R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

‘Toute suite,’ nodded Frost.

They were in Skinner’s office, seated round his desk drinking mugs of Sergeant Johnson’s instant coffee. The atmosphere crackled and sizzled with the unconcealed animosity between Barrett and Skinner. Barrett had various maps and papers spread over the desktop. ‘This is a more recent photograph. We found it in her digs.’ He passed Skinner a colour photo of a girl in her teens, her fair hair in a ponytail. Skinner gave it barely a glance before flipping it across to Frost.

‘Lovely-looking girl,’ muttered Frost, finding it hard to eliminate from his mind the way she looked now.

'Emily Roberts,’ intoned Barrett. ‘Nineteen years old. Guess where she was born?’

‘I don’t play guessing games,’ said Skinner.

‘In the fair city of Denton,’ smirked Barrett.

Skinner scowled. ‘You kept that bloody quiet. Weren’t we supposed to know?’

‘We’ve only just found out ourselves. Her parents emigrated to Australia some six months ago and we’ve had one hell of a job trying to contact them. Emily didn’t want to go. There was a family row and she stayed behind. She didn’t keep any of their letters, so we didn’t have an address. The Melbourne police managed to trace them and they are on their way over here. She was born in Denton. The family moved to Manchester some five years ago when she was fourteen. After her parents emigrated, she moved in with a girlfriend who had a flat. She worked in Tesco’s on the check-out. The night she went missing she told her flatmate she was meeting her boyfriend at a local disco. She left at around seven thirty and that was the last an saw of her. The boyfriend said he waited all evening, but she never turned up. He left the disco with his mates around midnight and went straight home.’

‘You checked his alibi, I hope?’ asked Skinner.

Barrett whiplashed a ‘Do you take me for a complete prat?’ look across the desk. He turned to his DC. ‘No. We forgot to do that, didn’t we, Constable?’ Back to Skinner. ‘Of course we bloody well checked it out. All his mates confirmed it and we checked out a lot of his movements on CCTV.’

‘Any footage of the girl on CCTV?’ asked Frost.

Barrett shook his head. ‘We checked the area near the disco and the centre of town. No sign of her.’

‘So how do you reckon she got to Denton?’ asked Frost.

‘Well she didn’t go by train. There are CCTV cameras in the booking hall and on the platforms. We’re working on the theory that she went by car, either voluntarily or she was abducted and taken to Denton, where she was assaulted and killed and the body was dumped.’

Skinner flapped a hand dismissively. ‘Without evidence to the contrary, I’m working on the theory that she was killed on your patch and her body was brought to Denton and hidden where we found it. Denton was just the dumping ground – so it’s your case, not ours. We’ll see to the coroner’s inquest, but from there on the rest is up to you.’

‘Why should he kill her in Manchester then drive all the way to Denton to dump the body?’ asked Barrett. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ replied Skinner, ‘but as it’s your case, I’m not going to rack my brains to find out.’

‘Perhaps the killer got her in his car, tried to have sex, she resisted, so he killed her, panicked and drove like the clappers to get the hell out of there until he could get rid of her,’ offered Frost, sucking sugar from the end of the pencil he had used to stir his coffee.

‘I’ll go along with that,’ said Skinner, rising from his chair. ‘He killed her in Manchester and dumped her in Denton. So if you’ll excuse me – ’

‘Mind you,’ continued Frost, slipping the pencil back in his top pocket, ‘whoever killed her probably came from Denton.’

Skinner glowered. If looks could kill, Frost’s body would be the next one on the mortuary slab. ‘And how do you make that out?’ he hissed.

‘You’d have to know Denton bloody well to find that bridge where he dumped the body – somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for weeks. It’s right off the beaten track.’

As Skinner opened his mouth to shoot Frost down, DC Fussell said, ‘If he came from Denton, that makes it more than likely he took her to Denton to kill her.’

Skinner decided to vent his rage on the DC. Smiling sweetly, he said through clenched teeth, ‘Forgive me, whatever your name is, but might I ask your rank?’

‘Detective constable.’

‘Detective constable?’ echoed Skinner in mock surprise. ‘The way you were airing your unsolicited views, I thought you were at least a chief inspector.’

Barrett leapt from his chair and thrust his face right up to Skinner’s. ‘If you’ve got sarcastic remarks to make, Skinner, make them to your own men. And if we’re talking rank, remember I’m a superintendent and you are a chief inspector. DC Fussell’s comment was valid and I agree with him. Wherever she was killed, the odds are she was killed by someone from Denton, as I will advise our chief constable. This will be a joint investigation and I expect – in fact, I demand – your fullest cooperation. And you will be up to your knees in shit if we don’t get it.’ He pushed various papers from his briefcase across to Skinner. ‘I’m leaving these with you. Keep me informed as to the progress of your investigation. We’ll do the same.’ With a jerk of his head for DC Fussell to follow him, he swept out of the office.

Skinner gathered up the papers and thrust them into Frost’s hands. ‘You do not contradict me, do you hear? Next time, keep your bloody mouth shut,’ he snapped, his face contorted with rage.

Frost smiled. One of the unforeseen bonuses of getting the boot from the division was that there were few other sanctions left that they could throw at him.

He dumped the papers on his office desk, sniffing as he detected the siren aroma of pork sausage, chips and beans wafting down from the canteen. He decided to take an early lunch.

‘Inspector!’ Sergeant Johnny Johnson was waving excitedly, a leathery-faced man in a boiler-suit at his side. ‘We’ve got the dead boy’s bike.’

Frost hurried over. ‘What? Where is it?’

‘Out the back. In the exhibits shed!’ Frost frowned. ‘You’re not telling me it’s been there all the bleeding time?’

‘No,’ grinned Johnson. ‘This gentleman, Mr Harry Gibson, found it and brought it in for us.’

‘He brought it in?’ echoed Frost in disbelief. ‘He didn’t leave it untouched where it flaming well was?’

‘I had to touch it to bring it in,’ said Harry.

‘Yes, silly me, of course,’ said Frost. ‘So where did you find it?’

‘You know that big empty office block just off Denton Road?’

Frost nodded. He knew it. A speculative development company had plans for a business complex just outside Denton and the modern office block was to be its centrepiece. But the company ran out of money and went bust. The office block had remained empty ever since.

‘That’s where I found it.’

‘So what were you doing there?’

‘I’m a sort of caretaker for the liquidators. I repair broken windows when the kids chuck bricks, make certain the chain-link fencing is secure, cut back the undergrowth – that sort of thing.’

‘I don’t want a flaming job description,’ said Frost. ‘How did you find the bike?’

‘The grass round the outside of the fence was overgrown, so I decided to cut it back. I saw the bike and thought to myself, That could be the bike the plods are looking for, so I humped it on the van and drove it over here. I was wondering if there was any sort of reward?’

‘In heaven,’ grunted Frost, ‘not down here.’