A Touch Of Frost (18 page)

“You should see her bank book,” said Frost. “She’s got at least twenty thousand quid in the building society, fifteen thousand in the bank, and God knows how much more in her other accounts.”

“You’re joking!” exclaimed Webster.

“I’m not, son. I had a little nose around while you and she were up to no good in her bedroom. Years ago she used to carry out back-street abortions fifty bob a time, including a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit afterward. She was known as the “Fifty Shilling Tailor.” If it weren’t for Lil and her crochet hook we’d be suffering from a population explosion. But as soon as the government made abortions legal she went over to money lending . . . short-period loans at exorbitant rates of interest to people desperate for ready cash—housewives who’ve spent the housekeeping on Bingo and don’t want their old man to know, loan club organizers with sticky fingers. She also makes loans to young people behind on their HP payments, usually taking their family-allowance books as security. There was a wad of them in her piano. You needn’t get your beard wet with tears over her, my little hairy son.”

Time was hurtling on. The visit to Mrs. Cornish would have to wait until after they had attended the postmortem on her son. Webster broke all speed records driving to the mortuary, pulling up with a screech behind a Rolls-Royce hearse, all agleam with black and silver like Mullett’s new uniform.

Out of the Cortina, up a slope and through double doors into a small lobby where the notice on the wall read
All undertakers to report to porter before removing bodies
. At the inquiry counter two undertaker’s assistants in funereal black were arguing with a little bald-headed mortuary attendant who was firmly shaking his head as he thumbed through the papers they had presented to him.

“But I keep telling you,” the exasperated undertaker was saying, “the bloody funeral is in an hour. We’re burying him at twelve.”

“Don’t you swear at me,” said the attendant, drawing himself up to his full height. “Without the death certificate you’re burying bugger all!”

“Excuse me,” said Frost, elbowing his way through like a referee parting two boxers. He showed his warrant card. “I’m here for the Cornish postmortem.”

The attendant craned his neck up at the clock. “You’re a bit late, Inspector.”

“Don’t tell me it’s started?” asked Frost.

“Nearly finished, I think. You know how punctual Dr. Bond is. He don’t sod about.”

They pushed through another set of double doors into the white chill of the green-tiled autopsy room where a sharp antiseptic smell held a cloying aftertaste of something nasty.

A sheeted trolley stood against the wall to the left of the entrance doors. Frost twitched back the sheet and looked down on the blue, shrivelled, waxen face of an old lady. “Sorry, love,” he murmured gently, covering her. “I thought you were someone I knew.”

At the far end of the room a rubber-aproned mortuary attendant in abattoir-style Wellington boots was hosing down the guttered and perforated top of a postmortem operating table. Water suddenly overflowed as something blocked one of the drains, but the assistant cleared the blockage with his finger and carried on with his work. Webster shuddered to think what the blockage was caused by. Frost tapped the attendant on the shoulder. “The Ben Cornish postmortem?”

“All over,” said the attendant, too engrossed in his work to stop. “The pathologist has gone, but Dr. Slomon’s in the office waiting to see you.”

In the office Slomon was pacing up and down, very agitated and worried. As soon as Frost entered, he dashed over and grabbed him by the arm. “Thank goodness you are here, Inspector.” His worry increased when he saw Webster. “Who is this?”

Frost introduced his assistant. Slomon hesitated. “It’s a bit delicate,” he said, making it clear he wanted Webster to leave.

“If it’s police business,” answered Frost, “then he’s in on it.”

Slomon compressed his lips, checked the hall to make sure no eavesdroppers were hovering, then closed the door firmly. He lowered his voice. “We’re in trouble, Inspector.”

“I’m always in trouble,” said Frost, finding himself a chair. He didn’t like the way the doctor had said “We’re in trouble.” His tone seemed to imply that Slomon was in trouble but wanted Frost to share a large part of the blame. He listened warily to what the man had to say.

“No-one could examine a body properly in the conditions we had to cope with last night, Inspector. They were intolerable and if we missed anything it was through no fault of our own. It’s important that we each stress that fact in our reports. People are always too ready to point the accusing finger.”

Now Frost was really worried. What the hell had they missed last night? “What did the postmortem show, Doc?”

