Winter Frost (34 page)

   
"You spurned my gifts in the past, Inspector," said Plummer, looking cock-a-hoop, "but at last you've come to your senses." He declined Frost's offered cigarette. "Alcohol and cigarettes deaden the mental powers, as I'm sure you've found out." He produced a worn leather wallet from his jacket pocket and took out a newspaper cutting carrying a photograph of Vicky Stuart. "This is the little girl I keep seeing, calling out to me in my dreams. You don't know where she is, do you, Inspector?"

   
"No," grunted Frost, mentally adding, and neither do you, mate. This was going to be a complete and utter waste of time and he had so many other things to attend to. That bleeding skeleton for a start.

   
Plummer rubbed his hands briskly. "I'd like a full-scale map of Denton, if you please." Frost found him one and Plummer carefully unfolded it over the surface of Morgan's desk. He sat in Morgan's chair and took several deep breaths, slowly expelling air from his lungs. "To purify the system," he told the inspector.

   
Frost raised his eyebrows to Lane. He was getting fed up with this already. Plummer gave him a pitying smile. "Patience, Inspector. These things can't be rushed." He addressed Lane, who he considered a more receptive audience. "Last night I had a dream, a vivid dream. A child was crying out." He imitated a small child's voice: " 'Help me . . . please help me . . .' I saw her face clearly." His finger stabbed the newspaper cutting. "It was that child." If he was expecting a favourable reaction from Frost, he didn't get one.

   
"When is the big film going to start?" Frost asked. "I'm getting bored with the Mickey Mouse."

   
Plummer, looking hurt, ignored him. "I immediately sprang out of bed and felt something drawing me to this copy of the Denton
Echo
. I opened it, and there was this picture . . . the little girl from my dream. I concentrated on it and could feel hatred, pain, violence. There were trees, grass, leaves . . ." Again he looked at Frost.

   
"So all we've got to do is to find somewhere where there's trees, grass and leaves, and we've got her. Thank you very much." Frost rose to his feet, bringing the meeting to a close.

   
Plummer stayed in his chair. "You have no faith in me, have you, Inspector?" He smiled knowingly. "But I will change that. Do you have any item here that would have been in the girl's possession? Something actually handled by her?"

   
Frost opened the file and took out the school photograph of the smiling, gap-toothed Vicky. She had brought it home from the school for her mother.

   
"Perfect, perfect," breathed Plummer, placing the photograph on the map. He closed his eyes and swayed from side to side. "I can feel her presence . . . she has control of my hand. She is saying, 'I'm here, I'm here.' " Then his finger quivered and descended on to the map. "There! This is where you will find her, Inspector." He opened his eyes and beamed triumphantly up at Frost.

   
Frost leant over to see the spot indicated. A small section of Denton Woods, cut off by the new motorway. "Marvellous," snorted Frost. "We've already searched there three times, twice with men, once with dogs. We found nothing." He snatched the map from the desk and made a hash of refolding it. "On your way—I've wasted enough time over this."

   
"I'm prepared to go with him on my own," said Sandy Lane. "You'll look a right prat if we find her after you refused to come."

   
"I never look anything other than a right prat," said Frost. He unhooked his mac from the rack. "All right, but make it quick." Opening the door, he yelled down the corridor for Morgan. "Get the car round, Taffy. We're going body-hunting . . ."

The long grass was sodden and their trouser legs were soon soaked to the knees with a cold clamminess the howling wind was doing its best to turn to ice. Plummer had led them off the main path and they were plunging into an overgrown area where trees creaked and groaned. Frost exchanged exasperated glances with Morgan. It was obvious that Plummer, looking more and more despairing, was hopelessly lost. Behind them, deadened by a fringe of trees, came the steady roar of motorway traffic. Sandy Lane, stumbling along behind them, was trying hard not to meet Frost's eye.

   
"Can we stop when we reach Edinburgh?" asked Frost sarcastically.

