First Frost

by James, Henry

  Hanlon bent down once more to peer through the letterbox. Something about the stillness inside unsettled him too. On the verge of retreating to the car to call for back-up, Hanlon watched, relieved, as the distinctive form of Frost, shrouded in his mac, approached the other side of the smoked glass.

  ‘Shit,’ he heard Frost say.

  The detective sergeant clearly couldn’t open the front door from the inside either. It must have been double-locked, the key missing.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ Frost shouted. ‘And get Scenes of Crime and uniform down here pronto, then come round the back. The kitchen door’s open.’

  Frost quickly returned to the kitchen and to, he presumed, Wendy Hudson. A fully dressed blonde woman was lying unconscious, in a pool of blood, on the black-and-white chequered linoleum floor. She had been badly beaten around the head, but she was still alive, just. Frost could detect a faint pulse. He took off his mac – a recent present from his wife, Mary – and gently laid it over the unconscious woman, before removing his jacket and laying that on her, too.

  Hanlon appeared in the kitchen. Frost had had to smash one of the small windowpanes on the back door to release the catch and bolt.

  ‘Oh dear me,’ said Hanlon, rushing forward. ‘The poor woman.’

  ‘It’s her, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s her, all right. And she was a looker, too.’

  ‘I saw her foot from the window,’ said Frost. ‘Had to break in. All the doors and windows were shut tight. No sign of forced entry. The back door was bolted also, which means that whoever did this most likely let themselves out of the front door, and then double-locked it.’

  ‘Out of habit?’ said Hanlon.

  ‘Could be,’ said Frost, troubled. The woman was in a terrible state. It had been a brutal, frenzied attack, though given her untouched clothing it didn’t look like she’d been sexually assaulted. ‘I’d like to know where Mr Hudson is right now. And, more importantly, where the hell Julie Hudson is.’ A case of a missing child, a presumed runaway, had suddenly become a lot more complicated.

  ‘I’ll alert Control, get them to put out a search for Steven Hudson right away,’ said Hanlon, still short of breath. ‘I noticed his car wasn’t out the front.’

  ‘That’s what they pay you for, Arthur. Sharp insights like that.’

  ‘It was there yesterday evening,’ said Hanlon. ‘A flashy, bright-yellow TR7.’

  ‘A man of taste,’ Frost shrugged.

  ‘Steve Hudson’s in the motor business. That place out on Bath Road – nearly new sports cars. They’ve got some beautiful motors.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know one if I saw one,’ said Frost, crouching and feeling yet again for Wendy Hudson’s pulse. Although he occasionally felt like giving Mary a quick slap, the little firebrand, he knew it took a certain sort of person to actually hit a woman, again and again until she was an unconscious mess of raw meat. Frost suddenly remembered it was his wedding anniversary on Friday, and if he didn’t come up with something special for Mary he’d be in for a hiding, all right.

  When Hanlon returned from calling Control for the second time, Frost said, ‘Wait with her. I’m going to snoop around.’

  Frost could already hear the ambulance’s siren in the distance. It would be there shortly – there was little traffic about at this time on a Sunday morning, especially as the clocks had gone back. Most of Denton was still in pyjamas.

  ‘You sure no one else is in the house, boss?’ he heard Hanlon calling, as he was climbing the stairs.

  The upstairs layout of the semi was all too familiar to Frost: three bedrooms, an airing cupboard and a bathroom. Frost only glanced into the first and smallest room, which was being used for laundry, with a large clothes horse, ironing board and piles of washing. The next he entered. It was the marital chamber, and what a tip. A Scandinavian duvet lay on the floor. What looked like pieces of a broken vase were strewn on top of it and across the rest of the room, along with assorted make-up, hairbrushes, hairbands, jewellery.

  It looked to Frost as if someone had made a clean sweep of the dressing table, which was now bare, with the drawer gaping. The built-in wardrobe had been ransacked as well, with clothes, women’s clothes mainly, and shoes and other accessories scattered nearby. In one corner lay a mound of lacy underwear, some of it appeared ripped and in shreds.

  Some bust-up. Frost wondered whether somebody had been looking for something.

