A Killing Frost (31 page)

   ‘Bleeding wind,’ said Harry. ‘As fast as I put it up, it gets blown down again.’

   Frost kicked the sign to one side. The ground underneath was dry; the grass flattened and yellow. ‘It doesn’t look as if it has ever been put up again since it first fell down.’

   Harry shrugged. ‘What’s the point? You put it up, the wind blows it down. It’s like painting the flaming Forth Bridge.’ He jerked his head. ‘Round here.’

   Frost, Morgan and Norton from SOCO followed him round the exterior of the chain-link fencing to the rear of the building, where some of the undergrowth had been cut back. ‘That’s where it was.’ He pointed. The inspector’s torch picked out a depression in the grass. If you wanted to keep a bike well hidden and the undergrowth was uncut, this was the place to put it.

   Frost chewed thoughtfully at his fingernail. ‘Why didn’t they chuck this bike in the river with the girl’s?’ he wondered. He parted some brambles so he could look through the fencing. The beam of his torch crawled over grass on to a patio area which encircled the complex. He gazed up at the building; he could just make out the windows on each floor, with their balconies and window-boxes intended to take the starkness off the design. Alongside the balconies an ivy-entwined metal trellis crawled up the wall to the top floor.

   He moved his gaze from the trellis and stabbed the beam of his torch at the stone slabbed patio with its sunken, gravel-topped miniature gardens. He called Norton over. ‘A pound to a pinch of nasty stuff that gravel matches the grit we found on the boy’s body. Check it when we get inside.’ He moved slightly to the left, where his torch had picked up a section of the chain-link fencing which bulged inwards where it had been detached from its base. He beckoned Taffy Morgan over. ‘You’re a fat little sod, Taff. See if you can crawl under there.’

   Morgan looked doubtfully at the sodden grass. ‘I’ll get wet, Guv.’

   Frost smiled sweetly. ‘Only your clothes and your body . . . now get under there, fatty.’

   With theatrical grunts and groans, Morgan managed to squeeze himself under the fence and emerged on the other side. He stood up, his clothes sodden, and stared ruefully at Frost from the other side.

   ‘That’s how the boy got in,’ said Frost. ‘You wait there. We’re coming in the dry way through the gates.’

   Frost and Norton walked with the caretaker to the main entrance, which Harry unlocked. They joined Morgan. Again Frost looked up at the metal trellis. ‘Do you reckon you could shin up to one of those balconies, Taff?’

   Morgan looked up and gaped. ‘You’re joking, Guv?’

   ‘All right,’ said Frost, ‘forget it. I’m not paying 5p for a bleeding wreath if you fall.’ He beckoned the caretaker over. ‘I want to take a look inside.’

   Harry checked his watch. ‘Not tonight, Inspector. A time lock kicks in at four o’clock. We can’t get in until the morning.’

   Frost snorted. ‘I haven’t got time to sod about until then. This is a murder investigation. Find a brick, Taff. We’ll smash one of those windows.’

   ‘Hold on,’ said Harry alarmed. ‘No need for drastic measures. We might be able to get in through the boiler house. We’re supposed to bolt it on the inside, but we sometimes forget.’

   His torch showing the way, he took them down stone steps, selected a key from a bunch and opened the door. ‘Your luck’s in, Inspector. I must have forgotten to bolt it.’

  
I bet you never bolt it
, thought Frost. The stepped into a small cellar-like room which held a bank of electric switchboards and two commercial central-heating boilers which weren’t operating. Passing through another door, they climbed some more stairs and were in the darkened lobby. Harry pressed a switch and fluorescent lights shimmered into life. A small reception desk stood alongside a lift.

   ‘How many floors does this place have?’ asked Frost.

   ‘Ten.’ He opened the lift doors. ‘What floor do you want?’

   ‘Let’s start at the top.’

They stepped out of the lift into black emptiness. Harry found the switch and the lights clicked on to reveal a barren, empty floor with rows of windows on each side.

   ‘If ever they rent this place out, the floors will be partitioned off into separate offices,’ explained Harry

   There were plenty of radiators, all stone cold. The entire building was like an icebox. Their footsteps echoed eerily as they walked across the uncarpeted composition floor. Frost moved over to a window and looked out. Blackness was speckled with lights from distant Denton. So what else did he expect to see - Halley’s flaming Comet?

