Frost 6 - A Killing Frost

by R D Wingfield

  He let his eyes travel round the room: harsh neon lights burning down on the autopsy tables; green-tiled walls; the blue flicker of the electric insect-killers, of more use in hot weather than now. Somewhere a tap was dripping. There always seemed to be a dripping tap, plop-plop- plopping into a stainless-steel sink. Two autopsy tables. Two bodies. Two for the price of one. That tasteless thought reminded him of the supermarket and the blackmailer, now stuck on the back-burner. What the hell was he going to do about that? The thought was chopped short as he realised all eyes were on him. Drysdale, looking annoyed, had asked him something and was waiting for an answer.

  ‘Sorry, Doc. I was miles away.’

  Drysdale raised his eyes to the heavens and expelled a theatrical sigh. ‘Sorry I’m not holding your attention, Inspector, but I ventured to ask if the bodies had been formally identified.’

  ‘Yes, Doc. Both of them.’

  ‘I asked because that specific section of the “Autopsy Request” form had been left blank and my mind-reading ability is not at its best today.’

  ‘That’s all right, Doc,’ said Frost grandly. ‘We all have our off-days’ He quickly filled in the form and handed it to Drysdale, who waved it towards his secretary, who took it and slipped it in a folder.

  ‘Could the body be turned face-down, please,’ requested Drysdale.

  Frost moved back to let the photographer and the mortuary attendant perform this task. One of the few perks of being an inspector was that you could get your subordinates to do the jobs you hated doing.

  ‘Hands tied behind her back by ligatures around the wrists,’ Drysdale intoned to his secretary. The clicking and purring of the camera was accompanied by the blinding glare of flash-guns as these details were recorded.

  Frost moved forward so he could see better. Debbie’s back was criss-crossed with angry bruises and red weals. Her wrists were tied with tough twine; blood had seeped where it had bitten deeply, cutting into the flesh and making it red raw. Debbie must have struggled frantically to free herself.

  Harding from Forensic cut the twine free from the wrists, leaving the complicated knots intact. He held it up to be photographed before placing it carefully into an evidence bag. He then took scrapings from each of the fingernails while the pathologist tapped his foot and sucked air through his teeth impatiently.

  Drysdale then carried out a careful examination of the girl’s body, from the top of her head back down to her feet, stepping back and again waiting impatiently while Harding took swabs from the feet in case they yielded clues as to where she had been undressed and killed. He also took swabs from the weals on her back.

  ‘Now lay her on her back, please,’ said Drysdale, selecting another scalpel from the row of shining instruments laid out on a green cloth at the head of the autopsy table. He made a long, deep incision down the white flesh of the stomach. Again Frost turned his head away. After God knows how many post-mortems he had attended, he knew the routine off by heart. He knew the various stages without looking: the sounds, the scents, the whining and the burnt-flesh smell of the bone-saw as the whirring blade cut into the bone, the plopping noise, followed by the clang of the scales, as organs were weighed. He could never see the point of weighing the various organs. Drysdale’s secretary leant forward to take the reading from the scales. It was like buying offal from a butcher.

  The organs were transferred to a plastic container ready for the mortuary attendant to replace them and stitch up the body after the pathologist had walked away from the carnage of his autopsy. Frost shot a quick glance at Kate Holby to see how she was taking it. She was white-faced and was biting her lip hard, but didn’t flinch when Drysdale’s knife made a delicate cut so he could peel the flesh of the face away from the skull, like removing a Hallowe’en mask.

  Drysdale now bent down and parted the girl’s legs. ‘Much bruising. Sexual penetration took place shortly before death. She was not a virgin.’

  Frost’s head shot up. Twelve years old and not a virgin? The boyfriend, who was now covered with a sheet on the other autopsy table, awaiting Drysdale’s attention . . . or the crocodile-tear-dropping bastard of a father?

