‘So this is where it all happened?’ asked Frost.
‘Yes,’ said Lewis, wiping an offending speck of dirt off the worktop with his handkerchief. ‘Germs get everywhere,’ he muttered. ‘They breed.’
‘Dirty little sods,’ said Frost. ‘But back to your wife…’
‘She was standing here when I hit her. She fell to the floor there.’ He pointed.
‘I see,’ said Frost, who was dying for a cigarette, but knew there was no chance of having one in this operating theatre of a kitchen. ‘So where is the bathroom?’
Lewis opened a door to the passage. A door to the left opened on to a small bathroom, tiled from floor to ceiling with blue and white tiles, reminding Frost appropriately, of a butcher’s shop. The white bath glimmered, the plughole gleamed, as did the taps.
‘What did you do with her clothes?’
‘I burnt them.’
‘You must have got blood all over yourself and your own clothes?’
‘Yes. I had to burn my clothes as well, then I bathed and bathed and scrubbed and bathed.’
Frost scratched his chin. ‘Right. Now we come to the crunch. What did you do with all the bits?’
‘I took them to the car. It was night. No one could see me. I drove around and threw them away.’
‘Where?’
Lewis shook his head ‘I don’t remember. I keep trying to remember. That night was just like a bad dream.’
‘Where’s your bedroom?’ Frost asked. ‘If your wife is fast asleep in there your bad dream could have a happy ending.’
Lewis pointed. ‘First door on the left.’ He leant over and turned on the cold tap, watching the water splash and gurgle down the plughole. Frost pulled his hand away and turned the tap off. ‘Just in case you’re telling us the truth, Mr Lewis, don’t touch anything!’
There were two single beds in the bedroom, their sheets crisp and blindingly white like those in a hospital ward. Folded candy-striped pyjamas lay on the pillow of one, nothing on the other. Frost opened the wardrobe door: men’s clothes on one side, women’s on the other, all strictly segregated. Frost closed the door. What was he expecting to find – the wife’s body swinging from a coat-hanger?
‘What do you reckon, Guv?’ asked Morgan.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frost. ‘This whole place is so bleeding clean it gives me the creeps. You feel you want to break wind just to give the place a homely atmosphere.’
They returned to the bathroom, where Lewis had just finished blotting offending drops of cold water from the bath. ‘I’ve just remembered something, Inspector. I think I buried the head in Denton Woods. I might be able to recognise the spot if you drove me there.’
‘It’s far too late for those larks, and it’s peeing with rain,’ Frost told him. ‘We’ll have a look tomorrow when we’re all a bit more alert.’
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ asked Lewis plaintively. ‘I’m not staying here.’
‘We’ll find you a nice warm cell for tonight,’ said Frost, ‘then give your place a thorough going-over in the morning.’
‘Find the gentleman a cell,’ called Frost to Wells. ‘Suspicion of murder.’
‘I’ve only got one vacancy,’ said Wells, leading them to the cells. ‘Bookings have been heavy tonight.’ He opened the door to a small cell with a bunk bed.
‘Here you are, Mr Lewis,’ said Frost. ‘No single supplement. If you want anything, just yell and my sergeant here will tell you to shut up.’
Lewis looked around him with distaste. ‘Could I have a mop, a bucket of hot water and some disinfectant, please? This place is full of germs.’
‘Our germs won’t hurt you,’ said Wells.
Lewis looked pityingly at the sergeant, who obviously didn’t understand. ‘Germs kill. They killed my son… my five-year-old son.’
‘Give them to him,’ said Frost.
‘Do you really think he’s killed his wife?’ asked Wells.
Frost sucked deeply at his cigarette and expelled a lungful of smoke. ‘It’s anyone’s guess at this stage. He’s capable of doing it. The poor sod is obviously mentally disturbed. He lost his kid, then his business – more than enough to push him over the edge. And if you wanted to kill someone and cut them up, you couldn’t find a more suitable place than that abattoir of a house. But a couple of things niggle. He says he can’t remember where he dumped the pieces, which I find bloody strange, because he remembers lots of other details. ‘And
…’ He scratched his chin. ‘This is trivial. You murder your wife, cut her up and scrub the place from top to bottom. But would you take her nightdress from the pillow and put it away?’
