As the ambulance pulled away, a convoy of cars containing Detective Inspector Allen and his team roared up. There was a barrage of overexcited shouting and door-slamming as everyone piled out, immediately silenced when Allen bawled that they were all to get back inside their cars and wait. “No-one to move until I give the say-so.” He didn’t want people trampling all over the evidence before he had a chance to see it, especially as some of them were clearly the worse for drink.
Detective Inspector Allen, a wiry man with a thin sour face and a permanent sneer, looked sharp, alert and efficient despite being dragged away from the drinking party well after midnight. His assistant, Detective Sergeant Vic Ingram, slightly unsteady on his feet, his breath redolent of whisky fumes, was a thickset, charm less man of twenty-nine, cursed with a foul temper and a vindictive streak. He hated the newcomer, Webster, and delighted in giving him menial tasks to perform. If Webster hesitated to comply, he invariably taunted him with his stock response: “Too lowly for a detective inspector, is it? Well, you’re a detective constable now, Sunshine, and a bloody rotten one at that.” It was rumoured that Ingram was currently having domestic trouble, which everyone thought served him damn well right. He certainly had a cracker of a wife, much lusted after by all the red-blooded station personnel and, by general consensus, far too good for him.
“You’ve let the damn ambulance men take her away,” complained Allen. “I wanted to see her.”
“Then you should have got here quicker,” said Frost.
“Fill me in,” said Allen curtly.
Don’t tempt me, thought Frost. He told Allen how they had found her and the extent of her injuries.
Allen listened intently, his eyes flicking from side to side, missing nothing. When he saw that Webster, contrary to his instructions, was holding the girl’s school hat in his hand, he raised an eyebrow to Ingram and jerked his head toward the detective constable. Used to his master’s sign language, Ingram swaggered over to Webster and snatched the hat away.
“You bloody wally, don’t you understand English? You were told not to touch anything.”
Webster snatched his hands from his pockets, ready to swing and to hell with the consequences. “Who are you calling a wally, you drunken slob?”
Quickly, Frost, the peacemaker, thrust himself between the two men.
“Now cool it, lads. We’ve got more important things to attend to.”
“You heard him, Inspector,” appealed Ingrain. “He called me a drunken slob.”
“All he meant, Sergeant,” said Frost soothingly, ‘is that you’re a slob, and you’re drunk. No disrespect was intended.” Over his shoulder he ordered Webster to wait for him in the car.
Ingram, swaying, spoiling for a fight, glowered as — Webster stamped off. Allen decided to continue as though nothing had happened. Somehow, Frost always got the best of these unsavoury encounters.
“You reckon the victim is this teenager, Karen Dawson?”
Frost hunched his shoulders. “It’s possible. We’re getting the father over to the hospital to identify her.”
“Let me know as soon as it’s confirmed. I’ll be there later.” Then, seeing Frost was making no attempt to move, he added, “Thank you, Inspector, that will be all.”
Back in the car, Webster waited, seething. Frost slid into his customary position. “Denton General Hospital… first on the left, then follow the main road.” As Webster jarred the car into gear, Frost radioed through to the station requesting them to contact Max Dawson and ask him to meet them at the hospital. That done, he slouched back in his seat, digging deep for a cigarette before he said, “Ingram’s a provocative bastard, son. He’s out for trouble. Try not to rise to his bait.”
Webster growled a noncommittal reply, his eyes straight ahead, looking for the left turnoff.
“What you must remember,” Frost continued, ‘is that one punch and you’re not only out of the division, you’re off the force. You should also remember that Ingram is a great big bastard who could probably knock the living daylights out of you.”
“Spare me the sermon,” muttered the detective constable, spinning the wheel to turn into the main road.
“It’s not a sermon,” said Frost, ‘it’s the gypsy’s warning.” Webster was well down the wrong road before Frost added, “Sorry, did I say left? I meant right…”
Demon General Hospital had originally been a workhouse and was built, like the public toilets, in the reign of Queen Victoria, when things were meant to last. So it was as strong and solid as a prison, but not as pretty and nowhere near as comfortable. Over the years it had sprouted additional wings and outbuildings and was now a sprawling melange of various styles of municipal architecture. It stood on the outskirts of Denton and was dominated by the huge, factory-type chimney poking from the boiler house where, according to Frost, the incinerator was fuelled by amputated arms and legs.
They waited for Max Dawson in the porter’s lodge, a small, partitioned cubbyhole just inside the main entrance. The night porter, a bright-eyed old man with a nicotine-stained walrus moustache, was pouring creosote-coloured liquid into three enamel mugs. Milk was added, then sugar was shovelled in from a tin marked Sterile Dressings. Frost always seemed to know where to get a free cup of tea at any hour of the day or night.
“Get that inside you, Mr. Frost,” said the porter, sliding a mug over.
“And you, young fellow.”
Webster smiled his thanks.
They sipped, blinked, and shuddered.
“What’s it like, Mr. Frost?” asked the porter.
“Delicious, Fred. Do we have to sign the poison register?”
The old boy cackled, showing teeth browner than his tea. “Your lot are keeping us busy tonight, Mr. Frost,” he said, rolling a hand-made cigarette from a pouch of coarse, dark tobacco. “First the old tramp in the morgue, then the poor kid who was raped, and last, that old man who was run over by a hit-and-run.”
“I hope we’re getting our usual discount for bulk,” said Frost, steeling himself for another swig. “Hello, you’ve got a customer.”
Someone was rapping on the frosted-glass panel over the counter. The porter slid it back to reveal a young woman in her early twenties, her bust in the high thirties, and her hair dark with a hint of auburn. She wore a light-blue raincoat over which was slung a white shoulder bag. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure when she saw the inspector.
“Hello, Mr. Frost.”
Frost was up and out of his seat. “Good Lord, it’s sexy Sue with the navy-blue knickers. What are you doing here, Sue? They don’t do pregnancy tests after midnight you know.”
She smiled, showing teeth as perfect as her figure. “Inspector Allen sent me. I’ve got to stay with the rape victim and try and get a statement. He said you’d have the details.”
Frost trotted out the details, adding that the girl hadn’t yet been identified but that a man who might be her father was on his way over. He caught sight of Webster staring at the girl in wide-eyed approval, his tongue almost hanging down to his stomach. It was the first time he had caught his assistant without a frown on his face. “Sorry, Sue, I should have introduced you. The bearded gent at my side is Detective Constable Webster.”
“I’ve seen you about the station,” she told him, warming him with a loin-tingling smile. “I’m Sue… Detective Constable Susan Harvey.”
“Take Sue up to Casualty,” Frost told Webster. “Ward C3.”
And for the first time, Webster obeyed an order without a display of resentment.
Frost returned to his tea, sipping slowly as the porter puffed away at his evil-smelling homemade cigarette.
“We used to see a lot of you when your wife was here, Mr. Frost.”
“That’s right, Fred.”
“How is she? Did she get better?”
“No,” said Frost, ‘she didn’t get better.”
The main doors opened and footsteps rang out on the tiled passage. Frost went out to meet Max Dawson, who was shaking with rage. Beside him stood his wife, wearing a silver-fox fur. She was crying.