Fatal Frost (DI Jack Frost)

by James, Henry

  ‘Candles. Ah yes, the altar candles allegedly used in some satanic ritual. No.’

  ‘Well, they were bloody well there!’ Frost slapped the desk, and looked in the direction of Waters for support.

  ‘It’s true,’ Waters confirmed. ‘There was a whole pile of them on Monday, in the porch. And today the old lady almost remembered, but her husband …’

  Mullett raised his hand in a lordly fashion. ‘Well, there are no candles there now, and that’s all that counts. Harding confirmed as much.’

  ‘What about the back garden? Any sign to indicate that someone may have forced their way through to the woods?’ Frost persisted.

  ‘The theory being that the body, after being brutally murdered in the front room, was somehow dragged out the through the woods over two miles to the golf course?’ Mullett patted himself for cigarettes. ‘No. Nothing there, either. And that reminds me, you’ – Mullett pointed a cigarette at Simms, slumped in the corner, half-heartedly drinking a can of lager – ‘if you were half the detective you could be, let alone think you are, and had been on the ball on Monday, you would have had Forensics either side of the garden fence looking for evidence of the housebreaker from Saturday night. Eh?’ Mullett paused to light his cigarette.

  Clarke felt embarrassed for the lad as all eyes turned on Simms.

  ‘The forced entry was from the rear of the house, was it not?’ Mullett shook his head despairingly. ‘As it is, following the deluge on Wednesday, Harding informs me, you’d be hard pushed to find tracks made by something even the size of an elephant, such is the vegetation. What a shambles,’ he said. ‘Procedure! If I have told you all once, I have told you a dozen times, the only way to get results is to follow procedure.’

  ‘Knew you couldn’t get a body through them woods – impossible,’ Simms mumbled.

  ‘Not impossible, DC Simms, impractical,’ Mullett corrected.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Frost piped up. ‘Are you suggesting you believe that Tom Hardy was murdered at Forest View?’

  ‘I am interested in the facts, Frost. The facts and the evidence alone. It looks as if the boy was there; the carpet fibre matches the strand found on his socks. If something did happen in that house, above and beyond a burglary and a garrotted cat, I would hope that even you would manage to get to the bottom of it.’

  The diary proved useless. Frost chucked it aside. It did, however, suggest a close link between Nicola Parke and Samantha Ellis. Parke was due to arrive by train from Reading first thing tomorrow morning.

  ‘OK,’ Frost said, wearily picking up his coffee. He had hoped the two girls would give contradictory statements, but he realized now how unlikely that had been. The girls were so close and had had ample opportunity to spend time getting their stories to match. To pin something on them he needed solid evidence; something that could be trusted. Suddenly it hit him. He slapped his forehead in annoyance: what on earth was he thinking of!

  They had let the Burleighs go. The father had been moaning like hell, dishing out threats of all sorts. It was close to ten.

  Frost opened the door to Interview Room 1. Both Mr Ferguson and his daughter sipped coffee that must surely be cold by now.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you,’ Frost muttered, pulling up a chair. ‘This won’t take much longer. Sarah, I’d like you to consider very carefully how you answer the next question.’ He noticed the girl was blinking heavily. Had she been doing that all along, or was it a new sign of nerves, he wondered? ‘Have you ever had a tattoo, either professionally or’ – he watched intently – ‘or home-made?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’ Mr Ferguson blustered.

  ‘I think Sarah knows exactly what I’m referring to. It’s very important that you answer truthfully. Of course, if you don’t answer, we could always call the General and request an examination.’

  ‘Stupid cow,’ Sarah Ferguson suddenly snapped angrily, ‘spoiling everyone’s fun.’

  Frost took this as an admission of guilt. A tattoo could not be hidden, and as he rightly suspected they would all have one, as part of the membership requirements. ‘Sergeant Waters, would you please pull up a pew and prepare to take Miss Ferguson’s statement.’ He addressed the girl again. ‘The demise of Miss Ellis has proved a nuisance for you. The dead can’t talk, but they can’t lie either, especially if they’ve marked themselves indelibly. Now there’s no way out, despite causing hapless detectives to jump to conclusions.’