   
"I'm sorry," flushed Plummer. "This isn't an exact science, you know."
      
 

   
"It was a bleeding exact science when you jabbed your finger on the map," snapped Frost. "We passed the place where we would definitely find her some ten minutes ago."

   
"She's here, somewhere," insisted Plummer. He stopped and slowly looked about him, shaking his head. "No . . . I'm sorry . . . something's wrong. I just don't know."

   
"My fault for agreeing to come with you," grunted Frost who wasn't going to waste time on recriminations. "Let's go home."

   
They had driven barely half a mile with Plummer glumly staring out of the window when he suddenly yelled, "Stop the car!"

   
Morgan, at the wheel, looked to Frost for instructions.

   
"What now?" asked Frost.

   
Plummer craned his neck, staring back at the way they had come and pointing excitedly to a clump of forlorn trees on the other side of the road. "She's there!"

   
"She bloody well gets about a bit, doesn't she?" snorted Frost.

   
"She's there!" insisted Plummer. "I'm positive. I can hear her calling, 'I'm here . . . I'm here . . .' "

   
Frost sighed and nodded for Morgan to do a U turn and drive back to the indicated spot. "Your last bloody chance,"he told Plummer.

   
They trudged along another winding, muddy path, then through more trouser-soaking grass, Plummer running ahead of them, excitedly, like a dog catching the scent of a rabbit, beard bristling, eyes glowing. He stopped and waited for them to catch up. "The child is very near. I can feel the vibrations."

   
"You'll feel the toe of my boot up your arse if this is another waste of time," grunted Frost.

   
The path narrowed and bushes on either side were brushing against them. Plummer took another couple of steps, then abruptly stopped, his face contorting as if in extreme pain. "I feel her suffering, her soul cries out in torment."

   
"Go on, then," urged Frost. "We're right behind you."

   
Plummer shook his head. "No. I can't go any further." He pointed. "She's there, Inspector, behind those bushes."

   
Frost barged him out of the way, briars snagging his mac as he squeezed through. His nostrils twitched. Something. Something unpleasant. Faintly at first, then it hit him hard. A smell he had experienced too often before. The sickly, rancid carrion odour of death and decay. "Morgan, come here," he barked. "Sandy, you stay put with Plummer."

   
With Morgan tagging close behind, he parted some brambles and stepped into a small clearing overgrown with sodden tall grass. Morgan bumped into him as he halted. "Shit!" he hissed.

   
"What is it, guv?"

   
Frost pointed.

   
They stared down at a mess of sodden clothes; and bloated flesh that was once an eight-year-old girl.

   
Morgan closed his eyes and looked away. "I thought we'd searched this area, guv?"

   
"We did," Frost told him. "Three times. She must have been dumped here after we searched."

   
"What's going on?" yelled Sandy Lane.

   
"Stay there," ordered Frost. "We're coming out."

   
They gingerly retraced their steps, anxious not to disturb any evidence which might be lurking in the long grass.

   
"You've found her, haven't you?" asked Plummer, a smug smirk of triumph on his face.

   
Frost stared coldly. "Yes, we've found her, and it hasn't made our day like it seems to have made yours." He sent Morgan back to the car to mobilize the murder team, then stopped Sandy Lane who was tugging a mobile phone from his inside pocket.

   
"Hold it, Sandy." He pulled the reporter to one side and lowered his voice. "She hasn't been identified yet, so just say we've found a body, and don't send one of your tactful reporters round to the mother's house before I've been over to break the news; she's going to take this bloody badly. And lastly, don't mention Plummer's part in this."

   
"Now hold on, Jack," protested the reporter. "We've paid good money for this exclusive. Plummer's red hot news."

   
Frost glared incredulously. "You've what?"

   
" 'Clairvoyant Finds Body Of Missing Girl'—it's a dream story. We've paid £5,000 for the exclusive world rights."