  Down the narrow landing was the girl’s room, which, in contrast to the master bedroom, was in perfect order. The walls were smothered in posters and magazine pull-outs of pop stars. There was that lanky bloke from The Boomtown Rats, and a lad in make-up with stuff tied in his hair, dressed as a pirate. Adam Ant it said. Behind the pictures Frost could make out pastel-pink emulsion and traces of a floral border.

  He sat down on the narrow bed and pulled out a crushed pack of Rothmans from a trouser pocket. As he did so he accidentally kicked over a pile of magazines stacked at the side of the bed. He reached down and picked up the nearest. Smash Hits. A whole magazine devoted to pop music. He sighed. He wasn’t into music, of any description, though Mary was always playing records, or listening to the charts on the radio, as if she were still a teenager. Drove him nuts.

  Frost’s mind had wandered. He glanced over his shoulder, back at Adam Ant, and there in a corner was a poster he hadn’t spotted before, of Charles and Di. Good luck to them, he thought. They were going to need it. Any bloody marriage did.

  As he felt around for his matches he heard a rustling out in the corridor, as well as the ambulance siren getting much louder. Blast. His matches were in his mac, which was downstairs covering Wendy Hudson. Standing, he returned the fag packet to his trouser pocket just as the bedroom door swung open. In ran a long-haired, dusty black cat, causing Frost to leap backwards into a chest of drawers. A large radio cassette recorder toppled over and fell on to the carpeted floor with a thud.

  Frost eyed the cat warily. He didn’t like cats. The feeling seemed mutual. The moggy jumped on to the bed and crouched menacingly by the pillow. Frost gave it a wide berth as he quickly exited the room, and bumped into Hanlon on the stairs. ‘I thought I told you to wait with the injured party.’

  ‘I heard a crash. I thought, I thought that—’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Frost, ‘you better meet the ambulance out front and direct them round the back.’

  As Hanlon turned clumsily on the stairs and began the brief descent, Frost said, ‘When you and the lovely Sue interviewed the Hudsons yesterday evening, did you get upstairs?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I do know my procedures, Jack. I had a good look in the girl’s room. Weirdly tidy.’

  ‘You’re right there. Did you get a butcher’s at the marital chamber?’ Sirens blared outside.

  ‘Well, no, I didn’t. It didn’t seem appropriate. Why?’

  ‘The kid’s disappearance is troubling me more and more by the minute. Mullett’s not going to be able to keep this quiet for long. We’ll have to make an appeal for witnesses.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hanlon, making his way through the kitchen and out of the back door. ‘But it’s the mother I’m more worried about right now.’

  ‘She’ll live,’ Frost called after him, not at all convinced she would. He reached down to feel her pulse again. There was a faint but steady beat. While crouching he fished in his mac pocket for his matches, retrieving them just as the ambulance men and Hanlon hurried into the kitchen, followed by a couple of uniformed PCs.

  ‘DC Hanlon will fill you in on the details,’ Frost said, leaving them to it. He entered the hallway and poked his head round the corner of the lounge-diner. Dominating the room was a lurid orange-patterned carpet. Aside from the functional G-plan table and chairs at one end, and a fat leather sofa and matching armchair at the other, there was an enormous television, a VCR and a neat stack of video cassettes in a corner.

  Frost ambled over to have a closer look. That lot, he decided, must have cost a small fort
une. It was state of the art. Yet it was, by the looks of it, still all there, untouched. The cassette at the top of the pile was Star Wars. Hadn’t everyone seen Star Wars at the cinema?

  ‘There’s clear evidence of a break-in,’ Frost heard, coming from one of the uniforms in the kitchen. ‘What’s been taken? Where’s Scenes of Crime?’ the PC continued.

  ‘Hold your horses, lad,’ said Frost, finally lighting a fag, and poking his head back into the kitchen, while exhaling a cloud of smoke. ‘It’s not a burglary. Nothing’s been nicked. There’s jewellery and knick-knacks all over the place upstairs and a stash of top-notch electrical gear in the front room. It’s a domestic, of one sort or another.’ He coughed.

  ‘Unless it’s something more complicated,’ Hanlon interjected.

