Hard Frost (5 page)

   Drysdale studied the area around the lips and nostrils, pointing out where small fibres of cotton wool still adhered. He tweeze red them off and passed them over to Harding. "The anaesthetic was poured on a pad of cotton wool and clamped over the mouth, causing a slight burning of the flesh . . . here . . . and here." He forced open the uiouth and shone a small pen torch inside. "Particles of undigested food and vomit . . . looks like ground meat, onion . . ." Then he tweeze red out a piece of sodden cloth and held it aloft before dropping it into the large glass container Harding was holding out for him. "The gag," he announced. Then, with agonizing slowness, he extracted more samples from the mouth and nose.

   "Any sign of sexual interference, doc?" asked Frost impatiently.

   "I'll jtell you when I'm ready," murmured Drysdale, 'and not before." He then proceeded to work even more slowly.

   Frost sighed. The man was a bastard. He wandered off to a side room and helped himself to a mug of coffee from a thermos he found on the table. He had no wish to see the body opened and the organs removed and weighed. All he wanted was the findings. He sipped the coffee and smoked and tried to think of anything he should have done, but hadn't. He poured another mug of coffee, then wandered back to the autopsy room. The pathologist had finished and was washing his hands at the sink, while the mortuary attendant was busily suturing the gaping wounds. "Brief findings, doc?" He stressed the 'brief. Drysdale was inclined to be long-winded.

   Drysdale tugged at the automatic towel dispenser. "No sign of sexual assault. If that was the intention, then it wasn't carried out."

   "Good," nodded Frost, although this meant there was no way of knowing if they were looking for a sex attacker or not.

   "His last meal was a proprietary hamburger - sesame seed bread roll, ground beef, onion rings - eaten very shortly before death."

   "How shortly?" Frost asked.

   "Half an hour at the most."

   Frost thought this over as he tried to rub some life intc his cheek. It was freezing cold in the autopsy room and his scar was starting to ache. The kid had a hamburger half an hour before he died. They'd have to check all the likely places - McDonald's, Burger King - in the hope someone might remember serving him amongst their hundreds of other customers . . . You're bound to remember him, he bought a hamburger! A forlorn, bloody hope, he knew.

   "There's a very faint mark around the hair-line," said Drysdale, leading him back to the body. "You can hardly see it." He slipped a finger under the hair to lift it and showed Frost what he meant . . . a barely perceptible white mark, just under an eighth of an inch wide, running across the forehead.

   "What do you make of it, doc?"

   "Something elasticated pulled over the hair. My secretary suggested a shower cap." He nodded to the woman, who blushed and went back to writing out labels for the specimen jars.

   "A shower cap?"

   "Doesn't make much sense, but something like that. You'll get my fuller report in the morning."

   "Send it to Mr. Allen," said Frost. "Not me - it's not my case, thank God!" Then he remembered what he meant to ask. "Chloroform. Do they still use it in hospitals?"

   Drysdale shook his head. "Not for many years. It's been superseded."

   "So where would you get it a chemist?"

   Another shake of the head. "Only if they've got some very old stock they haven't got around to throwing away yet. Years ago it was used in certain prescribed medicines, but not any more. Anything else?"

   Frost scratched his head. "That's all I can think of, doc."

   "I'll bid you good night then." He jerked his head to his secretary, who followed him out.

   Evans began to bag up the materials removed from the body . . . the masking tape, the cotton wool and sticking plaster . . . The mortuary attendant came out to take the body back to the storage area, but Frost held up a hand to delay him. "Take a couple of Polaroid shots of the face," he instructed Evans. "I want them faxed out to all forces in the hope someone can identify the poor little git." He moved out of the way as the flash gun fired. One last look at the body. He lifted the hand with the severed finger. "Why the hell would anyone want to do this?"

   "Liz Maud has got a weirdo breaking into houses and stabbing kids," said Burton. "Could be him."

   "Could be," said Frost, not sounding very convinced. "I'll have a word with her."

   On the way out they passed Drysdale and his secretary in the midst of an angry exchange with the mortuary attendant who was hotly denying helping himself to coffee from their thermos flask.

