R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

The driver, a, ruddy-faced, dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, shouted down to Frost, ‘You won’t be able to see them from down there. You’ve got to be high up.’ He pointed over the uncut corn to the far end of the field, where an embankment was heavily overgrown with bushes and shrubs and straggling grass. On top of the embankment, traffic roared past on the road to Denton. ‘There’s a naked body just behind that bush between the two trees. There’s another body about ten yards to the right. Want me to show you?’

‘No,’ said Frost. ‘You stay there.’ The only way to reach the embankment was by trampling across the uncut corn.

‘I want compensation for any damage,’ called the farmer.

You wait until half the clod-hopping Denton police force come trampling through your corn. That’s the time to talk about compensation, thought Frost as he headed over the field. And a fat chance you’ll have of getting any.

He clambered up the embankment. Why can’t people dump bodies on level flaming ground? he asked himself, looking back as the tractor-driver shouted and signalled that he should go more to the right.

He nearly tripped over the girl; she was well hidden in the long grass. It was Debbie Clark. She was on her back, naked, staring sightlessly at the rain clouds which were getting darker and darker. He gently touched her face. Icy cold and damp. So what the hell did he expect – warm, vibrant flesh? He shook his head in sadness. Twelve bleeding years old. ‘What bastard did this to you, my love?’ he muttered. He looked up at the road above, where traffic was speeding past. She had probably been chucked down here from a car or a van.

Pushing his way through the long dank grass which made his trousers wringing wet, he soon found the boy’s body. Again, it would have been dropped from the road – it had rolled down and become wedged by the thick stem of a bush, intertwined with bramble. Thomas Harris, fully dressed, also was on his back. There was blood on his face, his trouser knees were jagged and torn, and the flesh beneath the holes was covered with bloody abrasions. His face was badly bruised and swollen. Frost looked up again at the road above. Traffic was still speeding past. No one looking down from the road would have been able to see the bodies – they would have been completely obscured by overgrown grass, brambles and bushes. They had both been dead for days.

He tugged out his mobile and called the station, requesting SOCO, Forensic and the full murder team. As he waited, smoking, the first heavy drops of rain plopped on his head. He shucked off his mac and draped it over the boy to stop the blood being washed away from his face. Within minutes he was drenched.

A thin line of police officers in yellow water proofs, backs bent, were painstakingly carrying out a fingertip search of the area. The road above the embankment had been closed and more police were carefully searching through the grass verge. Frost, sitting in his car after having returned home to change out of his rain-soaked clothing, watched the forensic team erecting marquees to protect the bodies. He grudgingly admired the efficiency and thoroughness of the operation, but thought it a complete waste of manpower and time. Whoever dumped the bodies would have been in and out of the car or van in a matter of seconds and would hardly have left any impression on an area where junk, accumulated over the ages, was lying thick and plentiful. Rusty tin cans, spent matches, scraps of paper would all have to be logged and grid- referenced, then filed away unread. A waste of everyone’s time.

At last the two blue plastic marquees had been erected. ‘Starting to look like a bleeding camping site,’ muttered Frost as he picked his way over the trampled corn. The forensic photographer was busy snapping in the marquee where the girl’s body lay, so Frost moved to the other one, where Morgan, keeping out of the rain that was drumming on the tent roof, was looking at the body. ‘No sign of his bike, Guv. The girl’s was in the lake, but no sign of his.’

‘If we look for it, all we’ll find is more bits of flaming chopped-up leg. Let’s start looking for leg – we might find the bike,’ grunted Frost, bending down over the body. He lifted a skin- scraped hand, then turned it over. The knuckles were badly bruised and bloody. He dropped the hand, then lifted the head by the hair to feel round the back of the skull. It was wet and sticky. His fingers came away dark with the boy’s blood. He wiped them with a tissue. ‘He’s been hit hard round the back of his head. We’re not supposed to touch the body, so try and look surprised when Drysdale tells us.’

‘I thought Drysdale had retired, Guv,’ said Morgan.

‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Frost, brightening up. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’ Of course. It would be the roly-poly, bum-waggling Carol Ridley. He hoped he would be able to sweet-talk her into reinstating the promised leg-over.

The door flap opened and Dr Mackenzie, shaking rain from his trilby hat, pushed into the tent. ‘You’re getting to be my best customer, Jack.’ Then he saw the body and his face softened. ‘Is it the missing boy?’

‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘The girl’s in the other marquee.’

The doctor shook his head sadly. ‘When I see what these bastards do to kids, it always hits me, Jack. I suppose big-head Drysdale’s on the way?’ Mackenzie nursed a deep and well-nurtured hatred of Drysdale, the Home Office pathologist, who had once tried to discredit the doctor’s evidence in court.

‘It won’t be Drysdale,’ said Frost. ‘He’s retired. Just wait until you see who comes in his place. I’m on a promise of a bit of the other.’

Mackenzie grinned. ‘About time they got shot of that big-mouthed bastard. I’d love to do a post-mortem on him – I wouldn’t even bother to wait until he was dead.’ He dumped his bag on the grass and bent to examine the body.

A voice interrupted from the tent flap. ‘I’d be obliged, Inspector Frost, if you would not let any Tom, Dick or Harry maul the body before I’ve seen it.’

Frost turned his head and his heart sank. Drysdale, thin, austere and glowering, was standing by the tent opening.

Mackenzie stood up and glowered back. ‘I don’t consider myself to be any Tom, Dick or Harry.’ He snapped his bag shut and turned to Frost. ‘He’s dead. That’s all I’m paid to certify. I’ll take a look at the girl now.’ At the tent flap he paused. ‘I don’t envy you your bit of the other,’ he said.

Drysdale frowned after him. ‘What was that about?’

Frost shrugged. ‘No idea, Doc.’ He nodded a greeting to Drysdale’s faded-blonde secretary; who followed the pathologist into the marquee, her mackintosh running with rain. As Drysdale started his examination, she kept well back to avoid being snapped at for dripping rain all over the corpse.

‘You’re lucky to get me,’ Drysdale told Frost. ‘I was just finishing an autopsy over at Lexford, otherwise you’d have got that overweight woman.’

‘I don’t deserve such luck,’ muttered Frost bitterly.

‘Killed elsewhere and deposited here,’ dictated Drysdale to his secretary, her pen writhing over the loops and whirls of Pitman’s shorthand. ‘Probably thrown down from the road up there.’

Brilliant. Tell us something we don’t flaming well know, thought Frost.

Drysdale ran his hands down the boy’s trouser legs. ‘Both legs broken.’ He stared at the face. ‘He’s smashed up pretty badly. I’d say he’s had a fall – and from quite a height.’

‘You mean before he was dropped here?’ asked Frost.

Drysdale grunted his agreement.

‘And the fall killed him?’

‘No. He was still alive after he fell.’ Drysdale felt round the back of the head. ‘His skull’s caved in.’