A Killing Frost (33 page)

   ‘She’s dead,’ sobbed Mrs O’Brien. ‘Like that poor Debbie Clark. She’s dead. I know it.’

   ‘We’ll find her,’ soothed Frost, trying to sound convincing. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’ll find her.’ Another bloody lie, but what the hell? He couldn’t tell her what he really thought.

Back in the car. Where next? Debbie Clark’s mother. Gawd, he was dreading this. His mobile rang: it was Bill Wells.

   ‘Jack, Beazley’s going ballistic.’

   ‘Soon, Bill. I’ve got Debbie’s mother to see, then I’m going to check Lewis’s old shop for pussy’s pieces, then I’ll see Beazley.’

   ‘The mother? You told me you were going straight to the butcher’s and that was your only call.’

   ‘I lied, Bill. Get off my back. I’m having a sod of a morning.’ He terminated the call and switched the phone off.

Outside the Clarks’ house, Frost sat in the car and smoked. It was his usual delaying tactic and this was something he definitely wasn’t looking forward to. Come to think of it, there was very little to look forward to these days. If Skinner got his way, which looked inevitable, Frost would be out of Denton in a matter of weeks. He’d have to see about selling his house and finding some where to live in Lexton. Lexton! A dump that made Denton look like Palm Springs. Bastard, bleeding Skinner. His mind skimmed over various painful deaths he could plan for the man, but none was drastic enough.

   He yanked the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it through the car window. Debbie’s mother might be able to come up with some thing - anything to reinforce the sod-all they already had.

   She took ages answering the bell. He could hear shuffling footsteps, as if someone was dragging themselves along, and when she opened the door he was shocked at her appearance. Mrs Clark had aged ten years since he last saw her: grey-streaked, uncombed hair sprawled over her shoulders, her eyes were unfocused, a cigarette dangled from her lips and there was the reek of whisky on her breath. She squinted red-rimmed, tear-stained eyes at him, her face screwed up as she tried to remember who he was.

   ‘Frost,’ he said. ‘Inspector Frost. How are you?’ Stupid question. He could see how the poor cow was.

   ‘How am I? On top of the effing world,’ she snapped. ‘How the bloody hell do you think I am?’ She turned and shuffled back up the hall. Frost followed, closing the front door behind him.

   The hall was littered with unopened letters that had dropped through the letter box. Frost scooped them up and took them into the lounge, where Mrs Clark had slumped in an armchair. He quickly shuffled through the post in case there was anything addressed to Debbie or anything from vindictive cranks who took delight in writing abusive letters to bereaved families. Nothing.

   Mrs Clark was clutching a photograph of a younger Debbie and was rocking from side to side, silently sobbing. Frost felt overwhelmed with pity for her - he was determined to get the bastard who had ravaged and killed her only child. ‘We think Debbie went to that deserted office block just outside Denton,’ he said softly. ‘Any idea why she would go there?’

   She shook her head. ‘Ask my husband. He killed them both. He lusted after his own daughter. If he couldn’t have her, no one else could . . . that’s why he killed my lovely baby.’

   Frost stood up to go. He had heard all this before. ‘We’re looking into that, Mrs Clark.’

   She thrust the photograph she was holding at him. ‘I haven’t even got an up-to-date photograph. This is all I have.’ In the colour print, Debbie was no more than nine or ten. ‘That bastard . . . She was so beautiful . . . She wanted to be a model, but he wouldn’t let her.’

   Frost sank down in the chair again. This was something new. ‘A model?’

   ‘She sent a photograph and they did a test. They wanted her. All he had to do was sign the consent form, but the bastard refused. He said models were involved in sex and drugs and he wasn’t having his daughter mixed up with that and this from a man lusting over pornographic pictures of young children. It was everything Debbie wanted and he refused. It broke her heart.’

   ‘Twelve’s a bit young to be a model,’ said Frost, handing back the photograph.

   ‘This was years ago when she was nine. It was for a mail-order catalogue for children’s clothes. He wouldn’t let her have any more photographs taken in case she applied again.’ She clutched the picture to her chest. ‘This is all I’ve got.’

   ‘Do you remember the name of this model agency?’

   She thought for a while. ‘Dagmar - Digmar Child Modelling. Something like that. Why, is it important?’