  The pathologist was now gently scraping with a spatula. ‘No trace of semen.’ He permitted himself a wry smile. ‘People know too much about DNA these days. It seems a condom was used.’ Dropping the spatula into a stainless-steel kidney bowl, he examined the rest of the body, which yielded nothing that would help. ‘Death by manual strangulation,’ he told Frost, ‘and she was brutally raped just before death.’ He prised open the girl’s mouth and shone a torch inside, the beam bouncing off perfect teeth. He then turned his attention to the eyes.

  ‘Any sign that she was gagged, Doc?’ asked Frost.

  ‘If there was, Inspector, you can be sure I would have mentioned it in the hope you were paying attention,’ sniffed the pathologist, as if explaining to a child.

  ‘Check again, Doc. It’s important’

  Drysdale stared at Frost. ‘And why, pray, is it important?’

  ‘When she was being raped, she’d have screamed her bleeding head off. If there was no gag, she must have been somewhere where there was no chance of her screams being heard.’

  Drysdale’s mouth twitched in annoyance, but he did a more thorough examination. ‘Definitely no sign of a gag. Her killer could have clamped his hand over her mouth.’

  ‘She’d have bitten the bastard’s fingers off,’ said Frost.

  ‘It’s for you to advance theories, not me,’ sniffed the pathologist. ‘I deal only with facts. May I now continue with this autopsy, or do you want me to examine everything all over again?’

  ‘No. You’ve been reasonably thorough, Doc,’ conceded Frost. ‘You carry on.’

  Drysdale finished the examination of the girl without finding anything further that would help. They then moved to the boy on the other table.

  ‘Arms broken, both legs broken. He’s fallen or been dropped from a height of some twenty-four feet or so. His left leg would have been under him when he hit the ground and snapped at the ankle. Back of hands and knuckles badly bruised, two knuckles on right hand broken - they were hit hard with a stone of some sort. Grit embedded in palms. Back of skull caved in. A heavy, deliberate blow from a blunt instrument causing death.’

  Drysdale took his fingernail scrapings and swabbed off some of the grit from the boy’s hands.

  At last the double autopsy was over and Drysdale was washing his hands at the sink.

  Frost ambled over to Kate Holby, who was talking to the photographer. ‘You all right, love?’

  She smiled and nodded, but he could see her hands were shaking.

  ‘I hate it when it’s kids,’ said Frost.

  Frost perched himself on the corner of the desk in the Incident Room and surveyed his team, who looked as tired and worn out as he felt. They had been searching, hoping to find the two kids alive, and now fatigue had hit them. And still there was no sign of Jan O’Brien.

  Frost swilled down his tea and lit up. ‘As you know, we’ve found the missing girl, Debbie Clark - ’ He turned and jabbed a finger at the photograph on the pinboard. ‘Stripped, beaten, raped and strangled. And Thomas Harris, arms and legs broken and his skull caved in. He’d fallen or been pushed from a height of some twenty feet or more on to gravel. We’ve got to find the site where he fell. We’ve come up with no CCTV footage of the kids cycling through the town, so they presumably went out of town somewhere. I’m guessing the site will be remote because the girl wasn’t gagged and the poor little moo would have screamed her head off. So, somewhere remote, with a twenty-foot drop and surrounded by gravel. Start studying detailed maps and see if you come up with any thing. We’ve got the girl’s bike, we haven’t got the boy’s bike. I want it found. We covered a lot of places when we were searching for the bodies, so we can eliminate them.’ He looked out of the window. ‘It’s peeing with rain and too flaming dark to start looking tonight, so we’ll make an early start tomorrow. It should be
light enough by seven, so meet here tomorrow morning at six thirty;’ A groan from his audience. ‘All right, if you don’t think that’s early enough, let’s make it five o’clock.’

  PC Collier’s hand shot up. ‘What about the stake-out at the building-society cashpoints?’

  ‘Shit,’ said Frost. He’d forgotten about it again. Anyway, it was low priority now. ‘Thanks to our beloved commander showing County what a good boy he is by lending them more bodies than anyone else for the drugs bust, we now haven’t got the manpower. Our blackmailer might do the decent thing and give it a miss tonight in view of the weather, but if he doesn’t it’s only five hundred quid and Beazley can easily afford that. If he moans, we’ll have a whip-round for him.’ He looked up as Bill Wells came in.

