Fatal Frost

by Henry James

  The temperature was rising steadily and the air was humid. Even beneath the shade of the trees it was hot. ‘Are you all right?’ Simms asked.

  Clarke was tired already. Her fuzzy head was made worse by the events of yesterday jostling for position. Pangs of guilt and shame kept flooding through her, making her feel like she was going to throw up. Why did she do it? Why did she sleep with a stranger? Initially she’d felt liberated, but as the morning wore on the gloss faded and all that lingered was disgust.

  ‘I’m fine. Leave me alone,’ she said defensively. ‘I’m not even sure why we’re here. I was here with uniform late yesterday, after they’d trampled all over the bluebells.’ She sighed.

  He scrunched up the map and squared up to her. ‘No, I won’t leave you alone – we’re here to do a job. Pull yourself together, bloody drama queen. They only made a cursory sweep to look for clothing. Now we’ve got this’ – he waved the Ordnance Survey map at her – ‘we’re going over the area properly. Got it? God, you stink of booze.’

  She was taken aback by his vehemence, and stumbled into a bramble, which caught her bare leg. She winced. Having got up late she’d rushed to get ready, forgetting to think about appropriate clothing. A short, pale-yellow summer dress and open-toed sandals weren’t really the best things for tramping about in Denton Woods.

  They set off along the path again, but within seconds the car radio crackled into life, a distinct burst of noise in the peaceful surroundings.

  ‘That’ll be Myles.’ Simms turned on his heel and marched back. He was quite attractive when cross, albeit in a sort of boyish way. He leaned into the car to pick up the handset, his white T-shirt riding up as he did so.

  Clarke picked up the map he’d dumped on the ground and walked back to the car with it, unfolding it on the bonnet as Simms had done. It was years since she’d looked at one of these – not since orienteering field trips for geography A level. Frost was right, she thought, flicking her hair behind her ears, you see the terrain differently on a detailed map; the contours of the land – dips and rises – give it proper definition. Yesterday afternoon uniform had been stumbling around blindly. She looked in fascination at the dotted paths, the markings for woodlands and orchards, the strangely named farms and the symbols for churches. Familiar names and sights linked up with less familiar ones to form a complete picture, like the pieces of a jigsaw. How much simpler everything seemed with a bit of perspective.

  They were on a bridleway that started at Wood Vale. It was a popular entrance for Sunday strollers, particularly at this time of year when for a mere ten days, beginning around the end of April, Denton Woods became one of the most beautiful places in England. It was reputedly one of the largest bluebell woods in Europe. Clarke remembered the planning application for a new housing development being successfully opposed last year by conservationists.

  She followed the path on the map with her thumb nail. The clearing where the scouts had camped was midway between where they stood now at Wood Vale and the golf course where Tom Hardy had been found. It appeared to be a good mile and a half from the camp to the fringe of Denton Golf Club, she reckoned. They’d parked at the same entrance the Scouts had used. Door-to-door enquiries in the cul-de-sac had confirmed the comings and goings of many young people at the weekend, but neither the Scouts nor the Guides had been in uniform, so it was harder to be sure how many had been part of the exercise.

  ‘That was Myles,’ Simms confirmed, hanging up the radio. ‘Tom Hardy wasn’t part of any camping trip to Denton Woods. But his sister Emily was. Myles is going now to Forest View; she’ll start from there and meet us in the middle.’

  ‘Right. That doesn’t really help us much, does it? Emily didn’t disappear until Wednesday, so who cares what she was up to at the weekend?’

  Simms shrugged. ‘Forensics said that on the green there was no blood around the body or any signs of frenzied activity such as you’d associate with a violent murder, so that implies he was murdered and stripped elsewhere. And the only place with unhindered access to the golf course is here,’ he suggested, nodding towards the woods. ‘Besides, you said yourself the search yesterday wasn’t all that thorough – more of a ramble through the flowers looking for his clothes.’

  Clarke was still studying the map’s network of footpaths, which seemed to follow a distinct pattern, unless it was the glaze of her hangover playing tricks with her vision. Something caught her eye, within the maze of dotted lines. She consulted the map key.

