Frost 6 - A Killing Frost

by R D Wingfield

  ‘Hmmph,’ sniffed Skinner, as if it made no difference. ‘I’ve got some things to sort out with Superintendent Mullett this afternoon, so I won’t be able to attend the post-mortem of that body you found on the railway embankment. I want you to attend on my behalf and give me a report. And try not to balls it up, for a change.’ He spun on his heel and left the office.

  Skinner was closing the door behind him when the sound of a soft, wet, juicy raspberry followed him out. He immediately charged back into the office to find Frost apparently deeply engrossed in paperwork. Frost looked up, eye brows raised, as if surprised at the DCI’s return.

  All right, sunshine, thought. Skinner grimly. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face soon.

  He closed the door, waited a minute or two, his hand hovering over the door handle, in case of a repetition, then made his way back to his own office.

  Frost was on his way to drag Taffy Morgan from the canteen when Wells called after him, ‘Hold on, Jack.’

  ‘I’m in a hurry,’ he replied. ‘I’m late for the autopsy.’

  ‘It’s about the autopsy. Skinner wants the new WPC to attend.’

  ‘No bleeding way,’ replied Frost. ‘This is going to be a stomach-heaver. What’s left of the body stinks to high heaven - it’s almost liquid. It would be enough to put anyone off the force, let alone a nineteen-year-old probationer.’

  ‘That’s what Skinner wants, I reckon. He’s finding all the shitty jobs for her. Oh, and he said to get that stupid Welsh prat to do the archive collation in her place.’

  ‘Stupid Welsh prat?’ echoed Frost. ‘Mullett isn’t Welsh.’

  Wells grinned. ‘You know what prat he means, Jack. And about the girl - you’ll have to take her. You can’t ignore an order.’

  ‘All right, I’ll take her, but she can wait in the car outside. There’s no way she’s being subjected to this.’

  There were three cars outside the mortuary. Frost parked behind a blue Citroën and Kate Holby made to get out.

  ‘Hold on, love. Sit down a minute.’ He handed her his mobile phone. ‘I want you to wait out here and take any phone messages.’

  ‘DCI Skinner said - ’

  ‘I know what Skinner said, love. Have you ever attended an autopsy?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They’re super-shitty at the best of times, but this one is super-shiny de-luxe, which is why Skinner has ducked out of going and sent me instead. You don’t want to see it, I promise you.’

  She stuck her chin out defiantly. ‘I don’t want favours shown to me just because I’m a girl. I want to be a good cop.’

  ‘Listen, love, I’ll tell you what a good cop does. He does all the lousy stinking jobs that have to be done, but if he can get out of doing them, he bloody well gets out of doing them. I’ve seen strong men faint at post-mortems which were Mills and Boon stuff compared to this. I’ve come near to crashing out once or twice and I’ve seen hundreds. Skinner would love for you to go out cold. Well, I’m not going to let it happen. A good cop can lie his head off when it’s necessary. I shall tell him you watched it all the way without turning a hair. His disappointment will make my day.’

  ‘I still want to come inside,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘Then I’m ordering you to stay in the car.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘I know I can’t, love, so I’m saying “please”.’ He put on his appealing, heartfelt expression, which had never failed him before. It didn’t fail him this time. She stayed in the car.

  The first thing that hit him when he pushed open the door of the autopsy room was the thudding sound of pop music. Bending over the autopsy table, a green-gowned, plump bottom was jiggling in time to the music. Flaming hell! thought Frost. A bit of a change from misery-guts Drysdale.

  The second thing that hit him was the stench of putrefying flesh, a sickly smell that lingered for days and clung to your clothing and hair, no matter how much you scrubbed. There could be no doubt which body she was examining. Overhead the extractor fans were going full blast, but they were fighting a losing battle. Leaning against the tiled wall, looking as green as his gown, was the forensic photographer.

  The pathologist turned at his approach. ‘Hardly Chanel No. 5,’ she shouted over the din of the music. When she saw that he couldn’t hear her, she turned the volume down and said it again. She pointed to a ball of cotton wool and a jar of Vicks VapoRub. ‘Stick it where you think it will do the most good.’

