First Frost (2 page)

‘You were waiting outside the changing room?’ asked Clarke, her notepad in hand.

‘Not exactly.’ Mrs Hudson was now keeping her eyes on the floor. She was wearing surprisingly high-heeled shoes, of a not dissimilar colour to the lurid orange-patterned carpet.

Clarke pressed on. ‘Where were you, then?’

‘I suppose I’d wandered over to another section – there’s this new lingerie bit.’ The woman coughed into her tissue. ‘But Julie’s a big girl, she’s very nearly thirteen. It’s not like she needs me watching over her at all times.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Clarke, noticing Mr Hudson flinch. ‘But how long was it before you realized she was missing?’

‘I don’t know. It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. I went to find her in the changing rooms, and she wasn’t there – nobody was.’

Mr Hudson was now staring at his wife, and not, Clarke thought, out of sympathy or concern. He was angry. ‘Twenty minutes?’ Clarke repeated, careful to not sound accusatory.

‘Julie always takes her time in front of a mirror,’ explained Mrs Hudson.

‘Like her mother,’ said Mr Hudson.

‘There was no attendant by the entrance to the changing rooms, I take it?’ said Clarke.

‘No, there weren’t many staff about at all.’

‘But the shop was busy?’

‘I’ve seen it busier.’

‘You would know,’ muttered Mr Hudson, standing up, stubbing his cigarette out in an ashtray on the glass-and-chrome coffee table, then sitting straight back down again. He was a short man, shorter than his wife. ‘The amount of time you spend in there, running up my account.’

‘Did you see anyone suspicious?’ asked DC Sue Clarke.

‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Hudson, shifting uncomfortably on the settee.

Clarke’s eye was momentarily distracted by the enormous television in the corner of the room. Beside it were a new VCR machine and a stack of video cassettes. From where Clarke was she couldn’t read the titles. ‘Men,’ she prompted. ‘Men behaving oddly.’

‘You mean like perverts?’ Mrs Hudson gasped.

‘Do you think she could have been snatched?’ said Mr Hudson, getting to his feet again.

‘We have to keep an open mind,’ said Clarke. ‘But it would be very unusual.’

‘I didn’t see anything, anyone behaving like that,’ said Mrs Hudson quickly. ‘I’m sure I would have noticed.’

‘Most likely she’s gone off to meet a friend,’ suggested Clarke. ‘I’m sure she’ll come bursting through your front door any moment.’

‘What if she doesn’t?’ said Mr Hudson.

‘Well, first of all we need to contact all her friends – see if they know anything. I’ll need a list.’

‘She wouldn’t do that,’ said Mrs Hudson. ‘Just disappear like that.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ her husband disagreed. ‘She can be a right stubborn little cow at times.’

‘She can’t have run away,’ sobbed Mrs Hudson. ‘Why would she do that?’

Clarke looked at her, the tears now rolling down her cheeks, and then hard at Mr Hudson. He was giving her the creeps. ‘Is she generally happy?’ she asked. ‘Are things OK at home?’

‘She’s in a world of her own,’ said Mr Hudson, sitting down once more. ‘All she does is play records and get dressed up. Spends most of her time in her room.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ said his wife. ‘Headstrong at times, but who isn’t at that age?’

They all looked up to see Detective Constable Arthur Hanlon appear in the lounge doorway, red-faced and very out of breath. Though he was still in his thirties, Clarke had always thought her chubby colleague could easily pass for being two decades older; it wasn’t just his weight and thinning salt-and-pepper hair, but his old-fashioned moustache, and cheap, unfashionable clothes.

Hanlon had been searching the girl’s bedroom, and was holding a framed photograph in his large, podgy hand. ‘I take it this is Julie?’ He waved the picture around.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hudson quietly.

Clarke strained to see a photograph of a desperately slight girl in school uniform. She had hazel eyes, prominent cheekbones and a pointy nose. There was a streak of red in her shoulder-length, mousey hair. Clarke didn’t think she looked much like either of her parents.

‘Can we borrow this?’ Hanlon asked. ‘We’ll need to get some copies made.’ He turned the frame over in his hands.

‘Someone’s taken her, haven’t they?’ Mrs Hudson suddenly wailed.