   The balcony door wasn’t locked. Turning the handle, he pushed it open and stepped out, bracing himself and grabbing the iron rail tight against the force of the wind, his hair and tie streaming.

   Frost looked down ten storeys into yawning blackness, then took the cigarette from his mouth and let it fall. It was like dropping a stone down a bottomless well. The red dot took ages before it shot out a miniature shower of sparks when it hit the ground and was swallowed up by the darkness. That was a bloody long way down. The boy couldn’t have fallen from here. He’d have done more than break his legs. He would have been smashed to pieces when he hit the concrete of the patio. He must have fallen from one of the lower floors. But which one?

   Frost stepped back from the balcony and closed the door, conscious that the others were looking at him, expecting him to come up with something. Well, they could bloody well expect. It felt warmer inside after his stint on the balcony, but it was still an icebox.

   ‘Debbie Clark was here,’ he said. ‘Not on this floor, but she was here, in this building. It’s too dark to do a proper search tonight. We’ll get our team together and go over it inch by inch in the morning.’ He stabbed a finger at Harry. ‘When we leave, you stay out of here. This is now a crime scene. If we catch you inside I’ll have you up for perverting the course of justice.’

   ‘You try and bleeding help,’ moaned Harry, ‘and that’s the bleeding thanks you get.’

Frost was woken up in the middle of the night by the insistent ringing of his mobile phone. He staggered out of bed and clicked on the light. Where the hell was the phone? The damn thing was in the room somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where he had left it. He eventually located it under the bed.

   ‘Frost.’ It had better not be a flaming wrong number.

   ‘Fortress Building Society, Inspector. Some one is withdrawing five hundred pounds from the cashpoint in Market Square right now. If you hurry, you can get him.’

   ‘Thanks,’ said Frost. ‘For a minute I thought it was bad news.’ He clicked off the phone and put it where he would forget it again.

   Shit! Beazley would chew his privates off in the morning. He shrugged. There was sod all he could do about it, he’d just have to cross that bridge when he came to it. He lit up a cigarette and smoked for a while before crawling back into bed. He switched off the light, but was unable to sleep. His mind kept whirring round and round, reminding him of all the vital things he had to do and didn’t have time for. Why wasn’t flaming Skinner taking some of the load off his back?

   He was still awake when the milkman rattled by at six and had just drifted off to sleep when the alarm went off at half past seven. It was still pitch dark outside.

Frost swept through the lobby on his way to the Briefing Room, yelling a greeting to Station Sergeant Johnny Johnson. ‘How’s it going, Johnny?’

   Johnson slammed the incident book shut. ‘Our paedophile prisoners are complaining about the standard of their accommodation. They want bail.’

   ‘They want castrating,’ said Frost. ‘I thought Skinner was dealing with them.’

   ‘He’s had to go back to his old division.’

   ‘I wish he’d bloody stay there. I think we’d better oppose bail for their own safety. Let’s try and get them put on remand - oh, and when that nice Mr Beazley phones, you don’t know where I am.’

   He pushed through the swing doors and into the Briefing Room, where he gratefully accepted a mug of steaming hot tea from Collier. He stirred it with a pencil and wiped the sleep out of his eyes, then turned his attention to the search team.

   ‘As you probably know, we’ve found the boy’s bike. It was hidden in some shrubbery outside that big empty office block on Denton Road. I’m pretty certain that’s where the boy was killed and that’s probably where the girl was killed.’

   He paused as Johnny Johnson came in and handed him a memo from Forensic. He scanned it, then waved it aloft. ‘Forensic have confirmed it. The boy was killed there - the grit matches. There’s a metal trellis running up the side of the window by the balconies. I reckon something was going on inside that the boy wanted to see, so he climbs up the trellis, gets a grip on the balcony rail and is hanging there, ready to haul himself over, when our friendly neighbourhood murderer hears him and smashes his knuckles with a stick, making the kid lose his grip and fall. The fall didn’t kill him, so while he’s lying there, moaning with pain, the bastard comes down and bashes the kid’s skull in.’

   ‘Why?’ asked Jordan.

   ‘Because the boy had seen something he should not have seen. He could have seen the girl being killed. There’s no proof of that at the moment, but I’m bloody certain Debbie Clark was killed there.’

   ‘So why didn’t the killer chuck the boy’s bike in the river along with the girl’s?’

