Snoopy’s paws pointed to 4.29. ‘Her things,’ announced the porter laconically, jerking his thumb.
He stopped in front of one of the bank of metal drawers, checked the name tag and pulled it open. Sliding on rollers, a sheeted body silently emerged. When the sheet was removed the girl was seen to be naked. A red label tied to her big toe seemed an obscene addition as if some joker had put it there for a laugh. Needle marks were clearly visible on her left arm.
The porter folded the sheet and stared down in disapproval. ‘I hate seeing them so bloody young.’
‘Give my colleague a hand to turn her over,’ requested Frost.
Gilmore hesitated, then steeled himself and complied. He wasn’t prepared for the hard coldness of the flesh and nearly let her fall back. The porter gave him a scornful look. ‘She can’t hurt you. She’s dead. Bloody hell… look at that!’
Now she was turned, they could see it. All across her buttocks, fading but still visible, deep, criss-cross lines of red weals and smudges of pale yellow bruises. They were the marks left by a thrashing, a vicious thrashing, from a whip or a cane. At least twelve weals could be counted. Frost winced. ‘It hurts just to look at it. Who the hell could have done this?’
‘That bloody stepfather,’ snapped Gilmore. ‘I’d like to meet him on a dark night.’
A firm shake of the head. Frost couldn’t buy that. ‘She was fifteen years old, for Pete’s sake. She’d never submit to that.’
A sniff from the porter who offered his worldly-wise opinion. ‘I reckon she was kinky. Perhaps she enjoyed being beaten.’
‘Maybe, but not as hard as this. She’d have been yelling blue murder after the first cut… and yet she took more than twelve of them.’
‘She could have been into bondage as well,’ offered Gilmore. ‘Strapped down while it was done to her. Some women like that.’
Frost’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Blimey, Gilmore, what sort of women do you go out with? I never have such luck. I only have to blow in their ear-hole and they think I’m a pervert.’
‘When you’ve quite finished your voyeurism…’ The pathologist glowered disapproval, his gown stained and carrying the taint of the grave into the clean coldness of the refrigerated section.
Back to the autopsy table where the body had been crudely stitched and the secretary was writing out neat labels for jars of removed organs. ‘She was trussed up and put inside the plastic sack within three or four hours of being killed,’ said Drysdale watching Gilmore note this in formation down. ‘Cause of death manual strangulation.’
‘That’s what Dr Maltby said,’ beamed Frost.
Ignoring him, Drysdale plunged on. ‘The killer’s two hands went round her throat like this.’ Obligingly, his secretary allowed herself to be used for a demonstration and stood still as he grabbed her throat, sinking his thumbs deep into her larynx. ‘The girl would have struggled desperately, fighting for her life. I imagine she grabbed his wrists, trying to break his grip but her killer, his hands still tight round her throat, swung her from side to side and smashed her head against a wall, probably hard enough to make her lose consciousness.’ He swung Miss Grey from side to side as illustration, but spared her the banging of the head. She looked disappointed as he released his grip, but carried on labelling jars of human offal.
Indicating blood-matted hair and a discoloured area on the scalp Drysdale invited them to inspect the damage.
‘If she struggled, doc,’ asked Frost, ‘wouldn’t she have marked him… scratched him… gouged out chunks of flesh?’
A tight smile. ‘If you’re hoping for pieces of tell tale flesh under her fingernails, I must disappoint you, Inspector.’ He lifted the girl’s misshapen right hand and displayed the fingernails. They were bitten down to the quick.
‘Damn,’ said Frost.
Carefully Drysdale lowered the hand to its original position. ‘Clear evidence of sexual intercourse just before she died.’
Frost nodded glumly. He had expected this. ‘Rape?’
‘I think so,’ replied the pathologist blandly.
‘You think so?’ echoed Gilmore, incredulously. ‘You only think so.
‘There is evidence of bruising that could suggest intercourse took place against her will…’
‘Then she was raped,’ cried Gilmore.
‘If I might be allowed to continue,’ grated Drysdale. ‘The girl was a virgin. She could have submitted willingly, but have been tensed instead of relaxed. This might account for the bruising. Equally, she could have been raped. There is no magic way of knowing at this stage.’
‘If she submitted willingly, doc,’ said Frost, ‘there would have been no real need to have wrung her neck afterwards.’
‘That’, snapped Drysdale, ‘is in your province, Inspector Frost, not mine. I give the medical facts. It’s up to you to speculate.’
Frost nodded ruefully. ‘Then give me some facts on the way the bastard burnt her so I can speculate how to catch the sod.’
‘I was coming to that,’ said Drysdale testily. ‘As you can see, the genital area is badly charred. In my opinion this occurred very soon after death, within an hour, say.’
‘Dr Maltby thought it could have been done with a blow-lamp.’
Drysdale frowned. ‘For once, Dr Maltby might have been right. To do that sort of damage you’d need some thing like a blowtorch.’
‘But why would anyone do it, doc? Is it a new kind of sexual perversion?’
‘I’ve come across something like this once before. A murdered rape victim, a thirty-eight-year-old prostitute. She was found in some bushes near a railway embankment. The lower part of the body was badly burnt where her killer had doused paraffin over her and set it alight. It seems he had heard about genetic fingerprinting. You’ve probably read about it.’
‘No,’ said Frost. ‘I only read comics and dirty books.’
‘There’s a newly developed technique,’ lectured Drysdale, ‘that allows us to determine an individual’s genetic fingerprint from traces of body fluid — semen, say.’
Frost’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean a dick print instead of a fingerprint?’
The pathologist winced. ‘I wouldn’t put it as crudely as that, Inspector, but yes, by DNA testing we can positively identify the donor of a semen sample.’
‘So if I produced a suspect…’ began Frost, hoping Burton had traced the plumber.
‘If you produced a suspect, we could either positively incriminate him, or positively eliminate him, but he would have to supply us with a blood sample for comparison.’
‘I’ll get a blood sample for you,’ said Frost. ‘And if he won’t give us one voluntarily, I’m sure we can arrange for him to fall down the station stairs.’
The pathologist’s smile wavered. Like many people, he never knew when Frost was being serious or when he was joking. ‘Unfortunately, Inspector, it wouldn’t work with this poor girl. Even without the burning, the advanced stage of decomposition of the body precludes any possibility of carrying out the test.’
‘This bastard’s having all the luck,’ moaned Frost. ‘Anything else, doc?’
Drysdale made a mental note to include in his complaint to the Divisional Commander his displeasure at the way Frost chose to address him. ‘Yes.’ He held out his hand and clicked his fingers. Miss Grey gave him a large sealed jar full of squishy, lumpy brown unpleasantness dotted with green. ‘The stomach contents. She hadn’t had time to digest her last meal before she died.’
Frost screwed his face and turned his head. ‘Tell me what it is, doc, so I can make a point of not ordering it.’
‘Something with chips and peas. You’ll get a detailed analysis some time tomorrow. My report will be on your desk by noon.’
‘Do you feel like eating, son?’ asked Frost as they climbed back into the car. ‘Something with chips and peas?’
‘No,’ said Gilmore. All he felt like doing was going to bed and sleeping the clock round.
