Winter Frost

'No,' Simms told him. 'He was huddled up by that big oak tree. He was crying.'

Frost man. whose arms were tightly gripped by two burly policemen. His head was bowed and little of his face could be seen through the long matted beard and shoulder-length grey-streaked greasy hair. He wore shabby well-patched clothes, stiff with dirt.

'Who are you?' asked Frost.

The man didn't answer.

'What's your name?'

Slowly, the man's head came up. Tears had cut white channels through the dirt. 'Boy,' he said. 'My name is Boy.'

The area car had left, taking mother and son to the station. Frost took a torch and went for a look around the damp and musty-smelling house. He shuddered. What a place to live. Now that the woman's coat had been removed from the nail, he could see a small door under the stairs. He opened it and shone his torch inside. A filthy mattress and some dirty bedclothes. Boy's bedroom and a place he could hide on the rare occasions visitors were allowed inside the house. He must have been hiding here when Frost and Morgan had called earlier that day.

He closed the door firmly, extinguished the oil lamp in the kitchen and stepped outside. He paused. A flutter of wings from the henhouse, then silence. He looked at his watch. A few minutes past six. Was that all? He could have sworn it was nearer midnight. One last look at the house, then he scrunched down the cinder path to the car where Morgan was waiting.

Bill Wells was liberally squirting air freshener around the cell area. 'Where did you dig those two up from, Jack? They're stinking the place out.'

Frost grinned. 'If they don't talk I'm going to threaten them with a bar of soap.' He pinched out his cigarette. 'Did you hear the one about the two flies on the heap of steaming horse-dung? One says to the other, "I saw a bottle of disinfectant yesterday." The other one says, "Do you mind… I'm having my dinner." '

'Yes, I have heard it,' grunted Wells. 'How's Morgan?'

'I've packed him off to Denton Hospital. He might need some stitches. Where's the old girl?'

'No. 1 interview room. She looks harmless enough.'

'As long as she hasn't got a carving knife in her hand. And the bloke?'

'I've stuck him in a cell for now. Is he her son?'

'Apparently. She's been telling everyone he's dead. He smells as if he is, but she's been keeping the poor sod hidden away under the stairs.' He lit up a cigarette and took Burton with him to the interview room.

The mug of tea the WPC had brought her was left cold and untouched on the table. Frost moved it out of reach in case she decided to chuck it over him in lieu of a slop bucket. 'The officer you attacked. He's in hospital having stitches,' he told her.

She stared blankly ahead. Her face registered nothing.

Frost puffed out a lungful of smoke and watched it weave its way up to the ceiling. 'The sooner we get this over, the quicker you can go home. Is that hairy sod your son?'

She slowly turned her head towards him. 'My son is dead.'

'I've never been kneed in the groin by a dead man before,' said Frost. 'Why did you keep him hidden away all these years?'

Her mouth twitched a secretive smile, then she began rocking backwards and forwards in the chair, humming that same tuneless dirge, ignoring all further questions until he gave up and terminated the interview. A WPC gently took her arm and walked her back to a cell.

'She's off her head,' said Burton.

Frost worried away at his scar. 'She's a crafty old cow. I don't think she's as daft as she's making out.' He decided to ask Bill Wells to call in the duty solicitor to sit in next time he questioned her in case it was suggested he had taken advantage of a feeble old woman who couldn't defend herself unless she had a dirty great carving knife in her hand. 'Let's chat up Hairy Horace.'

The man wasn't looking so wild now. He looked frightened and was watching PC Collier mop up the tea that had spilt from the mug in his violently shaking hands.

In the harsh light of the unshaded cell bulb his face looked more dirt-grimed, his hair more matted and straggly than before. His long, ragged coat was flapping open. Bill Wells had removed the knotted rope used as a belt in case he decided to hang himself like the previous occupant of this cell. They took him to the interview room where he sat uneasily in his chair, shrinking back as far away from Frost as possible. He flinched when Frost lit up a cigarette and cowered away from the flame of the lighter.

'What's your proper name?' Frost asked.

'Boy,' he muttered. 'My name is Boy.' He repeated 'Boy' a few times as if he liked the sound of it. He grinned. 'Boy,' he said again.

'This is a police station. Do you know why you're here, Boy?'

A solemn nod.

'Tell me.'

The man hung his head and shook it.

'You've got to tell me,' insisted Frost. 'It's the law.'

Boy looked up, tears again cutting paths through the grime on his face. He wiped a running nose with the back of his hand. 'If I tell you, Ma says you'll hang me.'

Frost gawped at him. 'Hang you? We stopped hanging people years ago. Why should we want to hang you?'

Boy stared down at the table. 'I mustn't say,' he mumbled.

'We used to hang people,' said Frost, 'but only if they had killed someone. Did you kill someone?'

The man stared at his hands and rubbed the red marks round the wrists where the cuffs had bitten. 'Ma says I mustn't talk about it.'

'Talk about what?' asked Frost, softly.

Boy shook his head firmly from side to side. 'If I tell you, you'll hang me. I'm not going to tell you.'

Beaumont, the duty solicitor, had arrived; a small fuzzy man who didn't approve of Frost. 'You're charging her with assaulting a police officer?' he asked.

'It could be a bit more serious than that,' Frost told him.

They went into the interview room and waited for the WPC to bring her in. She scowled suspiciously at the solicitor. 'Who is he?'

'I'm a solicitor,' said Beaumont, carefully sounding all the syllables as if speaking to a young child. 'I'm here to protect your interests.'

Her head swung round to Frost. 'Get him out!'

'You'd better have him,' said Frost. 'He's free, and things are a bit more serious now. I've had a chat with Boy.'