   In the car Frost settled back into the passenger seat and offered his cigarettes to Burton. "I want you to check up on that little Chinese nurse. Find out where she was from four o'clock onwards, today."

   Burton frowned. "You surely don't suspect her?"

   "Sticking plaster, cotton wool, chloroform, things you'd find in a hospital. And she'd certainly know how to lop off a finger."

   "But what on earth would her motive be?"

   "I don't know, son." The cigarette waggled in his mouth as he spoke and sent a shower of ash down the front of his mac. "Perhaps she was jealous of Kirby's son - perhaps he was spoiling their relationship."

   "But this is a different boy."

   "They all look the same to us - maybe our kids all look the same to them. Perhaps she got the wrong kid." Even as he said it, it sounded weak. "Just check her out, son. It'll give us something to do. We've got no other leads at the moment."

   A disgruntled Bill Wells grabbed Frost as soon as he entered the station. "If you want me to do anything for you, Jack, like organize a search party, do me the courtesy of talking to me direct. I'm not having that stuck-up tart telling me what to do."

   "Sorry," said Frost, knowing how prickly Wells could be. "Have one of Mullett's fags and we'll say no more about it." Wells took one and let the inspector light it for him. He was still not mollified.

   "And where is the good lady in question?" asked Frost.

   "Lording it up in the murder incident room."

   Frost nodded and breezed off down the corridor. "I'll give her your love," he called.

   He sailed into the incident room. Liz had done a good job getting it organized, and under way. The fax machine in the corner was chirping away, spewing out yards of messages; two uniformed men were taking calls and another phone was ringing on an unoccupied desk. As Burton followed Frost in, she yelled, "Answer that phone."

   Sullenly, Burton snatched it up. Like Wells, he wasn't happy taking orders from a woman.

   "Be with you in a minute," she called to Frost, putting down her phone and galloping over to the fax machine. She skimmed through the messages, shook her head in disappointment and dumped them in an already full wire basket. She was annoyed. "We fax all forces asking if they've had a boy answering our description reported missing and they send us details of every missing boy they've got on their books whether he fits our description or not. Some have even sent details of missing girls!"

   "Anything remotely like our boy?"

   She pulled a fax from the pile. "Just this seven-year-old, Duncan Ford, reported missing this afternoon from Scotland."

   Frost took the fax. "Last seen in Montrose just after four thirty," he read. "Well, unless Concorde has changed its route, we can rule him out." He gave her the Polaroid shots taken at the mortuary. "Fax these around." Then he remembered the photograph of Bobby the mother had given him. "You'd better send this out as well."

   As she busied herself at the fax machine, he riffled through the heap of faxes received, then pushed the tray away. His gut feeling told him that the murdered child came from Denton and they were wasting their time enquiring elsewhere. When Liz came back he asked her about her child stabber.

   "We've had four cases over the past week," she told him. "He breaks into the house, usually through a window, and stabs the kids while they sleep . . . just cuts their flesh. I think he gets a sexual kick out of seeing blood."

   "Do you think he'd get a bigger sexual kick cutting off a finger?" She shuddered as he told her about the dead boy and of Drysdale's findings. "Let Mr. Allen know tomorrow - and tell him his company is requested at the post-mortem,10 a.m." top hat, white tie and tails." He yawned. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning. "I'm off home." A wave to everyone. "See you next week."

   As he left, she was yelling for one of the PCs to start checking through the rubbish bags stacked in the car park to see if the dead boy's clothes had been dumped inside.

   "Bossy little cow, isn't she?" whispered Frost to Burton.

   "Too bleeding bossy," muttered the DC.

   "Still," added Frost, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed on a frosty night."

   Burton sniffed derisively. "I wouldn't have her in my bed in the first place."

It wasn't until he got home and the front door slammed behind him that he suddenly remembered Shirley. Shirley, who had been on holiday with him and who was going away again with him in the morning. He had left her in the house while he went off to the station to nick some fags from Mullett's goody box. Bloody hell! He had told her he would only be a couple of minutes and that was nearly five hours ago.