  ‘Would someone mind telling me what on earth is going on?’ Ferguson said, exasperated.

  ‘Oh be quiet, Daddy.’ The girl sighed. ‘Yes, the School of the Five Bells does exist.’

  ‘And the members are?’

  ‘Me, Samantha Ellis, Gail Burleigh, Emily Hardy and Nicola Parke.’

  ‘Right, I will ask you again – did Tom Hardy arrive at the house in Forest View along with his sister Emily on Friday night?’

  ‘Tom turned up with Sam.’

  Frost looked askance at Waters. All they knew was that Tom had caught the bus with a girl dressed in black. They had assumed it was his sister, Emily.

  ‘Tell me.’ Waters looked up from his pad. ‘What exactly is the School of the Five Bells?’

  Sarah Ferguson looked at Waters as if for the first time. It wasn’t quite contempt in her nervous eyes, but something very close to it. ‘Just a group of girls who worship nature and the seasons in a sort of pagan way. And abhor men,’ she said piercingly.

  ‘What, like witches?’ Waters asked.

  ‘If you like.’ She shrugged.

  Frost was baffled by the girl’s nonchalance. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what were you and your friends up to before Tom and Samantha turned up?’

  ‘Messing around in Denton Woods.’

  ‘Define “messing around”,’ said Waters.

  ‘Bit of dancing and drinking. All part of our May Day celebrations.’

  ‘Any candles?’ Frost asked.

  ‘Yes.’ The girl frowned. ‘As it happens, there were. Why?’

  ‘Please don’t toy with us – this is serious. We understand exactly what went on.’

  The girl blinked again. ‘We were celebrating May Day, as I’ve told you. OK, it is a pagan thing, but so what? At least we’re not blowing up battleships on the other side of the world for a two-bit island full of sheep.’

  ‘As I’ve said,’ Frost pushed, ‘we’re trying to trace Tom Hardy’s last movements. So where was he?’

  ‘Tom Hardy?’ said the father. ‘I thought this was about Emily?’

  The girl looked equally shocked. ‘He wasn’t in the woods with us. I told you, he came by with Sam about eight. He wasn’t keen on what we got up to and always tried to talk her out of it, right up until the moment he dropped her off – on the doorstep. He wasn’t welcome.’

  ‘So he didn’t step inside the house?’

  ‘He came in, but not for long. Like I said, he wasn’t welcome.’

  ‘What did you think of Tom Hardy?’ Waters asked.

  ‘Think of him?’ The girl almost sneered. ‘I didn’t think anything of him.’

  ‘Which of you has a boyfriend apart from Samantha Ellis?’

  ‘None of us.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘None of us has boyfriends. Are you deaf?’

  That would explain the hostility towards the boy, Frost thought. Man-haters at this age. Hell’s teeth, what was the world coming to? ‘Just a little hard of hearing; it comes with old age. Why did you call Samantha Ellis “a stupid cow” who “spoiled everyone’s fun”?’ he continued.

  ‘Throwing herself off a train …’

  ‘Detective, please, what has any of this got to do with Tom Hardy? He was killed on Tuesday …’

  ‘Wrong. He was murdered on Friday night,’ Frost snapped.

  ‘No, you wait!’ Ferguson’s pitch was rising. ‘We’re here to help with the missing girl. Her brother was ripped apart by a madman …’

  ‘Mr Ferguson,’ Frost said, now standing, ‘Tom
Hardy was last seen by your daughter and her friends on Friday night.’

  ‘What are you implying? That my …’ Ferguson’s face contorted in alarm. ‘… that my daughter is in some way involved in murder?’

  Suddenly Sarah let out an ear-piercing scream.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Frost said to himself, taking a step back. The girl looked terrified. ‘Please calm down, calm down.’

  ‘Mr Frost, we must call a halt to this,’ said Ferguson, comforting his daughter, who now had tears streaming down her face. ‘We’ll not say another word without a lawyer present.’

  Frost acquiesced. He realized he’d only get so far without the father shouting for a lawyer. He’d got what he wanted – a reaction – just not the one he’d expected. He thought she’d shrug off the accusation, but the outburst he witnessed was done out of sheer fright, that or a damn good impression of it.

