wasn't the loot. Then I had one of my rare bright thoughts. We took out the bath panels and there it was, PS12,000 worth. A good hiding place. I wish a few more crooks were clever enough to use it. It's the first place I look now and I haven't found a bloody thing since.'
A light tread on the stair and a rattle of cups.
'In here, Mrs. Uphill,' called Clive.
She stopped dead when she saw the removed panel and Clive on his knees by the bath.
She knew.
She knew they weren't looking for a live child. They were looking for a body.
Her hands shook. The cups rattled.
Frost gently took the tray from her and passed it to Clive.
'You think she's dead?' she whispered. Frost didn't answer. 'And am I supposed to have killed her-my own daughter?'
Frost leveled up the ends of his scarf. His voice was soft. 'We see lots of rotten things in the Force, Mrs. Uphill. You'd be surprised what people do. They kill their kids. Nice people. Loving parents with beautiful children, and they kill them. We had a mother, saw her husband off to work, kissed him goodbye, then drowned her three kids in the bath. Mentally ill, of course. Afterwards she went out shopping and bought them all sweets. Couldn't understand where they were when she got back. I doubt if that's what's happened in your case, but we have to check, even at the risk of hurting your feelings.'
There was silence. Even Clive was moved. Then she turned and clattered downstairs. She was sobbing.
'I wonder if she's hidden the body in the airing cupboard,' said Frost.
You callous bastard, thought Clive. Aloud he said, 'I've looked, sir.'
' Frost accepted this and sipped his tea reflectively. 'Hmm. Not bad. If she makes you a cup of tea like this afterward it's well worth the thirty quid she charges for her services. Grab a chair and come with me, son. I've found something else you must be dying to investigate.'
Something else Clive had missed. A trapdoor in the ceiling just outside the bathroom. It led to the loft. Clive's torch beam crawled over the rafters. A suitcase. Big enough, but too light. He dragged it down. Inside were some infant clothes and a ball of white angora baby wool. They had been there a long time. Nearly nine years.
'We always wanted kids,' said Frost, 'the wife and me. She couldn't have them.' He held the chair steady as Clive clambered down then diffidently dragged something from his inside pocket and offered it to the detective constable.
'I found this tucked inside Tracey's Beano Annual.' Clive looked at it in wide-eyed disbelief. Frost's words didn't seem to make sense. 'In her Beano Annual, sir?'
Frost nodded gravely.
It was an unretouched black and white photograph of a nude girl sitting on a draped box, leaning back, supporting herself on her hands. The model could not be identified since the top of the photograph had been torn off, although traces of dark hair could be seen resting on the shoulders. Somehow the effect seemed vaguely distasteful, not erotic, but pornographic, although there was nothing pornographic about the pose apart from the model's nudity.
Frost took the photograph back and raised it to his nose. 'Smell that, son-acid fixer. Amateurs never wash their prints as thoroughly as professionals. You can always smell traces of hypo.' He studied it again. 'That mark on the top of her left arm, son. What do you make of it?'
Clive moved to the open door of the bathroom for more light. 'It's not too clear, sir. Could be a birthmark.'
'Yes, that's what I reckon.' He pulled the cigarette from this mouth, flipped it into the toilet basin, and flushed it down. 'I wonder who she is… and how Tracey got hold of it.'
'It wouldn't be…?' Clive didn't like to say it. He pointed downstairs.
'Good Lord, no', son!' The photograph went back into his inside pocket. 'I'll show it to her anyway. She's in the trade, she might recognize the model from the salient features. But first we'd better see how many bodies she's got buried in her back garden. I don't suppose you looked last night.'
Clive assured him that they had.
Frost snorted. 'A quick flash round with your torch in the dark-and you were looking for a living child above the surface, not for signs of recent digging.'
The garden was mainly concrete patio and lawn. There were a couple of rose-beds, but the soil was rockhard and had not been disturbed. Frost probed the lawn to see if it was composed of turfs which could be reassembled to conceal a grave, but it had been sown from seed. The patio was unblemished. It contained a dustbin which they checked. Running along the side of the house there was a concrete path leading to the front. In it a black metal inspection cover to the sewage system was set. A heavy cover. It took the two of them to lift it. But desperate people with a body to hide can find hidden strength.
Frost rubbed his chin. 'You'll hate me for this, son, but you're going to have to give your new suit the shock of its young life. Have a poke around down there, would you?'
My day will come, you bastard, thought Clive behind a set grin, determined not to give Frost the satisfaction of seeing his annoyance. He crouched over the hole and let his torch beam cut through to the gurgling horrors below.
Apart from the obvious, nothing. He ignored Frost's heavy-humored request to see if his cigarette end had emerged yet.
They manhandled the cover back then poked about in the garage and Mrs. Uphill's red Mini. Frost seemed to be losing interest in the proceedings, hustling Clive on before he had finished. They gave the ground floor of the house a very perfunctory going-over. The inspector wouldn't let Clive clear out the meter cupboard under the stairs.
'She's not here, son,' he snapped impatiently. 'Leave it.'
You're the boss, thought Clive, and followed the inspector into the lounge where the young mother sat, staring blankly into the plastic logs of the electric fire.
'She's not here, Mrs. Uphill,' said Frost. 'Do you think her father might have taken her?'
She didn't raise her head. 'I'm not married.'
'I know, Mrs. Uphill, but the child has a father.'
A bitter grin made her face look ugly. 'Yes, she has a father. I haven't seen him since before Tracey was born-since the day I broke the news to him that I was pregnant. That's when he decided he didn't want to see me any more. Coincidence, wasn't it?'
'Does he support his child?' asked Clive.
She stood and took a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece. '1 was paid off in a lump sum by his parents. They were willing to pay anything reasonable I might ask to make sure their poor misguided son wasn't lumbered with a promiscuous bitch like me and her bastard. And he was the first you know, there was no one else.'
A silence broken by the rasping of Frost's finger against his troublesome right cheek. 'And he's never been in touch with you?'
She shook her head. 'If he thinks of me at all, he probably hopes I'm dead. He never even bothered to find out if he had a son or a daughter-or if I died in childbirth.'
Clive felt he would like to strangle the man with his bare hands. Eight years ago. She couldn't have been more than a schoolgirl, fifteen or sixteen at the most, and a virgin. His hatred mingled with jealousy and envy.
Frost wanted the man's name and address. She found the address in an old diary. Clive made an entry in his notebook. The man's name was Ronald Conley with an address in Bristol. He'd given her the diary as a present eight years before. The flyleaf bore the neatly written inscription 'To my darling Joan from Ron' followed by a string of kisses. The two-faced seducing bastard, thought Clive.
'I'm puzzled, Mrs. Uphill,' said Frost.
She looked at him.
'Why didn't you meet her from Sunday school?'
She busied herself lighting a cigarette. It seemed to require her full attention.
'It's a simple question, Mrs. Uphill. One of our chaps has had a word with the Sunday school superintendent. He says you always met her, winter or summer, rain or sunshine. Yesterday was the only day you missed. Why?'
