Hard Frost

by R D Wingfield

  "So what did you do with your school clothes flush them down the pan? They weren't with you while you were in the bank."

  "All right, all right!" She was almost shouting. "Ian met me round the corner from my house in his van. My mother doesn't like me going out with him. I changed in the back of his van while he drove me to the bank. He waited for me, then took me to his place. Satisfied?"

  "Perfectly," said Frost, standing up. "I just wanted to get the incongruities straightened out. Thanks for your time." He gave the girl a brisk nod, then he and Liz left the school.

  In the car, Liz said, "She was lying."

  "Of course she was," said Frost. "So let's nip round and see Ian what's-his-name and find out what sort of lies he's going to tell us."

  There was a van parked outside the house, a battered, rust-riddled light brown Ford with the name of the previous trader crudely erased with black paint.

  "Your witness said the van he saw was light brown," said Frost.

  "I thought you didn't believe him," sniffed Liz.

  "I can be flexible when it suits me," smirked Frost. "Sometimes I'm flexible when it doesn't suit me." He pressed the door bell.

  Ian Grafton was eighteen, tall and wiry, wearing his black greasy hair in a thick pigtail. He took them to his upstairs flat.

  "I expect Tracey's phoned you about us, Ian," said Frost, noting the pay-phone on the landing. "Just wanted to confirm a couple of things."

  Grafton occupied a bed-sit. He was unemployed. Social Security paid the rent. His last job was doing deliveries for a local furniture shop, but the job collapsed when the firm went bust some twelve months ago. He hadn't worked since. They sat on the bed in his small room with its pop posters and the midi hi-fi unit and went through the motions of scribbling down his confirmation of Tracey's story. He agreed every word of it and Frost was sure he too was lying.

  "You waited outside the bank for her?" asked Frost. "Now, thinking back on it, did you notice anything suspicious ... any weirdos hanging about?"

  "The only weirdo was a fat tart of a traffic warden who gave me a flaming ticket for parking on a double yellow line." He snatched it from a shelf and waved it at Frost who squinted at the date and time. It tallied.

  "Thank you, Ian. We might want to speak to you again."

  He took another look at the van as they left. The same colour as the one the witness saw, but if it received a parking ticket at 9.35, then it couldn't have been the van the naked Carol Stanfield was held in. He worried away at this, but the pieces refused to fit.

  He didn't have time to brood for long. As soon as Liz opened the car door, there was a radio message. Would Frost get over to the mortuary right away. The mother hadn't committed suicide. She had been murdered.

  "Murdered?" said Frost.

  The hospital pathologist, who had thought he was going to carry out a routine autopsy, nodded. "Come and see."

  The body was on the autopsy table and much of the blood had now been washed off. Her clothes had been removed and the head had been put in place, ready to be sutured back on to the torso to make her presentable for relatives. The junior technician who had been summoned to perform this task was hovering in the background.

  Frost and Liz looked down at the body. With the clothes removed, the pathologist had no need to explain. There were stab marks all over the abdomen and the area of the heart. The lower incisions were encrusted with dried blood. Frost did a quick count. She had been stabbed eleven times.

  "Shit!" This was a complication he could have done without.

  "The incision through the heart would have been enough to kill her," said the pathologist. "She was dead before she went over that railway bridge."

  Frost gave a deep sigh. "Any chance the wounds were self-inflicted, doc?" He knew it was a stupid question, but he wanted to cling to his suicide theory.

  The pathologist shook his head. "Look at her hands."

  Frost knew he should have checked before he asked. The backs of the hands showed slashes and stab wounds. They were inflicted as she tried to defend herself.

  "This is right outside my league," said the pathologist. "You'll have to get Mr. Drysdale to do the autopsy."

  "All right," said Frost. "Put her back in the fridge until he gets here."

  The junior technician helped the mortuary assistant to slide the torso on to a trolley then, with a look of distaste, carefully picked up the head and dropped it into a large polythene bag which he also placed on the trolley.

  They met Cassidy as they were walking back to the car. "Stabbed," said Frost tersely. "About eleven times. Dead before she was chucked in front of the train."

