Hard Frost (10 page)

   She looked as if all hope had been drained out of her. "I don't care too much about the jewellery. It's the medals. He was so proud of them . . ."

   "I know," said Frost. The last decoration had been awarded posthumously. A tracer bullet had penetrated the fuel tank and the heat-warped canopy had jammed. He screamed to his death in the blast furnace of a burning Spitfire, crashing to merciful oblivion in a field in Kent on a blazing hot summer's day in August 1940.

   "How long before you catch the man who stole them?"

   "Can't really say, love. We're following several leads." More lies. He didn't have a bleeding clue! "I'll be in touch as soon as we have anything." Which would probably be bloody never! "Sorry I haven't better news."

   "I'm sure you're doing your best," she said.

   He walked her to the door and watched her hobble across the road, fumbling for her bus pass. She realized she was being watched and turned to give him a wave.

   He slouched back to his office and screwed up the two niggling memos from Mullett he found lurking in his in-tray. Staring through the dirty grime of his window he wished it would hail or snow or pee with rain, anything to match his mood. But the sun glinted off the grime. He couldn't even get that right.

   Liz poked her head around the door. "Ready, inspector?"

   "Yes," he nodded. "I'm ready."

They took Frost's car and he cowered down in the passenger seat as Liz did her Monaco Grand Prix stuff. The thin sun zipped backwards and forwards across the windscreen like a typewriter carriage as she hurled the car down the zigzagging lanes. Away to the left, flying past, he could see the distant figures of one of the search parties spread out across a field. Liz screamed the car round a tight corner, shooting him forward as she suddenly slammed on the brakes. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she snarled. She had almost run into a cluster of cars parked in the lane. Over on the right another search party was clambering up a steep hill.

   "Half a mo!" Frost fumbled to get his seat belt off and slipped out of the car. Just ahead, on the grass verge, Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon, in charge of the search team, was bending to tie up his shoelace. His back was to Frost, his tight trousers providing a target the inspector was never able to resist. Frost's stubby finger shot forward, hitting its target with unerring accuracy. "How's that for centre, Arthur?" he cried, triumphantly.

   With a yelp of outrage, Hanlon sprang up abruptly, indignation evaporating as he recognized Frost. "You sod, Jack. No matter where I am, I've only got to bend over and you appear!"

   "Fatal attraction, Arthur. The moving finger pokes, and when it pokes, moves on." He squinted up at the men now disappearing over the top of the hill. "Where are you going to search now?"

   "Those old bungalows behind the hill." This was a site long abandoned and the huddle of decaying, pre-war jerry-built shacks were now mainly roofless and little more than shells. The area should have been cleared and flattened years ago when the last residents were re housed but the Council had better ways to spend its money. "What's your gut feeling about our chances of finding him alive?" asked Hanlon.

   "Don't ask, Arthur. It would only depress you." He took one last look at the straggle of men disappearing over the top of the hill. "If we don't find him by tonight we'll start dragging the river and the canal tomorrow." A brief nod to Hanlon and he returned to the car.

Carol Stanfield was now dressed in tight jeans and an even tighter grey woollen sweater. Her hair had been brushed back over her shoulders and as she passed close to Frost she smelled just like the blanket. Her mother and father were still sitting on opposite sides of the fire. Stanfield looked up with irritation. "More questions? We've told you everything. Now go out and catch the bastards."

   Frost plonked himself down on the settee and loosened his scarf. The heat in the room was oppressive. "We've found something." He pulled the blanket from the plastic carrier bag he was holding and offered it to the mother. "Did it come from here?"

   She examined it with a frown. "It could be ours."

   "It is ours," said the girl from the far side of the room. She was staring out of the window, her back to them. "They took it from the bed."

   "You never mentioned it," said Frost.

   She shrugged. "They wrapped it round me in the van."

   "Bloody nice of them," said Frost.

   "It was freezing in there. I was naked."

   "It was a darn sight colder outside the van, but they took it off when they booted you out."

   "I expect it fell off."

   "Then it would have been in the road. We found it on the grass verge."

   "Then they probably chucked it out as they were driving off."