‘That’s right, Guv,’ put in Morgan. ‘Her night dress wasn’t there, was it?’
‘Perhaps she slept in the nude?’ suggested Wells.
‘It’s not the sort of house where anyone would sleep in the nude,’ said Frost. ‘The poor cow would die of frostbite.’ He shrugged. ‘If she walked out on him she’d take her nightdress with her and I reckon that’s what has happened. He became impossible to live with, so she did a runner. Mind you, if we find her buttocks marinating in the deep freeze tomorrow, I’ll admit I’m wrong.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘Our first job tomorrow, Taff, is to give that place a real going- over.’
‘I thought we were supposed to start looking for the murder site,’ said Morgan.
Frost clapped a hand to his brow. ‘Shit! I forgot about that. All right, but take Lewis for a tour of Denton Woods first. He reckons he might remember where he got rid of some of the bits. And make sure you’re back by seven.’
Morgan looked dismayed. ‘But Guv, by the time I drop you off and get my head down, that would mean I’d only get three hours’ sleep.’
Frost checked his watch and beamed. ‘You’re right, Taff. Your maths is impeccable. Don’t be late.’
Chapter 12
A bleary-eyed Morgan sat fuming in the office as Frost breezed in just after eight. ‘Did I say seven?’ asked Frost innocently. ‘I could have sworn I said eight. There wouldn’t have been enough people here at seven to do the search. Well, were the teddy bears having a picnic in the woods or did Lewis turn up trumps?’
‘We tramped for miles, Guv. He says it all looks different and it was night time. He pointed out about five places it might have been, but it wasn’t.’
‘Never mind, Taff. Nip up to the canteen and get two sausage sandwiches and two mugs of tea and bring them to the Incident Room.’
On his way to the Incident Room, Frost was stopped by Johnny Johnson, the duty station sergeant.
‘That bloke Beazley from the supermarket wants to know if you’ve caught the blackmailer.’
‘Tell him I’m out on a murder inquiry and you don’t know when I’ll be back.’
‘And two officers from Manchester CID are on their way. Should be here later this morning.’ Frost screwed up his face as he tried to think why two officers from Manchester would be coming. He snapped his fingers. ‘Oh – the decomposing body. I hope they take it back with them. Let Skinner see them – he should be here soon.’
The hot sausage had melted the butter, which was making the bread all soggy as Frost bit into it. He pushed the remains of the sandwich into his mouth, swilled it down with a mouthful of tea, then wiped his fingers on the front of his jacket. He had a small team assembled for the search of Lewis’s bungalow: Norton from SOCO, Harding from Forensic, PC Jordan, Taffy and WPC Kate Holby.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fed in a cigarette. ‘You all know what this is about. Lewis walked in here last night claiming he’d murdered his wife and cut her up into pieces, which he says he chucked, but can’t remember where. He says he thinks he left her heart in San Francisco, but that might just be a song he remembers.’ He grinned at the ripple of laughter. ‘The poor sod hasn’t got all his marbles, so this could all be in his mind. He had to give up his butcher’s shop last year and his five-year-old kid died of meningitis a couple of years back. He reckons he killed his wife in the kitchen, then butchered her in the bath. That should mean a lot of blood. The place looks as if it has been scrubbed and disinfected from top to bottom, but even so, I’m hoping we can still find some. I want drains and waste pipes checked. I want the place searched thoroughly in case there’s any bits of body lying around he might have missed.’ He turned to Kate Holby. ‘Check the wardrobes and drawers and things. If she’s upped and left him, has she taken the sort of things you’d expect a woman-to take, like a chastity belt or open-crotch knickers? Jordan, I want you to knock up the neighbours. See if they can throw any light on the missing woman. Did they see anything suspicious, like her husband sawing her arms and legs off without her permission?’ He swivelled round to the cork board and pinned up a photograph. ‘This is Mrs Lewis. If you find a head, make sure it’s the right one, otherwise chuck it back. I want this to be thorough, but speedy. We’ve then got a murder site and a bike to find.’ He looked out of the window. ‘At least the rain’s stopped.’ He drained the dregs of his tea. ‘All right. Let’s go.’