  Cassidy barely concealed a smirk. "I knew this case wasn't as straightforward as you tried to make out."

  "Nothing I touch turns out to be bloody straightforward," said Frost ruefully.

  "Have they done the autopsy?"

  "They've sent for Drysdale. If it's anything more complicated than an ingrowing toenail, this bloke doesn't want to know."

  "I'm going to pull Snell in," announced Cassidy.

  "Don't be a prat," said Frost. "You want to start putting pressure on the husband."

  "The husband couldn't have done it. Snell broke in, started to stab the kid when they all woke up and started screaming. He panics and silences them with the pillow. The mother runs in and he has to kill her as well."

  "Then why didn't he leg it and leave her? Why try to make out her death was suicide?"

  "I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

  "I'll give you a better scenario. The husband comes back from work to find his wife smirking all over her face. She tells him she's killed his kids to pay him back for leaving her on her own, night after night. He takes it amiss and goes berserk, stabbing her again and again. He realizes suspicion must fall on him, so he carts the body away and tries to make her death look like suicide."

  "He couldn't have done it," repeated Cassidy, stubbornly. "He's got a watertight alibi. Three people can confirm he was in that store until nearly two o'clock in the morning."

  "Then recheck his alibi... see if we can break it." He turned to Liz. "Is he still in hospital?"

  "Yes. They should be releasing him tomorrow."

  "Good. He was taken there straight from the house, so he was still wearing the clothes he had on that night. Get those clothes. I want Forensic to do a proper job for a change and go over every inch of them for bloodstains .. . there must have been one hell of a lot of blood." Back to Cassidy. "You'd better hang on for the autopsy. Drysdale should be here any minute. I'll make my way back to the house and wait for Forensic and the Scene of Crime boys."

  Cassidy wasn't happy at the way he was being ordered about. After all he was, if only temporarily, the same rank as Frost. But he decided to swallow it. It looked as if there could well be some embarrassing foul-ups with this case so it would be better if Frost was in charge. "Right."

  He went back through the swing doors of the mortuary to wait for the Home Office Pathologist.

  Liz dropped Frost off at the house in Cresswell Street and drove on to the hospital. The constable on duty, young PC Packer, handed over the front door key. "Go and get yourself a cup of tea or something," said Frost. "I'll be here for at least an hour." Packer nodded gratefully. It was boring standing on guard, nothing to do, no-one to talk to except when he was fending off questions from the inquisitive. There was a burger bar in the main road. He'd nip off there for a bite to eat in the warm.

  Frost let himself in and closed the door behind him. In the oppressive background of silence small sounds seemed to be exaggerated. The lounge door creaked as he pushed it open. The curtains had been drawn to stop people peering in and the room was in darkness. He clicked on the light. Was the woman killed here and taken away? If so, there should be blood, but he couldn't see any.

  He clicked off the light and went along the passage to the kitchen where there were still unwashed mugs on the small table. He should have got someone to tidy up
after they left. Blue polythene sheeting had been laid over the floor to protect it from the feet of everyone tramping in and out. He hitched a section back and peered down on to blue and white vinyl. Blood would have screamed. There was none. The white surface of the tall fridge freezer gleamed coldly. He took a look inside. Near the top, an opened tin of Heinz baby food.

  Over to the back door. At some stage one of its glass panes had been broken and a makeshift repair of a sheet of plywood nailed over the gap. The bottom of the ply was loose where the nails had been wrenched out, making it possible for anyone outside to squeeze a hand through and reach the key. This had been noted the night before, but not much attention was paid to it as the case then seemed uncomplicated.

  He left the kitchen and went down the corridor, the soft padded creak of his footsteps following him. The children's bedroom still breathed Johnson's baby powder. The beds, stripped of their clothes, were icy to the touch. Across the room, on a shelf, a row of soft toys, animals, golliwogs, dolls, stared reproachfully at him. As he turned to leave, his heart froze. A child's voice cried, "Mummy."

