R. Wingfield - Night Frost

Mullett looked pained. ‘If you consider that what I have suggested constitutes spying, Sergeant, then of course you will forget I ever said it.’ He closed the green cover of the detective sergeant’s personal file. ‘You are promotion material, Sergeant, but to promote you, I need a vacancy.’

He stared hard at Gilmore. Gilmore stared back, holding Mullett’s gaze, then gave a tight smile and nodded.

They understood each other.

They were still smiling smugly at each other when Wells crashed in with the tea.

‘This will be your office.’ Detective Constable Joe Burton, stocky, twenty-five years old and ambitious, tried to keep the resentment out of his voice as he showed the new detective sergeant around. Gilmore stared in amazement. The poky room he was expected to share with that scarecrow, Frost, was a complete shambles with papers and files everywhere but in their proper place, dirty cups perched on the window ledge and the floor littered with cigarette stubs and screwed-up pieces of paper that had missed the target of the waste bin. ‘And this is your desk,’ added Burton.

The spare desk, the smaller of the two, was awash with papers and ancient files. Gilmore’s jaw tightened. His first job would be to put this pigsty into some semblance of order. The internal phone rang. At first he couldn’t locate the instrument which was buried under a toppled stack of files on Frost’s desk.

‘Control here,’ said the phone. ‘Got a dead body for you — probable suicide. 132 Saxon Road. Panda car at premises.’

Gilmore scribbled down the details. He could fit it in on his way home. He told Burton to come with him.

On their way out to the car-park, they passed Mullett who was talking to a scowling Sergeant Wells. ‘You should be off duty, Gilmore.’

‘Possible suicide, sir. Thought I’d better handle it personally.’

Mullett beamed. ‘Keenness. That’s what I like to see. A rare commodity, these days. All some people think of is getting off home.’ His pointed stare left Sergeant Wells in no doubt as to who he was referring to.

Wells kept his face impassive. ‘Crawling bastard!’ he silently told Gilmore’s retreating back.

Rain hammered down on Frost’s blue Cortina as it slowly nosed its way down Saxon Road, a street of two-storey terraced houses in the newer part of Denton. He spotted a police patrol car at the far end and parked behind it. One last drag at his cigarette, then out, head down against the rain, as he butted his way up the path to number 132.

A worried-looking woman opened the door. Behind her, the bitter sound of sobbing. She looked enquiringly at the scruffy figure on the doorstep who was fumbling in the depths of his inside pocket. ‘Detective Inspector Frost,’ he said, showing her a dog-eared warrant card.

She peered doubtingly at the card. ‘I’m just a neighbour. Do you want to see the parents?’ She inclined her head towards the back room from which the sobbing continued unabated.

‘Later,’ he said. And he wasn’t looking forward to it.

Up the stairs to the girl’s bedroom where a white-faced uniformed constable stood outside. This was PC John. Collier, twenty years old. Collier, still very green and usually working inside the station with Wells, had been pitched out on patrol because of the manpower shortage. He hadn’t yet got used to dead bodies.

The bedroom door opened, releasing a murmur of angry voices. DC Burton came out. He seemed relieved to see the inspector and carefully closed the door behind him.

‘What have we got?’ asked Frost, shaking rain from his mac.

‘Suicide, but our new super-sergeant is treating it as a mass murder.’

‘He’s new and he’s keen,’ said Frost. ‘It’ll soon wear off.’

The bedroom was small, neat and unfussy, with white melamine furniture and pink emulsioned walls. A glowering Gilmore was watching Dr Maltby, red-faced and smelling strongly of alcohol, who was pulling the sheet back over the body on the single bed. Gilmore scowled at Frost’s entrance. He’d asked for a senior officer. He didn’t expect this oaf. ‘I thought you were off duty,’ he muttered.

‘They dragged me out of bed. So what’s the problem?’ Gilmore opened his mouth to speak but the doctor got in first. ‘There’s no problem, Inspector. It’s a clear case of suicide.’ He jerked his head towards a small brown glass container on the bedside cabinet. ‘Overdose of barbiturates. She swallowed the lot.’ He glared at Gilmore as if daring him to contradict.

‘You don’t look very happy, Sergeant,’ observed Frost, wondering why the man had requested a senior officer to attend a routine suicide.

‘There was no suicide note,’ Gilmore said.

‘It’s not obligatory,’ snapped the doctor. ‘You can commit suicide without leaving a note.’ He was tired and wanted another drink. What he didn’t want was complications. ‘It’s suicide, plain and simple.’ He moved out of the way so the inspector could get to the body.

‘I’m glad it’s simple,’ said Frost, pulling back the sheet, ‘I’m not very good when things are complicated.’ Then his expression changed. ‘Oh no!’ he said softly, his face crumpling. ‘I never realized it was a kid.’

‘Fifteen years old,’ said Gilmore. ‘Everything to live for.’

She lay on top of the bed. A young girl wearing a white cotton nightdress decorated with the beaming face of Mickey Mouse. Over the nightdress was a black and gold Japanese-style kimono. Her feet were bare, the soles slightly dirty as if she had been padding about the house without socks or shoes. A Snoopy watch on her left wrist ticked softly away. It seemed wrong. Almost obscene. Mickey Mouse and Snoopy had no place with death.

Frost gazed down at her face, trying to read some answers. A pretty kid with light brown hair gleaming as if newly brushed, spread loosely over the pillow. Gently, as if afraid to wake her, Frost touched her cheek, flinching at the hard, icy cold feel of death. ‘You silly bloody cow,’ he said. ‘Why did you do this?’

He switched his attention to the bedside cabinet. Standing on top of it was a bright red, twin-belied alarm clock, its alarm set at 6.45, a pair of ear-rings, a Bic pen, an empty, brown pill bottle and, over to one side away from the bed and almost on the edge of the cabinet, a tumbler with an inch of water remaining. Frost crouched to read the label on the pill container. Sleeping Tablets prescribed for Mrs Janet Bicknell.

‘They were prescribed for the mother,’ Gilmore explained. ‘There were about fifteen or so left. The kid got them from the bathroom cabinet.’

Frost sank down on the corner of the bed and lit up a cigarette. ‘Any doubts it’s a suicide, doc?’

‘If the post-mortem shows a lethal dose of barbiturates in her stomach, no doubts whatsoever. If you could speed things up, Jack, I’d like to get off home. I’ve had one hell of a day.’

‘Right,’ said Frost. ‘How long has she been dead?’

‘Rigor mortis hasn’t reached the lower part of the body yet. That and the temperature readings suggest she’s been dead some nine to ten hours.’

Frost checked his watch. It was now a few minutes past five. ‘So she died between seven and eight o’clock this morning?’

‘She was still alive at half-past seven, this morning,’ interjected Gilmore.

‘Then she was dead pretty soon after,’ snapped the doctor. His head was throbbing and Gilmore was getting on his damn nerves.

‘Slow down,’ pleaded Frost. ‘Let’s take it step by step, starting with her name.’

Gilmore opened up his notebook and read out the details. ‘Susan Bicknell, fifteen years old. In the fifth form at Denton Comprehensive.’

‘And who found the body?