  Frost ignored him, believing the only complication was his own forced entry. At the very least it would involve another load of paperwork. But the woman was in a terrible state . . . ‘You and I,’ he said to Hanlon, ‘had better quiz the neighbours while we’re here. This is prime curtain-twitching country.’

  Hanlon gave a knowing nod. ‘You’re right there.’

  ‘You finished with these?’ Frost said, addressing the ambulance men, who were preparing the stretcher. Before waiting for an answer he grabbed his jacket and mac, which had been half shoved across the kitchen floor. ‘It ain’t half nippy out.’

  Shrugging his garments on and emerging into broad daylight he realized his new coat was bearing smudges of blood. At least blood was easy enough for the missus to remove. Though why Mary fussed so much over his appearance he had no idea. There were far more important things for her to worry about.

  ‘Let’s save time and split up,’ said Frost once on the pavement, aware that despite its brightness the sun was not warm. Winter would soon be upon them.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Hanlon.

  Detective Constable Arthur Hanlon, almost as wide as he was tall, waddled down Carson Road. Frost made his way across the road to the semi directly opposite the Hudsons’. He rapped gently on the door, waiting briefly before repeating the knock.

  Nobody in, he was thinking. The sirens surely would have been enough to wake the dead. Looking about him his eyes settled on a low-slung, dark-blue Jag in the drive, the chrome trim glinting.

  A dulled yet clearly cross female voice from within the house finally reached Frost, followed by the rattle of the lock.

  ‘Yes?’ A tousled brunette peeked through the crack – hazel-coloured eyes looking out suspiciously. There was a thick intruder chain holding the door.

  ‘Denton CID.’ Frost held out his warrant card.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said aggressively.

  ‘Can I have a word, please, miss?’

  ‘I’m not decent.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Frost, ‘I’m not a church warden.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ The door was pushed shut.

  Frost looked up at the sky, breathed out, thought there were still some perks to the job.

  The door was then opened, the chain removed and the young woman, standing in the hallway in a very short, maroon-coloured silk dressing-gown, was saying, ‘Yeah? What do you want then?’

  Heat and heavily perfumed air leaked out of the house. ‘The house opposite, the Hudsons’?’ Frost gestured over his shoulder to where the ambulance had backed on to the drive. ‘Know them?’

  The girl peered quizzically round Frost. ‘No. Haven’t been here long, as it happens.’

  She had a strong south-east London accent. ‘Down from the smoke?’ asked Frost. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her legs, which went on for ever.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘s’pose.’

  ‘What brings you to Denton?’ Frost thought she couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, twenty-two.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business,’ she sneered, pushing the door to.

  Frost jammed his foot in the way before it was completely closed. ‘Just being friendly,’ he said. ‘I see you’ve left your manners behind, if you ever had any.’

  ‘Piss off,’ she said.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you.’

  ‘No, you don’t, not if you want me to haul you in for obstructing police business.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, I bloody well can.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she laughed. ‘It’s Louise. Louise Daley.’

  ‘Look, Miss Daley,’ said Frost, now pushing the door open a little further. ‘I’ve no time for prima donnas. A woman’s been subjected to a very violent attack – in that house just over there, the Hudsons’. She was damn nearly killed. Sometime last night or early this morning. Did you happen to see or hear anything at all? This is no laughing matter.’

  ‘No,’ she said immediately. ‘Was out last night – got back late. I sleep like a log.’ She paused, looked down at bare feet. ‘Now can I get back to bed?’

  ‘Anyone else at home?’ said Frost.

  ‘No mate,’ she said, smiling slyly. ‘It’s just me.’

  ‘Your car, is it?’ Frost glanced back at the Jag in the drive.

  ‘Yeah, what of it?’

  ‘Bit flash for a young thing like you?’

  ‘I got expensive taste,’ she said, smiling again.

  ‘I bet,’ Frost said, removing his foot and letting Louise Daley shut the door. ‘Keep your nose clean.’ He heard her reattach the intruder chain. Turning, he saw Hanlon crossing the road towards him.

  ‘Nothing of interest yet,’ shouted Hanlon. ‘Bloody amazing, isn’t it – these people spend all day and night peering out between their curtains, but when it comes to something important they see bugger all.’

  ‘Always the way,’ said Frost.

