‘You all right, Guv?’ Taffy Morgan was looking at him anxiously.
‘Yes.’ Frost turned to Daniels. ‘So where is the body?’
‘I’ll show you.’ The man scrabbled over the bridge wall and dropped down to the embankment on the other side. ‘Follow me.’
Frost left Morgan to wait for the rest of the team and heaved himself over the wall.
‘This way,’ urged the man eagerly. ‘And be careful. It’s very steep. You could slide down to the railway line if you don’t watch it.’ He slithered down the incline, stopping at a clump of bushes and pointing. ‘Behind there.’
Frost didn’t need any further guidance. His nostrils twitched and he felt the first stirring of a protesting stomach. A too familiar smelclass="underline" the rancid, cloying, decaying reek of death. Gingerly he made his way round the bushes. The smell hit him hard, making him gasp. He lit up a cigarette, but the smoke tasted of decomposed flesh. He tore the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it down on to the railway line.
The body was almost hidden by the overgrown vegetation. The smell was unbearable. Frost held his breath and parted the grass to look down on rotting slime that once was flesh. Human, but too decomposed to immediately ascertain the sex. It had been there some time so, thank God, it wasn’t Debbie Clark or Jan O’Brien. It wasn’t easy to make out if the body had both feet, but it looked too decayed for the bits they had been finding to have come from it.
Stepping back, he yelled up to DC Morgan, who was in animated conversation with a young woman who seemed anxious to know what was going on. ‘I don’t want any bloody sightseers, Taffy. Get rid of her and come on down here.’ He switched on his mobile and called the station. ‘Seren-bleeding-dipity’ he told Sergeant Wells. ‘When you look for one body, you find a different one. It’s neither of our missing girls. Get the duty doc and the full murder team down here – and tell them an empty stomach is advisable.’
He turned his attention to the railway worker. ‘It’s well hidden. How come you spotted it?’
‘I’m working on the line down there. I wanted a slash so I nipped up here to do it behind the bushes and that’s when I found it. Flaming heck. It was the last thing I expected.’ His nose quivered and he screwed his face up in disgust. ‘When the wind changes, you can’t half smell it, can you?’
‘Smell what – your pee?’
‘No – the body.’
‘Right. Thank you, Mr Daniels,’ said Frost, anxious to get rid of him. ‘When you get a chance, would you call in at Denton police station and give us a written statement – just for the record.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Daniels enthusiastically. ‘I’ll do it now. If they think I’m coming into work after this, they’re flaming well mistaken. Shaken me up rotten, this has. Like the time I tripped over a flaming body at the side of the line. Three trains had gone over it and the drivers hadn’t noticed… How could they bleeding miss it?’ He glanced at the bushes. ‘At least this one is in one piece and not all mashed up in bits.’
‘Yes, there’s always a bright side,’ agreed Frost.
A blue plastic marquee – erected with some difficulty because of the sharp slope of the embankment – had been set up over the body. Frost stuck his head inside and withdrew it quickly. The rotting-flesh smell was now concentrated inside the enclosed space. He turned his attention to the team from Forensic, backs bent, white-overalled, painstakingly doing a fingertip search of the surrounding area and coming up with masses of junk… spent matches, scraps of paper, rusty tin cans, plastic. carrier bags. All absolutely useless, but all would have to be logged and grid-referenced. All a complete waste of bleeding time.
‘Jack!’ Dr Mackenzie, the duty police surgeon, was making his way down the slope with much difficulty. Frost steadied him as he slid to a halt outside the marquee. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘I’ve got a body with no nose,’ said Frost.
Mackenzie had heard this chestnut many times before, but he went along with it. ‘No nose? How does it smell?’
‘Bloody horrible,’ said Frost, cackling at the ancient joke.
‘You’ll have to get yourself some new material,’ said the doctor, as Frost stood to one side to let him enter the tent first.
‘This job’s full of laughs,’ said Frost, filling his lungs with fresh air before following Mackenzie in. ‘I don’t need new material.’ He nodded at the body. ‘It’s not in tip-top condition, so I want to know if it’s male or female, age, cause of death, and how long, to the nearest minute, it has been dead.’
Mackenzie, his handkerchief clapped over his mouth, took a quick look at the body. ‘If you think I’m going to touch that for the sort of money the police pay me, Jack, you’ve got another thing coming. It’s dead…’ He bent and peered at it. ‘I think it’s female, probably young, but I’m not prodding about to find the cause of death. Let Drysdale enjoy himself doing that.’ Drysdale was the Home Office pathologist, very much disliked by Mackenzie.
‘Has she got two feet, Doc?’ asked Frost.
Mackenzie blinked in astonishment. ‘Eh?’
‘We’ve been finding bits of a chopped-off foot. I want to know if it came from her.’
Mackenzie parted the overgrown grass and peered down. ‘She’s been chewed about by more animals than you can shake a stick at, but both feet seem to be there.’
‘How long has she been dead?’ asked Frost.
Mackenzie shrugged and spread his hands. ‘Weeks, months – you tell me.’ He looked down again. ‘There’s no clothing on the body. It could have been torn off by animals or stripped before being dumped, but I’d guess he or she was stripped before being dumped here. Drysdale will tell you.’
He stepped out of the marquee and took a deep breath. ‘God! Doesn’t fresh air taste good? I’ll send in my bill, and make certain they pay it promptly this time. They made me wait weeks for the last cheque.’ He clambered up the embankment to his car.
Harding from Forensic, who was in charge of the fingertip search, approached Frost. ‘We’ve thoroughly searched the area up to the bridge, Inspector. We’ve found plenty of junk, but not a scrap of clothing. Do you want us to widen the search area?’
Frost tugged at his lower lip, then shook his head. ‘No. It’s my gut feeling she – if it is a she, Mackenzie wouldn’t say for sure – was stripped naked before she was dumped here. My other gut feeling is that the clothes we found in the lake belong to this poor cow.’ He shook a cigarette from the packet and lit up. ‘Drysdale should be able to give us some idea as to how big she was and we can see if the clothing would fit.’
‘I think Drysdale’s retired or cutting down his hours,’ Harding told him.
Frost brightened up. ‘Ah well, not all bad news then.’ He would have to let Dr Mackenzie know. He beckoned Morgan down.
The detective constable slithered down the embankment. ‘Do you want me to get you some thing to eat, Guv?’
Frost nodded at the open flap of the tent. ‘Stick your nose in there, Taff, and tell me if you feel like eating.’ He looked up. A plumpish woman in her early forties, wearing slacks and a thick windcheater, had clambered over the bridge wall and was cautiously making her way down. ‘Who the bleeding hell is that, Taffy? You’re supposed to be up there, stopping any fat tart who feels like it from coming down for a sniff.’
‘You told me to come down here,’ protested Morgan.
‘I don’t care what I said – get rid of her.’
Morgan clawed his way up to head her off, but to Frost’s annoyance soon made his way down again with the woman in tow.
‘I thought I told you to get rid of her,’ hissed Frost.
‘You don’t know who she is, Guv. She’s the new Home Office pathologist.’