  Clarke made room as Frost precariously nudged the drinks tray on to the small circular pub table, which after two rounds was already crammed with glassware. She wasn’t keen on the Eagle, a grubby coppers’ pub, but at least it was unlikely she’d bump into her farmhand-stroke-builder lover in here. It was an incident she now regretted, and tried to blank from her mind. She had hoped to grab five minutes alone with Frost, but he’d invited the others along for a drink too, in an unusually gregarious gesture. She could only assume he was over-tired and this was a last surge of energy.

  Clarke and Simms had failed to make much progress questioning Gail Burleigh. The girl’s lawyer father had made things difficult, and all they’d managed to establish was that Emily Hardy was indeed at 7 Forest View on Friday night. Now, as the four of them sat drinking in an Eagle lock-in, the same fact ran through their minds: in theory, a child could murder another child, but it was hard to believe without evidence, and all they had thus far was circumstantial. One sock fibre. No blood was found anywhere at the Forest View address. This, coupled with the Ferguson girl’s horror at being implicated had made them doubt themselves.

  ‘Just because the girl screamed out,’ continued Derek Simms, ‘doesn’t mean she’s not guilty. She’s a girl; she would have screamed if a spider ran across the table.’

  ‘Derek, don’t be so ridiculous,’ Clarke said. ‘For starters, a girl capable of murder is hardly likely to be squeamish of spiders.’

  ‘Give me strength.’ Simms tapped the side of his head. ‘I know that. She’s playing us, geddit?’

  Clarke gave him a disparaging look.

  ‘Women manipulate men,’ he continued, ‘one minute screaming at spiders, the next marching on American air bases, like all those Welsh lesbians at Greenham Common. Man-haters when it suits them.’

  ‘What a load of twaddle!’ Clarke spat. ‘How much have you had?’

  ‘Evening, all. Talking politics? That time of night already, is it?’ Kim Myles had pulled up a stool next to Waters.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Frost emerged from his reverie. ‘John, what was it Sarah Ferguson said to you? About disliking men?’

  ‘Just that,’ Waters said, sipping his pint. ‘Though her exact words were something like “we abhor men”. None of them had boyfriends except Samantha Ellis.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Simms said too loudly. ‘And look what happened to her.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ Clarke sighed.

  ‘No, no. Let’s look at it differently for a second. The original School of the Five Bells was created for the purpose of revenge. The girls from St Mary’s were caught one night messing around with local boys, and the group was formed to seek vengeance on those who’d punished them and those who’d got off scot-free, although no revenge was ever exacted. What I’m saying is, we should be looking at why this current incarnation of the Five Bells exists …’

  ‘So, Jack, you’re suggesting that the girls did kill the boy for some revenge motive?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘All I’m saying is, look to the motive for re-forming the Five Bells and see what that throws up … But I still think we’re missing something.’

  ‘The Fifth Bell. Miss Parke?’

  ‘There’s her, yes … but something else too.’

  ‘She’s coming back by train,’ Simms explained. ‘First thing tomorrow. I told her we wanted a chat and she suggested meeting her at the station.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Frost said, stifling a yawn. ‘Someone actually being forthcoming, a first in this case.’

  Clarke watched Myles and Waters link arms and make their way down the street, laughing together. Simms ambled off after them, swaying slightly and calling for them to wait up.

  ‘Well,’ she said to Frost. ‘What’s it to be?’

  It was 12.45. Frost, though dishevelled and tired, looked sharp and sober in the moonlight, his eyes shining brightly.

  ‘I’m needed at home,’ he said.

  ‘At this time of night? For what?’ She huffed. She could feel herself getting emotional, no doubt intensified by the drink. She bit her bottom lip. ‘Look, the lad I was seeing … it was nothing. I just did it to—’

  Frost placed his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘It’s not that, love,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Mary is …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘I see.’ Clarke could think of nothing else to say. ‘You’d best go, then.’

  He leaned over and kissed her gently on her cheek, then turned in the direction of the station. She’d definitely drunk too much to drive.

  Myles had recently moved into the block next door to hers, a ten-minute walk away.

  ‘Hey! Wait up!’ she hollered and made after her three colleagues, who were stumbling off into the night.