   
"You never told me this," said Frost, angrily. "I'd never have gone along with it had I known."

   
"Then you would never have found her."

   
"Listen, Sandy. I don't care how much you've paid that smug bastard, but he's too clever for his own good. He knew where she was and not through bloody second sight. He's got a lot of questions to answer."

   "You don't believe in second sight?"

   "Not even at £5K a bleeding throw. That bastard
knew
she was there. He's just become my number one suspect."

The pathologist emerged from the small temporary canvas tenting erected over the body which had the effect of containing the reek of decay, but Drysdale didn't appear to mind. "Sexually assaulted and manually strangled, like the other girl," he told Frost "Killed elsewhere, of course, and brought here some time after death."

   
"How long has she been here?" Frost asked, hoping it was well after the time the area was thoroughly searched.

   
"Difficult to tell without knowing the previous-storage conditions. At a guess I'd say some two to three weeks."

   
"Storage conditions?"

   
"I suspect the body was kept in a deep freeze of some kind before being brought here."

   
"A deep freeze?" echoed Frost. "Bloody hell!" The freezer compartment to the fridge in Weaver's house was tiny and nowhere near big enough to store a body. He made a mental note to check Plummer's house and see what sort of a deep freeze he had.

   
"If she was killed shortly after she went missing," continued Drysdale, "then there would have been much more evidence of decay. I should be able to be more precise when I do the PM. I've a busy schedule, but I can fit it in today—two o'clock this afternoon, Denton Hospital mortuary."

   
"I'll be there, doc," said Frost.

   
No matter how many times Frost said it, Drysdale always winced at the 'doc'. He couldn't stand the man's coarse familiarity. As he left, Harding and the Forensic team, who had been waiting patiently, went inside the canvas shelter.

   
Frost's mobile phone bleeped. Mullett calling from the station. "You've found the girl?"

   
"Yes. Raped and strangled like Jenny."

   
"By the same man?"

   
"I bloody hope so. It's hard enough finding one killer, let alone two."

   
"I understand you've arrested this man Plummer. Can I take it you now accept that Weaver was innocent?"

   
"No. I reckon Weaver and Plummer acted together. Plummer could have hidden Jenny's body while we had Weaver in custody, then sent that letter with the button."

   
"Hmm," grunted Mullett, sounding unconvinced. "Try and speed things up. The news has leaked out that we're holding a suspect and we're being inundated with phone calls from the press. And something else. I've had an irate Chief Inspector Preston from Belton Division on the phone. You haven't sent over the files on the prostitute killing he asked for."

   
"Damn," said Frost. "Funny how you forget things when some bastard strings himself up in his cell. I'll see to it as soon as I get back."

   
"Make sure you do," Mullett snapped. "These things reflect on the Division. Have you told the girl's parents yet?"

   
"No," said Frost, fingering the plastic bracelet found on the body. He was going to ask them to identify it as Vicky's. He didn't want them to have to see the body in its present state. "I've got that treat to come."

   
"After weeks of uncertainty, it might even come as relief," suggested Mullett.

   
"Yes," said Frost bitterly. "We might even have a few laughs about it." He clicked off the phone and dropped it in his pocket. No point in putting it off any longer. He walked to his car and drove to the parents' house.

It was Vicky's mother who opened the door. She had seen his car pull up outside and couldn't wait to hear the good news that Vicky had been found and was alive and well. Then she stared and clutched her chest. His face told her everything. He looked at her and sadly shook his head. She forced herself to ask "Vicky?"

   
Frost nodded.

   
"Dead?" She was already shaking her head, refusing to believe what he was going to tell her.

   
He nodded again. He always tried to be detached and not let these things affect him, but this time he found himself struggling to hold back the tears.

   
She put her arms round him and hugged him tight. "You poor man," she crooned, as if soothing a child. "You tried so hard, you hoped for so much." And she was comforting him.