  ‘Tumulus,’ she said to herself, a word she’d not heard since school.

  ‘You what?’ Simms asked, peering over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s Latin. It means mound or small hill.’

  ‘Get you!’ Simms whistled, fishing a crumpled pack of Bensons out of his back pocket. ‘So?’

  ‘A burial mound, an ancient burial site, thousands of years old,’ Clarke continued, studying the map. ‘I remember something similar from a field trip at school. Not much to look at – in fact, unless you know it’s there you’d walk straight past it, but thousands of years ago it would have been deeply significant.’

  ‘A sort of prehistoric graveyard, you mean?’

  ‘More than that. It’s where the ancients would make offerings to their gods.’

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ Simms said, suddenly interested. Drysdale’s theory of a ritual killing wasn’t lost on him either. Flicking away the unfinished cigarette, he lifted up the police tape across the bridleway. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

  Thursday (4)

  ‘CAN WE SAY this is suicide?’

  Mullett glared at Frost, who was banging away on the barely visible Smith Corona; the typewriter was shrouded by a disgraceful mound of paperwork and its operator wreathed in cigarette smoke.

  ‘We can say whatever we like at this stage.’ Frost squinted up at him, slapping the typewriter carriage across. ‘I’m just typing up my report on the findings so far.’

  ‘Well … is it?’

  ‘There’s a possibility, yes. Nobody saw the girl on the train – she was in a compartment on her own, we think. The train stopped at Denton due to engineering works instead of chundering on through to Wales, thereby allowing us to identify the other passengers, and we interviewed more or less everybody who got off the train.’

  ‘More or less?’ Mullett tapped his fingers rapidly on the door frame. ‘That doesn’t sound very conclusive to me.’

  Frost shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘That’s where we’re at. There’s a woman passenger who we’ve not been able to trace. We’ve interviewed the other three and failed to pin anything on them.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Three out of four are in the clear – so you can say there’s an eighty per cent chance it’s suicide.’

  ‘Seventy-five, Frost, seventy-five.’ Mullett puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘What about the post-mortem?’

  ‘Inconclusive. I’ve just come from the lab. I’ve got the file here.’ Frost shoved the ashtray off a beige lab-report folder, and flicked the file open, sending ash everywhere. ‘We’d initially suspected a struggle because skin was found under the fingernails, but tests have shown it’s likely to be her own.’

  ‘Her own?’ Mullett said incredulously.

  ‘Drysdale noticed angry blotches on the girl’s body. He called the Ellises’ GP for her medical records and it transpires she suffered from a form of eczema.’

  Mullett stepped aside as Waters entered the room with two mugs of coffee. What had that lad done to himself? he thought for the second time that day. Mullett didn’t really want to know, but he would have to ask. On top of everything else. He sighed and felt increasingly irritable.

  ‘Eczema? Do people claw their own skin? Seems a bit extreme to me,’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m allergic to cats – the slightest contact with fur, and my eyes run and my skin crawls. If it’s anything like that, well …’

  Mullett considered the Detective Sergeant with a mixture of exasperation an
d contempt. ‘Get on to that ferrety fellow at the Echo,’ he said, meaning Sandy Lane, whose name he’d all but wiped from his mind after the press-conference debacle yesterday. ‘Tell him preliminary investigations indicate suicide, and then shelve it. And square it off with the parents first.’

  ‘Shelve it?’ Frost looked astonished. ‘The girl was only discovered on Monday morning. The parents won’t take too kindly to being told we’ve given up after less than a week. We’ve barely scratched the surface, if you forgive the pun.’

  ‘For now, Frost, shelve it for now,’ Mullett said. ‘Buy ourselves some time and credibility with the public while we’re dealing with the lad on the golf course. What other news from the lab? The body discovered this morning?’

  The phone rang and Frost hastily answered it. Mullett could swear he was ignoring him on purpose.

  ‘Fellow died of a wound to the throat,’ Waters said.

  ‘From a knife?’

  ‘No. Judging from the wound, the pathologist thinks it was more like something like a butcher’s hook.’

