Fatal Frost (22 page)

One half of the board was devoted to Samantha Ellis, the girl discovered by the railway track on Monday morning. The other half now contained both Hardy children, with the scene-of-crime photos of the boy spilling over on to those of Ellis. The most recent addition was Emily Hardy’s school photo. The exact time of the girl’s disappearance remained vague; the report from uniform was sketchy. In truth nobody up to now had given her a moment’s thought. All attention had been on the other two.

Frost was beginning to feel the pressure mounting. Tension tweaked down his neck and along his shoulder muscles. The situation was growing serious; he needed a result, and quick. A girl was missing; she could be the next body. He refocused on her photo. That uniform, he’d seen it somewhere else; at the
Ferguson
house earlier today – school photo on the mantelpiece. So, she attended St Mary’s, the same as the two girls from the train on Saturday night. A coincidence, no doubt; there were only four secondary schools in Denton, but nevertheless he made a mental note to make further checks on those two girls.

He moved from the board to the easel, where the various assaults and muggings were mounting up on a daily basis. The day had been topped and tailed by a jeweller’s being robbed and a man being stabbed on his way home from work. Simms was filling in the details on the latter incident.

‘OK,’ Frost said, ‘run that by me again. This guy, Everett, was on his way home from work and was jabbed with what, a penknife? They took his briefcase but he doesn’t want the police to take action.’

‘That’s about the sum of it.’ Simms yawned, rocking back on his chair. ‘He said he was embarrassed to have been done by a bunch of kids, and the briefcase had sod all in it apart from his lunch box.’

‘I don’t care if he had the Crown Jewels in it,’ Frost said wearily. ‘These little bastards are more than likely the ones who stabbed Sue Clarke. Not to mention done the jeweller’s and probably the newsagent’s.’

‘Sure, sure,’ Simms said, calmly lighting a cigarette. ‘He didn’t say he wouldn’t help, he just wasn’t bothered on his own account.’

‘Daring little geezers, aren’t they,’ said Waters, sipping a beer.

‘Simms, you went back to Mr Singh today. Did it open up anything new?’

‘I thought it might have been a disgruntled paperboy.’

‘And?’

‘Mr Singh didn’t think so.’

‘Well, what does he think?’

‘He’s still insisting they were armed.’

‘But he didn’t see the gun,’ Waters put in.

‘He didn’t see the gun,’ Frost echoed. ‘Did they even have a gun? I doubt it. C’mon, we don’t have time to waste on this, it really is kids’ stuff. Did he say anything sensible?’ Frost was beginning to get annoyed.

‘He … er.’ Simms was looking at Waters. ‘He thought it might be race-related.’

‘Oh, cobblers!’ Frost slapped the wall, exasperated, causing the incident board to tremble. ‘Drag in Mr Singh and take him through the photos of possibles, see what Clarke and Myles have come up with … Honestly, this is a waste of everybody’s time. Right, now, on to the serious stuff. Let’s start with Samantha Ellis.’

Frost sat down and stretched, cigarette in hand. Waters and Simms were watching him intently. What did he have to say? Initially he was convinced she must have been murdered, but enquiries had led nowhere. Perhaps, as Mullett hoped, she really had committed suicide.

He rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Right, the Ellis girl; we have absolutely nothing to go on. Two girls, Ferguson and Burleigh, the same age as our girl and on the same train from London, who you’d think must have seen something, claim to remember nothing about the trip home because they were too drunk. Convenient, but not beyond the realms of possibility. But them aside, this train did not just stop at Denton – there were a number of stops up the line. What I don’t get is why there have been no witnesses. The posters are definitely up?’ Frost directed the question to Simms.

‘Up and down the line,’ Simms confirmed, ‘and all over Paddington Station.’

‘Somebody
must
have seen something!’ Frost exclaimed as Clarke appeared in the doorway looking tired and miserable. ‘If not at the station, then surely on the train itself.’

‘I’m not sure they would,’ Simms said. ‘I went back to British Rail to confirm a few details – the length of the train, the number
of
carriages – to try to corroborate where the passengers who got off at Denton had sat. I asked the guard again to confirm where the bag was found. He said it was in a smoker, yes, at the front, but not an “open” coach.’

