First Frost (3 page)

Mullett’s mind flashed to the evergreen fairways of the Royal Denton Golf Club, and the impressive men making up this morning’s foursome. ‘I shouldn’t have to spell it out,’ he said, knowing that was exactly what he’d have to do, ‘but we don’t want any unnecessary attention. Which would distract us from our proper investigations.’

‘Does that mean, sir,’ asked DS Frost, slumped in a seat at the back, puffing away, ‘that you don’t want us to go public on this missing Julie Hudson?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m ordering – for the time being. I don’t want public lynchings breaking out in Denton, just because a few tabloid hacks have it in for the police. DI Williams is in charge of this case. When he gets in. For the time being …’ Mullett quickly glanced about the tatty room. It was going to take a lot more than the addition of a few modern comforts to get the place up to a standard befitting a modern division. ‘For the time being,’ the station commander repeated slowly, ‘DS Frost will be handling the investigation.’

Mullett doubted Frost could do a worse job than DI Williams, and he was, worryingly, the highest-ranking officer present. ‘I suggest, Frost,’ he added, ‘you and Hanlon get straight over to the Hudsons’ home and get this matter ironed out.’

As he was heading for the exit Mullett suddenly stopped in his tracks, and shouted over his shoulder, ‘Oh, and I’d also like to remind everyone that the canteen will be shut as of tomorrow, when we embark upon the next stage in the station’s renovations. A replacement trolley service will be coming round throughout the day.’

With that Mullett was out of the briefing room and marching down the corridor, only to feel a tap on his arm.

‘A quick word, Super.’ It was DS Frost. ‘Bert, sorry, DI Williams, had asked me to process the October crime clear-up stats for County, which, as you know, are due in tomorrow first thing. But with me taking over the Hudson case, I don’t see how I’m going to make this deadline. There’s an awful lot of paperwork.’

There was a strong smell of tobacco, and cheap aftershave. The detective sergeant looked smart enough, if a little crumpled – suited, but the Paisley tie had seen better days. He was of medium height and build, with thinning, light-brown hair, intense dark eyes and an almost permanent grin on his face. Mullett could never be sure whether Frost was being mocking or friendly. ‘You’ll get it done, Frost,’ he said. Though dismayed, Mullett was not surprised to hear that Williams had tried to pass on yet another one of his duties.

‘Enjoy your golf, sir,’ Mullett heard Frost shout from the other end of the corridor.

‘Any sign of Inspector Williams?’ Mullett asked irritably, not even looking in Station Sergeant Bill Wells’s direction, as he was striding across the lobby.

‘No, sir,’ said Wells, from behind the front desk. He was quickly shuffling the duty roster over his Pools coupon. ‘No sign, sorry, sir.’

‘Keep trying.’ A few paces on, Mullett added, ‘Sunday morning or not, it wouldn’t do any harm if you looked a little more alert. And this lobby is a bloody disgrace. But not for much longer – the decorators will be starting in here too in the next few days. I want the public to feel not just welcomed when they visit the station, but to realize we’re in a properly organized division too. It’s not a tatty social club, you know.’

With that Wells watched the tall, straight-backed Mullett, in his ridiculous golfing gear, delicately push his way through the lobby doors, which Wells had to concede could do with a lick of paint, and march across the yard to his gleaming Rover, neatly aligned in the super’s special parking slot.

It’s all right for some, Wells thought, retrieving his Pools coupon: golf, Sunday dinner, followed, no doubt, by a long snooze. He looked down at the scruffy receipt. He definitely hadn’t won.

The phone rang the second Wells was reaching for his tea mug. Control was putting through calls to the front desk because they were understaffed – part of Mullett’s bloody new cost-cutting regime, which was hitting the weekends worst.

‘Can you speak up,’ Wells said. ‘What was that? You’ve just seen a van circling Market Square?’

‘Yes,’ the softly spoken male voice replied. ‘At least half a dozen times.’

Wells thought he could detect a trace of an Irish accent. His heart skipped a beat. ‘What colour was the van?’

‘White. It was white.’

‘Any idea of the make?’

‘Ford Transit. No doubt about it.’

‘I don’t suppose you got the licence number?’ Wells asked hopefully.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And?’

‘Hang about a moment. Yes, here it is: N16 UES.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Wells fumbled for his pen and the call-register log. ‘Can you repeat that, please? Hello? Hello?’

