“I don’t think you’ll find her in the bed,” said Frost. He had pulled out the drawers of the bedside cabinet and was rummaging through the contents.
“I was checking to see if her pyjamas were there,” sniffed Webster. “If she’d done a bunk I would have expected her to take them with her. They’re not here.”
“But that doesn’t mean she’s taken them with her,” said Frost, pushing the drawers shut. “She might be like Marilyn Monroe and wear nothing in bed but her aftershave.” He lifted the top sheet and brought it to his nose. “Tell you what, though, my hairy son, she wears a pretty sexy perfume in bed .. . smells like that stuff farmers use to get pigs to mate. Mullett’s wife smothers herself in it.”
Webster took a sample sniff. It certainly was pretty heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old. He was reassessing young Karen by the minute. “Could we check the bathroom to see if her toothbrush and stuff have gone?” he asked. “No girl would run away without her toothbrush.”
“Good idea,” said Frost, “I’m dying for a pee.”
The first door they tried led to the Dawsons’ bedroom, a vast room with a canopied bed, the walls covered in some kind of padded velvet. The next door opened on to the bathroom, fully tiled in red Italian marble. It contained a large circular sunken bath that could have doubled as a swimming pool. The bath had taps made of gold, as did the matching sink basin. A red carpet matched the tiles, and all the towels matched the carpet.
Frost surveyed the bath in awe. “If I had a bath like that, son, I’d definitely have to get out if I wanted a pee.”
The bathroom cabinet was concealed behind a mirror over the sink. Webster opened it and was searching through its contents when the door burst open and Dawson charged in. He reacted angrily when he saw what Webster was doing.
“Who gave you permission to go through our private possessions?”
“We’re checking to see if your daughter’s toothbrush is still here, sir,” said Webster patiently. He had found two toothbrushes in a beaker, one red, the other green. He showed them to Dawson. “Do either of these belong to Karen? It is important, sir.”
“Karen’s brush is orange.” He pushed Webster out of the way and rummaged impatiently through the cabinet. “It should be here somewhere.” He yelled for his wife to come up. “Karen’s toothbrush he snapped as she entered the bathroom, ‘where is it?” He moved so she could get to the cabinet.
Standing on tiptoe, she peered inside, moving things out of the way.
“It should be here,” she said.
“I didn’t ask where it should be,” Dawson told her sarcastically, “I asked where it was. Apparently, it’s important.”
“It isn’t here,” Clare said eventually. “None of Karen’s stuff is here her toilet bag, flannel, toothpaste .. .”
Webster leaned against the wall and folded his arms. Annoyingly, it looked as if Frost’s theory was correct. The girl had run away.
“If Karen took her toilet things with her,” Frost told the parents, ‘it does rather suggest she went of her own free will.”
Dawson’s face reddened to match the Italian tiles. “Are you suggesting Karen has run away from home? You’re an idiot, man. A bloody idiot. You don’t know my daughter. She loved her home. She wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Lots of teenagers do it, Mr. Dawson,” said Webster. “Not necessarily because of anything to do with home. There could be trouble at school ... or an upset with a boy friend.”
Dawson regarded the detective constable as if he were an imbecile. “A boy friend? My Karen? She’s only fifteen, for God’s sake, a mere child! And what about that man Debbie saw? What is he supposed to be, a mirage ... a teenage sex fantasy?”
“I’m not convinced she saw anyone, sir,” Frost said. “She had doubts herself.” He buttoned up his mac to show he was ready to leave.
“So you intend doing nothing?”
“Not a lot we can do,” said Frost. “We’ll issue her description, circulate her photograph, ask everyone to keep an eye open for her. I don’t think she’ll be away for long.”
They heard a phone ringing. Dawson snapped his fingers for his wife to answer, but when Frost suggested the caller might be Karen, he dashed out to answer it himself.
Frost sat down on the toilet seat and lit up his thirty-eighth cigarette of the day. He gave the woman a friendly smile. “Anything you want to tell us while your husband isn’t here, Mrs. Dawson?”
