And there she was, white and still, lying on her back.
She was naked, her cold, still flesh gleaming like silver in the harsh moonlight.
“Here!” yelled Simms. “Over here.” He directed his torch beam into the sky like a beacon, then knelt beside her, shining his torch on her face. He shuddered. Her face was a swollen, bloody mess, the eyes puffy and blackened, the nose misshapen and broken. Blood from her nose had clotted, forming a sticky mask all over the lower part of her face and neck.
The body was blood-streaked, scarcely an inch free of livid bruises.
Scattered on the grass around her were items of ripped-off clothing. She looked dead. He touched her. Her body was icy. He bent his ear to the wreckage of her mouth, holding his breath as he tried to detect the slightest whisper of life. Nothing at first, only the hammering of his own heart, but then the faint wheezing rasp of tortured lungs. Fumbling with the buttons, he dragged off his greatcoat and draped it over the girl.
There was a crash in the undergrowth as Frost lumbered through, Webster hard on his heels. “She’s still alive,” Simms told him. “Some bastard’s smashed her face in.”
Frost dropped to his knees and made his own check for signs of life, feeling for the pulse in her neck. Satisfied, he called over his shoulder to Webster. “Radio the station. We want an ambulance bloody quick. And you can tell Sergeant Wells, with my compliments, that the party’s over. We’ve got another rape victim.”
As Webster was radioing through, Frost studied the extent of the girl’s injuries. It took some resolve to look at her face, which must have been kicked. He suspected the jaw was broken as well as the nose.
Jordan was the last to arrive. He stared down at the girl, and what he saw made him shudder.
“See what the bugger’s done to her neck,” said Frost, indicating bruises cut deeply into the flesh where the rapist’s fingers had gripped and squeezed her into unconsciousness.
“The same pattern as the other one,” observed Simms dispassionately. “That nurse he raped over at the golf course. But she wasn’t beaten up anything like this.”
Webster switched off the radio and dropped it into his pocket. “Ambulance on its way,” he reported. Frost, still bent over the girl, acknowledged his message with a grunt, then ordered Simms out to the main road to home the ambulance crew in.
“Is it Karen?” Webster asked, only to wince and turn his head away as Frost moved back so Webster could see what the animal had done to the girl.
“If it is, then she’s nothing like her photograph,” muttered the inspector. “The poor cow’s been kicked in the face. Give me just five minutes alone with the bastard.”
He pulled back the greatcoat so he could examine the rest of her. She was naked except for thick black stockings, the tops banded by sexy red garters. The stockings were short, coming not much higher than her knee, then there was an awful lot of white thigh. Somehow, it reminded Frost of dirty French postcards he had seen when he was a kid, all black underwear and white flesh. Her body, like her face, was mapped with huge green-and-yellow bruises. As gently as he could, Frost ran his hands along her sides. He thought he could detect at least two broken ribs. She moaned softly as he touched her.
Could this possibly be young Karen? There was no way he could tell from the face. The body looked too well developed for a kid of fifteen, but girls seemed to be maturing earlier and earlier these days. He frowned and bent forward. The nipples. There was something odd about them. The colour was wrong. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed. The red came off. It was lipstick. Lipstick? He stood up and stared at the red on the handkerchief, unable to believe it. It couldn’t be Karen.
“It’s Karen, all right,” called Webster, and he showed Frost the school blazer he had picked up from the grass. “And there are pieces of school uniform all over the place.” His torch stabbed out at the straw boater, the gym slip, the navy-blue knickers.
“I’ve found this, sir,” called Jordan, pulling a white plastic carrier bag out of a clump of nettles. Frost delved through the contents… sweater, jeans, bra… a complete change of clothing. Also a purse which held about a pound’s worth of silver, a worn, Yale-type key, and three packets of male contraceptives.
School uniform, red garters, painted nipples, and contraceptives. It wasn’t making sense. And the Yale key, its chromium plating wearing away, looked far too old to be the key to the Dawsons’ elegant front door. He put everything back into the bag. Where was the ambulance? It should be here by now. As if in answer, the piercing warble of a siren came floating over the trees.
Deep in thought, Frost followed the trail of flattened grass back to the bush where the rapist had stood hidden, waiting. He looked along the empty path, from where the girl would have come, trying to put himself into the mind of a man who would do such things to a kid.
Muffled sounds came from his jacket pocket. His radio was trying to talk to him.
“Sergeant Wells calling Inspector Frost.”
“Yes, Bill, what is it?”
“Message from Detective Inspector Allen. He’s on his way with a full team. He said don’t anyone touch anything until he gets there.”
“I won’t even touch my dick,” said Frost.
“Is it Karen Dawson, Jack?” asked Wells. “I’m getting phone calls every five minutes from her father asking if there’s any news.”
“Hard to tell. The way the bastard’s rearranged her face she could be anyone… Karen, Bo Derek, or Old Mother Riley. Keep stalling her old man. We might want him to identify her, but I’ll be back to him as soon as there’s anything positive. Over and out.”
He pushed the radio back into his pocket. No surprise that Allen was taking over. Allen was in charge of the “Hooded Rapist’ investigation and would want to get Frost as far away as possible the second he took command.
Car doors slammed, then Simms pushed his way through the bushes to report that the ambulance men were hot on his tail. “Do you want me and Jordan to start looking around, sir… to see what we can find?”
He shook his head. “We’ve been ordered not to touch anything. Mr.
Allen is on his way, so we can expect an arrest in seconds.”
Out of sight behind him, Webster grinned. It was common knowledge that Frost and Allen didn’t get on, but then, coldly efficient Allen was a real detective, unlike the clown in the mac. Webster had successfully led many rape cases back in his old division. Tomorrow he would request a transfer to Allen’s team.
“Where the hell are you?” came a cry for help from the ambulance men, floundering about in the dark. Simms waggled his torch like a cinema usherette and yelled, “This way!” then, lowering his voice, said to the inspector, “Something a bit odd about the girl, sir. Did you notice?”
“Painted nipples, you mean?”
“No, sir. Something else… lower down.”
“If it was something else, then I have missed it.” Frost pulled back the greatcoat again and Simms directed his torch. “I keep feeling like a dirty old man every time I do this, Simms. What am I supposed to be looking for?” The torch beam moved down and pointed. “Oh!” exclaimed Frost, very surprised.
He replaced the greatcoat and straightened up. “You’re probably too young to be told this, Simms, but that feature is known to us men of the world as “the sleek bikini line.” You can buy special shavers for it. Webster’s wife has one. That’s why he grew a beard he didn’t want to share the same razor.” He called Webster over and showed him.
“It’s got to be her,” said Webster. “It’s got to be Karen.”
Frost still couldn’t convince himself. “This is hardly bikini weather, son. Still, we’d better get her father to meet us at the hospital, just in case.”
The ambulance men forced their way through and lifted the girl on to a stretcher, covering her with thick red blankets. “Anyone travelling with her?” one asked.
“No,” Frost told him, ‘but we’ll be sending a woman police officer to the hospital as soon as we can.”