  He grinned, pulled a couple of plugs of cotton wool, dunked them in the Vicks jar and gratefully inserted them in his nostrils. The pungent aroma made his eyes water, but mercifully over powered the smell of decaying flesh.

  ‘I started without you - I hope you don’t mind,’ she said.

  ‘With this one you can finish without me,’ he told her. The body on the slab was a disgusting mess. He wondered how she could possibly glean anything from it.

  ‘My name’s Carol,’ she said.

  ‘Jack,’ he told her. First-name bleeding terms now!

  The scalpel slashed a path in the neck. ‘Hard to believe it, but I reckon she was a pretty girl once,’ she said.

  Frost nodded. ‘I can believe it.’ He had seen the rotting bodies of too many pretty girls in his time with Denton CID. ‘Can you tell me any thing we don’t know?’

  She gave him a knowing grin and lowered her voice so the photographer couldn’t hear. ‘I’m free tonight, did you know that?’

  Bloody hell! thought Frost. A sex-starved pathologist propositioning me over a rotting corpse. I’ll be dating the undertaker’s daughter next. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven,’ he said. ‘But what about the body?’

  ‘Female, eighteen to twenty-three, about five foot four. She probably had quite a good figure. Been dead some four to five weeks, perhaps a little longer. The entomologist should be more precise. She looked after her teeth, so you’ll be able to identify her from her dental records and then get a positive ID from her DNA.’

  ‘Cause of death?’ asked Frost.

  Carol pointed to the neck section she had opened with the scalpel to expose bone. ‘Look!’

  Frost didn’t want to look that closely, but bent forward. Putrescence and slime. He was glad of the nose plugs. Then he saw what she meant and nodded. ‘The cicoid?’

  ‘Yes - it’s fractured. It would take quite a bit of pressure to do that. Mind you, a karate chop would do it, but the fracturing would be different. It’s invariably damaged with strangulation. I’d say manual strangulation, in this case. Even with a cadaver in this condition I’d expect to see ligature grooving, but there doesn’t seem to be any.’ She shrugged. ‘If the body was in any sort of decent shape, I’d be certain, but in this condition I can only say more than likely.’

  She beckoned the photographer over and they stepped back so he could take photographs of the splintered neck bone.

  The photographer finished and returned to his wall position. Frost and the pathologist moved back to the body. She pointed. ‘The neck has been chewed and ripped - probably by a fox - which doesn’t help much.’

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’

  Again she shrugged. ‘No way of knowing. I can’t even tell you if she was a virgin. She was naked when you found her, but I can’t say if she was stripped before or after death.’

  ‘No remnants of clothing under the body when we moved it,’ Frost told her.

  ‘Then almost definitely she was naked when she was dumped. The odds are she was sexually assaulted, but I can’t give you any proof.’

  He tried not to watch as she cut, poked and probed the squelching tissue, but the body was a magnet for his eyes.

  At last she straightened up. ‘This is a waste of time. I can’t tell you any more.’ She dictated some notes into a small cassette recorder, then called for the mortuary attendant to remove the body.

  Frost waited for the overhead fans to cleanse the air before pulling out his nose plugs. Carol peeled off he
r surgical gloves and dropped them in a waste bin. She then shrugged off the green gown. Under it she was wearing a grey sweater and black slacks. The sweater was well filled and for a brief moment Frost’s thoughts were not of death and decay.

  ‘Seven o’clock, then,’ he whispered, feeling quite excited at the prospect.

  She gave a conspiratorial nod. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  Outside, in the fresh air, he lit up a cigarette and inhaled a lungful of smoke. With a cry of disgust he snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and hurled it to the ground. The smoke tasted of Vicks VapoRub. He scrubbed his nose with his handkerchief, but to no avail. He could smell, he could taste, nothing but Vicks. Cursing loudly, he made his way to the car.

  Kate was waiting for him. She looked up and smiled, glad her boring wait was over. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

  ‘Not as many laughs as I hoped,’ said Frost. The car radio was playing the local news:

  . . . hunt for the three missing teenagers has entered its third day. The officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Skinner, says there is no obvious link between the disappearance of Jan O’Brien, and Debbie Clark and her boyfriend Thomas Harris, who have not been heard of since they left home three days ago . . .

