely not human. He relaxed and eased forward. He could smell his own sweat, his excitement. Soon he would hear her.

  Such a shame he would have to hurt this one. She was so young, so innocent. How wonderful if she submitted without protest, her eyes wide open and wondering. At first terrified, but gradually, as she experienced the new delights, the unbelievable sensations he was offering, she moaned, as if in pain, gasping with pleasure, drawing him on . . . the way the girl in his book reacted the very first time it happened to her. She was a schoolgirl, too.

  His ear caught another sound. The dry whisper of fallen leaves on the narrow path scuffed by quick, nervous footsteps.

  It was her. The girl. Again he held his breath. Stood stock still and tensed . . .

  Ready to spring.

  Police Constable David Shelby, twenty-five, married with two young children, shivered and stamped his feet as the wind, cutting down the deserted back street, found an empty lager can and rattled it across the cobbled road. He checked his watch. Twelve minutes past eleven. He wondered who the station would send, hoping it wouldn’t be Detective Inspector Allen but whoever it was, he wished he would come soon. He had far better things to do tonight than stand guard over a dead body.

  Above his head an enamel sign, hanging from a wrought-iron frame like a gibbeted body, creaked as it swung to and fro in the wind. The wording on the sign read Gentlemen, with an arrow pointing downwards. Behind Shelby a broken metal grille sagged, no longer fit to perform its function of denying entry to the worn, brass-edged stone steps which descended to the dank darkness of the underground public convenience, built by the Works Department of Denton Borough Council in 1897 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

  The sound of a car approaching. Headlights flared as a mud-splattered, dark blue Ford Cortina rumbled over the cobbles, coming to an uncertain halt behind Shelby’s patrol car. The door opened and a scruffy-looking individual wearing a dirty mac draped with an equally dirty maroon scarf, clambered out., In his late forties, he had a weather-beaten face flecked with freckles, his balding head fringed with light-brown fluffy hair. Shelby smiled, relieved that the station had sent the easygoing Detective Inspector Frost and not that sarcastic swine Allen, who treated the uniformed branch with contempt and who was bound to ask some probing questions. It would be a lot easier with Jack Frost.

  The wind found the lager can again and dribbled it across to the inspector, who gave a mighty kick and sent it flying through the air, past Shelby’s ear, to rattle and bounce down the toilet steps.

  ‘Goal!’ yelled Frost, ambling over.

  Shelby grinned and swung his torch beam toward the depths. ‘Shall we go down, sir?’ He was anxious to get this over, but Frost was in no hurry.

  ‘What’s the rush, son? If he’s dead, he’ll wait for us. Be sides, I’ve got my best suit on and I don’t want to mess it up sooner than I have to.’ He opened his mac to reveal a newish looking, blue pinstriped suit with a fairly respectable crease to the trousers. It was the retirement party tonight. Police Inspector George Harrison was leaving the force after twenty-eight years in Denton, and the division was throwing a big farewell thrash for him in the station canteen. Although officially on duty, Frost had set his heart on attending and was going to take the first presented opportunity to sneak up there. Which was why his old blue-striped wedding suit had been paroled from its moth-balled prison. He could have done without Shelby’s newfound efficiency in finding this lousy dead body.

  Frost fished a battered packet from his mac pocket and worried out a cigarette. ‘You’d better fill me in with some facts. How did you find him, and why the hell didn’t you pretend you hadn’t seen anything and leave him for the morning shift?’

  ‘Well, sir, I was driving past on watch when I noticed the metal grille across the stairs had been forced back . . .’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Frost. ‘You know what a slow old sod I am. What were you doing driving down this bloody back street at this time of night?’

  ‘It’s part of my beat, sir,’ protested the constable, looking hurt. ‘It has to be covered.’

  ‘Highly commendable,’ sniffed Frost, spitting out a shred of tobacco, ‘but next time there’s a party, stick to the main roads. And speed it up, son. The beer’s going to run out before you reach the punchline.’

  ‘Well, sir, I stopped the car, got out, and checked the grille.’ He directed his torch toward the sagging grille and they both moved forward to examine it. ‘As you can see, the padlock has been forced.’ Frost gave the padlock the briefest of glances and stared pointedly at his wristwatch. Taking the hint, Shelby speeded up his narrative. ‘As you know, sir, these toilets are locked up at eight o’clock.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ grunted Frost. ‘I always pee in shop door ways.’

  ‘Anyway, sir,’ continued Shelby doggedly, ‘I thought I’d better investigate.’

  Frost snorted. ‘Investigate what? Illicit peeing after hours?’

  ‘There’s plenty of copper and lead piping down there, Inspector,’ Shelby pointed out. ‘They could have been after that.’

  ‘Sorry, son,’ Frost apologized, ‘you’re quite right. Carry on.
I’ll try and keep my big mouth shut.’