   "You must have seen it," said Frost.

   Her father's head snapped up. "If she had seen it, she would have wrapped it around her, instead of standing there starkers, freezing to death."

   "But how could you miss it?" insisted Frost. "It was lying there in the open." He was hoping to catch her out. Hoping she would say, "It wasn't in the open, I hid it behind the hedge," but before the girl could answer her mother had chimed in. "It couldn't have been all that obvious. Your policemen didn't see it this morning."

   "Silly me!" said Frost, forcing a smile as he pushed himself up out of the settee. He stuffed the blanket back into the carrier bag. "We'll hang on to this for a while - let our Forensic people give it a going over."

   He held his feelings in check until they were back in the car. "The scheming bastards. They went back to recover the blanket and realized we had found it."

   "There's always the possibility they're telling the truth," said Liz, spinning the car into a reverse turn.

   "No way," said Frost, wincing at the thought of the rubber they were leaving in the road. "There was no robbery and no abduction. I want it tied up quickly. We've got more important things to do than sod about with this."

   They were passing a small isolated house when, suddenly, she slammed on the brakes. His head hit the windscreen. He had forgotten to put the seat belt on. "What the hell . . . ?"

   "Sorry," she said, getting out of the car. "That house. There was no reply this morning when I knocked to ask about the van. Someone's in now."

   "Oh - the non-existent bleeding van loaded up with naked tart," said Frost, rubbing the bump on his forehead. "Well, make it quick." He watched her walk up the path and knock on the door. An elderly man answered.

   "Control to Mr. Frost."

   He picked up the handset. "Frost. He listened. It wasn't good news.

   Liz was scribbling down the details the old man was giving her when the car horn blasted out repeatedly. She tried to ignore it, but it went on and on. Frost was waving frantically and yelling for her to return. Muttering apologies to the old boy, she raced back to the car. What was up now?

   Frost, now in the driving seat, had the passenger door open for her. "Get in," he yelled, and the car was away even before she had the door shut.

   "Why did you drag me away?" she protested. "I was getting details. The old boy saw the non-existent van going towards the Stanfield house late last night. Even gave me the colour - light brown."

   Frost skidded the car round a tight bend and removed several inches of hedge in the process. "I've had Control on the radio. Arthur Hanlon's search party - those old bungalows. They've found a body."

   Liz went cold. The boy?"

   "Life's not that bleeding simple," snorted Frost. "It's not a boy - it's a man, probably a dosser. It never rains flaming bodies, it pours!"

   The car wheezed its way up the steep gradient of Denton Hills, its engine making unhappy noises and giving off the smell of burning oil. They were behind the woods in a barren section of the district. Years ago a sprawl of pre-war bungalows and weekend shanties had occupied the area, their dwellers living in primitive conditions without mains drainage or electricity. These substandard dwellings were deemed unfit for human occupation and some twenty years earlier the Council had re housed the occupants and compulsorily acquired the land for a building project for which it had long since given up trying to raise the money. The empty properties were quickly vandalized and opened up to the weather and were now of no interest, even to the local tearaways. Roofless, windows smashed, doors torn off their hinges, the flimsy buildings cowered under the wind and weather. The whole area was overgrown with vegetation and stunk of damp, rot and decay.

   Arthur Hanlon and a uniformed man were waiting for them, hands in pockets, stamping their feet for warmth. The sun was a watery yellow in a clear sky. It was going to be a freezing cold night.

   Hanlon led them across what was once a front garden, overgrown grass slapping at their legs. It fronted the shell of an asbestos-walled bungalow, painted in now-faded pink. Frost peeked in through the glassless windows on to strewn rubbish and charred floorboards where someone, years ago, had tried to start a fire, but the wood was too damp to burn. "I wish my place was as tidy as this," he muttered.

   They trudged round the side to the rear. Other overgrown gardens could be seen, many of them with ramshackle wooden structures like sentry boxes. "Outdoor privies," said Hanlon. "The old bucket and wooden seat - there was no mains sewerage."

   "The body's not in one of them?" asked Frost apprehensively.

   Hanlon shook his head.