“Come with me.” Slomon took Frost’s arm and steered him into the adjoining storage area with its neatly tagged refrigerated units set into the wall like filing-cabinet drawers. “Where are the frozen peas?” asked Frost. Slomon was in no mood for jokes. He tugged at one of the drawers, and a body, smoking with curling wisps of frozen carbon dioxide, slid silently forward on rollers.

The haggard, strangely clean face of Ben Cornish stared up, horrified as if in protest at the indignities the postmortem had subjected him to. “Look at this!” Slomon indicated a nasty-looking green-tinged bruise in the area below the corpse’s left eye.

Puzzled, Frost crouched over the body. “How come we didn’t spot this last night, Doc? It looks so bloody obvious now.”

“Last night,” explained Slomon. “he was covered with filth and vomit. This only came to light when the body was stripped and washed clean. There was no way I could have spotted it.”

He pulled the sheet down to expose the torso and upper legs. The dead man’s right arm was one angry mass of suppurating sores where he had been injecting himself. The chest and abdomen were vividly slashed with extensive autopsy wounds, which had been crudely restitched after flaps of flesh had been torn back to facilitate the removal of internal organs from the stomach cavity. The flesh of the stomach was one massive, sprawling, yellowy-green bruise.

Slomon traced the bruised area with his finger. “As you can see he was beaten up pretty badly just before he died.”

Frost’s heart dropped down to his own stomach cavity. He was beginning to realize what was coming. Did a fist do this?”

“Not a fist,” replied Slomon. “A boot. He was punched, knocked down, then, when he was helpless on the floor, his assailant brought up his foot and stamped with all his weight on the abdomen.”

Frost gritted his teeth and winced. He could feel the pain shooting across his own stomach. But Slomon hadn’t finished. From a stainless-steel cabinet in the corner he brought over two sealed specimen jars containing a mass of mangled human offal half immersed in a bloodied liquid. The sight of it made Webster flinch, and his stomach gave one or two protesting churns, but Slomon lectured dispassionately as if to students. “As you can see, his liver has virtually exploded. In the whole of my professional career I have never seen such terrible internal injuries. Further, the blows actually split the pancreas, and the main blood vessel to the heart is torn. Really shocking injuries.”

“And that’s what killed him, Doc?” Frost asked, fearful that the sheet might be pulled down to reveal further horrors.

“They would have killed him,” answered Slomon. “In fact there is no way he could have recovered from such injuries. However, the initial blows to the abdomen caused the expulsion of the stomach contents. He choked on his own vomit, so, to my credit, in spite of the appalling conditions, my diagnosis was perfectly correct.”

To your credit? thought Frost. No-one comes out of this with any credit, Slomon. He stuck his hands deeply into his mac pockets and swore softly to himself. Why the hell wasn’t any of this spotted last night? Damn bloody Slomon for not wanting to get his feet wet, and damn my own bloody incompetence. I was so keen to get away to that lousy party, I bungled the investigation. I should have insisted Slomon do a proper job.

“I don’t want the body touched further,” he said. “It’ll have to be photographed. I’ll send one of our blokes down . . . and I’ll need his clothes for forensic examination.” He looked again at the dead face and then recalled the scene in the toilet the previous night. The cubicle with the splintered door. He could picture the scene. Ben cowering inside in terror while his assailant kicked the door down, then dragged him out and stamped him to death. He draped the sheet over the dead face and pushed the drawer firmly shut. “Come on, son,” he said. “Work to do.”

“Don’t forget to emphasize in your report that we did everything possible last night,” called Slomon as they were leaving. Frost waved a vague hand. He would report exactly what happened, nothing more, nothing less. He had no doubt that Slomon’s report would dump all the blame on the police, but he hadn’t time to play such games.

They pushed through the swing doors and out into the mortuary lobby, where a side door had been opened to allow the two undertakers to carry a coffined body straight through to the waiting Rolls Royce hearse. Behind his desk the mortuary attendant was booking out the corpse and adjusting his stock records. He was whistling happily as if someone had tipped him a fiver. There was no sign of the death certificate on his clipboard.

Outside the air smelled marvellously fresh and untainted. As they waited for the hearse to move away, Frost said, “Why would anyone want to do that to a poor old sod like Ben?”