  ‘A butcher’s hook? How extraordinary.’

  Mullett turned to go, and then remembered he had Frost’s expenses, which looked dubious, though he hadn’t the energy to take him to task over them. With the price of petrol rocketing past £1.50 a gallon there was a slim chance the figures were genuine, though he suspected not. He’d get him when things settled down – if they ever did.

  Frost hung up the phone, mumbling to himself.

  ‘Here,’ said Mullett, ‘these are yours. Given your dismal display of elementary mathematics just now, you may well be unable to calculate mileage allowances. You can have the benefit of the doubt this time. But next time …’

  Frost flicked open Samantha Ellis’s lab report, which he’d swiped from the lab, as soon as Mullett was out of the door. Something he’d noticed earlier in the girl’s file had been playing on his mind. He hadn’t time to deal with it now, but he ringed distinguishing marks. Drysdale may be good, but somehow he’d missed this.

  ‘What was all that about?’ Waters asked.

  ‘Fractions,’ Frost said, taking a proffered JPS.

  Waters, confused, reached over with a lighter.

  ‘And percentages,’ Frost added, puffing enthusiastically.

  ‘No, I meant the phone call.’

  ‘Oh. That was Mrs Hardy. She and Mr Hardy are coming in later, which means we’ve a spot of time to kill. Which is great, because I’m starving. First, though, answer me this. How many people can want a sixty-five-year-old chimney sweep with nothing more than rent arrears to his name dead?’

  Waters looked blankly at Frost. ‘Not too many, I suspect.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Frost, flipping the Rolodex round. ‘So, while we wait for the boys and girls to get back from their ramble in the woods, let’s do exactly what Hornrim Harry has asked.’ Frost winked at him, a finger catching the card with the Denton Echo number, and began to dial.

  ‘Ah, good morning. Sandy Lane, please.’

  Denton Woods lived up to its reputation; the bluebells were truly spectacular, even more so now as the sun rose higher, and was refracted through the beech canopy, creating a hazy purple carpet as far as the eye could see. Yesterday, in the company of a dozen uniform, and rather the worse for wear, Clarke hadn’t been able to appreciate it properly, but now, nearly alone, it seemed almost surreal. Derek Simms, by contrast, seemed not the least concerned where he trudged with his size nines.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ She sighed, and for the first time that week felt cheerful. Maybe last night with Danny the farm boy had done her good, she thought. Though he wasn’t so much of a boy …

  ‘What is?’ Simms barked, looking up from the map.

  ‘The flowers. They’re amazing. Mind where you tread, Derek.’

  ‘Yeah, right … lovely.’ His large, pale face frowned. ‘But they don’t really help.’ He reached down to examine a specimen. ‘I’m no expert, but these look like they’ve just bloomed or blossomed, or whatever the word is, which makes it difficult for us, when there’s something covering the ground like this.’

  Clarke was impressed with his thinking. He was smart, and would cut it as a detective, probably more so than she. Shame he was so childish in other ways. But she didn’t want to dwell on the past.

  She looked around her. Well, they’re beautiful, regardless, she thought.

  Suddenly she caught a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. There was something moving in the distance. But nobody should have been in here; the area had been sealed off until further notice.

  ‘Derek,’ she whispered, tapping him on the shoulder, though the figure was a good distance away. ‘Look!’

  Simms stood up. ‘Oi!’ he bellowed. ‘Stop! Police!’

  Very subtle, Clarke thought. The figure paused momentarily, as if weighing up the options of fight or flight. It was someone in a red-hooded coat, but they were too far away for her to be sure of sex or age. Not surprisingly, they opted for flight.

  ‘Not thinking of a pursuit, then?’ she asked the stationary Simms.

  He looked at her as if she were mad. ‘There’s close on a couple of hundred feet of tightly packed undergrowth between us,’ he cried, adding, ‘Not to mention the pretty flowers.’

  ‘Let’s have the map a sec,’ Clarke said. ‘We’d never get back to the car quick enough to radio for back-up. But let’s see which way they were heading. Whoever that was shouldn’t have been in here, and knows it.’ The figure had continued running in the same direction it had been moving in.

