many as twenty teenagers around here go missing every week.”
“A man was reported lurking inside her house as she came home from school. She hasn’t been seen since,” said Webster.
Heads turned toward him. They hadn’t seen the bearded bloke before.
“Are you the ex-inspector?” asked Simms. “The one who got kicked out of Braybridge?”
Another sneering bastard, Webster thought, his hands balling into fists. “What if I am?”
“Rotten luck,” commented Simms mildly.
The oak offered shelter from the wind, and Frost was in no hurry to move on. He offered his cigarettes around. Only Webster, with an impatient jerk of his head, declined to accept one. Jordan’s lighter did the rounds.
Webster looked out on to the dark mass of trees which seemed to stretch on and on for miles. “It’s hopeless with only the four of us. We should ask the station for reinforcements.”
Frost forced out a stream of smoke which the wind snatched and tore into shreds. “A full-scale search would have to be properly organized, so it couldn’t even begin until the morning. Let’s give it a whirl ourselves first — unless anyone else wants to chip in with a suggestion?” He looked hopefully at the two uniformed men, who shook their heads, engrossed in studying the branches of the oak tree. They were paid to do what they were told, not to work out campaign plans.
“Right,” said Frost, pulling himself up straight. “Lacking evidence to the contrary, we’ve got to assume that there is a body a girl alive or dead. While we’re assuming, let’s give ourselves a bit of incentive and make her alive… not only alive, but a rampant quivering nymphomaniac with enormous knockers, fully prepared to bestow her hot lusty favours on the man who finds her.”
Jordan and Simms grinned. At least Frost was making it interesting.
“Right,” he continued. “Now keep that dirty picture in mind while we transfer our attention to the herbert who tripped over her and phoned the station.”
He dropped his cigarette end to the ground and crushed it under his heel. “It’s late at night. So what was he doing skulking behind bushes? Obvious answer: He wanted to do a pee and, either ashamed of or too modest to flaunt his equipment, decided to commune privately with nature behind a convenient bush, only to find this nympho’s supine body. So he bottled it up and legged it to the nearest blower to call the cops. How does that sound?”
They paused to consider this. It sounded feasible.
“Sergeant Wells said the man was phoning from a public call box,” Frost continued.
“I noticed a phone box near where we parked the car,” offered Webster.
“There are phone boxes all over the bloody place,” said Jordan gloomily.
“We’ve got to start from somewhere,” said Frost, ‘and that’s as good a place as any. We’ll go up the main paths, searching behind the bushes on either side. If we can’t find anything, we’ll go to another phone box. And if we have no joy in a couple of hours, we’ll call in the heavy mob from the station.” ‘
It was Simms who found her. And by pure chance, because Frost’s reasoning was completely wrong. After getting himself entangled in a flesh-clawing clutch of blackberry thorns, he made a wide detour to take him clear of another thicket and bramble. He squeezed through a tight gap between two bushes.
And there she was, white and still, lying on her back.
She was naked, her cold, still flesh gleaming like silver in the harsh moonlight.
“Here!” yelled Simms. “Over here.” He directed his torch beam into the sky like a beacon, then knelt beside her, shining his torch on her face. He shuddered. Her face was a swollen, bloody mess, the eyes puffy and blackened, the nose misshapen and broken. Blood from her nose had clotted, forming a sticky mask all over the lower part of her face and neck.
The body was blood-streaked, scarcely an inch free of livid bruises.
Scattered on the grass around her were items of ripped-off clothing. She looked dead. He touched her. Her body was icy. He bent his ear to the wreckage of her mouth, holding his breath as he tried to detect the slightest whisper of life. Nothing at first, only the hammering of his own heart, but then the faint wheezing rasp of tortured lungs. Fumbling with the buttons, he dragged off his greatcoat and draped it over the girl.
There was a crash in the undergrowth as Frost lumbered through, Webster hard on his heels. “She’s still alive,” Simms told him. “Some bastard’s smashed her face in.”
Frost dropped to his knees and made his own check for signs of life, feeling for the pulse in her neck. Satisfied, he called over his shoulder to Webster. “Radio the station. We want an ambulance bloody quick. And you can tell Sergeant Wells, with my compliments, that the party’s over. We’ve got another rape victim.”
As Webster was radioing through, Frost studied the extent of the girl’s injuries. It took some resolve to look at her face, which must have been kicked. He suspected the jaw was broken as well as the nose.
Jordan was the last to arrive. He stared down at the girl, and what he saw made him shudder.
“See what the bugger’s done to her neck,” said Frost, indicating bruises cut deeply into the flesh where the rapist’s fingers had gripped and squeezed her into unconsciousness.
“The same pattern as the other one,” observed Simms dispassionately. “That nurse he raped over at the golf course. But she wasn’t beaten up anything like this.”
Webster switched off the radio and dropped it into his pocket. “Ambulance on its way,” he reported. Frost, still bent over the girl, acknowledged his message with a grunt, then ordered Simms out to the main road to home the ambulance crew in.
“Is it Karen?” Webster asked, only to wince and turn his head away as Frost moved back so Webster could see what the animal had done to the girl.
“If it is, then she’s nothing like her photograph,” muttered the inspector. “The poor cow’s been kicked in the face. Give me just five minutes alone with the bastard.”
He pulled back the greatcoat so he could examine the rest of her. She was naked except for thick black stockings, the tops banded by sexy red garters. The stockings were short, coming not much higher than her knee, then there was an awful lot of white thigh. Somehow, it reminded Frost of dirty French postcards he had seen when he was a kid, all black underwear and white flesh. Her body, like her face, was mapped with huge green-and-yellow bruises. As gently as he could, Frost ran his hands along her sides. He thought he could detect at least two broken ribs. She moaned softly as he touched her.
Could this possibly be young Karen? There was no way he could tell from the face. The body looked too well developed for a kid of fifteen, but girls seemed to be maturing earlier and earlier these days. He frowned and bent forward. The nipples. There was something odd about them. The colour was wrong. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed. The red came off. It was lipstick. Lipstick? He stood up and stared at the red on the handkerchief, unable to believe it. It couldn’t be Karen.
“It’s Karen, all right,” called Webster, and he showed Frost the school blazer he had picked up from the grass. “And there are pieces of school uniform all over the place.” His torch stabbed out at the straw boater, the gym slip, the navy-blue knickers.
“I’ve found this, sir,” called Jordan, pulling a white plastic carrier bag out of a clump of nettles. Frost delved through the contents… sweater, jeans, bra… a complete change of clothing. Also a purse which held about a pound’s worth of silver, a worn, Yale-type key, and three packets of male contraceptives.
School uniform, red garters, painted nipples, and contraceptives. It wasn’t making sense. And the Yale key, its chromium plating wearing away, looked far too old to be the key to the Dawsons’ elegant front door. He put everything back into the bag. Where was the ambulance? It should be here by now. As if in answer, the piercing warble of a siren came floating over the trees.
Deep in thought, Frost followed the trail of flattened grass back to the bush where the rapist had stood hidden, waiting. He looked along the empty path, from where the girl would have come, trying to put himself into the mind of a man who would do such things to a kid.
Muffled sounds came from his jacket pocket. His radio was trying to talk to him.
“Sergeant Wells calling Inspector Frost.”
“Yes, Bill, what is it?”
“Message from Detective Inspector Allen. He’s on his way with a full team. He said don’t anyone touch anything until he gets there.”
“I won’t even touch my dick,” said Frost.