Her face went white, then she pretended to be puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Frost shrugged. “Then it’s my mistake, Mrs. Dawson.” He stood up as her husband returned. “It’s for you, Inspector Denton Police Station. You can use the phone in Karen’s room.”
The caller was Bill Wells. To Frost’s delight, he could hear the noise of the party in the background. There was still a chance he would make it.
“Hello Jack,” Wells intoned in his usual gloomy voice, “Can you talk freely?”
“Yes,” confirmed Frost.
“What’s the score with Karen Dawson?”
“Zero. Her old man thinks she’s been kidnapped, but my bet is she’s done a bunk.”
“Don’t be too sure she’s all right, Jack. We might have found her.”
Frost caught his breath. Suddenly he felt cold and apprehensive.
“Might?”
“We’ve had an anonymous phone call. A man. He says there’s a girl’s body in Denton Woods. I think you’d better take a look.”
Dawson poked his head round the door. “Anything wrong, Inspector?”
“No,” said Frost. “Just something we’ve got to look into. I might be back to you later on, sir. If there’s any news, that is.”
Tuesday night shift (4)
Upstairs, the party was throbbing away louder than ever and showing no signs of breaking up. Wells heard stamping, shrieking, roars of laughter, and the sound of glass smashing. A load of bloody hooligans, he thought as he tried to hear what the caller was saying. “I’m sorry, sir, bit of a disturbance outside. Would you mind repeating that?”
The man sounded out of breath and was barely whispering into the phone.
“I’ve found a body. In Denton Woods. A girl.”
Wells stiffened. Another body! Just when he was praying for a nice, quiet, peaceful night. With his free hand he knuckled the panel to Control and, when Ridley opened it, signalled for him to listen in on the extension.
“A girl’s body, you say, sir?” He picked up his pen, ready to write down the details.
“That’s right. A young girl .. ‘. a kid.”
A kid! The sergeant’s first thought was of the previous call he had logged. Karen Dawson, fifteen, missing from home since this afternoon.
“I see, sir. And where exactly is she?”
“I told you. In Denton Woods. Off the main path, behind some bushes.”
“Where in the woods, sir? We’ll have to have the exact location.”
A pause, then a click and the line went dead. The caller had hung up.
Wells replaced the receiver and cursed. “Damn!”
“Sounded a nutter to me,” called Ridley, hanging up the extension.
Wells nodded. They were always receiving bogus calls from cranks with a grudge against the law, who took delight in wasting police time and money. But you couldn’t take chances. It had to be assumed that all calls were genuine until proved otherwise. “What cars have you got?” he asked the controller.
Ridley didn’t need to consult his map. With half the strength drinking themselves stupid upstairs, only two cars were available, and one of them, PC Shelby’s patrol car, was failing to respond. This was not untypical of Shelby! “There’s only Charlie Alpha, Sarge, and that’s on the way to a domestic on the red-brick estate.” A ‘domestic’ meant a family row or disturbance.
“Forget the domestic,” he was told. “I want Charlie Alpha to divert immediately to Demon Woods.” He vented his annoyance by kicking the leg of his desk. “O
ne bloody area car! How am I supposed to cover a division of this size with one lousy area car?”
Shutting his ears to the sergeant’s moans, Ridley thumbed the transmit button and called Charlie Alpha. While he waited for the response, he asked, “Exactly where in Demon Woods, Sarge?”
“How the hell do I know?” snarled Wells. “I’m not a bloody mind reader! You heard what he said off the main path, behind some bushes.”
A burst of static from the loudspeaker. “Charlie Alpha to Control. On our way to domestic on the red-brick estate in response to your previous message, over.”
“Forget the domestic, Charlie Alpha. Proceed immediately to Denton Woods and initiate search. Anonymous report of young girl’s body behind bushes, off main path. Over.” He waited, his thumb hovering over the transmit button, for Charlie Alpha to request the precise location.
“Would you give us a more precise location, Control? There are main paths running the length and breadth of Denton Woods.”
“That is all the information we have, Charlie Alpha,” replied Ridley in an aggravatingly reasonable voice. “Over and out.” He heard the door open behind him as Wells came into the room.