‘What does that mean?’ Frost huffed, rooting around for the bottle of Black Label. ‘I’m not familiar with train lingo.’

‘It means she was on a closed-compartment-style coach’ – Simms flicked through his notebook – ‘with just the doors on either side. All the compartments are separate, and there’s nothing in them apart from two big long seats the width of the train, seating six each, and the overhead luggage rack.’

‘So, if there was a struggle in one compartment, it would be quite possible that nobody saw a thing,’ Waters said.

‘Or she could have been alone and decided to top herself,’ Frost countered, scratching his head.

‘I don’t buy that,’ Waters said. ‘Why? No note. Bright future ahead of her, by all accounts. Besides, there are easier ways to go. No, those girls are hiding something. After we’d interviewed Burleigh she rushed out to tell us they’d been drinking – why? To cover something up. It was a calculated action.’

‘Maybe,’ Frost agreed. ‘It’s odd, I admit – but you have to be careful with minors, especially with this lot. Social Services could come down on us like a ton of bricks. The lack of witnesses still seems crazy, though. We’re asking if anyone saw a fifteen-year-old girl; we know there were at least three on the train, possibly another, and yet we haven’t had a single report.’

‘Different passengers,’ said Waters. ‘Your posters are seen by commuters – those punters wouldn’t go near a train station at the weekend. Meanwhile, the casual day-trippers are none the wiser.’

‘OK.’ Frost yawned. ‘We know there was nobody at Denton when the train got in, but what about the London end? Those
big
stations are open twenty-four hours a day. Was there a guard, a ticket inspector, anyone?’

‘Er, yeah, there was a ticket inspector,’ Simms said, ‘but apparently he had a couple of days off once his shift had finished.’

‘Well, go rouse him from his slumbers, or whatever it is British Rail employees do to recharge their batteries. Anything further on the girl’s bag?’

‘I’ve got it here,’ Simms said. ‘The only prints we could lift were on the Walkman, and they were hers.’ Simms tossed the bag to Frost.

‘What about the tape?’

‘I’ve dropped it off at Denton Hi-Fi,’ Simms replied. ‘Got a mate there who can hopefully make out what the gibberish on the B-side is.’

‘Good move.’ Frost slumped down in a chair and had a look inside the bag, pulling out a paperback. ‘
Rosemary’s Baby
.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘Not the sort of thing I’d want my teenage daughter to be reading.’

‘The movie scared the shit out of me.’ Waters grimaced. ‘You remember it – the Polanski one about satanists? Mia Farrow gives birth to the devil. Nasty.’

‘Which brings us on to body number two,’ Frost said, shooting a glance at Clarke who was stifling a yawn. ‘What’s new on that?’

‘Forensics are furious,’ she answered. ‘The grass could have told them a lot.’

‘The grass?’ Simms snorted.

‘The grass,’ Clarke repeated. ‘Had the manicured ninth hole not been trampled by a squadron of berks in plus-fours, they might possibly have a clue as to how the body arrived there.’

‘What on earth are you on about?’ Simms said, his forehead creased, confused.

Clarke shrugged.

Frost tried to ignore the dark creases under her puffy eyes. He noticed a whiff of alcohol. ‘Let’s not dwell on what we don’t have,’ he said diplomatically, but added with a glint in his eye, ‘It’s a pity a competent officer wasn’t on the scene.’ How ironic. If Mullett knew remotely what he was doing and thought less about the spectacle, there’d be undisturbed evidence. A clue in the dew. He smiled at his own joke.

‘What’s so funny?’ Clarke snapped.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Frost replied quickly. God, he felt tired. ‘Is there anything Forensics can tell us?’

‘It’s likely the body came from the woods, as opposed to being carted across the green.’

‘What – he was killed in the woods?’ Frost said, as the phone rang.

‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ Clarke rejoined. The more she spoke the more the tension increased palpably. Frost could cut it with a knife. It didn’t help that it was growing late and the week had already seemed long; although in fact it was only Wednesday. The phone continued to ring. ‘The new golf club itself is locked at night, and the perimeter is either chicken wire or a hedgerow. Or Denton Woods.’