The man had rung off, before Wells had had time to slide open the panel behind him and alert PC Ridley, the duty controller, to listen in.
Bugger
, he said to himself. All he could remember of the licence number was that it had an ‘N’ and an ‘S’ in it, and maybe an eight too.

‘Look who we’ve got here – it’s the Old Bill.’ Frost had appeared in the lobby, making for the exit.

‘Hello, Jack, off somewhere nice?’

‘You know me, Bill, and my love of the great outdoors. Talking of which, I don’t suppose Inspector Allen’s rung in from his hols? There’s some info missing from the crime clear-up stats I’m meant to be processing for County HQ. Maybe I’ll leave the lot on his desk for his return, and he can join up the dots.’

‘Jim Allen’s not going to like that. Nor is the super, Jack, if it’s late. Allen’s away for another week.’

‘They get paid more than us, Bill. Let’s not forget.’

‘I haven’t, Jack.’ As Frost was nearing the exit, Wells added, ‘Oh by the way, Jack, it probably isn’t anything, but a man just rang in to say he’d seen a white van being driven round and round Market Square.’

‘I don’t suppose he kindly supplied the licence number as well?’

‘No … not all of it. But he said it was a Transit.’

‘Did he now? Well, nothing to worry about then—’

Wells watched in horror as a disgusting mound of rags and bones entered the station and collided with Frost.

‘Jesus,’ a winded Frost spluttered, immediately starting to brush his mac. ‘It’s Steptoe without his son.’

‘Sorry, Mr Frost, I didn’t see you,’ croaked Desmond Thorley.

‘Looks like times are treating you as well as ever, Des,’ said Frost. ‘Amazing what riches lurk in Denton Woods.’

‘You’d be surprised, Mr Frost.’

‘I’m sure I would. So what brings you back to the land of the living?’ Frost had paused by the exit.

‘I want to report an incident,’ said Thorley.

‘Don’t tell me. On a dark and stormy night,’ said Frost.

‘It was morning, actually. And very cold too.’

‘Is that right? Well, old Bill Wells over there is ready and waiting with pen and paper. Spin him a good one and he might even fetch you a cuppa.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ muttered Wells.

Sunday (2)

Detective Inspector Bert Williams made one final lunge for his radio. Having been knocked from its holder, it was hanging near the bloodied handbrake. It should have been easier to reach there, but Bert was never going to be able to grab it from where he was, half in, half out of the car. He could barely move. Besides, he had no idea whether the radio still worked.

It had taken him the best part of he didn’t know how long just to shift his upper body closer by a few inches. Time had lost relevance. Life seemed to be slowing to a standstill. He knew he was shutting down for good.

He wheezed, bracing himself for another wave of pain to spread tightly across his chest.
Flaming arseholes, it hurt
.

Perhaps it would have been better if he’d been killed outright. Now he was left in the middle of nowhere to digest the fact that he’d fucked up. He was a better copper than that.

His mind flashed to Betty, making him wince. The compensation coming to her would be pitiful. He should have saved more carefully, planned for his retirement. At least then she would have been sitting on a tidy sum. The things he should have done – all very well to think about that now. What a bloody idiot he’d been.

And who would pick up the pieces? It was big, all right. He thought of Frost, his deputy. Was Frost up to it?

One way or another it was all there in the mountain of paperwork on his desk, back at the station, a fat file crying out for attention. Lucky, in some sense, that he never threw anything away, and rarely handed stuff back to Records.

But no one, not even Frost, would find what they needed – in time, anyway, to save him. Though just maybe, hopefully, in time to save other lives. Those bastards had to be put away. He’d never known a more ruthless gang.

Bert tried to pull his hand back and make himself more comfortable. His shoulder and his head were resting at an awkward angle against the side of the opened driver’s door. The handset was definitely closer, almost within reach now. If only the door hadn’t opened and he hadn’t all but fallen out. If only he had the strength for another lunge. If only …

Arseholes
, he was tired. He tried to focus, not on the blood still seeping from his chest, but on the dense hedge, the other side of the ditch. The treetops beyond that. Denton was far in the distance. No one would ever come down here – that’s why he’d chosen it.

Sunday (3)

‘Steady on, boss,’ said DC Arthur Hanlon.