  It was a doll. A bloody doll on the floor and he had trodden on it. He picked it up and put it on the shelf with the others.

  Shaken, he hurried off to the darkened lounge where he sat and smoked. The heavy curtains insulated the room from outside noises, but kept in the stifling silence of the house. It was chilly and he shivered. At one stage he was jolted from his thoughts by a sound like a child giggling, but when he listened hard there was nothing.

  Footsteps up the path and someone knocking at the door. The Forensic team. "Not today, thank you," he said. "I never buy at the door."

  He went back to the lounge and left them to it. Painstaking, methodical work was not his forte and he got impatient with people who had to work this way. Young Packer reported back and was sent to check with the neighbours about what they saw or heard last night. If the mother was killed in the house she would have had to be driven to the railway bridge, so did anyone see or hear a car?

  A tap at the door. "We'd like to do this room, inspector." He was getting the distinct impression he was in the bloody way.

  He moved on to the kitchen. Harding from Forensic was out in the garden examining the door in the wall that led to the outside lane. He saw Frost and hurried over to him. "Something to show you." It was the back door. With rubber-gloved hands Harding eased back the plywood panel and pointed to its jagged bottom edge.

  Dots of red and flecks of skin. "Someone forced back the wood to get a hand through so they could turn the key from the inside. The edge of the ply grazed the back of his wrist, drawing blood. Whoever did it would have a nasty scratch on the back of the hand."

  "It could have been the father ... or even the mother," said Frost. "Forgot their front door key so came in through the back."

  "Possible," said Harding. "We should be able to do some DNA testing on the skin fragments. Find a suspect and we could match him to this. You wouldn't need a confession."

  "Science is wonderful," grunted Frost. "It's making the rubber truncheon obsolete." Two men from the Forensic team in their gleaming white boiler suits came in. "We'd like to do the kitchen now, inspector."

  Nowhere where he could sit and think and be undisturbed. He let them get on with it and caught a bus back to the station.

  Cassidy was waiting for him in the murder incident room. He had the results of the post-mortem on the mother. "Numerous stab wounds to the abdomen and heart. The wound to the heart killed her and she would have died almost instantly. Stab marks on her hands where she fought off her attacker."

  "What sort of knife?"

  "Single edge, sharp-pointed. Could have been a kitchen knife."

  "Time of death?"

  "Between eleven and one o'clock last night."

  Frost told Cassidy about the back door panel. Cassidy's eyes glinted with satisfaction. "I want to bring Snellin ... now."

  "He should be back at Newcastle," said Frost. He hoped and prayed Snell would be there, sitting in his flat, reading his bible, the backs of his hands entirely without a scratch ... "He isn't," said Cassidy. "The Newcastle police have checked."

  Frost stared out of the window. With low-lying, heavy black rain clouds, it was already dark outside. "AH right. Let's try and find him."

  Ten.

  A few minutes past four o'clock in the afternoon and it was already dark with the ominous rumble of thunder in the distance as Cassidy pulled up outside Snell's house in Parnell Terrace. Only one of the street lights was on, the other had been vandalized, its metal cover forced off and the spaghetti of coloured wires wrenched out. No lights shone from the house and there was no reply to Cassidy's pounding at the door. Outside the front door five bulging dustbin sacks lolled against the wall.

  Frost crouched to take a peek through the letter box into more darkness. "We'd better take a look round inside."

  "Do you have a key?" sneered Cassidy.

  "Don't need one, son. What's that?" He pointed into the darkened street. As Cassidy's head jerked to look there was the sound of breaking glass; when he turned back Frost seemed to be replacing an empty milk bottle on the step and the glass pane of the front door was shattered. "Looks as if someone has tried to break in here," said Frost. "We'd better check." He stuck his hand through the broken pane and unlocked the door from the inside.

  Cassidy didn't want to get involved with any of Frost's corner cutting, but there seemed to be no chance of anyone finding out, so he followed him inside.

  The hall light came on when Frost tried. There were two preprinted postcards on the door mat, one from the Electricity Board, the other from the Gas company. Both were dated that day and each said that their service engineer had called at 9 a.m." 'as requested by you for the purpose of taking the final meter reading and cutting off the supply. He could obtain no answer. Please contact our office to make a fresh appointment."

