by Danny Miller
Banes ignored Parker’s defeatist hissy fit and gave some thoughtful little nods at the idea of restoring the painting. It made sense. He knew they could perform wonders these days, find out all sorts of things.
‘We need to get in there and get that painting back.’
‘How are we going to do that? I offered him a small fortune, he could buy a hundred blank canvases to paint his masterpieces on.’
‘Don’t worry. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’
‘He’s a deluded artist, there isn’t a painting in his shop he’d sell at that price. He’s … he’s crazy.’
So am I, so am I, said Banes to himself.
‘We’re a peaceful protest protecting our mother. Mother Nature. When she cannot speak for herself, we shall stand up and speak for her. Because when she is gone, there will be no one left to speak. We don’t want any trouble.’
‘Then put down the weapon,’ called out PC Simms.
Frost and Clarke exchanged quizzical looks at this.
The protestor looked at the branch he was fanning the campfire with. ‘It’s not a weapon.’
‘It’s a stick and you’re pointing it at me, which makes it an offensive weapon.’
Frost and Clarke, who were just behind Simms, waited to see how far the keen PC would take this.
‘I’m not pointing it at anyone,’ said the man with a long grey ponytail worn under a broad-brimmed bushman’s hat. ‘I’m just holding it, and it’s got leaves on it, hardly an offensive weapon. It’s not even a stick. It’s a branch.’
The other three men and two women gathered around the fire for warmth all hummed and muttered in agreement.
Frost put his hand on Simms’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Stand down, son, I think they’ve got a point. You couldn’t beat a carpet with that, never mind an overzealous PC who’s about to blow his shot at promotion.’
The DI stepped forward into the small clearing where the tents were pitched. There were four small tents, army-style ones, and one big enough to stand up in, with clear plastic windows. Frost couldn’t help but think it looked like the set of M*A*S*H. These people were in it for the long haul.
‘We’re not here to break up the Swamp, no matter what Radar over there says.’ Whilst Frost chuckled, they looked at each other blankly. ‘You don’t watch much TV …?’
‘We don’t have a television set. Not even at home,’ said a woman, also with a long grey ponytail worn under a bushman’s hat.
Clarke distributed some missing-person pictures of Ruby Hanson and filled them in on the case. It seemed they hadn’t been listening to the radio either. They looked genuinely disturbed by the fate of the little girl, and that the protestors had fallen under suspicion.
‘I don’t for a second believe that any of you had anything to do with it,’ said Frost, ‘and I can see you’re as appalled as us. But I’m sure you understand just how vital it is we get Ruby back with her family, so anything you can help us with, we’d be grateful.’ They all readily agreed: anything they could help with they would. ‘One person keeps coming up in our enquiries, a man in his twenties who goes by the name of Degsy?’
This got a reaction. The man with the stick and the bushman’s hat spoke for the group. ‘He was here, we asked him to leave. To be honest, our ethos is that through persistent peaceful protest, we will prevail. He thought force and violence were the way forward. He wanted a revolution and the violence that came with it, and he was using the woods as an excuse for that, we believed. We told him, we are all one with nature, every living thing. We asked him to leave our camp and he did.’
‘Can you give us a description?’ asked Clarke.
The tall ‘bushman’ gave a description that pretty well matched what they’d already been told by others. But still no one seemed to know his real name, assuming ‘Degsy’ wasn’t it.
‘Do you have any idea where he is now?’ asked Frost.
A tall skinny man leaning on a hand-tooled wooden crook, or as Simms would probably have it, a Kalashnikov, pointed northwards.
Frost, Clarke and Simms followed the directions and headed deeper into the woods. The peaceful protestors had told them that there were a few people setting up camps further into the terrain, so that if the main body of them couldn’t hold the line, they would be a reserve force to keep up the good fight.