“Robbery,” suggested Webster.

“He had bugger all to pinch,” said Frost.

“Drugs?” was Webster’s next suggestion. “Another drug addict wanted Ben’s heroin so he killed him for it?”

For a few seconds Frost stared into space. Webster wondered if he had been listening, but then Frost turned and said, “I’ve been bloody stupid, son. I knew I’d missed something.”

“What?” Webster asked.

“His carrier bag. That’s where he kept all his worldly possessions—food, odds and ends, his hypodermic. He was never without it. But it wasn’t with his body last night. Whoever killed him took it.”

He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, then leaned over for the handset and called Johnny Johnson at the station. He wanted to know if Wally Peters was still in the cells.

“No, thank God,” was the reply. “We kicked him out half an hour ago. Now we’ve got all the windows open, and we’re burning sulphur candles and scratching like mad.”

“I want him brought in,” ordered Frost. “Get the word out to all units.”

“Brought in, Jack? Why?”

“We’ve just come from the postmortem. Ben Cornish was murdered.”

“Murdered?” gasped Johnson. “Why would anyone want to murder him?”

“Probably for the few bits and pieces in his carrier bag,” replied Frost. “It’s missing . . . and Wally was seen lurking about outside those toilets last night. So I want him.”

“Right,” said Johnny. “Consider it done. By the way, Jack, you won’t be long, will you? Mr. Mullett’s got Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor sitting in his office, all craving an audience with you about the hit-and-run.”

“Flaming hell!” cried Frost, “I forgot about them. We’re on our way—shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

He replaced the handset. “Back to the station, son.” Webster reminded him they hadn’t yet called on Ben Cornish’s family. “Hell,” said Frost wearily, “we’ll have to do that first.” As they were on their way to the house, he remembered that he had meant to ask Tom Croll some more questions about the Coconut Grove robbery while they were at the hospital. His finger gave his scar a bashing. There was so much to be done, and he didn’t seem to be getting through any of it.

Then he saw her. “Stop the car!”

Webster slammed on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt.

A young girl in school uniform was looking into the window of a dress shop. Frost’s hand was moving toward the door handle when the girl turned and stared directly at him.

She was blonde, wore glasses, and looked nothing like Karen Dawson.

“Drive on, son,” said Frost.

Frost banged the knocker a couple of times. This started a chain reaction of noise from inside the house. A dog barked, setting off a baby’s crying. Footsteps thudded down uncarpeted stairs; a sharp, angry shout followed by a yelp from the dog, then the front door opened.

“Police,” said Frost. He didn’t have to show his warrant card. Danny Cornish knew him of old.

Danny didn’t look at all like his brother. Four years younger, stockily built, he had thick black hair and bright red cheeks which betrayed the family’s gypsy origins. His meaty hand was hooked in the collar of a black-and-brown mongrel dog whose immediate ambition seemed to be to sink his teeth into the throats of the two policemen.

Webster stepped back a couple of paces as the dog’s jaws snapped at air. Frost was looking warily at Danny, whose face reflected the savagery and hatred of the dog and who seemed all too ready to let his hand slip from the collar. The mongrel, almost foaming at the mouth, was getting more and more frantic as its efforts to rip the callers to pieces were frustrated.

One eye on the mongrel, his foot ready to kick, Frost said, “You’d better let us in, Danny. It’s about your brother.”

The man cuffed the dog. It stopped barking but, instead, began making menacing noises at the back of its throat, its lip quivering and curling back to expose yellow, pointed teeth.

“Ben? What’s he done now?”

“Don’t let the bleeders in.” Behind him, advancing out of the dark of the passage, they could see a young woman, not much more than nineteen. She carried a ten-month-old baby, its squalling almost drowning the snarls from the near-apoplectic dog. This was Jenny, Danny Cornish’s common-law wife, once pretty, now hard-faced, her features twisted with hate.

His head snapped around to her. “Shove it, for Christ’s sake. And keep that bloody kid quiet!” His angry tone caused the infant to howl even louder, and this, in turn, spurred the mongrel on to greater efforts. Cornish yanked its collar and dragged the animal down the passage where he slung it out into the backyard. As he slammed the door shut, there was a resounding thud as the dog hurled itself against it, trying to get back in.