Frost had mounted the pavement while rounding Green Lane, as it led into Beech Crescent. He wasn’t even going fast. ‘Tight corner,’ he exhaled heavily.

Frost disliked driving. It had taken him three attempts to pass his Advanced Police Speed and Chase Proficiency Test, quite a few years back, when he was still in uniform. He wouldn’t have bothered had it not at the time been obligatory. When Frost was with Detective Inspector Bert Williams, as he normally was, Williams drove, insisted on it, whether he was pissed or not. The inspector said it helped him think. Frost himself couldn’t do both – think and drive.

‘Here we are, boss,’ said Hanlon, once Frost was slowing on Carson Road.

Nosing the unmarked Cortina to a stop outside the Hudson house, Frost managed to scrape the hubcaps noisily along the kerb. Hurriedly he clambered out and lit a cigarette, taking two long, hard puffs, before throwing the smouldering remains on to the crazy paving.

Sensing something was wrong before he even reached the smoked-glass front door, Frost suddenly increased his pace. What was strange was the fact that there was no one anxiously peering out of a window to see who had pulled up, that the house was oddly still. The curtains were not drawn, the windows were shut. Frost stuck his finger on the bell, heard a ding dong and waited. Nothing. Impatient, he rapped on the glass, to no effect.

‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s home, boss,’ said Hanlon behind him, still catching his breath.

‘I’d rather you didn’t call me boss, if that’s all right, Arthur. It might give me ideas above my station. You wait here, I’m going round the back.’

Left on his own, Hanlon bent down and peered through the letterbox. He caught a whiff of Alpine air freshener – he didn’t remember that from yesterday evening. He heard nothing and saw only an empty hall. Standing up, he tried the door. Locked. Turning round he noticed a neighbour, a young woman, in a house across the way, staring at him from behind half-open curtains, then he noticed someone else, older, in another front window, and another. It felt like the whole street was watching him.

From the back of the house he heard the sound of breaking glass, then a thump and a muffled crash.

‘Jack?’ he shouted, knowing he couldn’t leave the front door, having been told to wait there. He braced himself. ‘Jack?’ he repeated, alarmed.

Hanlon bent down once more to peer through the letterbox. Something about the stillness inside unsettled him too. On the verge of retreating to the car to call for back-up, Hanlon watched, relieved, as the distinctive form of Frost, shrouded in his mac, approached the other side of the smoked glass.

‘Shit,’ he heard Frost say.

The detective sergeant clearly couldn’t open the front door from the inside either. It must have been double-locked, the key missing.

‘Call an ambulance!’ Frost shouted. ‘And get Scenes of Crime and uniform down here pronto, then come round the back. The kitchen door’s open.’

Frost quickly returned to the kitchen and to, he presumed, Wendy Hudson. A fully dressed blonde woman was lying unconscious, in a pool of blood, on the black-and-white chequered linoleum floor. She had been badly beaten around the head, but she was still alive, just. Frost could detect a faint pulse. He took off his mac – a recent present from his wife, Mary – and gently laid it over the unconscious woman, before removing his jacket and laying that on her, too.

Hanlon appeared in the kitchen. Frost had had to smash one of the small windowpanes on the back door to release the catch and bolt.

‘Oh dear me,’ said Hanlon, rushing forward. ‘The poor woman.’

‘It’s her, is it?’

‘Yes, it’s her, all right. And she was a looker, too.’

‘I saw her foot from the window,’ said Frost. ‘Had to break in. All the doors and windows were shut tight. No sign of forced entry. The back door was bolted also, which means that whoever did this most likely let themselves out of the front door, and then double-locked it.’

‘Out of habit?’ said Hanlon.

‘Could be,’ said Frost, troubled. The woman was in a terrible state. It had been a brutal, frenzied attack, though given her untouched clothing it didn’t look like she’d been sexually assaulted. ‘I’d like to know where Mr Hudson is right now. And, more importantly, where the hell Julie Hudson is.’ A case of a missing child, a presumed runaway, had suddenly become a lot more complicated.

‘I’ll alert Control, get them to put out a search for Steven Hudson right away,’ said Hanlon, still short of breath. ‘I noticed his car wasn’t out the front.’

‘That’s what they pay you for, Arthur. Sharp insights like that.’

‘It was there yesterday evening,’ said Hanlon. ‘A flashy, bright-yellow TR7.’