  ‘Evening, Johnny.’ Frost nodded at Night Sergeant Johnny Johnson, sitting in a soft pool of light behind the Eagle Lane reception desk, doing a crossword. The rest of the station was in darkness. The comforting murmur of a small portable transistor radio took the edge off the silence.

  ‘Just popping down to the cells. Left a friend down there …’

  ‘Right you are, Mr Frost.’

  Frost flicked the corridor light on and made his way downstairs. Propped in the far corner a PC sat dozing. He peered in the first cell: a drunk. He looked like ‘Mugger’ Moore. What was he doing still here? Never mind, he thought, and moved on to the next one. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he muttered before banging fiercely on the door. ‘Wakey, wakey!’

  The snoring skinhead leapt up, dazed, taking a moment to register where he was. ‘Frost?’

  ‘Martin. Bet you thought I’d forgotten about you.’ In truth he had, until he’d sat behind the wheel of the Cortina five minutes ago.

  The sleepy thug grunted.

  ‘But no, I just thought you might like a taster of what you’ve got to look forward to.’

  The PC had woken from his slumber and now unlocked the cell door so that Frost could step inside.

  ‘Well, had any thoughts?’

  ‘About what?’

  Frost yawned. ‘With your record, I won’t have any trouble at all getting you banged up again; and that’s just for your antics in Milk Street. But it’s your visit to the pawnshop I’m interested in, and if you want to help yourself, then you’d better help me. The jewels – where did you get them?’

  ‘Me nan’s, just like I told that old bastard at the pawnshop.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a minute. But what we’re going to do is this: you’re going to tell your little brother that I want to know where he got those jewels from. Do you know why?’

  ‘Why?’ Martin Wakely rubbed his tired eyes.

  ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to pin every burglary that’s happened round here in the last six months on you and your little brother. It’s one thing running around jabbing people with a penknife, but armed robbery is something else altogether.’

  ‘Armed robbery? What you talking about?’ Wakely’s cell bunk groaned in protest as he shifted position.

  ‘A newsagent was robbed at the start of this week by a gang of kids. The owner swore b
lind they were armed. Don’t believe it myself; reckon the old fingers-in-the-pocket routine worked a treat.’ Frost shoved his hand in his mac to demonstrate. ‘See? Now you or I would call their bluff, but not an elderly Asian shopkeeper who thinks every white face a vicious racist.’

  ‘He was never armed!’

  ‘Wakely junior? But what about the gun his big brother was waving around in Milk Street this afternoon?’

  ‘What?’ The burly skinhead got to his feet. ‘My kid brother ain’t never had my shooter …’

  Frost pushed him back down. ‘Calm down, or do you want me to call in the PC to witness our negotiation?’ Wakely slumped back. Frost offered him a cigarette, sighing. ‘Maybe it’s a daft idea.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I could never get the charges dropped for the assault on DC Clarke. Assaulting a police officer is a very serious offence.’ Frost waved out the match. ‘What is it with you Wakelys; such an aversion to the law …’

  ‘It wasn’t Gary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It weren’t my brother. It were Justin Pile.’ Wakely put his head in his hands. ‘Bunch of dumb kids charging around on BMXs. Don’t know what they thought they were playing at. All right if people are dumb enough to leave their motors unlocked, in this day and age they deserve to get stuff pinched – but after such a close shave with a pair of coppers you’d think they’d keep low. But did they? Nah, of course not – they go rob the Paki shop. Stupid. Like they’re untouchable. I told him, he’d be in for a hiding off me if he didn’t stay well clear of Pile.’ Wakely looked up at Frost almost penitently. ‘You know, they didn’t realize at first it was a copper’s car, not until they tried to leg it. Pile just lashed out at her to get away …’

  ‘But the attack on the jeweller on Merchant Street? A knife to the neck is armed robbery.’

  ‘It weren’t my brother. I told him after the copper got stabbed to stay away from Pile. But the rest all got carried away. Anyway, the gems from Sparklers in Merchant Street, them weren’t what I was trying to pawn.’

  ‘We know that. Those were stolen twice,’ Frost said to himself. ‘But what a mess. What are we going to do, eh?’