  ‘And looks like the neighbours immediately next door to the Hudsons’, number forty, are away,’ continued Hanlon, now standing next to Frost. ‘There’s a pile of post in the hall.’

  Frost fumbled for his cigarettes and said, ‘A couple more houses each, then, and let’s get back to the station.’

  ‘OK with me,’ agreed Hanlon.

  ‘Flighty mare, that one.’ Frost nodded in the direction of Louise Daley’s home just behind him. ‘She’s got a few issues.’

  ‘She not see anything?’ said Hanlon, surprise in his voice.

  ‘So she says,’ said Frost, lighting his cigarette.

  ‘She was gawping out of the window when we first got here,’ said Hanlon.

  ‘Was she now?’

  They watched silently as Wendy Hudson was loaded gently into the ambulance and the vehicle took off at speed.

  Sunday (4)

  Behind his counter, Station Sergeant Bill Wells jumped as Frost barged through the doors, allowing them to swing back into DC Arthur Hanlon. That man is never going to keep up with Frost, thought Wells.

  ‘Right, Arthur,’ Frost shouted over his shoulder, ‘run along and fetch us a tea, will you, while that canteen’s still open for business – two sugars – and I’ll see who I can reach at Aster’s. We need to check out their security arrangements.’

  ‘But Jack,’ Hanlon protested, ‘it’s Sunday.’

  ‘What of it?’ said Frost, making for the corridor. ‘I’m not suggesting we go to the store.’ He paused, stared back into the lobby at a new poster alongside the fading Colorado Beetle warning. ‘What the hell’s that, Bill? An advertisement for the annual Denton Halloween Ball?’

  ‘No,’ said Wells, looking behind him at an angry Alsatian, foaming at the mouth, ‘Crufts are putting on a Christmas special in Denton.’ He laughed at his own joke.

  Hanlon shuffled dejectedly across the lobby, giving Frost a wide berth, disappearing into the safety of the dilapidated building.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ said Wells.

  ‘He’s hungry,’ said Frost. ‘Missing his elevenses.’

  ‘Actually, Jack, glad I’ve caught you. There is something I wanted to—’

&nbs
p; ‘Not now, Bill. Could you get me the name and home address of the Aster’s manager?’

  ‘Easy,’ Wells said proudly. ‘That’ll be Ken Butcher. My missus plays darts with his wife, for the ladies’ team at the Bricklayers Arms.’

  ‘Debbie chucks arrows? Whatever next.’ Frost sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘Ladies’ regional final tomorrow night. They’re playing a team from Rimmington, which was runner-up in the nationals last year,’ Wells said with a grin, before returning his gaze to the new rabies warning poster behind him. It had already lost its fixing in the top-left corner.

  ‘That’s one place I’ll be steering clear of, then,’ said Frost, heading for his office.

  Wells had just finished re-sticking the corner of the poster when a call came through.

  The woman at the other end of the line was hysterical. ‘Please calm down, love,’ said Wells, trying to open the call register and grab a pen. He was sick of having to man the phones alongside an understaffed Control. ‘I can’t hear you,’ he found himself shouting into the mouthpiece.

  As she quietened a little, before explaining herself more clearly, Wells could hear a young child crying in the background.

  ‘Attacked?’ Wells finally said loudly. ‘In the garden? By a fox, you think?’ Wells looked up at the new poster, an uneasy feeling sweeping through him.

  This morning was giving him the jitters: first there’d been an Irishman, giving him a registration number, which he immediately forgot, of a van being driven suspiciously round and round Market Square, and now here was a woman claiming her child had just been mauled by a wild animal.

  Rabid was his sudden thinking, having just put up that damn poster. A stack of them had been lying in the cupboard under the counter for weeks, following a county-wide rabies warning. Except Wells had promptly forgotten all about them. Until he’d accidentally stumbled upon them that morning, while looking for a new biro. And now his mind was jumping to all sorts of worrying conclusions.

  Many minutes later Wells had managed to write down an address and was attempting to reach Frost – to no avail. Pressing the button on the Tannoy and lifting the microphone to his mouth, he said, crossly, ‘Detective Sergeant Frost to contact the front desk at once.’