   ‘It probably isn’t,’ shrugged Frost, scribbling the name down on the back of an old envelope. Important or not, they had sod-all else to go on. ‘You wouldn’t have any papers about them - an address?’

   ‘He threw them away. Tore them up in front of her and threw them away in case she tried to go back to them. He threw everything away.’

   ‘Where did Debbie go to get the photographs taken? Was it local?’

   ‘It was somewhere not too far away, I think. She did it all without telling us and when the papers came for signature he tore them up.’

   ‘And how did Debbie take all this?’

   ‘I told you. It broke her heart. I tried to comfort her. I said, “Wait until you’re sixteen, my love. You won’t need his consent when you’re sixteen.”’ She covered her face with her hands and started sobbing again. ‘She’s never going to be sixteen. She’s dead.’

   Frost lit up a cigarette and dribbled smoke through his nose, waiting for her to calm down. This could be a lead or, more than likely, another blind alley, but it had to be investigated. ‘And as far as you know, she never made contact with the agency again?’

   ‘No. She was terrified of him . . . the way he screamed and shouted. The hypocritical bastard.’ She pushed herself up and shuffled over to the sideboard to pour herself half a tumbler of Johnny Walker. ‘Join me?’

   ‘No thanks, love.’ Frost stood up again. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own. You should have someone with you.’

   ‘I should have my daughter with me, but she’s dead.’ She drained the whisky and hurled the glass into the empty grate. ‘She’s bloody dead.’ Sobs racked her body.

   ‘I know, love, I know,’ said Frost sadly. ‘I bloody know.’

Back in the car, he switched his mobile phone on and it buzzed angrily and flashed its lights.

   ‘Yes, Bill?’ said Frost, as if he didn’t know what it was all about.

   ‘Jack, what the hell are you playing at? Beazley’s chewing my privates off. He’s been on to Mullett so he’s chewing his off as well. I said you were on your way.’

   ‘I’m on my way to the butcher’s shop, then I’ll be straight back.’ He cut the sergeant’s protests short by clicking off the phone and dropping it in his mac pocket.

   As he cut through the back streets to avoid traffic congestion, his mind started racing again over all he had to do and all his doubts and worries bubbled to the surface. It was getting too much and he wasn’t up to it. He was a sergeant, bumped up to an inspector because some junkie pumped a bullet in his head. He rubbed the scar, which was aching again. Sod that bleeding medal. Without it he would still be a sergeant, and not a bleeding good sergeant at that, but other people would then be making the decisions he was having to make and would be doing a much better job of it. Too many flaming bodies and not a single flaming clue.

   His radio crackled. ‘Inspector Frost, come in please. You are required urgently at the station.’

   Yes, so Mullett could give him a bollocking. He switched the radio off and coasted the car down a back street, past a row of boarded-up shops, their doors scrawled with ancient graffiti. The area was dead. Even the graffiti writers had stopped coming.

   The butcher’s shop was on a corner, its facade completely boarded up. The key clicked in the lock and turned easily. As he pushed open the door, the smell of death hit him like a wall. The sickly, cloying, stomach-churning stench of a long-dead body. He stepped back and closed the door. Shit. Just what he bloody feared. He took a lungful of fresh air, then pushed the door wide open, steeling himself before moving tentatively inside. With everything boarded up, the place was in pitch darkness. He fumbled for a light switch and clicked it on. Nothing. Of course, the supply would have been cut off long ago.

   Scrabbling in his mac pocket, he located his torch. At first it wouldn’t work - he’d been meaning to change the battery - but a couple of shakes and a bang made it flicker reluctantly to life and give out a feeble yellow beam which threatened to die at any minute. He steered the beam around the shop. The light bounced off white tiled walls, then picked out another partly open door which led to the refrigeration room. That was where the smell was coming from. He wished he still had some of that Vicks to shove up his nose, but all he had was an inadequate handkerchief which he clasped to his face. Gritting his teeth, he took a tentative step into the dark, watching the torchbeam creep across a blood-smeared, tiled floor, then his stomach heaved. In the corner was a heap of rotting, green, slimy putrescent flesh, crawling with maggots and dotted with bloated bluebottles.