‘I see.’ Frost felt for his cigarette packet. Empty – the second pack today. ‘Hold on,’ he said and picked up the phone angrily. ‘Yes?’ It was Night Sergeant Johnny Johnson. He had Samantha Ellis’s mother on the phone.

‘I’m busy,’ Frost said. He knew he couldn’t delay talking to the mother much longer, but in truth he just hadn’t had the time.

‘She says it’s important. It’s to do with Mr Mullett on the television.’

‘Tell her I’ll call her back.’ He put the phone down and scribbled ‘Ellis’ on a spare piece of blotting paper. ‘Right, where were we? Access to the golf club.’

‘Mmm.’ Clarke sighed. ‘Uniform combed the woods all day today. Found nothing apart from some bivouacs left over from some camp, probably Scouts.’

‘Bivouacs?’ asked Waters. ‘What are they?’

‘Tents, shelters, made out of fern and bracken. Green shit,’ Simms offered helpfully. ‘You know, Boy Scout stuff.’

‘Where are you off to?’ Frost enquired gruffly, seeing Waters reach for his jacket.

‘It’s nine o’clock. I’m … going to meet a friend.’

‘Blimey, you don’t waste much time. Go on then, bugger off. I want a full report in the morning. Be here by eight; we’re off to the posh girls’ school, St Mary’s. You’ll give them a fright, all right.’

As Waters left the room, Frost turned back to Clarke. ‘Right, so, bivouacs? So were there kids camped out over the bank holiday weekend?’

‘Haven’t had time to get on to it yet,’ Clarke replied, brow creasing.

‘What have you been doing all day, then?’ Frost snapped in jest, but before he knew it his remark had released the floodgates. Clarke’s shoulders convulsed as she broke down in sobs in the chair opposite.

Frost exchanged an awkward look with Simms.

‘All right, Derek, son,’ Frost said, suddenly feeling very tired, ‘that’ll do for tonight. Well done. We’d better get down to the woods tomorrow morning – not that I doubt the thoroughness of our colleagues, but just to be sure. Get an Ordnance Survey map and plot the entrances and exits – I doubt uniform will have squared that off. Check out the movements of the Girl Guides and Scouts over the last week and interview those in charge. Take Kim Myles, she strikes me as one who’s no stranger to leaping around the toadstool.’

DC Simms picked up his leather jacket, nodded goodbye and left quietly.

‘Give me a cigarette,’ Clarke muttered, sniffing, her auburn hair hiding her eyes. Frost chucked her an unopened pack.

‘What’s up?’ Frost asked reluctantly.

‘Nothing,’ she said, regaining her composure in an instant. ‘Mullett threatened to suspend me.’

‘Did he?’ Frost said, unmoved. ‘He may want to, but he can’t afford to.’

‘Don’t you want to know why?’ Clarke said with a sneer. ‘Not that it matters; we were on first-name terms by the time we parted company.’

‘I know why,’ he said, topping up his mug with Black Label. ‘You and Kim Myles got rat-arsed then stumbled into Mullett’s TV appearance.’

‘Aren’t you in the least bit concerned?’ she asked.

‘It’s nothing,’ Frost said. ‘Mullett was bad-tempered. When he goes on telly the rule is nothing can stick to him directly; it was, to say the least, a nuisance that he personally stumbled across a body. Nowhere to hide. I wish I’d been there to see him squirm.’

‘But I’m talking about why.’ Clarke pulled out a tissue and blew her nose violently.

‘Why what?’

‘
Why
I was drunk on duty.’

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, darling, most of us are.’ He smiled.

‘Rubbish. You can’t take anything about me seriously. Mullett took it seriously. Getting pissed on duty may be the norm for everyone, but not for me. It’s your fault.’

‘My fault? How in blazes is it my fault?’ Frost got up and paced the room, which was starting to feel cold. The heating had been off since the end of April. He stared long and hard at Emily Hardy’s angelic school photo pinned on the board – he hadn’t really looked at it before.

‘Let me finish up here,’ he said, reaching for Father Lowe’s pagan book, ‘and I’ll drive you home.’

‘It’s all right, Jack,’ Clarke said, regaining her composure a second time. ‘I, too, am going to meet a friend.’

She stood up and strode out of the office.