  ‘Not much more to tell, sir. I went down and found this tramp sprawled on the floor. As far as I could tell, he was dead. Dr Cadman only lives round the corner, so I nipped round and brought him back.’

  The inspector dragged on his cigarette. ‘Pity you didn’t just call an ambulance and let the hospital take over.’

  ‘He might not have been dead, sir. The doctor would have been quicker.’

  Frost nodded gloomily and said, ‘You’re right again, son. Pity you have to be so bloody right on the night of the big booze-up. What did the quack say?’

  ‘Doctor Cadman found damage and bleeding at the base of the skull. He reckoned death was caused by a blow to the head.’

  Frost stared moodily into the darkness. He knew Dr Cadman. Knew him well. Cadman had been his wife’s doctor. It was Cadman who had diagnosed stomach pains as mere indigestion and kept prescribing the white peppermint mixture until the unbearable pains drove her to hospital. ‘An old tramp, you say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve seen him knocking around the district, but I don’t know his name.’

  ‘I suppose we can’t put the evil moment off.’ Frost pinched out his cigarette and stuffed the butt back into the packet. ‘Let’s get inside before people think you’re trying to pick me up.’

  One hand gripping the brass handrail, he followed Shelby’s torch cautiously down stone steps worn concave in the middle from the traffic of thousands of hurrying feet. The echoing, monotonous plopping sound of dripping water grew louder.

  ‘Do you know which police surgeon they’re sending us?’

  ‘Dr Slomon, sir. Mind that step . . . it’s a bit dodgy.’

  ‘Slomon!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘That snotty-nosed little bastard? He’ll want everything done by the book. I reckon I can kiss the party goodbye.’ He moved his foot down to the next step only to give a startled yell as something cold and wet leaped up and licked its way inside his shoe. ‘Flaming hell, Shelby, it’s awash down here. You might have bloody warned me.’

  ‘It wasn’t as bad as this before,’ said Shelby. The reflections from his torch beam danced in the rippling water which lapped at the bottom step. ‘One of the cisterns is overflowing and the body’s blocking the drain.’

  ‘This gets better and better,’ the inspector observed bitterly. ‘So where is he?’

  Shelby swung his torch and illuminated a sodden shape huddled in one corner. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to get our feet wet, sir.’

  They splashed over, the water finding holes in Frost’s shoes he never knew existed and reminding him of the pair of Wellington boots lying idle on the back seat of his car. The heap in the corner looked like a mess of wet rags, but the light of the torch revealed it to be a man. A dead man. He lay on his back in the flooded glittering of the urinal stalls, his long, matted hair bobbing in the rising water, wide-open, sightless eyes staring unflinchingly into the burning glare of the torch. The mouth was agape and dribbling, the beard and ragged overcoat filthy with vomit that stank of stale, cheap wine. The body of a derelict, a tramp who had crawled into some dark corner to die.

  Frost stared at the tired, worn-out face, a face long unwashed, grimed and greasy with dirt. ‘Good God, it’s Ben Cornish!’

  ‘You know him, sir?’ Shelby asked.

  ‘I know him,’ Frost replied grimly. ‘And so would you bloody know him, Constable, you spent more time on your job and less on looking for crumpet.’

  In the dark, Shelby flushed. He believed his womanising was a well-kept secret, but nothing seemed to escape the seemingly unobservant Frost.

  ‘He may look a bloody old man, Shelby, but he’s not much older than you.’ The inspector bent down, his hand slipping under the water to the back of the head, his fingers exploring and finding the sticky section where the skull moved under pressure. ‘He’s been living rough ever since his family chucked him out a couple of years back. He started out as a wino - cheap booze ‘laced with meths or surgical spirit - then he progressed to heroin.’

  ‘Heroin!’ exclaimed Shelby, his torch beam slowly creeping over the emaciated figure at his feet. ‘That’s an expensive habit.’

  ‘Well, by the look of him,’ observed Frost, ‘I doubt if he wasted money on nonessentials like soap and food. He used to be a lovely kid. A cheeky little sod. Look at him now!’ He prodded the body with his foot, then turned away. A match flared as he relit the butt. ‘I suppose you haven’t been through his pockets?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the constable admitted. ‘He’s a bit messy.’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to get any bloody cleaner floating in pee, is he? Is there any way to stop this damn water rising? It’s up to my ankles. I feel like a passenger on the Titanic.’

  Shelby paddled over to the far end of the fetid room leaving Frost in the dark. ‘I think it’s this one over here sir.’

  ‘Don’t give me a running commentary, son. Just fix it.’

  Shelby’s torch beam bobbed, then pointed upward to spotlight a cast-iron cistern tank which was meant to flush the urinal stalls at regular, hygienic intervals. It was brim-full, and water was cascading over the sides and down the wall. Shelby reached up and plunged his hand inside the tank. He jiggled the ball cock up and down a couple of times, and suddenly the cistern gulped, emptied itself, then filled up and cut off. Satisfied, Shelby splashed back to Frost.