‘I’m sure they haven’t,’ said Clarke, hoping to God they hadn’t – such a vulnerable, impressionable-looking girl – and rising to her feet, not knowing whether she should walk over and comfort the woman. Her husband wasn’t going to.

‘She’ll show up soon enough,’ Hanlon added cheerily. ‘I expect it’s all been a bit of a misunderstanding.’

‘Don’t bet on it,’ Mr Hudson said sharply, standing again also.

Sunday (1)

‘Whatever next?’ Desmond Thorley muttered, fumbling for the Harvey’s Bristol Cream. It didn’t feel like he’d been asleep for long. The bottle appeared to be empty so he slumped back on his bench.

However, the high-pitched shrieking, which had so rudely and painfully woken him, seemed to be getting worse. It sounded like a child. A young child. But not at this hour, in the middle of the woods, surely.

His mind was playing games again, yet he couldn’t just go back to sleep and he found himself sitting up again and peering out through a badly smudged and cracked window-pane. There was daylight, already, not that he could see much except tree trunks and branches and the sodden ground.

He gathered his mound of threadbare coats and moth-eaten blankets tighter around him. Winter was fast approaching. He looked over at the old wood-burning stove, knowing the chimney was blocked solid with tar, like his lungs, no doubt.

Scratching his head, he then noticed, lying on the dirty wooden floor, his tin of tobacco – open and all but empty. Not even one shred of Old Holborn.

Just at that moment his old railway carriage was rocked by that blood-curdling noise again, worse than anything he’d ever encountered on stage or screen; his bit-part acting career, though in the distant past, was still a vivid memory.

It was no good, he knew he wasn’t going to get back to sleep. Clasping his tatty covers around him, he swung his legs off the hard bench and let his feet fall to the sticky ground. He was already wearing his boots, what was left of them. Slowly he made his way to the end of the carriage. Pushing open the rickety wooden door, he blinked in the soft light. The freezing early-morning air making his bloodshot eyes water.

The frantic, terrifying noise was coming from some way off, to the left of the end of his track, behind a wall of rhododendrons and a vast copper beech, its last few leaves still clinging on for dear life.

Feeling a mixture of outrage and apprehensive curiosity, Thorley stepped gingerly down from his carriage and on to the forest floor. This was his home, his kingdom. How dare they wake him in such a manner.

He was used to wind and rain battering Denton Woods, but it was strangely calm, which made the noise even more penetrating and unbearable. He heard a rustle coming from the bushes – he was certain of it. He walked to the end of his track, where it joined the main path, and while he was debating whether he should attempt to go straight through the middle of the rhododendron bushes, or take the less obstructed but longer route round, he heard short, heavy panting breaths behind him.

Quickly turning, and managing to lose his grip on his blankets and outer garments at the same time, he was faced with the vision of a tall, perfectly built young woman jogging towards him. She was wearing clothing so tight it left little to the imagination. Every bump and crevice was shockingly revealed. What was it with these female keep-fit types and their Lycra?

Yet it was wasted on him: women weren’t his thing.

The woman was clearly startled, though rapidly seemed to feel reassured. Desmond Thorley knew he couldn’t have appeared much of a threat.

She nodded a hello before passing and then increasing her pace.

He had seen her before, he was sure – with even less clothing on. Down by the north car park, that was where they came to do it, in the summer. Groups of them, sometimes. Men and women.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please,’ Superintendent Stanley Mullett said loudly. He was standing between a desk and an incident board at the front of Denton Police Station’s scruffy briefing room. ‘Gather forward, gather forward,’ he added, noticing the lack of personnel, even for a Sunday.

Mullett self-consciously fiddled with his papers while there was the noise of people slowly shuffling forward and changing seats. The new divisional commander was already regretting his decision to come to the station, straight before the golf club, despite the fact that his beige trousers were sharply creased and his Pringle sweater was neatly pressed too.

However, when the Sunday newspapers had dropped on to his doormat Mullett had realized he needed to be at that morning’s briefing. And there wouldn’t have been time to change into uniform and then back into his golfing attire, and there was no way he was going to miss the tee-off time. Despite his exalted position in Denton, he was still very much the new boy at the Royal Denton Golf Club.

‘It has come to my attention that certain members of the fourth estate are already making enquiries about twelve-year-old Julie Hudson,’ Mullet said, suspecting there was a leak from the station.

‘The Southern Estate, did you say?’ coughed someone to his side.

