“Is it Karen Dawson, Jack?” asked Wells. “I’m getting phone calls every five minutes from her father asking if there’s any news.”
“Hard to tell. The way the bastard’s rearranged her face she could be anyone… Karen, Bo Derek, or Old Mother Riley. Keep stalling her old man. We might want him to identify her, but I’ll be back to him as soon as there’s anything positive. Over and out.”
He pushed the radio back into his pocket. No surprise that Allen was taking over. Allen was in charge of the “Hooded Rapist’ investigation and would want to get Frost as far away as possible the second he took command.
Car doors slammed, then Simms pushed his way through the bushes to report that the ambulance men were hot on his tail. “Do you want me and Jordan to start looking around, sir… to see what we can find?”
He shook his head. “We’ve been ordered not to touch anything. Mr.
Allen is on his way, so we can expect an arrest in seconds.”
Out of sight behind him, Webster grinned. It was common knowledge that Frost and Allen didn’t get on, but then, coldly efficient Allen was a real detective, unlike the clown in the mac. Webster had successfully led many rape cases back in his old division. Tomorrow he would request a transfer to Allen’s team.
“Where the hell are you?” came a cry for help from the ambulance men, floundering about in the dark. Simms waggled his torch like a cinema usherette and yelled, “This way!” then, lowering his voice, said to the inspector, “Something a bit odd about the girl, sir. Did you notice?”
“Painted nipples, you mean?”
“No, sir. Something else… lower down.”
“If it was something else, then I have missed it.” Frost pulled back the greatcoat again and Simms directed his torch. “I keep feeling like a dirty old man every time I do this, Simms. What am I supposed to be looking for?” The torch beam moved down and pointed. “Oh!” exclaimed Frost, very surprised.
He replaced the greatcoat and straightened up. “You’re probably too young to be told this, Simms, but that feature is known to us men of the world as “the sleek bikini line.” You can buy special shavers for it. Webster’s wife has one. That’s why he grew a beard he didn’t want to share the same razor.” He called Webster over and showed him.
“It’s got to be her,” said Webster. “It’s got to be Karen.”
Frost still couldn’t convince himself. “This is hardly bikini weather, son. Still, we’d better get her father to meet us at the hospital, just in case.”
The ambulance men forced their way through and lifted the girl on to a stretcher, covering her with thick red blankets. “Anyone travelling with her?” one asked.
“No,” Frost told him, ‘but we’ll be sending a woman police officer to the hospital as soon as we can.”
As the ambulance pulled away, a convoy of cars containing Detective Inspector Allen and his team roared up. There was a barrage of overexcited shouting and door-slamming as everyone piled out, immediately silenced when Allen bawled that they were all to get back inside their cars and wait. “No-one to move until I give the say-so.” He didn’t want people trampling all over the evidence before he had a chance to see it, especially as some of them were clearly the worse for drink.
Detective Inspector Allen, a wiry man with a thin sour face and a permanent sneer, looked sharp, alert and efficient despite being dragged away from the drinking party well after midnight. His assistant, Detective Sergeant Vic Ingram, slightly unsteady on his feet, his breath redolent of whisky fumes, was a thickset, charm less man of twenty-nine, cursed with a foul temper and a vindictive streak. He hated the newcomer, Webster, and delighted in giving him menial tasks to perform. If Webster hesitated to comply, he invariably taunted him with his stock response: “Too lowly for a detective inspector, is it? Well, you’re a detective constable now, Sunshine, and a bloody rotten one at that.” It was rumoured that Ingram was currently having domestic trouble, which everyone thought served him damn well right. He certainly had a cracker of a wife, much lusted after by all the red-blooded station personnel and, by general consensus, far too good for him.
“You’ve let the damn ambulance men take her away,” complained Allen. “I wanted to see her.”
“Then you should have got here quicker,” said Frost.
“Fill me in,” said Allen curtly.
Don’t tempt me, thought Frost. He told Allen how they had found her and the extent of her injuries.
Allen listened intently, his eyes flicking from side to side, missing nothing. When he saw that Webster, contrary to his instructions, was holding the girl’s school hat in his hand, he raised an eyebrow to Ingram and jerked his head toward the detective constable. Used to his master’s sign language, Ingram swaggered over to Webster and snatched the hat away.
“You bloody wally, don’t you understand English? You were told not to touch anything.”
Webster snatched his hands from his pockets, ready to swing and to hell with the consequences. “Who are you calling a wally, you drunken slob?”
Quickly, Frost, the peacemaker, thrust himself between the two men.
“Now cool it, lads. We’ve got more important things to attend to.”
“You heard him, Inspector,” appealed Ingrain. “He called me a drunken slob.”
“All he meant, Sergeant,” said Frost soothingly, ‘is that you’re a slob, and you’re drunk. No disrespect was intended.” Over his shoulder he ordered Webster to wait for him in the car.
Ingram, swaying, spoiling for a fight, glowered as — Webster stamped off. Allen decided to continue as though nothing had happened. Somehow, Frost always got the best of these unsavoury encounters.
“You reckon the victim is this teenager, Karen Dawson?”
Frost hunched his shoulders. “It’s possible. We’re getting the father over to the hospital to identify her.”
“Let me know as soon as it’s confirmed. I’ll be there later.” Then, seeing Frost was making no attempt to move, he added, “Thank you, Inspector, that will be all.”
Back in the car, Webster waited, seething. Frost slid into his customary position. “Denton General Hospital… first on the left, then follow the main road.” As Webster jarred the car into gear, Frost radioed through to the station requesting them to contact Max Dawson and ask him to meet them at the hospital. That done, he slouched back in his seat, digging deep for a cigarette before he said, “Ingram’s a provocative bastard, son. He’s out for trouble. Try not to rise to his bait.”
Webster growled a noncommittal reply, his eyes straight ahead, looking for the left turnoff.
“What you must remember,” Frost continued, ‘is that one punch and you’re not only out of the division, you’re off the force. You should also remember that Ingram is a great big bastard who could probably knock the living daylights out of you.”
“Spare me the sermon,” muttered the detective constable, spinning the wheel to turn into the main road.
“It’s not a sermon,” said Frost, ‘it’s the gypsy’s warning.” Webster was well down the wrong road before Frost added, “Sorry, did I say left? I meant right…”
Demon General Hospital had originally been a workhouse and was built, like the public toilets, in the reign of Queen Victoria, when things were meant to last. So it was as strong and solid as a prison, but not as pretty and nowhere near as comfortable. Over the years it had sprouted additional wings and outbuildings and was now a sprawling melange of various styles of municipal architecture. It stood on the outskirts of Denton and was dominated by the huge, factory-type chimney poking from the boiler house where, according to Frost, the incinerator was fuelled by amputated arms and legs.
They waited for Max Dawson in the porter’s lodge, a small, partitioned cubbyhole just inside the main entrance. The night porter, a bright-eyed old man with a nicotine-stained walrus moustache, was pouring creosote-coloured liquid into three enamel mugs. Milk was added, then sugar was shovelled in from a tin marked Sterile Dressings. Frost always seemed to know where to get a free cup of tea at any hour of the day or night.
“Get that inside you, Mr. Frost,” said the porter, sliding a mug over.
“And you, young fellow.”
Webster smiled his thanks.
They sipped, blinked, and shuddered.
“What’s it like, Mr. Frost?” asked the porter.
“Delicious, Fred. Do we have to sign the poison register?”
The old boy cackled, showing teeth browner than his tea. “Your lot are keeping us busy tonight, Mr. Frost,”