   He crashed his way outside and was violently sick, leaning against the wall of the shop as his stomach churned and churned. Even out in the open he could still smell and taste that stench. It was much worse than the first girl’s body they had found. That had been out in the open. This was in a confined space. So he was right: Lewis was a nutter. He had killed his wife and cut her up as he would an animal carcass. He shakily lit a cigarette, but after one puff threw it away. The smoke reeked of death. Wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, he fished out his mobile to call the station. Let the boys from SOCO and Forensic throw up their dinners. Why should he have all the fun?

   Bill Wells answered the phone. ‘Flaming heck, Jack, where have you been? We’ve been calling and calling - ’

   Frost impatiently cut him short. ‘I know, but - ’

   But Wells wouldn’t listen. ‘She’s here, Jack.’

   Frost frowned. ‘Who? Who are you talking about?’

   ‘Mrs Lewis. The butcher’s wife. She’s alive and well. The Met managed to trace her. She wants to talk to you.’

   Frost stared at the phone in disbelief. ‘Say that again.’

   ‘Mrs Lewis isn’t dead . . . and to prove it, she’s here! She wants to see you about her husband.’

   ‘On my way,’ croaked Frost, his mind in a whirl. If she was alive, then who the hell was rotting away in the refrigeration room, stinking the place out? He lit up another cigarette to delay the moment when he would have to go back and take a closer look. He shuddered. Maggots. How he hated maggots.

   This time the smell seemed even stronger and the beam from his torch even weaker. He had almost to stick his nose in the rotting mess to see what it was. A quick flick of the torch on to the heap told him. Stupid bloody fool!

   He hurried out, slamming the refrigerator-room door firmly behind him and staggering out to the street to suck down lungfuls of fresh air. He shook his head and laughed at his flaming stupidity. He would have expected Morgan to make such a mistake - but not that he himself would have jumped to the wrong flaming conclusion. The remains weren’t human. They were fly-blown animal carcasses - just what he should have bloody well expected from a butcher’s shop that had been abruptly closed. A shiver ran down his back as he realised what a prat he would have looked had he called out the full murder team to look at a couple of dead pigs.

   Even with the car windows open and the wind blowing through, he could still smell the reek of rotting meat on his clothes.

Mrs Lewis was overweight and in her late forties, with dark-brown hair and a raw-meat complexion; she looked like a typical butcher’s wife. Nicotine-stained fingers circled her third cup of police tea and the ashtray was full of cigarette stubs.

   ‘What the hell is going on?’ she demanded as Frost came in. ‘Bloody police knocking on my door. The neighbours must think I’m a prostitute or something.’

   Only if they need glasses
, thought Frost. Aloud he said, ‘Sorry about this, Mrs Lewis. Didn’t the Met explain what it was all about?’

   ‘No they bloody well didn’t. Dumped me in a police car and drove me straight here.’ She pushed her cup away. ‘And after all that I’m left sitting here drinking cat’s pee.’ She snatched at the cigarette Frost offered her. ‘I never used to smoke, but he drove me mad. So what the hell is this all about?’

   Frost lit up for both of them. ‘Your husband came in here and told us he had killed you and cut you up into little pieces.’

   Her mouth sagged, the cigarette clinging to her lower lip. ‘Again? And you bloody well believed him?’

   ‘He was most insistent,’ said Frost. ‘Trouble was, he couldn’t remember where he had dumped all the bits. We didn’t believe him, but we had to take it seriously, just in case . . .’

   ‘He’s round the twist,’ she said. ‘He always was a bit weird, but he went right over the top when we lost our little boy.’ Her voice faltered and she stared hard at the table top. ‘My lovely little Matthew . . .’ She shook her head, pulled a handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed her eyes. ‘Might not have been quite so bad if I could have had any more kids, but I couldn’t. I was as upset as he was, but I didn’t get any comfort from him. He started blaming me for Matthew’s death. Said I should never have let him go to the hospital. Meningitis - he had meningitis. So what was I supposed to do - leave him at home? He reckoned it was the hospital that killed him. All right, I know he loved Matthew - loved him a bit too much, if you ask me - but he was taking his death out on me. Then he started being rude to the few customers we had in the shop, and when the landlord kicked him out he really went weird muttering to himself, sharpening his bloody knives over and over. I used to be friendly with the woman next door. She was a paediatric nurse and that was enough for him - he blamed nurses for Matthew’s death. She soon stopped coming over, he frightened her so much.’

   Frost nodded sympathetically. ‘You’ve had it rough, love.’