‘No, the fourth estate,’ repeated Mullett. He continued, ‘The press, the press.’ He paused. ‘By the way, where is everyone?’ There were fewer than a dozen officers in the room. A scattering of plainclothes and uniform.

‘The clocks went back, not forward, last night,’ snapped Mullett. ‘There really is no excuse.’ He slapped the
Sunday Mirror
on to the desk. Lifting his head, in an attempt at conveying superiority, he caught a couple of people bemusedly studying their watches.

Only six months into the job, Mullett was having a desperate time trying to gain control of the overstretched and under-resourced station. The Denton Division had been the laughing stock of the county. No one, except possibly Detective Inspector Jim Allen, had a clue what they were meant to be doing. But Allen was in the middle of a walking holiday in the Peak District, and Detective Inspector Bert Williams, who should have been in charge this morning, was nowhere to be seen.

It was just as well that Mullett had made the detour between home and the club. ‘See this,’ he said angrily, unfolding the rag, and holding it up for the benefit of the half-empty room.

‘You’re holding it upside down, sir,’ prompted the long, pale face of PC Pooley.

Flustered, Mullett turned the paper the right way up. ‘What it says, right across the front page – and I quote – is, “COPS BEATEN BY CHILD MOLESTERS”. Inside, the paper details what it claims are the mistakes police, right up and down the country, are making by not monitoring paedophiles. We’re being accused of rape and murder.’

A terrible squeaking sound was coming from the middle of the room.

‘These seats, sir. Sorry,’ apologized Detective Constable Arthur Hanlon. ‘There must be something wrong with them.’

Mullett was not going to enter into a discussion about the new office furniture. He was aware that people had already been grumbling, the ungrateful slobs.

‘When I want your opinion, Detective, you’ll know about it.’ Mullett’s stride was well and truly ruined – and it was only ten past nine in the morning. He looked about the room, hoping DI Bert Williams might have materialized, ready to take over with the finer details, as per his duty. But he was still nowhere to be seen.

Right
, Mullett said firmly to himself; he was not going to be derailed by a lack of attendance and discipline. ‘Now, while the nature of Julie Hudson’s disappearance bears some similarities with the case of Miranda Connelly – the girl who was snatched from a department store in Bath last July – there are enough differences for me to believe at the moment that there is no connection. Notably, Miranda Connelly was a good four years younger, and the store in question had virtually no security. I don’t like to say it, but it was a case of somewhat easy pickings. Aster’s, as we all know, is a famously well-run ship – the pride of Denton.’

There was a titter from the floor, but Mullett didn’t bother to look up. ‘I doubt very much that Aster’s was being targeted by a paedophile. No. In fact, I don’t believe Julie Hudson was snatched by anyone,’ he continued. ‘And the last thing I want is for the press to start printing such nonsense.’ He paused, running his fingers down his newly trimmed moustache. ‘Where’s DC Clarke?’

‘She’s off duty today, sir,’ replied DC Hanlon, accompanied by more of the awful squeaking.

‘Taking a well-deserved rest,’ someone else chipped in. ‘Frisky little thing.’

As a further bout of tittering subsided, Mullett said calmly, ‘Hanlon, you were with DC Clarke when she interviewed Mr and Mrs Hudson together yesterday evening at their home. I’ve read Clarke’s report – am I right in thinking there are good grounds to believe that Julie has in fact run away?’

‘That’s the impression we both arrived at, sir,’ said Hanlon. ‘As you will have read, Mr and Mrs Hudson appear to have a number of personal issues, to say the least. Frankly, they could barely look each other in the eye. And the girl’s bedroom was suspiciously tidy, as if one of the parents had hurriedly cleaned the place up.’

Mullett wasn’t sure how much he trusted DC Clarke’s intuition; she seemed rather immature and impressionable. Or Hanlon’s for that matter. The great oaf was too fat to take seriously. Yet he was willing to give them credit here. A girl running away from home seemed straightforward enough, even for them. What he didn’t need was pressure from the press drumming up hysteria. He knew how pernicious they could be, having been bitten once before – it had nearly ended his career.

‘Thank you, Hanlon. One of the reasons why I wanted to be here this morning, having been alerted to what our friends in Fleet Street are trying to cook up, is to make sure we approach this case with an appropriate and proportionate response.’