   A sigh of relief from Frost. "If he'd known I was going to be on the case he'd have died head first down an unemptied privy bucket."

   Hanlon grinned. Frost had an affinity for mucky cases. "He's in a bunker, Jack."

   "A bunker? It's not bloody Hitler, is it?"

   "A coal bunker. Over there." He pointed to where a uniformed officer stood guarding a taped-off section. The undergrowth was almost waist-high, but had been trampled down to form a path leading to an almost concealed brick-built coal bunker, four feet long, three feet high. A rusted sheet of corrugated iron that had once covered the open top was propped to one side. A strong smell of putrefaction drifted out to greet them.

   Frost wrinkled his nose. "Bloody hell, Arthur, what have I told you about changing your socks?"

   Hanlon giggled. "We reckon it's probably a dosser . . . crept in there to sleep and got hypothermia."

   Frost took a deep breath and looked inside. "Bloody hell!" He moved back and sucked in great gulps of clean, cold air. He passed his cigarettes around and moved a few steps back, but the smell seemed to be following him. Liz pushed forward to take a look, but Frost held out a restraining hand. "Best if you don't, love."

   Angrily she shook his hand off. "I've seen bodies before." She took a breath and looked down. Huddled at the bottom of the bunker, in some inches of soupy rain water, were the remains of a man. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition and the face, covered with black mould, was unrecognizable. She moved back, exhaled slowly, then took some deep breaths. She fought back the urge to be sick.

   "Are you all right?" asked Frost.

   "Yes," she snapped. "Perfectly all right."

   "Remind me to tell you of that dead tramp I found in a heat-wave," he said. "You could have poured him away. It made this one smell like Chanel Number 5 in comparison . . ."

   "Don't let him tell you that story, Liz," said Arthur Hanlon. "Not on a full stomach - I was sick for three days after I heard it."

   "You're thinking of the other one," said Frost. "The bloke who drunk the contents of the spittoon for a bet."

   Hanlon went white. "I'd forgotten all about that one." He pulled a face. "If you value your stomach, Liz, don't let him tell you that story either."

   A short tubby figure carrying a medical bag came puffing towards them. Frost waved. "Over here, doctor."

   Dr. Maltby beamed when he saw the inspector. "I thought you were on holiday?"

   "They couldn't do without me, doc." He jerked a thumb at the bunker. "There's your patient."

   Maltby took a quick look. "I confirm life is extinct."

   "Is that all we get for our bloody money? How long has he been dead?"

   The doctor shrugged. "No idea, Jack. Weeks - probably months. Was that corrugated iron sheeting on the top when you found him?"

   "Yes," confirmed Hanlon.

   "Sun beating down on that would make it like an oven - and there's a good two inches of water down there to speed things up. Decomposition could start in hours."

   "Cause of death?"

   "No idea. If you drag him out I'll take a further look, but if you think I'm going to climb down inside . . ."

   "Sod it!" sighed Frost. He pulled Hanlon to one side. "Pathologist, Forensic, SOCs, the works, Arthur. You know the drill."

   "You think it might be murder?"

   "There's water and broken bricks at the bottom of that bunker, Arthur. A dosser would have to be pretty hard up for a bed to sleep on that."

   "I'm off then," said Maltby, backing away.

   "Thanks, doc," said Frost. "If you hadn't told us he was dead we'd still be pushing aspirins down the poor sod's throat." He waved him off, then returned to Hanlon. "You'd better han ale this one, Arthur. It was your team who found him, you can suffer the consequences." He took one last look at the bunker and shuddered. "I'd hate to be one of the blokes who have to lift him out. Don't pull him up by his arms, they might come off in your hand . . . and for the same reason, don't lift him by his dick."

   Liz screwed up her face in distaste. She didn't find death the least bit funny.

   "We're going to need some more help, Jack," Hanlon called after them.

   "Our beloved Divisional Commander has it all in hand," said Frost. "We're getting another detective inspector."

   As they climbed back into the car, Liz had an awful thought and consulted Frost for reassurance. "You don't think Mr. Mullett is going to upgrade Sergeant Hanlon to acting DI?"