It had been a while since Frost had been into Denton Woods, certainly this far in. But at this stage it wasn’t just the woods that were being searched for Ruby; already civilian volunteers were sweeping the parks, fields, the wilder environs of Denton and even the Southern Housing Estate. There was always a sense of desperation when these scenes were shown on the TV, it looked like the last resort when the police had run out of ideas or options. But in reality, the desperation was always there from the start. It was just a horrible fact in these cases, that from the outset every wheelie bin and tip and skip were searched.
‘Look at this,’ said Simms, pointing into the distance at another clearing.
Frost and Clarke caught up with Simms, who was leading the way. The great outdoors seemed to suit him, and his sheer enthusiasm and ambition were becoming as exhausting as they were exasperating.
‘What am I looking at?’ queried Sue Clarke.
‘Exactly!’ said Simms, as he started to pull away some branches and hold them up.
‘Oh, more deadly weapons. Nice one, Simmo. Best take them with us in case we come across a bear or a pack of wolves …’
‘I heard there was still an escaped panther from Denton zoo on the loose,’ said Frost.
Clarke said, ‘I heard there’s definitely wild boar still out here.’
Frost laughed. ‘Big Foot.’
‘King Kong, or the—’
Sue Clarke stopped talking and Frost stopped laughing as Simms pulled away more branches to reveal a car. A red Ford Cortina with a black vinyl roof, and behind that, again almost totally obscured by branches, fern fronds, bracken and anything else that could be thrown at it to camouflage it from view, was the cream 1972 model Abi Monza 1200 CT touring caravan. The car and caravan had travelled as far up the muddy track as they possibly could before the woods had closed in and made it impassable.
Simms held up a branch, and pointed to the white flesh of the wood where it had been torn from a tree. ‘Freshly cut, about twenty-four hours ago, I’d say. It’s still sappy.’
‘Just like you, Simms.’
Clarke laughed, but couldn’t help but look impressed. ‘Your Boy Scout training is really paying off, Simmo.’
Frost made his way around to the door of the little cream-coloured caravan. ‘Hold on to your woggle, I’m going in.’ With his gloved hand, the DI tried the door handle. It opened. Frost gave a dispiriting groan.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Clarke.
‘Last time I got this lucky with a door being unlocked was in Norwood. You wait here.’
Frost pushed the wobbly aluminium door and stepped carefully into the caravan alone, and found Florence Wheaton’s son in much the same condition as he had found her – dead.
Kevin Wheaton was face down on the linoleum floor, a floor that was almost completely red where he had bled out from deep and penetrating wounds. By the look of the head trauma, Frost straight away suspected the same weapon had been used on both Kevin and his mother. A cluster of blows had reduced the back of his head to a pulpy mess. There was blood, splinters of bone and fragments of brain matter splattered on the walls. By the position of the wounds on the head, and the body on the floor, it looked like Kevin had been sitting down when he met his fate, his head bowed.
There was a Daily Express, soaked in blood, lying on the lino. It was open at a report of the murder of his mother. Frost took a sharp intake of breath and blew out a tremulous stream of air, as a genuine cold charge travelled up and down his spine. He felt nauseous. Not just because of the carnage in the caravan, but because of the heartless distraction he believed the killer had used. Did the killer hand Kevin th
e paper because he knew his victim would dip his head in grief? A distraction. But it had its own macabre logic. If the killer was of average height, because of the limited size of the caravan, he’d be unable to fully raise his arm, so he would need his victim to be seated, bowed, to inflict the fatal blows. A skilful, calculating and practised killer, thought Frost.
Also capable of abducting and killing a child? Without a doubt. They had come out to the woods to find Ruby Hanson’s abductor, and had discovered the Norwood killer. Were they one and the same?
‘What is it, guv?’
‘Jack?’
The voices of his colleagues outside the caravan broke his gruesome but necessary train of thought. He stepped back out of the doorway, and closed the tinny little door behind him. If you didn’t have to see it, you were better off not seeing it.
‘Kevin Wheaton?’ asked Clarke.