  ‘Do you reckon they saw us?’ Simms asked.

  ‘Until your almighty bellow, no, I’d guess not. They were running across our path,’ Clarke mused, folding the map over.

  ‘Where were they heading?’

  ‘North, according to this. It’s residential up there. What’s the area called with those really grand houses that back on to the woods?’

  ‘Forest View?’ Simms suggested.

  ‘Possibly,’ Clarke said. ‘And where they were coming from – over there – it’s where we’re heading.’

  ‘Your mound?’

  Clarke squinted through the trees. ‘That’s it!’ she said, pointing to a slight rise in the woodland floor, fifty feet away.

  It didn’t look much, Simms thought – you’d walk right over it if you didn’t know it was there. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, turning to look at her. The colour had risen in her face, and the sun through her thin cotton dress revealed her full young figure. She suddenly struck him as remarkably beautiful. Get a grip, he told himself. It was only an hour ago she’d been driving him crazy. Must be the tranquillizing effect of nature, or something. He wiped the sweat from his brow; he was getting thirsty.

  ‘I’m positive,’ she said in answer to his question, pointing at the map. She left the path, treading tentatively through the bluebells. ‘I wish I’d worn different shoes. Come on.’

  ‘Doesn’t look much to me,’ Simms said, following. ‘I wish we had something to drink.’

  ‘It’s been here thousands of years. What do you expect?’ Clarke tutted.

  Derek Simms didn’t really know what he expected. As they approached the burial mound, Simms noticed that the vegetation increasingly fell away and the flowers thinned, exposing a crust of earth, still damp after the recent downpours.

  ‘I’m sure we didn’t come here yesterday,’ said Clarke.

  ‘Hush,’ Simms hissed, ‘get down!’ He could see a figure crouched beyond the mound. ‘Slowly creep forward,’ he said in a whisper. Clarke did as instructed.

  They moved quietly, approaching to within a few yards of a crouching figure in a denim shirt, then Simms made a dash.

  ‘Blimey, you scared the life out of me!’ screeched a flushed DC Myles, getting to her feet and brushing woodland debris from her bare legs. She was wearing a matching denim skirt that was definitely too short, Simms thought, regardless of how hot it was.

  ‘Sorry,’ Clarke s
aid. ‘We thought you were … well, to be honest, we didn’t know who you were. We just saw someone and …’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, though I did tell him I’d meet you here.’ Myles pointed an accusatory finger at Simms. ‘Never mind. Come and have a look at this.’ Myles sank to her knees. Clarke and Simms followed suit.

  She pointed out some small white lumps on the earth.

  ‘Wax?’ Simms wondered. ‘Candle wax?’

  ‘What on earth is candle wax doing out here?’ Myles asked, perplexed.

  ‘This is an ancient burial mound, so I’m guessing it could be from some sort of ritual.’ Clarke got up, brushing soil from her knees and glancing meaningfully at Simms. ‘So, Drysdale and Jack might be on to something.’

  ‘Never mind why or what – the question is who,’ Simms said uneasily. He realized they really had to get a handle on who had been camping out here. Until that moment he’d dismissed the theory of a ritual killing as laughable. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

  Thursday (5)

  ‘HERE WE ARE. Time for a spot of nosh,’ Frost said, holding open the door.

  He removed his Polaroids but kept the panama hat firmly on his sweaty head. He wouldn’t look so bad if he shaved every once in a while, thought Waters. In his cheesecloth shirt he wouldn’t look out of place in Acapulco.

  ‘Billy’s Café: best fry-up in North Denton.’

  ‘What, surely not in the whole of North Denton?’ Waters smirked as they entered the smoggy café. Hell, he thought, this is the last place anyone sane would wish to be on a sunny day like this.

  They slid into a booth. The place looked full of people who’d yet to come out of hibernation from last winter, dressed in overcoats and barely conscious.

  A buxom waitress in a blouse that left little to the imagination took their order. Frost asked for a fried-egg sandwich and coffee, Waters settled for tea and toast.