R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

‘Bound to be, Jack, but they can’t blame you. You hadn’t charged her or arrested her, so she wasn’t in police custody. They can’t blame you.’

‘Maybe they can’t blame me, but I flaming well do. She said she’d rather die. I should have been on my guard.’

‘All right, so she said she would rather die. You had no reason to think she meant there and then. But if there is an inquiry, Jack, I wouldn’t mention that if I were you.’

Before Frost could answer, the door swung open and Skinner burst in. He glowered at the two men. ‘What’s this – a flaming mothers’ meeting?’ He jabbed a finger at Wells. ‘The lobby’s unattended. Why aren’t you there? And take that bloody cigarette out of your mouth.’

‘Just going,’ mumbled Wells, snatching at the cigarette and squeezing past Skinner, who watched him scurry down the corridor.

‘Bloody useless,’ he snarled, before turning to Frost.

‘Another of your sod-ups, I understand? A prisoner killed herself in police custody?’

‘She wasn’t a prisoner and she wasn’t in custody,’ Frost told him. ‘She hadn’t been arrested or charged.’

‘Hmmph,’ sniffed Skinner, as if it made no difference. ‘I’ve got some things to sort out with Superintendent Mullett this afternoon, so I won’t be able to attend the post-mortem of that body you found on the railway embankment. I want you to attend on my behalf and give me a report. And try not to balls it up, for a change.’ He spun on his heel and left the office.

Skinner was closing the door behind him when the sound of a soft, wet, juicy raspberry followed him out. He immediately charged back into the office to find Frost apparently deeply engrossed in paperwork. Frost looked up, eye brows raised, as if surprised at the DCI’s return.

All right, sunshine, thought. Skinner grimly. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face soon.

He closed the door, waited a minute or two, his hand hovering over the door handle, in case of a repetition, then made his way back to his own office.

Frost was on his way to drag Taffy Morgan from the canteen when Wells called after him, ‘Hold on, Jack.’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ he replied. ‘I’m late for the autopsy.’

‘It’s about the autopsy. Skinner wants the new WPC to attend.’

‘No bleeding way,’ replied Frost. ‘This is going to be a stomach-heaver. What’s left of the body stinks to high heaven – it’s almost liquid. It would be enough to put anyone off the force, let alone a nineteen-year-old probationer.’

‘That’s what Skinner wants, I reckon. He’s finding all the shitty jobs for her. Oh, and he said to get that stupid Welsh prat to do the archive collation in her place.’

‘Stupid Welsh prat?’ echoed Frost. ‘Mullett isn’t Welsh.’

Wells grinned. ‘You know what prat he means, Jack. And about the girl – you’ll have to take her. You can’t ignore an order.’

‘All right, I’ll take her, but she can wait in the car outside. There’s no way she’s being subjected to this.’

There were three cars outside the mortuary. Frost parked behind a blue Citroen and Kate Holby made to get out.

‘Hold on, love. Sit down a minute.’ He handed her his mobile phone. ‘I want you to wait out here and take any phone messages.’

‘DCI Skinner said – ’

‘I know what Skinner said, love. Have you ever attended an autopsy?’

She shook her head.

‘They’re super-shitty at the best of times, but this one is super-shiny de-luxe, which is why Skinner has ducked out of going and sent me instead. You don’t want to see it, I promise you.’

She stuck her chin out defiantly. ‘I don’t want favours shown to me just because I’m a girl. I want to be a good cop.’

‘Listen, love, I’ll tell you what a good cop does. He does all the lousy stinking jobs that have to be done, but if he can get out of doing them, he bloody well gets out of doing them. I’ve seen strong men faint at post-mortems which were Mills and Boon stuff compared to this. I’ve come near to crashing out once or twice and I’ve seen hundreds. Skinner would love for you to go out cold. Well, I’m not going to let it happen. A good cop can lie his head off when it’s necessary. I shall tell him you watched it all the way without turning a hair. His disappointment will make my day.’

‘I still want to come inside,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Then I’m ordering you to stay in the car.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I know I can’t, love, so I’m saying “please”.’ He put on his appealing, heartfelt expression, which had never failed him before. It didn’t fail him this time. She stayed in the car.

The first thing that hit him when he pushed open the door of the autopsy room was the thudding sound of pop music. Bending over the autopsy table, a green-gowned, plump bottom was jiggling in time to the music. Flaming hell! thought Frost. A bit of a change from misery-guts Drysdale.

The second thing that hit him was the stench of putrefying flesh, a sickly smell that lingered for days and clung to your clothing and hair, no matter how much you scrubbed. There could be no doubt which body she was examining. Overhead the extractor fans were going full blast, but they were fighting a losing battle. Leaning against the tiled wall, looking as green as his gown, was the forensic photographer.

The pathologist turned at his approach. ‘Hardly Chanel No. 5,’ she shouted over the din of the music. When she saw that he couldn’t hear her, she turned the volume down and said it again. She pointed to a ball of cotton wool and a jar of Vicks VapoRub. ‘Stick it where you think it will do the most good.’

He grinned, pulled a couple of plugs of cotton wool, dunked them in the Vicks jar and gratefully inserted them in his nostrils. The pungent aroma made his eyes water, but mercifully over powered the smell of decaying flesh.

‘I started without you – I hope you don’t mind,’ she said.

‘With this one you can finish without me,’ he told her. The body on the slab was a disgusting mess. He wondered how she could possibly glean anything from it.

‘My name’s Carol,’ she said.

‘Jack,’ he told her. First-name bleeding terms now!

The scalpel slashed a path in the neck. ‘Hard to believe it, but I reckon she was a pretty girl once,’ she said.

Frost nodded. ‘I can believe it.’ He had seen the rotting bodies of too many pretty girls in his time with Denton CID. ‘Can you tell me any thing we don’t know?’

She gave him a knowing grin and lowered her voice so the photographer couldn’t hear. ‘I’m free tonight, did you know that?’

Bloody hell! thought Frost. A sex-starved pathologist propositioning me over a rotting corpse. I’ll be dating the undertaker’s daughter next. ‘I’ll pick you up at seven,’ he said. ‘But what about the body?’

‘Female, eighteen to twenty-three, about five foot four. She probably had quite a good figure. Been dead some four to five weeks, perhaps a little longer. The entomologist should be more precise. She looked after her teeth, so you’ll be able to identify her from her dental records and then get a positive ID from her DNA.’

‘Cause of death?’ asked Frost.

Carol pointed to the neck section she had opened with the scalpel to expose bone. ‘Look!’

Frost didn’t want to look that closely, but bent forward. Putrescence and slime. He was glad of the nose plugs. Then he saw what she meant and nodded. ‘The cicoid?’

‘Yes – it’s fractured. It would take quite a bit of pressure to do that. Mind you, a karate chop would do it, but the fracturing would be different. It’s invariably damaged with strangulation. I’d say manual strangulation, in this case. Even with a cadaver in this condition I’d expect to see ligature grooving, but there doesn’t seem to be any.’ She shrugged. ‘If the body was in any sort of decent shape, I’d be certain, but in this condition I can only say more than likely.’