Found a couple of girls still working, but they didn't recognize the photograph.'
'We'll have to try again tonight,' said Frost. The bacon sandwich was stirring last night's beefburger into offensive action, so he dumped it on his plate and pulled out his cigarettes. 'Are we knocking on doors in case anyone saw something?'
'All in hand, Jack,' Hanlon yawned.
'Go and get some kip, Arthur. You're not much use when you're wide awake, but half-asleep you're useless.'
Hanlon smiled, took a last sip at his tea and stood up. 'See you tonight, Jack.'
Frost was stubbing out his cigarette in the bacon sandwich when the tannoy summoned him to the phone. It was Bill Wells. 'Someone in the lobby wants to talk to you about the skeleton, Jack.'
I've got the post-mortem at nine. Get Morgan to handle it.'
'It's that young bird you fancied with the baby.' 'They can't leave me alone,' sighed Frost. 'Put some bromide in her tea and I'll be right down.'
She hadn't put any make-up on and her hair flowed down her shoulders, making her look about fourteen, and Frost fancied her something rotten. She flashed him a warm smile that made things worse. 'Hope you don't think I'm becoming a nuisance, Inspector?'
'Of course not, love.' He sat opposite her. 'Where's the kiddy?'
'My sister's looking after him. I don't know if this would help.' She opened a small red and green plastic handbag and pulled out a dog-eared black and white photograph. 'I found this amongst my mother's things.' She passed it over to Frost.
The photograph showed two girls in their twenties, both wearing bathing costumes. One of the girls, dark- haired, bearing a strong resemblance to the woman facing Frost, had her arm linked round a ravishing long-legged blonde whose two-piece skimpy bathing costume was a mite too tight for Frost's comfort. A really sexy cow if ever he saw one. They were both grinning excitedly at the camera.
'That's my mum.' She pointed to the dark-haired girl. 'Taken a long time ago, of course. The other one is Nell Aldridge, the one I was telling you about. My dad took the photo — I think he fancied Nell.'
'I fancy your mum,' lied Frost, still staring at the blonde who simply oozed sex.
'Just behind them,' continued the girl, pointing to the fence they were leaning against, 'you can see her garden. That's where she used to sunbathe topless.'
'Disgusting,' said Frost, mentally stripping away the top of the swimsuit. 'Can I keep this?'
She nodded. 'I'd like it back, though.'
'If you find any more,' he told her, 'bring them in. I don't care how rude they are, I'll steel myself to look at them.'
He showed her out and watched for some time as her waggling bottom made its way across the road. 'She couldn't keep her hands off me,' he told Bill Wells as he cut through the lobby to his office. 'I had to give her a quick one to calm her down.'
A note in his in-tray from Mullett reminded him, with heavy underlining, that the promised progress report was very much overdue. He found the photograph more interesting than the memo. That blonde would have had more trouble beating off men than the poor cow whose post-mortem he was about to attend. He slipped the print in the file, then pulled it out again. Something he'd vaguely noticed. In the background, behind the two women, could be seen the spire of a church. It had to be St Aidan's, it was the only one in the neighbourhood… He rummaged in his drawer and found a street map. Yes — he was right. The fence the two girls were leaning against would have to be at the rear of the mother's house, not to one side. Nelly didn't live in Nelson Road, but in the road running parallel to it.
As he was unsuccessfully trying to refold the map, Morgan bounced in, all bright and breezy, a folded Daily Mirror poking from the pocket of his tweed overcoat. 'Sorry I'm late, guv… the damn car wouldn't start.'
Frost cut him short. 'I use that excuse myself, Taffy, so I know it's a bleeding lie.' He picked up the photograph. 'What do you want first — the good news or the bad news?' 'The good news, please, guv.'
Frost handed him the photograph. 'If you had your choice, which of these two would you pick?'
Morgan moved over to the window so he could study it better. 'No contest, guv — the blonde. I wouldn't say no to the other one, but just look at the blonde, those legs… that flat belly!'
'Did you notice,' said Frost, 'how tight her swimsuit is? How her lusty young nipples, full and firm like ripe wild cherries, are trying to fight their way through the thin fabric of her bra, how they are aching for the soothing, but rough rasp of a gentleman's thumb?'
'Pack it in, guv,' croaked Morgan. 'You know how responsive I am to that sort of talk. Who is she?'
'She's your next job, Taff. I want you to find her.'
A broad grin. 'You're on, guv!'
'Now for the bad news,' said Frost. 'That photograph was taken some fifty years ago. If she's not dead and buried, she will now be wrinkled, hairy in all the wrong places and stinking erotically of thermal knickers and wintergreen.'
Morgan's face fell. 'Oh!'
'You've been checking the wrong street, Taff. Old mother Aldridge's house was in the next street.'
'There's no next street, guv — just a through road and an estate.'
'That estate's only been up thirty years, they must have demolished the old street to erect it. There's some ancient street maps in the basement store room, go and dig them out.'
'Can it wait until I've had some breakfast?' pleaded Morgan.
'No, it can't. We've already waited fifty years. And hurry — I've got a date with a naked woman.' As the constable's eyes lit up, he added, 'She's dead and on a mortuary slab — so chop, chop.'
He was putting on his mac, ready to go, when Morgan returned smothered in cobwebs and dust from the basement store room and holding a yellowing map, its folds reinforced with brown sticky tape. 'Give it here, son.' Frost spread it out over his desk top. 'Where's Nelson Street… ah, yes. And look, there was a street running parallel… Beresford Street — that's where the girl with the wild cherry nipples lived. Back to the town hall, son.' He checked his watch. Ten minutes to nine. He was going to be late for the post-mortem.
Frost dragged the green gown over his mac and scarf. It was like the North flaming Pole in the autopsy room and he had to keep warm somehow. Drysdale, hovering over the body, scalpel poised, stared pointedly at the clock on the wall. 'I've been waiting for you Inspector.'
'Sorry,' muttered Frost, 'damn car wouldn't start.' The body on the slab looked even less appealing than the night before, the bruises, weals and burns standing out in stark relief against the pallor of the white flesh.
'I take it we still don't have a name?' Drysdale asked.
Frost shook his head.
A deep dramatic sigh as if this was only to be expected with someone like Frost. 'Right, let's see if we can uncover any points that the good Dr McKenzie overlooked.' He turned to his secretary. 'Autopsy on an unknown woman aged between thirty-six and forty-two years.' The blonde's pen flew across the page of her shorthand notebook. Drysdale didn't believe in tape recorders ever since one let him down and details of a lengthy autopsy were lost.
As the pathologist droned away with initial findings that the inspector thought almost too obvious to mention, Frost's mind drifted on to other things, although his autopilot was ready to switch him back to full alert should anything of interest come up. He was suddenly switched back. Everyone was looking at him as if expecting an answer.
'Sorry, doc, what was that?'
'I asked if Dr McKenzie told you that this woman I was a virgin before she was assaulted?'
Frost gaped. 'A virgin?'
'No doubt about it. You had her down as a prostitute?'
'Frost just stared, open-mouthed. 'Bloody hell, doc. I didn't think there were any virgins left in Denton — present company excepted, of course.' He winked at the blonde secretary who was blushing fiercely. 'Are you sure, doc?'
I am. Perhaps you'd like to call in Dr McKenzie for a second opinion?'
Frost shook his head, his mind in a whirl. They had put the killer down as a kerb-crawler, picking up toms. This required a radical rethink. No wonder she didn't look like a prostitute. Poor cow, what a lousy bleeding way to
