Lewis stared open-mouthed at Frost in sheer disbelief. ‘How can she withdraw money if she’s dead?’
‘Perhaps because she’s not dead,’ suggested Frost.
Lewis buried his head in his hands. ‘You won’t believe me, will you? If only I could remember where I put the pieces.’ He looked up at Frost. ‘Someone will find them. Someone’s bound to find them.’
‘If they do, I’ll arrest you like a shot,’ said Frost, ‘and that’s a promise. And if your wife comes back, you will let me know, won’t you?’
‘You’re wrong,’ said Lewis. ‘You are absolutely wrong.’
‘It won’t be the first time,’ said Frost, ushering him out of the cell. He watched Lewis go, a forlorn figure, shoulders hunched.
At the door, Lewis turned. ‘It was the germs,’ he said. ‘The germs killed my son so I killed her because of the germs.’
Suddenly, for no reason he could think of, Frost began to have doubts. Grave doubts.
Station Sergeant Johnny Johnson looked up and switched on his ‘How can I help you?’ smile as the two men approached the inquiry desk in the lobby.
‘Detective Superintendent Barrett and Detective Constable Fussell, Manchester CID,’ announced the older of the two, a thick-set man in his late forties. ‘Would you let DCI Skinner know we’re here?’
‘I’m afraid DCI Skinner is out with a search party at the moment, Superintendent,’ Johnson told him. ‘Could anyone else help?’
Barrett frowned. ‘He knew we were coming and now he’s bloody out?’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling and gave a scoffing snort. ‘Flaming typical. It’s about the body you found – Emily Roberts.’
‘Ah – Inspector Frost is handling that at the moment, sir.’
Barrett frowned again. ‘Frost? Scruffy Herbert – always got a fag in his mouth?’
‘Yes, the one with the George Cross,’ said Johnson, unwilling to let this fat sod from Manchester bad-mouth Denton personnel. He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Inspector Frost, two officers from Manchester CID to see you.’
Frost took them to the Incident Room and showed them the clothes recovered from the lake in Denton Woods. Barrett examined them briefly, nodding as he did so. His DC was taking his time, checking each item carefully against a typed list. ‘They look like the girl’s clothes,’ be admitted grudgingly.
‘More than flaming “look like”,’ snapped Barrett. ‘They are her bloody clothes.’
‘But still no proof they came from the body.’
‘What do you want, flaming jam on it? You’re not the Crown bleeding Prosecution Service looking for ways not to prosecute, you’re a detective flaming constable, and the way you’re going on, you’ll end your career in the force as a detective flaming constable. We’ve got a body that matches her description, we’ve got clothes that match those she was wearing. Of course they came from Emily Roberts. Give Inspector Frost the envelope.’
Fussell fished a plastic envelope from his briefcase and handed it to Frost. ‘Hairs from her hairbrush.’
‘For DNA testing,’ said Barrett. ‘Then no one can moan we’ve got the wrong body. We’d like to have a look at it, by the way.’
‘You can take it home with you if you like,’ said Frost. ‘It’s not a pretty sight. I’d rather look at Skinner than the body – that will tell you the sort of shape it’s in.’
Barrett grinned. ‘What do you think of your new DCI?’
‘Far be it for me to call a man a shitty bastard just because he is a shitty bastard,’ said Frost, ‘so I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ He unhooked his mac from the rack and slipped it on. ‘You might not feel like any lunch after this.’
Handkerchiefs clapped to their noses, the two Manchester detectives looked down at the remains. ‘And the pathologist reckons she was strangled?’ asked Barrett.
‘Yes,’ nodded Frost. ‘Broken bone in the throat, probably manual strangulation, but decomposition too advanced to see any ligature marks.’
‘Sexually assaulted?’
‘Again, decomposition too advanced to tell.’
‘I’ve seen enough,’ grunted Barrett. He turned to the DC. ‘Unless you want to make sure she’s dead?’
Fussell grinned. ‘If the pathologist says she’s dead, sir, I’ll take a chance.’
Frost signalled for the mortuary attendant to close the drawer. ‘Do you want to see where she was found?’
Barrett nodded. ‘Yeah. It won’t tell us much, but while we’re here let’s take a look.’
The blue marquee was still mounted on the rail way embankment at the spot where the girl’s body had been located. It was guarded by a fed-up-looking, freezing-cold PC. ‘If you wanted warmth and excitement, son, you shouldn’t have joined the force,’ Frost told him. They stepped inside the marquee, where the smell of death and decay still clung tenaciously. They all stared at the marked area on the grass as if it could yield up some secret, then quickly backed outside. Frost’s mobile chirped. Skinner was back and wanted to see the two Manchester men.
Skinner ushered them into his office, then, before Frost could follow them, stepped outside and shut the door.
‘I know this Superintendent Barrett,’ he said, keeping his voice down. ‘He’s a real right slimy bastard.’
Takes one to know one, thought Frost.
‘He’s going to try to dump this case on us,’ Skinner continued, ‘and we’re not going to have it. We’ve got enough on our plates. She was killed on his patch and the body dumped here, so it’s his case, not ours. We’ll give them what assistance we can, when we can and if we can, which probably means bloody never, but our stuff takes priority. Comprende?’
‘Toute suite,’ nodded Frost.
They were in Skinner’s office, seated round his desk drinking mugs of Sergeant Johnson’s instant coffee. The atmosphere crackled and sizzled with the unconcealed animosity between Barrett and Skinner. Barrett had various maps and papers spread over the desktop. ‘This is a more recent photograph. We found it in her digs.’ He passed Skinner a colour photo of a girl in her teens, her fair hair in a ponytail. Skinner gave it barely a glance before flipping it across to Frost.
‘Lovely-looking girl,’ muttered Frost, finding it hard to eliminate from his mind the way she looked now.
'Emily Roberts,’ intoned Barrett. ‘Nineteen years old. Guess where she was born?’
‘I don’t play guessing games,’ said Skinner.
‘In the fair city of Denton,’ smirked Barrett.
Skinner scowled. ‘You kept that bloody quiet. Weren’t we supposed to know?’
‘We’ve only just found out ourselves. Her parents emigrated to Australia some six months ago and we’ve had one hell of a job trying to contact them. Emily didn’t want to go. There was a family row and she stayed behind. She didn’t keep any of their letters, so we didn’t have an address. The Melbourne police managed to trace them and they are on their way over here. She was born in Denton. The family moved to Manchester some five years ago when she was fourteen. After her parents emigrated, she moved in with a girlfriend who had a flat. She worked in Tesco’s on the check-out. The night she went missing she told her flatmate she was meeting her boyfriend at a local disco. She left at around seven thirty and that was the last an saw of her. The boyfriend said he waited all evening, but she never turned up. He left the disco with his mates around midnight and went straight home.’
‘You checked his alibi, I hope?’ asked Skinner.
Barrett whiplashed a ‘Do you take me for a complete prat?’ look across the desk. He turned to his DC. ‘No. We forgot to do that, didn’t we, Constable?’ Back to Skinner. ‘Of course we bloody well checked it out. All his mates confirmed it and we checked out a lot of his movements on CCTV.’
‘Any footage of the girl on CCTV?’ asked Frost.
Barrett shook his head. ‘We checked the area near the disco and the centre of town. No sign of her.’
‘So how do you reckon she got to Denton?’ asked Frost.
‘Well she didn’t go by train. There are CCTV cameras in the booking hall and on the platforms. We’re working on the theory that she went by car, either voluntarily or she was abducted and taken to Denton, where she was assaulted and killed and the body was dumped.’