“But there’s four hundred acres of woods, miles of paths, and thousands of bloody bushes .. Charlie Alpha pointed out.
Wells was getting fed up with this. He snatched the handset from Ridley. “Then you’ll be spoiled for bloody choice, won’t you, Charlie Alpha? Just go and look for her and don’t bloody argue!”
“Over and out,” said Charlie Alpha hurriedly.
Ridley stuck the marker for Charlie Alpha in the green-coloured expanse of Denton Woods on his wall map. “They’ll need some help, Sarge. Should we break up the party?”
Wells pinched his nose and gave it some serious thought. It was tempting, very tempting, and it would serve those noisy sods right to be turfed out into the dark and cold to search the woods. But if the call turned out to be a hoax and he had deployed half the force on a fruitless search, all on overtime, he’d never hear the last of it. Mullett would grind on and on about it for weeks. On the other hand, if it was genuine and he ignored it -He groaned. He was in a no-win situation.
To play it safe, he decided to phone Jack Frost. It might be his
missing schoolgirl, and if the inspector wanted more men, it was up to
him to ask for them. He picked up the phone and dialled the number of
the Dawson house. “Denton Police here, sir. Sorry to trouble you,
but
I
wonder if I could have a word with Detective Inspector Frost?”
The traffic lights glowed an angry red in the darkness as Webster ignored them, speeding the car straight across the road junction. “Slow down, son,” Frost murmured. “There’s four hundred acres of forest to search. The odd second isn’t going to make much difference.”
Frost’s request received the same sort of treatment as the traffic lights, and Webster’s foot pressed down on the accelerator. Watching the street lights zip past at seventy-five miles an hour, Frost checked that his seat belt was fastened, then fumbled in his pocket for the photograph of the missing girl and studied it gloomily. I hope this body isn’t Karen Dawson, he told himself. I’d hate to be the one who had to break the news to her father. Break the news! He sat up straight and banged his fist on the dashboard. “Knickers! We were supposed to be breaking the news to Ben Cornish’s old lady. What time is it?”
Webster twisted his hand on the steering wheel so he could see his wristwatch. “Ten past one.”
Frost settled back in the seat, relieved it was too late to do it tonight. “We’ll do it tomorrow, first thing. It’ll be our number-one treat before the post-mortem.” He paused for a second. “Are you any good at breaking bad news, son?”
“No,” said Webster hurriedly. The inspector wasn’t dumping that rotten job on him.
“Pity,” sighed Frost. “I’m bloody hopeless. How do you tell someone their son was found dead, choked in his own vomit, floating in a pool of piddle. There’s no way you can tart up that sort of news.”
They were approaching the dense blackness of the woods. Frost scrubbed the wind-screen with his cuff and squinted through, trying to locate Charlie Alpha. “There it is, son,” he yelled, pointing to the white-and-black Ford Sierra tucked neatly into a lay-by. Webster coasted the Cortina snugly in behind it.
The wind slashed at them as they left the warmth of the car. Frost wound his scarf tighter and buried his hands deeply into his mac pocket as they trudged along a path in search of Jordan and Simms, the Charlie Alpha crew. Webster was the first to spot the dots of torch beams bobbing in the distance.
The path they followed twisted and turned, so it was nearly five minutes before they heard low voices. A sharp turn, and just ahead of them were the two uniformed men, Jordan and Simms, greatcoat collars turned up, huddled against the trunk of an enormous oak tree, dragging at cigarettes. At the approach of the detectives they spun around guiltily, pinched out their cigarettes, and snapped to attention.
“Hard at work, I see,” said Frost.
They grinned sheepishly. “Have you come to give us a hand, then, sir?” asked Jordan, who sported a drooping, Mexican-bandit moustache.
“You mean to say you haven’t found her yet?”
“Found her, sir? Some nutter phones the station and says there’s a body behind a bush, and me and Simms are supposed to search four hundred acres in the dark. It’s bloody ludicrous.”