  ‘That’s done it, sir. If we can shift the body it should unblock the drain and let the water flow away.’

  ‘Better not move him, son. You know what a fussy little creep this police surgeon is. And see if you can’t find a light switch. Slomon’s bound to moan about the dark.’ He sneaked a look at his watch. How much longer before he could get to the party? Where was bloody Slomon?

  His question was answered by a clatter of footsteps from the top of the stairs and a peevish voice that inquired, ‘Any one down there?’

  Shelby’s torch guided the newcomer down. Dr Slomon, a short, self-important individual wearing an expensive- looking camel-haired overcoat, peered distastefully into the murk as Frost waded over. ‘Inspector Frost! I might have guessed. Somehow one associates you with places like this.’ His overcoat was unbuttoned, and beneath it Frost could see a bow tie, and a smart black evening dress suit.

  ‘You needn’t have got tarted up just to come down here Doc. Any old suit would have done.’

  Slomon smiled sourly. ‘If you must know, I was on my way to Inspector Harrison’s retirement party when I got this call. I hope it’s not going to take long.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Frost. ‘Hold on a tick, we’re trying to find the light switches.’

  At first there didn’t seem to be any way of turning on the lights, but eventually the beam of the torch followed the wiring down until it disappeared inside a small wooden cup board on which was stencilled Switches - Keep Locked. In obedience to this request, the cupboard door had been secured with an enormous brass padlock that wouldn’t have been out of place in the vaults of the Bank of England.

  ‘It’s locked,’ announced Shelby.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Frost, splashing over to take a look. There was a wrenching sound, a tearing of wood, and the padlock crashed to the floor. ‘You see,’ said Frost, ‘it wasn’t locked.’

  The splintered door swung open to reveal its treasures . . . rolls of toilet paper stamped Property of Denton Borough Council, a huge bottle of disinfectant, and a pair of brass-domed light switches screwed to the wall. Two dicks and the fly-specked bulbs high in the ceiling fought a half hearted battle against the darkness.

  Frost surveyed his surroundings, the filthy, stained urinal stalls with their cracked beige glazing turning an unpleasant shade of brown, the copper piping thickly crusted with verdigris, the brown composition floor awash with discoloured water and floating matter. Behind him a row of dark-green painted doors with brass coin locks guarded the lavatories. One of the doors was newly splintered, the coin lock hanging from loose screws; it ya
wned open to reveal a toilet with a broken seat stuffed with torn sheets of newspaper; over it dangled a length of discoloured string as replacement for the missing chain.

  ‘Only my opinion,’ commented Frost, ‘but I think it was more romantic with the lights off.’ He paddled over to the body. ‘Here’s your patient, Doc. I’d be obliged if you’d hurry it up. I want to get to that party, too.’

  The police surgeon made no attempt to leave the bottom step. He looked first at the swirl of dirty water he would have to wade through, then at his highly polished patent-leather shoes. ‘Do we know who he is?’

  ‘His name is Ben Cornish,’ replied the police constable. ‘A dropout. Sleeps rough. He’s on drugs and booze.’

  Slomon nodded. ‘I see. And what leads you to suspect that death is other than from natural causes?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if he was dead, so I brought Dr Cadman in. He said he died from a blow to the back of the skull.’

  Slomon’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh? And how did Dr Cadman reach that extraordinary diagnosis?’

  ‘I think he did it by actually walking over and examining the body,’ chimed in Frost, losing patience. ‘He didn’t do it by remote control from the bottom step.’

  Slomon’s cheeks ballooned with anger. ‘I don’t need lessons from you on how to conduct an examination, Frost. These tin-pot general practitioners don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Even from here I can see that the most likely cause of death is the obvious one: he choked on his own vomit. I have no intention of soiling my clothes by wading through that filth just to confirm what is self-evident. Isn’t there any way of getting rid of this dirty water?’

  ‘Only by moving the body,’ explained Frost. ‘It’s bunging up the drain.’

  ‘Then move the damn thing! Surely you’ve enough gumption to do that without having to be told. And while you’re moving it you might as well bring it over here to me.’

  And this is the bastard who insists on everything being done by the book, thought Frost. Aloud, he said, ‘You take his arms, Constable. I’ll grab his legs.’ As they raised the body, the water began gurgling and swirling down the cleared drain. ‘Reminds me of the time,’ said Frost, grunting as he took the weight, ‘when I was a bobby on the beat and I had to pull this stiff out of the canal. He’d been dead a bloody long time but had only just popped up to the surface. I grabbed his arms to pull him out . . . and his bloody arms came off. I was left holding the damn things while he sank to the bottom again.’ Both Shelby and Slomon winced at this choice tidbit of reminiscence.