   She wasn't in the living-room. He looked hopefully in the bedroom. The unmade bed was empty. Sod it! He snatched up the phone and dialled her number. The engaged tone. She had left the phone off the hook. Sod, sod and double sod. He considered driving round to her place, but was too damn tired. What a bloody fine holiday this was turning out to be. Piddling with rain all the time he was away, a murder case, a post-mortem and a solitary bed. He undressed, letting his clothes fall on the floor by the bed, then flopped down on the mattress.

   He slept soundly until seven thirty when the insistent ringing of the phone brought him reluctantly to the surface. It could only be Shirley. But at this time? He lifted the phone.

   "Frost," he mumbled, sounding very contrite.

   It wasn't Shirley. It was the station. Mullett wanted him to report there right away.

   "Tell the silly sod I'm on holiday," said Frost.

   "The silly sod knows that," answered Bill Wells. "But he still wants to see you and he's in a real right mood."

   Frost's heart nose-dived. "He's not been counting his bloody fags, has he?"

It was ten past eight and still dark as he turned the Ford into the car-park at the rear of the station. Usually half empty at this time of the morning, it was now jam-packed with alien vehicles of all kinds. Bobby Kirby was obviously still missing and the search party was assembling. Every available officer had been called in to help, including off-duty personnel and officers who could be spared from neighbouring divisions. All very efficiently organized. Frost was glad it wasn't his case. Organization and efficiency weren't his strong point. He'd have made a complete sod-up of it all.

   As he bumped along, looking for somewhere to leave the Ford, a stray dog in the kennels started to bark and was answered by suppressed whining from the dog-handler's van over in the far corner. Space was at a premium, but he managed a clumsy double-park which effectively boxed in Mullett's blue Jaguar.

   In the lobby, a weary-looking Sergeant Bill Wells - who should have gone off duty at six - was directing a group of constables from Thorrington Division up to the canteen where the main briefing was to take place. "Follow the smell of stewed tea and burnt bacon - you can't miss it," called Frost.

   Wells beckoned Frost over, his eyes glinting as they always did when he had an item of tasty gossip to impart. "Did you hear what happened last night?"

   "You got your leg over with Liz Maud?" suggested Frost.

   "She should be so lucky!" snorted Wells. He leant across the desk. "That booze-up that Mullett and Allen attended. It was some sort of senior police do - top brass from all divisions were there."

   "My invite must have been lost in the post," said Frost.

   "Anyway," continued Wells, 'meting to the meaty bit, 'my information is, they sunk a lot more booze than was good for them and they were all well over the limit. Chief Inspector Formby from Greenford Division was giving four of them a lift back. He was in no fit state to drive, but that didn't stop him. Just outside the hotel car-park there's a lamp post. Formby wraps the car round it and turns it over."

   Frost beamed. "I like happy endings."

   "It's even happier," continued Wells. "They're all in Felstead Hospital with broken arms and ribs - Formby's leg is broken as well."

   "Serves the bastard right," said Frost. "If he had an inch of common decency he'd have given Allen and Mullett a lift as well and broken both their bloody legs."

    Two more uniformed men swept in. Wells steered them up the stairs to the canteen, then leant over to Frost, lowering his voice. "Here's the best bit, Jack. The ambulance was called and the Traffic boys turn up anxious to breathalyse the driver - the car just stunk of malt whisky."

   "Bloody hell," said Frost. "I'd give up my pension for the chance to breathalyse a sod like Formby."

   "He wasn't breathalysed, Jack. Someone pulled rank."

   "There's no justice," said Frost.

   "Anyway, five senior officers in hospital is going to make them a bit thin on the ground for a few weeks." The internal phone rang. Mullett. "He wants you," said Wells.

   "He can't have everything he wants," said Frost.

Mullett dropped the Alka Seltzers in the glass of water and winced at the head splitting fizzing noise. He shouldn't have drunk so much last night, but the other officers were so insistent and he didn't want to appear the odd man out. A perfunctory tap at the door and before he could say "Enter' Frost had shuffled in. Mullett groaned. Was that the only suit the man had? He squeezed out a thin smile and waved Frost to a chair, then swilled down the Alka Seltzer.