‘So why didn’t you tell us this before?’ demanded Gilmore.
‘Because I didn’t think it was important. I thought we were dealing with vandals, not a flaming murder. I didn’t hear what they were saying and I didn’t see anyone else.’
‘You’re a fine bloody help,’ moaned Frost. ‘A body dumped right under your nose and you see damn all! We’re looking for one or more men with no description.’
‘Don’t you blame me for the shortcomings of your lot,’ snapped Turner, picking up his bike. ‘If the police were doing their job, they’d have caught them. They were supposed to have two men on watch for vandals… so where the hell were they? Boozing in some pub, I imagine.’
Frost went cold. He hadn’t considered this aspect.
‘Bleedin’ hell, son,’ he muttered to Gilmore. ‘I’ve just given Mullett my head on a platter.’
By the time the pathologist and his secretary arrived, some forty minutes later, Forensic and Maltby had left and the mortuary squad were waiting outside, shuffling their feet impatiently, anxious to pick up the remains and get out of the rain. The pathologist was in a foul temper, furious that Frost had disturbed the body before he had a chance to see it and angry to learn that Maltby, who had been most rude to him after a clash of medical evidence in a recent court case, had done a detailed examination. ‘If I’m called in no-one, but no-one — let alone jumped-up general practitioners — touches one hair of the corpse, do you hear? All this clumsy handling has probably destroyed vital clues.’
‘Anything you say, doc,’ said Frost in his ‘couldn’t care less’ voice.
‘And don’t call me doc,’ snapped the pathologist, pulling on a pair of long, almost transparent rubber gloves..
Frost left him to it, wandering up the steps for a smoke. PC Jordan’s personal radio spluttered. Control wanting a word with Mr Frost. ‘How’s it going?’ asked Sergeant Wells.
‘The pathologist’s just turned up with his blonde secretary. They both went down the crypt and he started putting some rubberware on, so I discreetly left them to it.’
Wells gave a guarded laugh. ‘Mr Mullett’s at my side, Inspector. He wishes to speak to you.’
Frost waited apprehensively. He certainly didn’t want to speak to Mr Mullett.
The superintendent was bubbling over with fury and was almost shouting incoherently. ‘You disobeyed my orders, my express orders. Your incompetence has made us a laughing stock, an absolute laughing stock…’
Frost turned the volume down and let the superintendent rant away unheard. He couldn’t think of any way he could get out of this foul-up. His head turned as Gilmore emerged from the crypt.
‘Preliminary report from the pathologist. The body wasn’t dumped there tonight. It’s been in the crypt for at least six or seven weeks.’
Six or seven weeks? Frost frowned as he worried this through. So the kid must have been hidden there almost immediately after she was killed. So it was vandals Turner saw running away. They had nothing to do with the girl. The grin returned to his face as he turned up the volume of the radio where Mullett was still in full flow.
‘… If you had been doing your damn job you’d have caught the murderer in the act of dumping the damn body…’
‘Hold on, Super,’ Frost interrupted. ‘How could I have caught him in the act of dumping the damn body tonight when it’s been stinking the flaming vault out for eight weeks?’
So knocked off balance was Mullett by Frost’s explanation that he completely forgot that his orders had been disobeyed and ended up by apologizing. ‘Forgive me if I was too hasty, Inspector… the strain of work, you know.’
‘You’re forgiven, Super,’ said Frost grandly.
‘The family will have to be informed, of course.’
‘It’s half-past midnight,’ said Frost. ‘I was thinking of leaving it until the morning.’
But Mullett was adamant. ‘The press have already got hold of the story. The family mustn’t learn of it through the media.’
Frost groaned. Mullett was right, of course. ‘Right, sir. We’re on our way.’
The Bartlett house was in darkness, but a low-wattage light burnt hopefully in the porch.
Even as they walked up the drive to the front door, Frost kept hoping the girl’s parents would be out, preferably staying with friends in some other division so that someone else would have the pleasure of breaking the news. But an upstairs light clicked on to dash his hopes. Sleeping fitfully, the Bartletts must have been awakened by the slam of the car door.
It was the mother who opened the door, a dressing gown over her nightdress. Ignoring Frost, she looked over his shoulder to Gilmore, the young man she had seen earlier. ‘It’s about Paula, isn’t it?’
His face grim, Gilmore nodded.
‘You’ve found her? I knew you would. I told you you’d find her. Thank God!’ She was weeping with happiness.
Flaming hell! thought Frost. This is an unmitigated balls-up. That bleeding clairvoyant, I could tear his dick out by the roots.
Behind the woman, her husband, a sad-looking man, read the message in Frost’s expression, a message his wife was refusing to see. He moved forward and put his arm around her. She looked at him puzzled, not understanding why he wasn’t rejoicing with her… and then she looked at Frost again. And then she knew.
‘Do you think we might come in?’ asked Frost.
They were in Paula’s bedroom where everything had been left exactly as it was on the day she went missing. The bed was made, blue pyjamas folded neatly on the pillow and the alarm clock, wound each day ready for her return, set to ring at 6.45 so she wouldn’t be late for her paper round. From downstairs the heart-tearing wail of Mrs Bartlett, her grief for her daughter sounding uncannily like that of the mother of the fifteen-year-old who had killed herself. It reminded Frost that they had to visit the mortuary to see the marks on Susan Bicknell’s body. He felt in his inside pocket for something to jot a reminder down on and felt an unfamiliar wad of papers. His car expenses. Something else he had forgotten about. How the hell was he going to find the time to get the proper copies made that bloody County were demanding? He stuffed them back in his pocket and forgot about them again.
‘What are we doing here?’ asked Gilmore.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frost wearily. ‘I just wanted to have a think away from all the bloody crying.’ He looked around the room. Everything plain and simple, just like the dead girl. No posters, no pop records. On the bedside cabinet was a framed photograph of her mother and father. A small bookcase held some children’s books, her school textbooks, a Collins Concise Encyclopedia and a Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Inside the bedside cabinet, standing on its end, was a black and green Adidas nylon holdall. He unzipped it and looked inside. Some gym clothes, a track suit and a couple of exercise books. He stuffed it back again. On the floor by the cabinet was a wastepaper bin. The bin contained a crumpled Milky Way wrapper and a small cardboard carton that had once held a lipstick.
‘You’re right, son,’ he said. ‘We’re wasting our bloody time here.’
He opened the door and they went downstairs.
The crying went on and on.
They let themselves out.
Monday night shift (2)
Sergeant Wells stared glumly at the cold scummy tea left in the cup, palmed two aspirins into his mouth and flushed them down in a shuddering swallow. It was just a headache. He envied those lucky devils who had gone down with the flu virus and were tucked up in their nice warm beds, leaving mugs like him to do the extra duties they were being paid for. He had been on duty since half-past nine, no-one to help him, the heating on the blink, no canteen and Mullett demanding cups of tea or coffee every five minutes.
‘Two teas and a fairy cake, please, Sergeant.’ Wells jerked two fingers up at Jack Frost who came bouncing in with that aftershaved ponce, Gilmore.