  They moved through to the living-room. On the table were six carrier bags packed with the mother's personal effects. There was food in the fridge in the kitchen, a Marks and Spencer chilled meal and an unopened carton of milk. The bed was made with folded pyjamas on the pillow.

  Frost poked around a few drawers, but they had been cleared out. "He hasn't been here since last night," he decided. "The bed hasn't been slept in."

  "He could have made it after he got up," said Cassidy.

  "No, son. He was going back to Newcastle today. He was all packed up, ready to go. He might make the bed after he got up, but he wouldn't fold his pyjamas and bung them on the pillow. And he'd have opened up the milk for a cup of tea." He chewed his thumb knuckle thoughtfully. "He went out last night, but didn't come back. Why?"

  "I'd have thought that was obvious," snapped Cassidy. "He killed the kids, then the mother and he's now on the run."

  "I can't buy that, son. Why should he try to make the mother's death look like suicide? It doesn't make sense."

  "You're looking for a rational explanation. The man's a nut-case."

  "If he chucked her in front of the train to make it look like suicide, why then has he done a bunk?"

  "Perhaps he saw the train hadn't gone over her. He wanted the body all mangled up so we wouldn't spot the knife marks. When that didn't happen, he ran."

  Frost chewed this over. It was as plausible as some of his own stupid theories, but it would mean that Snell, who up to now had been content with drawing pin pricks of blood, was suddenly a frantic mass murderer. He poked in one of the carrier bags on the kitchen table. On the top was a silver-framed photograph of the eight-year-old Sidney Snell in a sailor suit, hair combed, face washed for the camera, clutching the hand of his young mother. A sweet and innocent child .. . who grew up to be a pervert. "OK," he sighed. "Get on to Newcastle. Ask them to keep an eye on his place and if he shows up, arrest him on suspicion of murder. Tell Control to radio all patrols if they see him, arrest him on sight." He took one last look round the room. "And get someone to check this place
from time to time in case he comes back for his milk."

  The front door slammed behind them, echoing in an empty street. As their car turned the corner, a furtive figure emerged from the shadows of a derelict house on the opposite side of the road. Sidney Snell, shaking with fear. He had come back to the house to retrieve his belongings when some sixth sense warned him to wait. Sweat had broken out from every pore of his body when he saw Frost and Cassidy forcing their way in. He couldn't hear their car any more, but he hesitated, racked with indecision... Should he risk it and dash over to the house, or were they lurking round the corner waiting for him to do something stupid like that? He was tired and he was hungry. He'd had no sleep at all last night. The back of his hand was bleeding again. He sucked it and wound the dirty handkerchief tighter. What to do? God, what to do ... ?

  The old woman was waiting for Frost as he pushed through the doors to the lobby. She hurried towards him, eyes glowing. "You've got them back. The sergeant says you've got them back."

  He smiled, but she had wrong-footed him. Who the hell was she? Then he placed her. Of course ... the old dear who'd had her husband's medals pinched. Bloody hell. He hadn't had time to sort out half the stuff they'd found stacked behind the cistern in Lemmy Hoxton's house. "Your medal yes, love ... If you'd like to formally identify it.. ."

  He took her into the main interview room and they waited for Burton to lug in the large cardboard box. The medal, in its black case, was. near the top. It deserved more respect than being piled on top of the other junk. He gave it to her.

  She beamed her delight. "I never thought I'd see this again." She took the DFM out and held it close to her cheek. "He wanted our son to have it. There was going to be a baby, but I lost it when our house was bombed and I had a miscarriage. The doctor said it would have been a boy."

  Frost nodded in sympathy and explained they would have to hang on to the medal for a little while. "Don't worry, love, it'll be safe here. I'll look after it." Look after it! He grinned wryly to himself ... as well as I looked after forty grand's worth of jewellery from the Stanfield robbery? Which reminded him of the treat to come. He was going to have to face Mullett about that.