Frost nodded. ‘Same as his mum. I think we’ve got a psychopath on our patch.’
The crack of a twig sounded like a gun discharging, such was the silence and solemnity of that brief moment as they reflected on the danger they faced. The three of them turned sharply in the direction of the sound, and saw a crouched black-clad figure dart into the undergrowth away from them. For a moment they thought it could have been an animal, even the escaped panther that had forced the zoo to close down in ’79, or one of the fictional beasts they’d teased Simms with. It was getting dark now, and the tree canopy made everything darker. They took a collective sharp breath and went after whatever it was.
Frost stopped Clarke. ‘You stay here, but don’t go in the caravan.’
‘Sod that, Jack, I’m not staying here.’
Frost got her point. ‘Fair dos.’
Simms was already disappearing into the gloom of the dense woods, torch in hand, again leading the way. Frost soon lost sight of him. He called out to the young PC, but nothing came back.
‘Over there!’ Clarke pointed to a flash of light.
‘And there!’ Frost pointed to where, about thirty feet away, a torch beam raked the trees. The two shards of light circled each other, then one shot off, with the other giving chase.
Then there was a sharp cry – ‘Jesus!’ – and one light disappeared. Frost and Clarke heard a pained whinnying sound. They raced towards it, the bushes slowing them down, tearing at their clothes.
‘Simmo?’
‘Over here … Jesus wept!’
‘Hold on, Simms, we’re coming!’
When they reached the young PC, he was rolling around on the ground, as much as he could. His left foot was ensnared in some kind of animal trap. The trap was old and rusted, but very heavy. There was no blood.
‘You’re all right, Dave,’ soothed Clarke. ‘Can you move your toes?’
Simms nodded.
Frost bent down to look at the damage. ‘If you can move your toes, it’s nothing serious. That’ll teach you to go charging off. You should always keep close to your colleagues, no matter where you are. Got it?’
Simms nodded again.
Frost tried to open the trap’s jaws, but to no avail. The mechanism had stopped short of sinking its blunted brown teeth into Simms’s foot, and had probably tripped him as much as trapped him. But it was proving equally intractable in freeing him.
‘We’ll need some WD40 to get that off.’ Frost said to Clarke, ‘You wait here.’
‘Where are you going to get WD40 from around here?’
‘Don’t be a wally, I’m not, I’m just saying. I’m going after him, or whatever it is!’
There was no argument this time from Clarke, as Frost grabbed the torch that was still in Simms’s hand, and took off after whoever it was disappearing down the narrow path.
Clarke made sympathetic faces at Simms, who was now looking more embarrassed than pained. ‘How do you feel, mate?’
‘To be honest, I think I can wiggle my foot out of it.’
‘Then get wiggling.’
Simms sat up and started to pull his foot out of his wellington boot. It slipped out easily enough, just serving to deepen his blushes.
‘Ahh! … Gordon bleedin’ Bennett!’ came a cry in the distance. Frost was the only person Clarke knew who still used that arcane expression.
She stood up and headed in the direction the cry had come from. Simms, leaving his welly in the trap, hobbled after her. About seventy yards away, Clarke saw the flicker of torchlight; it was climbing a tree. What the hell is he doing up there? thought Clarke.
‘Jack?’
‘Down here!’
Simms had caught up and was at her side. They looked around at each other, trying to work out where the voice was coming from. ‘Where are you?’
‘Don’t come any closer! … I’ve fallen in.’
Clarke and Simms dipped their heads down to where the voice sprang from. Not the tree in the distance, but a hole in the ground. Frost had fallen into another trap, a covered pit.
‘You all right?’ asked Clarke.
‘Silly bloody question,’ Frost said, slowly getting to his feet and straightening up in staggered stages of grimacing pain. ‘My back … my bloody back … just as it was getting better.’
Clarke looked around at Simms, who wore the same expression as Frost, and was rubbing his ankle. Useless, she thought, the pair of them, bloody useless.