Frost showed them Karen Dawson’s photograph. “There’s a chance it might be this kid. She’s fifteen years old, missing from home since one o’clock this afternoon.”
They studied it under the light of Simms’s torch. “Why should it be her?” asked the moon-faced Simms. “As many as twenty teenagers around here go missing every week.”
“A man was reported lurking inside her house as she came home from school. She hasn’t been seen since,” said Webster.
Heads turned toward him. They hadn’t seen the bearded bloke before.
“Are you the ex-inspector?” asked Simms. “The one who got kicked out of Braybridge?”
Another sneering bastard, Webster thought, his hands balling into fists. “What if I am?”
“Rotten luck,” commented Simms mildly.
The oak offered shelter from the wind, and Frost was in no hurry to move on. He offered his cigarettes around. Only Webster, with an impatient jerk of his head, declined to accept one. Jordan’s lighter did the rounds.
Webster looked out on to the dark mass of trees which seemed to stretch on and on for miles. “It’s hopeless with only the four of us. We should ask the station for reinforcements.”
Frost forced out a stream of smoke which the wind snatched and tore into shreds. “A full-scale search would have to be properly organized, so it couldn’t even begin until the morning. Let’s give it a whirl ourselves first -unless anyone else wants to chip in with a suggestion?” He looked hopefully at the two uniformed men, who shook their heads, engrossed in studying the branches of the oak tree. They were paid to do what they were told, not to work out campaign plans.
“Right,” said Frost, pulling himself up straight. “Lacking evidence to the contrary, we’ve got to assume that there is a body a girl alive or dead. While we’re assuming, let’s give ourselves a bit of incentive and make her alive .. . not only alive, but a rampant quivering nymphomaniac with enormous knockers, fully prepared to bestow her hot lusty favours on the man who finds her.”
Jordan and Simms grinned. At least Frost was making it interesting.
“Right,” he continued. “Now keep that dirty picture in mind while we transfer our attention to the herbert who tripped over her and phoned the station.”
He dropped his cigarette end to the ground and crushed it under his heel. “It’s late at night. So what was he doing skulking behind bushes? Obvious answer: He wanted to do a pee and, either ashamed of or too modest to flaunt his equipment, decided to commune p
rivately with nature behind a convenient bush, only to find this nympho’s supine body. So he bottled it up and legged it to the nearest blower to call the cops. How does that sound?”
They paused to consider this. It sounded feasible.
“Sergeant Wells said the man was phoning from a public call box,” Frost continued.
“I noticed a phone box near where we parked the car,” offered Webster.
“There are phone boxes all over the bloody place,” said Jordan gloomily.
“We’ve got to start from somewhere,” said Frost, ‘and that’s as good a
place as any. We’ll go up the main paths, searching behind the bushes
on either side. If we can’t find anything, we’ll go to another phone
box. And if we have no joy in a couple of hours, we’ll call in the
heavy mob from the station.” ‘
It was Simms who found her. And by pure chance, because Frost’s reasoning was completely wrong. After getting himself entangled in a flesh-clawing clutch of blackberry thorns, he made a wide detour to take him clear of another thicket and bramble. He squeezed through a tight gap between two bushes.
And there she was, white and still, lying on her back.
She was naked, her cold, still flesh gleaming like silver in the harsh moonlight.
“Here!” yelled Simms. “Over here.” He directed his torch beam into the sky like a beacon, then knelt beside her, shining his torch on her face. He shuddered. Her face was a swollen, bloody mess, the eyes puffy and blackened, the nose misshapen and broken. Blood from her nose had clotted, forming a sticky mask all over the lower part of her face and neck.
The body was blood-streaked, scarcely an inch free of livid bruises.
Scattered on the grass around her were items of ripped-off clothing. She looked dead. He touched her. Her body was icy. He bent his ear to the wreckage of her mouth, holding his breath as he tried to detect the slightest whisper of life. Nothing at first, only the hammering of his own heart, but then the faint wheezing rasp of tortured lungs. Fumbling with the buttons, he dragged off his greatcoat and draped it over the girl.
A Touch of Frost Page 6