  ‘Inspector, those bits of leg you keep finding.’

  Frost groaned. ‘Don’t tell me some more has turned up.’

  ‘No. Got a customer for you, Jack. He wants to give himself up. He used to be a butcher. He reckons he killed his wife and cut her up in little pieces.’

  Frost stared at Wells, who didn’t seem to be joking. ‘Tell him to come back tomorrow, we’re too shagged out tonight for confessions.’

  ‘I’ve put him in Interview Room Number One,’ said Wells.

  ‘You’re no fun any more,’ said Frost, pushing himself up off the desk and scooping up his pack of cigarettes.

  He followed Wells to the Interview Room.

  The man didn’t look anything like a typical butcher should. Far from being a fat, jolly, rosy cheeked man in a striped apron and straw hat, he was thin and pale and in his late forties. Sitting hunched up at the table, he leapt to his feet when Frost and Wells came in.

  Frost waved him down. ‘Please sit down, Mr . . .?’ He glanced at the report sheet Wells had filled in, which told him the man was Albert Lewis of 23 Victoria Street, Denton. ‘Sit down, Mr Lewis.’ Frost stared at the man, who looked vaguely familiar. He riffled through the disorganised filing cabinet of his memory, but details eluded him. ‘Have we met before, Mr Lewis?’

  Lewis shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  You’re lying, you bastard, thought Frost. He excused himself and went out to the main desk where PC Collier was standing in for Wells. ‘Check the computer, son. See if you can get anything on a Mr Albert Lewis, 23 Victoria Street, Denton. I’m in Interview Room Number One.’

  Back with Lewis, he shook a cigarette from the packet and stuck it in his mouth.

  ‘Please don’t smoke,’ said Lewis. ‘It’s a filthy habit. It spreads germs. Germs kill.’

  Frost groaned inwardly. This was going to be a bundle of laughs. You’d better have murdered your wife, mate, he said to himself. I hope I’m not sitting here fagless for one of those nutters who like to confess to all manner of crimes to get a bit of attention. Lewis looked as if he lacked attention.

  He stuck the cigarette back in its packet. ‘I understand you’re a butcher, Mr Lewis?’

  ‘I was. Not now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘For over twenty years I had a small shop in Ruckley Street. Quality meat. Good prices. People came from miles around. Then the bloody supermarkets started undercutting. I lost all my customers. I could barely scrape a living . . . couldn’t pay the rent. I was evicted.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ sympathised Frost. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Six - nine months ago. I didn’t come here to talk about my shop.’

  ‘Of course not. My sergeant tells me you’ve murdered your wife?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lewis flatly, as if it was of minor interest.

  Frost waited for details, but none came. ‘And cut her up in little pieces?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when did this happen?’

  Lewis wiped a hand over his face. ‘I don’t know - a week ago? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Not the sort of everyday incident that usually slips the mind,’ suggested Frost, casting a despairing glance at Wells.

  ‘We quarrelled. I lost my temper. I killed her.’

  ‘What was the quarrel about?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  There was a tap at the door and PC Collier came in with a computer printout. Frost skimmed through it and nodded his thanks. He turned back to Lewis. ‘A quarrel so serious you killed her, but you don’t remember it?’

  Lewis stared blankly at the inspector. ‘That’s right.’

  Frost yawned. This was all a bleeding waste of time; he was dying for a cigarette and the chance to get his head down. ‘But you definitely remember killing her? Can you give me the odd detail?’

  Lewis stared into space for a while before replying. ‘Something snapped. We were in the kitchen. There was a rolling pin. I must have hit her and hit her. I don’t remember doing it. There was screaming and suddenly there was silence and she was on the floor and there was blood all over her and blood on the rolling pin and blood on me. I couldn’t believe I’d killed her.’

  ‘You were sure she was dead?’