  ‘Switch it off,’ said Frost. ‘They’re dead.’

  Kate turned and looked at him, her eyebrows raised in query

  ‘Just a feeling,’ he told her. ‘One of my fallible intuitions. But I reckon they’re dead. Stone-cold bleeding dead.’ He had had enough of death. He was glad it wasn’t his case any more.

  ‘How did you get on with the new pathologist?’ Wells asked as Frost passed through the lobby.

  ‘As pathologists go, she’s not a bad bit of crumpet,’ Frost told him. ‘I think she fancies me.’

  ‘Well, after looking at decomposing bodies all day, I reckon even you might look tasty.’

  ‘I’m taking her out to dinner tonight,’ said Frost.

  ‘Let’s hope she washes her hands first,’ grinned Wells.

  ‘Frost!’ Skinner’s acidic bawl echoed down the corridor and a moment later he strode through the door. ‘How is it you’re always talking, never working, when I see you, Sergeant?’ he snapped at Wells.

  Wells quickly grabbed a pen and started totting up non-existent columns of figures.

  ‘How did the new tart like the post-mortem?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘She was brilliant,’ lied Frost. ‘I was ready to pass out, but she never turned a hair - not even when she saw the maggots.’

  Skinner’s nose wrinkled in disgust. ‘She can see a few more, then.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Mullett wants to see you in his office in half an hour. No excuses, Frost. You be there.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ Frost asked.

  Skinner’s eyes glinted and he flashed a malevolent smile. ‘That’s what you’re going to find out,’ he replied as he marched back to his office.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling it’s not going to be something good?’ said Frost.

  ‘The bastard’s up to something,’ said Wells. ‘He’s been in and out of Mullett’s office all morning. When I took some papers in to him he was on the phone. He cut the conversation stone dead when I came in and didn’t start it again until I left.’

  Frost remembered the transfer request he had seen in Skinner’s in-tray.

  ‘He’s leaving. That’s what it’s about,’ enthused Frost. ‘The bastard is leaving Denton.’

  Chapter 9

  Police Superintendent Mullett, Denton Divisional Commander, nervously drummed his fingers on the polished surface of his mahogany desk. This was the moment he had been looking forward to for so long, but there was no way he was going to face Frost on his own. Where was DCI Skinner? He had said he would be here.

  A half-hearted tap at the door made Mullett’s heart skip a beat. This had to be Frost, annoyingly prompt for once. The door was flung open before he could say ‘Enter’ and Frost shambled in, a cigarette drooping from his mouth, ash snowflaking down the front of his jacket and on to the newly vacuumed blue Wilton carpet.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Super?’ asked Frost, the waggling cigarette shedding more ash. What the hell was this all about? he wondered. Mullett looked even more shifty and devious than ever.

  ‘Er - yes,’ said Mullett, checking his watch.

  Where the devil was Skinner? ‘Take a seat.’ He indicated a hard-seated chair he had placed some way from his desk.

  ‘Thanks,’ grunted Frost, ignoring the offered chair and dragging a more comfortable visitor’s chair from the wall over to Mullett’s desk, positioning it next to the in-tray. Mullett hastily took a heavy glass ashtray from his drawer and slid it across, just too late to stop another shower of ash descending on his gleaming desktop.

  ‘Sorry, Super,’ grunted Frost, blowing the offending ash all over the place. He leant back in his chair. ‘What did you want to see me about? Only I’m a bit pushed for time.’

  Mullett fiddled with his fountain pen and patted some papers into shape to gain time. He wasn’t ready to answer that question yet. It really was too bad of Skinner. Where on earth was he . . .?

  A polite tap at the door made him sigh with relief. ‘Enter,’ he called and Detective Chief Inspector Skinner strode purposefully into the room, giving a smile to Mullett and a curt nod to Frost.

  Mullett waved apologetically at the hard chair he had intended for Frost. Skinner dragged it behind Mullett’s desk so he could sit next to the Superintendent, edging Mullett from the centre position.

  ‘If you could kindly spare us a few moments of your valuable time, Inspector,’ said Mullett sarcastically as Frost nudged the in-tray round, trying to read the name on the ‘Request for Transfer’ form. A bit of gossip to share with Bill Wells.