‘Get me out of here!’
The pit was about twelve foot deep, and about that again wide, and sheer and slippery on all sides.
‘How?’
‘Is there a ladder?’
‘A ladder?’
‘I don’t know … a rope ladder or something … how about some rope?’
‘Oh yeah, the rope ladder, it’s in the same place I found the WD40 to get Simms out of the trap.’
‘Yeah?’
‘No, you wally. You’ll have to wait here. I’ll go back to the car and call it in.’
‘You can’t leave me here … Can you?’
‘Teach you to go charging off,’ muttered Simms.
Friday (4)
‘I didn’t do it, I swear I didn’t do it!’
‘Didn’t do what?’
‘Didn’t take the girl! I’ll admit to everything else, but not the girl.’
‘We’re not interested in anything else,’ said Frost, ‘we’re only interested in the girl.’
Frost and Clarke were in Interview Room 1, with a pale and frightened-looking Gordon Alistair Dellinpile, otherwise known as Degsy. Frost suspected it was a self-appointed nickname, much in the same way he always suspected that Sting had called himself Sting. His only interest in Sting being the name of his band, but it irked Frost; you shouldn’t get to pick your own nickname. Frost hadn’t picked ‘Jack’, that was the work of some genius primary-school wit pointing out the bleedin’ obvious. Both Sting and Degsy obviously wanted to get away from Gordon. Posh-boy Degsy was straining for working-class street cred; Sting, obviously, and without any irony, was straining for cool.
Frost refused to call him Degsy. Gordon Alistair Dellinpile, who was twenty-three, had turned down a solicitor or any kind of legal assistance whatsoever. He said he wanted to come clean, said he wanted to help with the enquiry, as he’d realized the error of his ways. But what became most clear was that Gordon Alistair ‘Degsy’ Dellinpile didn’t want his parents to know where he was, or what he’d been up to, as it might interfere with his annual allowance from his trust fund.
There he sat, eyes brimming, his pinched little public-school face twitching with trepidation, looking faintly ridiculous in his anarchist’s gear – black jeans, shirt, biker jacket, twelve-eyelet Doc Martens, and eyeliner that was now smudged.
Laid out on the table in plastic evidence bags was the same stationery as had been used for the blackmail note. It had been found in Dellinpile’s rucksack, which he’d stashed up a tree. A tree he’d been hiding and sleeping in, with a platform he’d fashioned from some branches he’d rather expertly woven together. It even came with its own pull-up rope ladde
r. The very ladder Jack Frost could have made use of to get out of the hole he’d fallen in. Luckily, he wasn’t down there too long. Clarke had made her way back to the car and alerted Eagle Lane to their location, and predicament. Soon uniform were swarming in the woods, and Dellinpile was discovered up his tree, the tree Frost had seen him climbing by torchlight, just before he fell in. If Dellinpile had switched his torch off, Frost would never have seen him or been able to find his hideout.
At first Dellinpile refused to come down. Then Frost said he’d cut the tree down himself, with an axe he kept in the car, and he couldn’t rule out what he’d then do with the axe. Dellinpile scuttled down the tree as fast as a squirrel.
‘I heard about the little girl on my transistor radio last night. Who she was … that she was the architect’s daughter. I thought I could use it to our advantage.’
‘Whose advantage?’
‘The cause.’
‘This cause, is it organized?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really. No one else knew I did it. There’s only a few of us who really know how to protest against this kind of stuff, the rest are just amateurs.’
‘Or just law-abiding citizens,’ countered Clarke, ‘who probably have a lot more influence on changing things than you do.’
‘What about the bear trap, and the pit?’ asked Frost.
‘I thought if anyone came after me, I could slow them down.’
Clarke said, ‘Oh, Mr Dellinpile, you certainly did that.’
Frost ignored Clarke’s jibe.
Dellinpile bowed his head in shame. ‘Sorry.’