  Lewis nodded slowly. ‘Oh yes. Her skull was smashed. There was blood and brains . . .’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I dragged her body to the bathroom and managed to get her into the bath.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  Lewis screwed up his face as if in pain and shook his head to ease the memory. ‘I had to dispose of the body. I had to cut her up.’

  ‘You cut her up?’ echoed Frost.

  ‘I managed to undress her, then I got some sharp knives and a bone-saw. I used to be a butcher. I still had my tools. I sawed off her arms, then her legs . . . then her head.’ Again he shuddered and winced at the memory. ‘I can still hear the sound of the saw going through her bones.’

  Frost winced too. It dragged back the memory of the post-mortem on the two kids. ‘Right. So you cut her up into bite-sized chunks. Then what?’

  ‘I turned on the bath taps to flush away the blood. I put her remains in two plastic dustbin sacks and I disposed of them.’

  ‘Where?’

  Lewis dropped his head. ‘I don’t remember.’

  Frost yawned again. ‘I wonder how I guessed you were going to say that.’

  ‘I said it because I don’t remember,’ retorted Lewis.

  ‘You don’t remember, Mr Lewis, because it never bloody well happened, did it? You’re making all this up, aren’t you?’

  Lewis blinked rapidly in astonishment. ‘What are you talking about? I’m telling you, I killed my wife.’

  ‘The only crime you’ve committed is wasting police time,’ Frost told him. He waved the computer printout. ‘I thought I remembered you. Last year you came in here and said you’d murdered your wife. You said you’d strangled her with the flex from the electric iron.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I believed you - right until we went round to your house and your wife opened the door to us. Even someone as thick as me could work out that she wasn’t dead then.’

  ‘I was on medication then. I had depression after losing my business. I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s all different now. I really I killed her. I’ll show you.’ He plunged his hands under the table and brought up a plastic shopping bag. Shit, thought Frost, recoiling. I hope the sod hasn’t brought her bleeding head to show us.

  Lewis upturned the bag and shook it. A large meat cleaver thudded on to the table. ‘That’s what I used.’

  Frost picked it up and ran his thumb along the cutting edge. It was razor sharp - definitely sharp enough to sever a head from a body. He moved it well away from Lewis. ‘I can’t see any blood on it.’

  ‘I washed everything in the dishwasher, even the bone-saw’

  ‘Tell you what,’ smiled Frost. ‘Why don’t we all go back to your house and take a look around. If your wife is there she can make us all a nice cup of tea.’

  Lewis’s house was a one-bedroomed bungalow down a quiet side street. Morgan parked the car outside and they pushed open the iro
n gate and scrunched up the gravel path to the front door. Lewis fumbled in his pocket and brought out a bunch of keys. He opened the front door, then stepped back.

  ‘I don’t want to go in,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Frost, gripping him by the arm and pushing him inside. ‘I’m afraid I must insist.’

  They stepped into a small hallway with a phone on a side table against the wall. Frost shivered. There was a distinctly, hostile, unwelcoming atmosphere to the place. Everything was clean and cold to the point of sterility and reeked of furniture polish and pine disinfectant ‘Mrs Lewis,’ he called. ‘Are you there?’

  No answer. The house screamed emptiness.

  ‘She can’t answer you,’ said Lewis. ‘She’s dead.’

  A door to the right took them into the lounge, a prim and proper room with an uncomfortable-looking brown three-piece suite, and a long-unused coal fireplace with a gleaming brass fender and a beige, marble-tiled surround. At the side of the fireplace stood an old sixteen-inch television set. Frost imagined Lewis and his wife sitting stiffly side by side, frowning disapprovingly at the images on the tiny TV.

  There was a photograph on the mantelpiece: A small boy sat grinning in a toy pedal car. Standing beside the boy, looking down proudly, was a younger version of Lewis, every inch the happy father, Frost picked up the photograph to examine it more closely. ‘Your son, Mr Lewis?’

  Lewis snatched it from Frost and clutched it tightly to his chest. ‘Matthew,’ he whispered. ‘Little Matthew. He died . . . five years old . . . meningitis.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ mumbled Frost, completely wrong-footed.