  ‘Sure,’ said Frost graciously, tearing his eyes away. ‘But if you could be quick - some of us have got work to do.’ He stared pointedly at his watch, then beamed up at Mullett’s bleak, worried smile and Skinner’s grim frown. Then it was Frost’s turn to frown. With a jolt he recognised the wad of papers Skinner was holding. Flaming heck! They were his monthly car expenses, which he assumed had already been passed and sent to County for payment. Today was the deadline. His mind raced. What the hell was Skinner doing with them?

  ‘Are they my car expenses?’ he asked. ‘They’ve got to be at County today, otherwise I don’t get paid until next month.’

  Mullett shuffled some papers again and studied the top of his desk. He looked hopefully at Skinner, but Skinner was waiting for Mullett to reply. ‘They’re not going off to County, I’m afraid,’ Mullett said eventually, carefully avoiding Frost’s eyes.

  ‘Oh? And why not?’ demanded Frost.

  This time Skinner answered. ‘Because most of these receipts appear to have been falsified.’ He spread them out on the desk in front of Frost.

  ‘Falsified?’ shrilled Frost in as indignant a tone as he could muster, while his brain raced through the data bank of his memory, wondering where the hell he had gone wrong. ‘Don’t tell me those lousy garages have been fiddling the amounts and I’ve missed it?’

  ‘I very much doubt that it is the garages that have been doing the falsifying,’ said Skinner, while Mullett, a smug smile on his face, nodded his agreement.

  ‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’ said Frost.

  Skinner smashed a fist down on Mullett’s desk and the glass ashtray leapt into the air, crashing down in another ash storm. ‘Don’t come the bloody innocent with me, Frost. You know damn well what I mean. The majority of these receipts have been altered in your favour. And I’m saying that you altered them.’

  ‘If you think that, then flaming well prove it,’ snapped Frost, hoping and praying that the fat sod couldn’t.

  Skinner leant back in his chair and smiled the smile of a fat sod who had four aces in his hand and a couple of kings to back them up. He took a receipt from the pile and waved it at Frost. ‘I asked Forensic to examine this one
. “20 litres” has been crudely altered to read “26 litres”.’

  Frost exhaled a sigh of relief. By sheer, undeserved good luck, Skinner had picked the one receipt that was genuine. It had already been altered, so he had been unable to alter it again. ‘If you check with the garage, you will find that the cashier misread the pump reading and had to alter it afterwards.’ He grabbed Mullett’s phone and thrust it at the Chief Inspector. ‘Go on. Phone them and ask.’ He stood up. ‘And when they confirm it, you can come to my office and apologise.’ Attack, he knew, was the best form of defence.

  He had hardly reached the door when Skinner roared, ‘Sit down! I haven’t finished with you yet. Then how do you explain this?’

  Frost slumped back in his chair and looked at the petrol receipt pinned to the desktop by Skinner’s finger. His heart sank. ‘What about it?’ he asked, knowing damn well that if the bastard had checked he would know too bloody well what it was about.

  The bastard had checked. ‘A bit off the beaten track, like most of the garages you choose to use, but I took a ride down there. The site was deserted. Elm Tree Garage has been closed for over two years.’

  Frost’s brain raced, churning this over. Sod it! He’d been getting too flaming careless. Mullett was so easy to fool, especially when he was caught on the hop and made to sign expense claims he didn’t have time to check first. Sod, sod and double sod. He’d meant to throw those old blank receipt forms away ages ago. Stupid, stupid fool! ‘I don’t know how that happened,’ he muttered. ‘I must have tucked the receipt in my wallet ages ago and got it mixed up with the current ones.’ He peered at Skinner to see how this was going down. It wasn’t going anywhere!

  Skinner was shaking his head. ‘With a current date?’

  ‘I probably noticed the date was wrong, so I put a new one in,’ offered Frost, trying to suggest it was the most natural thing to do with an old receipt.

  Smirking superciliously, and staring at Frost as he did so, Skinner began to line up a series of petrol receipts on the desktop as if he was displaying a Royal Flush ‘And you did the same for these other five Elm Tree Garage receipts. How do you account for that?’