“Is it true?” hissed Dawson. “Is it true?” “That’s what we want you to confirm,” Frost told him. He drew Dawson to one side and said quietly, “It might be better if your wife stayed down here, sir.”
“No,” said Clare firmly. “She’s my daughter. I want to be with her.”
“How bad is she?” asked Dawson as they walked towards the lift.
“She’s taken a very nasty beating. I think her nose, jaw, and ribs are broken,” Frost answered.
Dawson sucked in air angrily. “When you find the swine who did it, let me have him,” he pleaded.
“I think there’d be quite a queue, sir,” said Frost, pausing to look around as a clatter of footsteps chased after them.
“Mr. Frost!” called the porter. “Telephone call for you. Ward C3 they say it’s urgent.”
An icy cold hand clutched at Frost’s heart and squeezed hard. Karen
Dawson was in ward C3. Had she died? Phase don’t let her be dead. The
Dawsons had followed him and were watching him intently. He took the phone, then turned his back so the parents couldn’t see his face. “Frost,” he said quietly.
It was Susan Harvey’s voice on the other end. “Inspector, I’m with the rape victim. Did you say Karen Dawson was only fifteen?”
“That’s right, Sue. Why?”
“Then this can’t possibly be her. It’s not a girl, it’s a woman
… she’s thirty at least.”
Thirty! Flaming hell, thought Frost. “Are you sure, Sue? I’ve got the parents with me.”
“There’s no doubt at all, Inspector.”
He handed the phone back to Fred, took a few deep breaths to compose himself, then slowly turned to face the Dawsons.
Max Dawson was pacing up and down, unable to keep still, anxious to be with his daughter. His wife, who had sat down on one of the wooden benches that lined the corridor, stood up anxiously as Frost approached, trying to read the message in his face.
He gave them both what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s all right, Mrs. Dawson, it’s all right…”
Dawson pushed himself forward. “All right? How can it be all right?
My daughter’s been beaten and raped, and you tell us it’s all right.”
Frost took a deep breath and plunged up to his armpits into icy water. “I’m afraid we’ve worried you unduly. The girl who has been raped isn’t your daughter.”
Clare caught her breath, then began to laugh hysterically. Her husband grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly. Still she laughed: He slapped her face… hard, the pistol-shot sound echoing on and on down the long corridor. She gasped, her hand touching the red mark on her face, then she shrivelled and burst into tears, dropping on to the bench.
Dawson stared into space for a while, then said, “Not my daughter …?”
“No, sir. It turns out she’s a much older woman.”
The look of concern returned to Clare’s face. “But it could be Karen. She’s very well developed for her age. We’ve got to check.” She stood up and frantically tried to push past Frost to get to the lift and the ward. He gently restrained her.
“It couldn’t possibly be Karen, Mrs. Dawson. The victim is at least thirty maybe even older…”
Dawson froze, staring at the detective in open-mouthed incredulity. “Am I hearing you correctly? You thought this woman, this thirty-year-old woman, was my daughter? My wife and I have been worried sick because you told us our daughter had been raped and beaten, and all the time… all the time it was a thirty-year-old woman!”
All Frost could do was shuffle his feet, mumble how sorry he was, and wish that Dawson would push off home so he could face his own humiliation in private.
With a sudden lunge, Dawson grabbed Frost by the lapels of his coat. “Sorry? Is that all you can say?” Then, with a look of contempt, he pushed him away and wiped his hands down the front of his coat. “You stupid, bloody incompetent fool, I’m not going to soil my hands on you.” He took his wife’s arm and led her out. At the main doors he paused. “Find my daughter, you bastard,” he said, and then they stepped out into the dark.
Frost flopped down on the bench, which was still warm from Mrs. Dawson, and fumbled for his cigarettes. Opposite, on the wall, a large red-and-white sign frowned its disapprovaclass="underline" No Smoking… Please! His hand returned from his pocket, empty. “As you’ve said please,” he said aloud.
He heard someone clearing his throat. He looked up and there was Webster. “Did you hear all that, son?”
Webster nodded.
“A stupid, incompetent fool!” Frost repeated. “And he’s right.. that’s just what I am.”
From his inside pocket he again took out the photograph and studied it. He would have to start thinking of Karen as a schoolgirl again, far too young for boys, too young to keep contraceptives in her handbag. So who was the anonymous victim, and why the fancy dress?
He pushed himself up from the bench. “Come on, son, let’s nip up to ward C3 and see what we can find out.”
“It isn’t our case,” protested Webster.
“I know, son. My trouble is I’m such a nosey bastard.”
Sue Harvey was waiting for them by the door of C3, a small side ward with only four beds. “The doctors are with her now,” she whispered, pointing to the end bed, which was screened off by curtains.
After a few minutes the curtains jerked open and a small Asian doctor in a white coat emerged, followed by the night nurse. Behind them, on the bed, a white huddle, absolutely motionless. The night sister whispered something to the doctor and pointed to the two detectives. He examined them with tired eyes, then walked over.
“How is she, Doc?” asked Frost.
“Still unconscious. She has been punched, kicked, and badly beaten. There are two fractured ribs, a broken nose, fracture of the jaw, and hairline skull damage. In addition, she has severe bruisings, and contusions all over her body. There are external marks on the throat, which is badly swollen, indicative of manual strangulation; also, of course, internal bruising. I imagine she was rendered unconscious, then repeatedly kicked and punched while she was lying on the ground.”
“Would the beating have been before or after she was sexually assaulted?”
The doctor frowned and looked puzzled. “Sexually assaulted? Who said she was sexually assaulted?” He turned to the night sister and spread his hands in appeal. “Did I say she was sexually assaulted?”
It was Frost’s turn to frown and look puzzled. “Are you saying she wasn’t raped?”
“Raped? If my patient had been raped, do you think I am such a damn fool I would not have mentioned it?”
Frost shook his head, then wiped his face with his hands. He just couldn’t believe this! “You’re quite sure, Doc? You wouldn’t like to nip over and take another look?”
Indignantly, the little man pulled himself up to his full height. “Are you questioning my competence, Inspector? I have examined her. There are definitely no signs of recent sexual congress, nor of any attempt of forced sexual congress. You obviously cannot take in what I am saying, so you will please excuse me. I have other patients to attend to.” He pushed past them, bustling out of the ward, his white coat flapping behind him.
Frost scratched his head and tried to make sense of this unexpected development. “Not raped? He stripped her off but didn’t rape her. It’s like unwrapping your Mars bar then not eating it.”
“Perhaps he was disturbed before he could actually do it,” suggested Webster.
“Disturbed?”
“The bloke who made the anonymous phone call — perhaps he barged in on them at the crucial moment?”
Frost rubbed his chin. “I can’t buy that, son. I had a quick look at her clothes. There was no blood on them, which means he kicked and punched her after he’d stripped her. If he had time to kick her, he had bags of time for the old sexual congress.” He shrugged. “Still, it’s not our case anymore. Let Inspector Allen solve it.”
The ward door was barged open by a wheeled stretcher manoeuvred by a theatre orderly who had come to collect the patient for surgery. Through the open door Frost suddenly spotted Detective Inspector Allen, with Sergeant Ingram at his side, purposefully advancing toward the ward. He had no wish to be around when Allen learned of his foul-up with the victim’s age, so he quickly looked for a way of escape. With a quick wave to Sue, he hustled Webster through a rear door, down some dimly lit stone stairs, then along another empty, winding corridor.