'Boys dead,' she snapped.

'He told me a lot of things, but he didn't tell me that,' said Frost. They settled down in the chairs. The solicitor sat next to her, then his nose twitched and he decided his best position would be at the far end of the table. He usually objected when Frost smoked, but this time was happy to see the inspector light up. Tobacco smoke was preferable to other aromas!

'We've spoken to Boy,' Frost continued. 'He's told us everything.'

She shook her head. 'He doesn't know anything, he's simple.'

'He knows enough to tell us where you buried the body, the precise spot, exactly where we found it.'

Her eyes narrowed. She thought for a while. 'What did he say?'

Frost smiled sweetly. 'Never mind what he told us. Let's hear your version.'

The solicitor intervened. 'I think I should have a word in private with my client before she makes any kind of a statement.'

She glared at him with contempt. 'You shut your mouth!' Back to Frost. Lips pursed, looking shrewd, she didn't seem so simple now. 'His father deserted me as soon as he knew I was pregnant. I had to bring him up on my own. You didn't get any help from the government in those days, you were on your own. I had to get money any way I could,'

'And what way was that?' asked Frost.

'I let men stay the night.'

Frost looked at her through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. Wrinkled, scraggly grey hair, dirty and unwashed, it was difficult to imagine that this smelly crone was once able to get men to pay for her services. She read his thoughts. 'I was quite good-looking then.'

'I know,' nodded Frost. 'I saw a photograph.'

'This man — he was one of my regulars…'

Frost pulled out a pen. 'His name?' She looked down at the table. 'I forget.'

'Come on, love,' Frost urged. 'It's difficult to forget the name of someone you buried in your neighbour's garden.

'He said his name was Derek. He didn't tell me his second name.'

'Did Boy know about your men friends?'

'No. He was always asleep when they came. But that night Boy woke up. He'd heard noises and he was frightened, so he crept into my bedroom. He must have thought Derek was hurting me and wanted to protect me. Boy had this cricket bat thing. He hit Derek on the head with it and when Derek yelled, he hit him again and again…' She shuddered, her eyes glazing over as she recalled the horror of that moment. 'I screamed for him to stop, but he wouldn't. There was blood everywhere, on me, all over the bedclothes… I snatched the bat from Boy, but Derek wasn't moving and I knew he was dead.'

'You didn't phone for an ambulance?'

'We didn't have a phone.'

'You could have got help.'

'If I told anyone, they would have told the police. They hang murderers by the neck until they are dead. I didn't want Boy to be hanged.'

'How old was Boy?'

'Eighteen. If you're over sixteen they hang you. We had to get rid of the body. Boy was strong. He carried Derek down the stairs and into the garden. It was dark…no lights, no-one watching. We squeezed through the fence of that empty house and Boy dug a deep hole. We buried him. His clothes were still in the bedroom, so I burnt them… then we cleaned up the blood.'

'Then what?'

'Boy kept talking about it, about how he had hit the man and how we had buried him. I daren't let him out of the house in case he told everyone he met. Then this smallholding came on the market, so I bought it and we moved.'

'Where did you get the money from?'

'From what I'd earned from the men.'

'So all these years you've kept him hidden away, sleeping in a cupboard, no friends… no contact with the outside world. What son of life was that for the poor sod?'

'A much better life than being strung up by his neck.'

'The death penalty was abolished years ago. Don't tell me you didn't know.'

She stared at him, eyes slitted with suspicion, then turned to the solicitor. 'He's lying!'

'No, Mrs Aldridge. The officer is correct. Surely you read about it in the newspapers?'

'I can't read, neither can Boy.'

'The radio then, or television?'

'Ain't got them.'

'You've kept that poor bastard hidden away under the stairs for nothing,' said Frost.

Her shoulders twitched a shrug. 'You can't turn the clock back. Can I go now? I've got chickens to feed…'

Mullett was beaming from ear to ear. 'So, thanks to my insistence, we've got a result. It was a good thing I took this case over from you.'

Frost perched his cigarette on the large glass ashtray Mullett had hastily skidded across the desk top. 'It was a near thing, Super. I might not have solved it then it would still be my case.'

This sounded like insolence to Mullett, but Frost always looked so sincere when he made these dubious remarks, he would have to give him the benefit of the doubt. 'And the son has admitted to killing this man?'

'Yes, Super. The poor sod was having it away when the son welted him with a cricket bat. He died of a severe case of coitus interruptus.'

Mullett wrinkled his nose. He couldn't take Frost's crude attempts at humour. 'So what's the current position?'

'We've released your prisoners on police bail.'

Mullett's eyebrows soared in surprise. 'Released them?'

'They were stinking the place out,' said Frost. 'The council have been round twice to dig up the drains… We know where they are. We can always pull them in when we want them.'

'But this is murder, Frost. We've got a confession. I want them arrested and charged.'

Frost took another drag on his cigarette. 'The son's given us a statement, but it's all a bit vague and he hasn't got all his marbles. We'd be wasting our time taking him and the old girl to Court.'

'That's for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide, not you. Do we know who the victim was?'

'Not yet. All we've got is his first name and we know the approximate date he had his last leg over, but that doesn't help much.'

'Doesn't help much?' echoed Mullett in mock incredulity. 'It narrows things right down. Do something positive for a change. Go through the old records until you find him.'

'We've been through them Once,' said Frost.

'Then go through them again,' snapped Mullett. He smiled inwardly. He was feeling pleased with himself and was already mentally composing the conversation he would have with the Chief Constable: Yes, I took the case over, sir. Frost was getting nowhere so something had to be done. We've got a confession, we know who the victim is, all 't's crossed and 'i's dotted.