   ‘Probably because he couldn’t find it,’ answered Frost. ‘It’s hard to spot in daylight - at night it would have been impossible. It was too well hidden. I’m banking on this sequence of events, but if anyone can come up with anything better, let me know. I’m not too proud to pinch it as my own.’ He waved his cigarettes around, then lit up.

   ‘I reckon Debbie Clark was going to meet someone and she was a bit worried about it - bloody rightly so, as it turned out - so she asked her boyfriend to follow and keep an eye on her. Whoever she meets takes her into the office block. Thomas hides outside, then sees lights come on at one of the floors, so he climbs up the trellis to get a closer look, and gets his head smashed in for his troubles. The first thing we’re going to do is find out which floor he fell from. I want the patio on all four sides searched for traces of blood. The poor sod would have bled like mad, both when he hit the ground and when his brains were knocked out. When we find where he fell, we can then check the trellis for signs of him climbing - the greenery should be crushed or disturbed, which should lead us to the actual balcony he was hanging on to when he was helped down. We might find blood and prints on the rail. When we know the floor, we can search inside to see if there is any trace of the girl having been there. It’s going to be a cold, back breaking task and if you find anything, I’ll take the credit, which Skinner will then take for him self. I also want the surrounding area searched to see if we can find the brain-splattered blunt instrument that finished off the boy.’ He pinched out his cigarette and dropped it in his pocket. ‘All right. Let’s get going.’

It was PC Collier who found it. ‘Inspector!’

   Frost came running over. Not only was the gravel stained and. flecked with blood, there were marks where the boy’s body had been dragged before being lifted. Frost shouted for the others to stop the search. ‘We’ve found it!’

   They gathered round him as he moved over to the trellis. ‘This is where he climbed up - look.’ He pointed. ‘You can see broken stems where he trod on them.’ His eyes followed the ivy upwards. ‘I reckon he made it to the fourth floor - the plants seem undamaged above that point.’ He pointed to the blood marks. ‘Get them covered up and radio Forensic. Now let’s take a look inside.’

   They clattered up the stairs to the fourth floor, a vast echoing barn of empty space stretching the entire width of the building. It was pitch dark - all the blinds had been closed. Frost jabbed a finger at Jordan. ‘Get on to that caretaker and ask him if the blinds should be shut in an empty building.’ He fumbled for the switches and clicked on the lights. ‘Now open the bloody things.’ He waited while the blinds were opened and daylight streamed into the barren area. Frost opened the door to the balcony and checked to confirm there were no more broken branches above this level. This had to be it. ‘Get Norton up here to check for prints and blood.’

   While Norton went to work, Frost struck a match on the NO SMOKING sign and dragged at a cigarette. He moved to the balcony to watch, then looked out over the distant houses to the outskirts of Denton. What a dump the place looked. But dump or not, he wasn’t going to let the bastards chuck him out. But how was he going to stop them? Why the hell did he start fiddling his expenses? it wasn’t as if he needed the money. His thoughts were cut short. Morgan was calling him.

   ‘Guv!’ The DC had found something and was holding it aloft triumphantly.

   ‘Show me,’ said Frost, holding out his hand. It was a spent match. ‘I just used that to light my fag, you prat. Now make yourself useful for a change. Go downstairs and wait outside. I want to know if anyone would have been able to hear the poor cow when she screamed her bleeding head off, begging the bastard to stop.’ He ordered the blinds to be shut again, as they would probably have deadened the sound on the night.

   Minutes later, Morgan phoned to say he was positioned outside. Frost yelled, ‘Mullett is a sod!’ at the top of his voice. The sound echoed around the empty floor. He phoned Morgan. ‘Well? Did you hear that?’

   ‘No, Guv - and I was listening.’

   ‘Without me telling you to,’ said Frost. ‘Get back up here.’

   As he thought - from the double-glazed fourth floor, the poor girl could have screamed and screamed until the whole floor echoed to her pleas, and no one outside would have heard her, even if anyone was about in this remote area.

   Norton reported marks on the rail, but no distinguishing prints. ‘If he was gripping the rail, Inspector, and someone then cracked his knuckles, he would have released his grip, his hand would have slid open and smeared whatever prints were there.’

   ‘No matter,’ shrugged Frost. ‘We know he was here, prints or not.’