“Good idea,” said Frost, “I’m dying for a pee.”
The first door they tried led to the Dawsons’ bedroom, a vast room with a canopied bed, the walls covered in some kind of padded velvet. The next door opened on to the bathroom, fully tiled in red Italian marble. It contained a large circular sunken bath that could have doubled as a swimming pool. The bath had taps made of gold, as did the matching sink basin. A red carpet matched the tiles, and all the towels matched the carpet.
Frost surveyed the bath in awe. “If I had a bath like that, son, I’d definitely have to get out if I wanted a pee.”
The bathroom cabinet was concealed behind a mirror over the sink. Webster opened it and was searching through its contents when the door burst open and Dawson charged in. He reacted angrily when he saw what Webster was doing.
“Who gave you permission to go through our private possessions?”
“We’re checking to see if your daughter’s toothbrush is still here, sir,” said Webster patiently. He had found two toothbrushes in a beaker, one red, the other green. He showed them to Dawson. “Do either of these belong to Karen? It is important, sir.”
“Karen’s brush is orange.” He pushed Webster out of the way and rummaged impatiently through the cabinet. “It should be here somewhere.” He yelled for his wife to come up. “Karen’s toothbrush he snapped as she entered the bathroom, ‘where is it?” He moved so she could get to the cabinet.
Standing on tiptoe, she peered inside, moving things out of the way.
“It should be here,” she said.
“I didn’t ask where it should be,” Dawson told her sarcastically, “I asked where it was. Apparently, it’s important.”
“It isn’t here,” Clare said eventually. “None of Karen’s stuff is here her toilet bag, flannel, toothpaste…”
Webster leaned against the wall and folded his arms. Annoyingly, it looked as if Frost’s theory was correct. The girl had run away.
“If Karen took her toilet things with her,” Frost told the parents, ‘it does rather suggest she went of her own free will.”
Dawson’s face reddened to match the Italian tiles. “Are you suggesting Karen has run away from home? You’re an idiot, man. A bloody idiot. You don’t know my daughter. She loved her home. She wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Lots of teenagers do it, Mr. Dawson,” said Webster. “Not necessarily because of anything to do with home. There could be trouble at school… or an upset with a boy friend.”
Dawson regarded the detective constable as if he were an imbecile. “A boy friend? My Karen? She’s only fifteen, for God’s sake, a mere child! And what about that man Debbie saw? What is he supposed to be, a mirage… a teenage sex fantasy?”
“I’m not convinced she saw anyone, sir,” Frost said. “She had doubts herself.” He buttoned up his mac to show he was ready to leave.
“So you intend doing nothing?”
“Not a lot we can do,” said Frost. “We’ll issue her description, circulate her photograph, ask everyone to keep an eye open for her. I don’t think she’ll be away for long.”
They heard a phone ringing. Dawson snapped his fingers for his wife to answer, but when Frost suggested the caller might be Karen, he dashed out to answer it himself.
Frost sat down on the toilet seat and lit up his thirty-eighth cigarette of the day. He gave the woman a friendly smile. “Anything you want to tell us while your husband isn’t here, Mrs. Dawson?”
Her face went white, then she pretended to be puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Frost shrugged. “Then it’s my mistake, Mrs. Dawson.” He stood up as her husband returned. “It’s for you, Inspector Denton Police Station. You can use the phone in Karen’s room.”
The caller was Bill Wells. To Frost’s delight, he could hear the noise of the party in the background. There was still a chance he would make it.
“Hello Jack,” Wells intoned in his usual gloomy voice, “Can you talk freely?”
“Yes,” confirmed Frost.
“What’s the score with Karen Dawson?”
“Zero. Her old man thinks she’s been kidnapped, but my bet is she’s done a bunk.”
“Don’t be too sure she’s all right, Jack. We might have found her.”
Frost caught his breath. Suddenly he felt cold and apprehensive.
“Might?”
“We’ve had an anonymous phone call. A man. He says there’s a girl’s body in Denton Woods. I think you’d better take a look.”
Dawson poked his head round the door. “Anything wrong, Inspector?”
“No,” said Frost. “Just something we’ve got to look into. I might be back to you later on, sir. If there’s any news, that is.”
Tuesday night shift (4)
Upstairs, the party was throbbing away louder than ever and showing no signs of breaking up. Wells heard stamping, shrieking, roars of laughter, and the sound of glass smashing. A load of bloody hooligans, he thought as he tried to hear what the caller was saying. “I’m sorry, sir, bit of a disturbance outside. Would you mind repeating that?”
The man sounded out of breath and was barely whispering into the phone.
“I’ve found a body. In Denton Woods. A girl.”
Wells stiffened. Another body! Just when he was praying for a nice, quiet, peaceful night. With his free hand he knuckled the panel to Control and, when Ridley opened it, signalled for him to listen in on the extension.
“A girl’s body, you say, sir?” He picked up his pen, ready to write down the details.
“That’s right. A young girl.. ‘. a kid.”
A kid! The sergeant’s first thought was of the previous call he had logged. Karen Dawson, fifteen, missing from home since this afternoon.
“I see, sir. And where exactly is she?”
“I told you. In Denton Woods. Off the main path, behind some bushes.”
“Where in the woods, sir? We’ll have to have the exact location.”
A pause, then a click and the line went dead. The caller had hung up.
Wells replaced the receiver and cursed. “Damn!”
“Sounded a nutter to me,” called Ridley, hanging up the extension.
Wells nodded. They were always receiving bogus calls from cranks with a grudge against the law, who took delight in wasting police time and money. But you couldn’t take chances. It had to be assumed that all calls were genuine until proved otherwise. “What cars have you got?” he asked the controller.
Ridley didn’t need to consult his map. With half the strength drinking themselves stupid upstairs, only two cars were available, and one of them, PC Shelby’s patrol car, was failing to respond. This was not untypical of Shelby! “There’s only Charlie Alpha, Sarge, and that’s on the way to a domestic on the red-brick estate.” A ‘domestic’ meant a family row or disturbance.
“Forget the domestic,” he was told. “I want Charlie Alpha to divert immediately to Demon Woods.” He vented his annoyance by kicking the leg of his desk. “One bloody area car! How am I supposed to cover a division of this size with one lousy area car?”
Shutting his ears to the sergeant’s moans, Ridley thumbed the transmit button and called Charlie Alpha. While he waited for the response, he asked, “Exactly where in Demon Woods, Sarge?”
“How the hell do I know?” snarled Wells. “I’m not a bloody mind reader! You heard what he said off the main path, behind some bushes.”
A burst of static from the loudspeaker. “Charlie Alpha to Control. On our way to domestic on the red-brick estate in response to your previous message, over.”
“Forget the domestic, Charlie Alpha. Proceed immediately to Denton Woods and initiate search. Anonymous report of young girl’s body behind bushes, off main path. Over.” He waited, his thumb hovering over the transmit button, for Charlie Alpha to request the precise location.
“Would you give us a more precise location, Control? There are main paths running the length and breadth of Denton Woods.”
“That is all the information we have, Charlie Alpha,” replied Ridley in an aggravatingly reasonable voice. “Over and out.” He heard the door open behind him as Wells came into the room.