‘It’s coming from over here,’ said Jordan, his torch sweeping the floor.
‘There!’ called Frost, grabbing the torch and directing it towards the far corner. The light bounced off a large, bulging bundle wrapped in black polythene sheeting, criss-crossed with 2-inch wide brown plastic adhesive tape and tied with cord.
‘That didn’t ought to be here!’ said Turner.
As they dragged it to the centre of the floor it trailed foul-smelling liquid. Frost bent down and prodded it gently with his finger. The bundle felt cold and squelchy and the stench of putrefaction belched out. Frost’s pen- knife slashed open the plastic sheeting. So strong and sickening was the smell that they all had to retreat back to the door to inhale the clean, rain-washed night air.
They steeled themselves to go back in. Holding his breath, Frost cut the slit bigger and peeled back some of the, plastic. A gas-bloated putrefying face looked up at him.
PC Jordan gagged, his hand shaking so much that he nearly dropped the torch. Frost snatched it from him and handed it to Gilmore. ‘If you’re going to throw up, Jordan, do it outside. It stinks enough in here as it is.’ Gladly, the constable charged up the steps. ‘Are you all right, Sergeant?’
Fighting hard to control his stomach, Gilmore nodded. If the inspector could stand it, so could he.
Jordan returned, white and sweating, wiping his mouth. ‘I hope you haven’t desecrated someone’s grave?’ said Frost sternly. Jordan didn’t answer. He hadn’t looked and he just didn’t care.
‘Nip upstairs,’ Frost told Gilmore, ‘and radio through to the station. Tell Sergeant Wells we’ve found a body in the churchyard. When he stops peeing himself laughing and saying, “But the churchyard is full of bodies,” tell him “ha-bloody-ha” from me and I want a doctor, Forensic, Scene of Crime Officer and a gross of air fresheners.’
The mobile generator grunted and coughed before chugging away contentedly, and the Victorian vault was bathed in electric light for the first time in its life. Duck boarding had been placed down the centre of the steps and over the floor and footsteps clacked as they crossed it. Frost stood outside, keeping well out of the experts’ way as they measured and photographed, took samples and dusted for prints. The body remained tied up in the sheeting awaiting the arrival of the police surgeon.
A cursing as someone stumbled unsteadily down the path. Frost grinned to himself happy to see that Dr Maltby was still on duty and not that jumped-up, toffee-nosed sod, Slomon.
‘Welcome to the boneyard, doc.’
Maltby waved his bag and lurched over. ‘What have you got for me this time?’
‘Body in a sack. It’s past its best.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ said Maltby, following the inspector down the stone steps. ‘Any progress with my poison pen writer?’
‘Give us a chance, doc,’ pleaded Frost. ‘I’ve been tripping over corpses all day.’
Maltby dropped to his knees and bent over the body ‘Well, he’s dead,’ he announced.
‘I should hope he is,’ grunted Frost. ‘if I smelt like that, I wouldn’t want to live.’
Gilmore snorted his disgust. Frost seemed to thrive on bad taste remarks.
‘By the way, Jack,’ said the doctor casually as he gently prodded the puffy flesh through the torn opening in the plastic, ‘you know that dead girl — the suicide…’
‘What about her?’ asked Gilmore.
Pointedly addressing Frost, the doctor continued. ‘Tear up the report I did on her. I’m writing a new one.’
‘What was up with the old one?’ asked Frost.
‘I missed something. The morgue attendant tipped me the wink. He spotted it when he undressed her.’ He stood up and wiped his hands on a towel from his bag. ‘This one’s been dead at least eight weeks — possibly longer.’
‘What did the morgue attendant find?’ asked Gilmore. He knew there was something dodgy about that suicide.
Maltby’s head twisted to the detective sergeant. ‘There were marks on her buttocks — weals — about a week old, fading but still visible. She’d been quite severely beaten with a whip or a cane. And there were needle marks on her left arm.’
Gilmore’s eyebrows shot up. ‘And you missed it?’ He pulled the inspector to one side. ‘Surely you’re not going to let him get away with this?’
‘When you’ve made as many balls-ups as I have, son you don’t hesitate to help fellow sufferers,’ Frost told him.
Maltby snapped his bag shut. ‘I can’t tell you any more about this one unless you unwrap it.’
‘Might be best to wait for the pathologist,’ suggested the man from Forensic who had been hovering, ears flapping. ‘You know how fussy he is about bodies being left untouched.’
‘Sod the pathologist,’ snapped Frost. ‘It’ll be hours before he gets here. Cut it open.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Forensic, cutting through the cord to preserve the knots.
‘Must preserve the knots, doc,’ Frost explained. ‘The murderer might be a Boy Scout.’
‘We don’t yet know it’s murder,’ commented Forensic pedantically, as he delicately sliced through the plastic sheeting.
‘Bleeding hard to commit suicide and then tie yourself up in a parcel,’ sniffed Frost.
Forensic moved away. ‘All yours, doctor.’
As Maltby laboriously peeled aside the black plastic which tried to cling to the moist, rotting flesh, both Forensic and Gilmore found it necessary to move nearer the door and the sweet night air.
‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘It’s a woman.’
Gilmore forced himself to look. He saw the bloated body of a female, stark naked, hunched in a foetal position, knees bent to breasts and trussed with string which bit deep into wet, oedematous flesh. The hair, stained and discoloured, looked dark, almost black.
‘She’s wearing shoes!’ cried Frost. He bent over. No tights or stockings, just flat-heeled brown shoes, tightly laced over swollen naked flesh. ‘I want photographs.’
The doctor moved to one side to let Ted Roberts, the burly Scene of Crime Officer, take photographs, then began a close, careful examination, gently forcing open the mouth, then scrutinizing the neck. ‘She’s in too bad a condition, but I’d guess at manual strangulation.’ His examination continued downwards. He asked for the string to be cut so he could see the lower part of the body. He parted the legs slightly. ‘Dear God!’ he exclaimed, visibly startled at what he saw.
The lower stomach and genital area was a mass of blackened and charred weeping flesh.
Frost dropped on his knees beside the doctor and gasped. ‘Look at this, Gilmore. Some bastard’s burnt her.’
A fleeting glance was enough for Gilmore who stood well back, willing his stomach to keep calm while camera motors whirred and flash tubes crackled.
Maltby’s nose scraped the blackened area. ‘To do this sort of damage you’d need a blow-lamp.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Frost. ‘Was it done before or after death?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I hope it was after.’
No longer hunched up, she looked smaller than Frost had first thought. ‘How old is she, doc?’
‘Young,’ Maltby told him, again exploring the mouth. ‘Fifteen.. sixteen.’
‘Fifteen!’ echoed Frost. ‘And dead eight weeks?’ His head sank. ‘There ought to be a mole on the right shoulder, doc. Have a look, would you.’
Maltby moved some strands of hair and nodded. ‘Shit,’ cried Frost. ‘Shit and double shit!’ This putrid mess of tortured flesh was the missing newspaper girl.
They had found Paula Bartlett.
‘I didn’t see what he looked like,’ the church warden told Frost. ‘He just dashed off into the dark.’
‘Was he tall, short, fat, thin…? You must remember something. It’s bloody important. He’d just dumped a girl’s body in there.’
‘Just a dark shape, that’s all I saw.’ Then he hesitated. ‘I think there might have been more than one of them.’
‘More than one?’ yelled Frost. ‘Blimey, you kept that up your bloody sleeve.’
‘As I was pedalling up, I thought I heard voices — men’s voices.’
