A worried-looking woman opened the door. Behind her, the bitter sound of sobbing. She looked enquiringly at the scruffy figure on the doorstep who was fumbling in the depths of his inside pocket. ‘Detective Inspector Frost,’ he said, showing her a dog-eared warrant card.
She peered doubtingly at the card. ‘I’m just a neighbour. Do you want to see the parents?’ She inclined her head towards the back room from which the sobbing continued unabated.
‘Later,’ he said. And he wasn’t looking forward to it.
Up the stairs to the girl’s bedroom where a white-faced uniformed constable stood outside. This was PC John. Collier, twenty years old. Collier, still very green and usually working inside the station with Wells, had been pitched out on patrol because of the manpower shortage. He hadn’t yet got used to dead bodies.
The bedroom door opened, releasing a murmur of angry voices. DC Burton came out. He seemed relieved to see the inspector and carefully closed the door behind him.
‘What have we got?’ asked Frost, shaking rain from his mac.
‘Suicide, but our new super-sergeant is treating it as a mass murder.’
‘He’s new and he’s keen,’ said Frost. ‘It’ll soon wear off.’
The bedroom was small, neat and unfussy, with white melamine furniture and pink emulsioned walls. A glowering Gilmore was watching Dr Maltby, red-faced and smelling strongly of alcohol, who was pulling the sheet back over the body on the single bed. Gilmore scowled at Frost’s entrance. He’d asked for a senior officer. He didn’t expect this oaf. ‘I thought you were off duty,’ he muttered.
‘They dragged me out of bed. So what’s the problem?’ Gilmore opened his mouth to speak but the doctor got in first. ‘There’s no problem, Inspector. It’s a clear case of suicide.’ He jerked his head towards a small brown glass container on the bedside cabinet. ‘Overdose of barbiturates. She swallowed the lot.’ He glared at Gilmore as if daring him to contradict.
‘You don’t look very happy, Sergeant,’ observed Frost, wondering why the man had requested a senior officer to attend a routine suicide.
‘There was no suicide note,’ Gilmore said.
‘It’s not obligatory,’ snapped the doctor. ‘You can commit suicide without leaving a note.’ He was tired and wanted another drink. What he didn’t want was complications. ‘It’s suicide, plain and simple.’ He moved out of the way so the inspector could get to the body.
‘I’m glad it’s simple,’ said Frost, pulling back the sheet, ‘I’m not very good when things are complicated.’ Then his expression changed. ‘Oh no!’ he said softly, his face crumpling. ‘I never realized it was a kid.’
‘Fifteen years old,’ said Gilmore. ‘Everything to live for.’
She lay on top of the bed. A young girl wearing a white cotton nightdress decorated with the beaming face of Mickey Mouse. Over the nightdress was a black and gold Japanese-style kimono. Her feet were bare, the soles slightly dirty as if she had been padding about the house without socks or shoes. A Snoopy watch on her left wrist ticked softly away. It seemed wrong. Almost obscene. Mickey Mouse and Snoopy had no place with death.
Frost gazed down at her face, trying to read some answers. A pretty kid with light brown hair gleaming as if newly brushed, spread loosely over the pillow. Gently, as if afraid to wake her, Frost touched her cheek, flinching at the hard, icy cold feel of death. ‘You silly bloody cow,’ he said. ‘Why did you do this?’
He switched his attention to the bedside cabinet. Standing on top of it was a bright red, twin-belied alarm clock, its alarm set at 6.45, a pair of ear-rings, a Bic pen, an empty, brown pill bottle and, over to one side away from the bed and almost on the edge of the cabinet, a tumbler with an inch of water remaining. Frost crouched to read the label on the pill container. Sleeping Tablets prescribed for Mrs Janet Bicknell.
‘They were prescribed for the mother,’ Gilmore explained. ‘There were about fifteen or so left. The kid got them from the bathroom cabinet.’
Frost sank down on the corner of the bed and lit up a cigarette. ‘Any doubts it’s a suicide, doc?’
‘If the post-mortem shows a lethal dose of barbiturates in her stomach, no doubts whatsoever. If you could speed things up, Jack, I’d like to get off home. I’ve had one hell of a day.’
‘Right,’ said Frost. ‘How long has she been dead?’
‘Rigor mortis hasn’t reached the lower part of the body yet. That and the temperature readings suggest she’s been dead some nine to ten hours.’
Frost checked his watch. It was now a few minutes past five. ‘So she died between seven and eight o’clock this morning?’
‘She was still alive at half-past seven, this morning,’ interjected Gilmore.
‘Then she was dead pretty soon after,’ snapped the doctor. His head was throbbing and Gilmore was getting on his damn nerves.
‘Slow down,’ pleaded Frost. ‘Let’s take it step by step, starting with her name.’
Gilmore opened up his notebook and read out the details. ‘Susan Bicknell, fifteen years old. In the fifth form at Denton Comprehensive.’
‘And who found the body?
‘Her stepfather, Kenneth Duffy.’
‘Stepfather?’
‘Yes. Her father died two years ago. Her mother married again in March.’ Gilmore paused, then added significantly, ‘He’s a lot younger than the mother.’
‘Ah,’ said Frost. ‘I’m getting the scenario… teenage girl, randy young stepfather. But let’s get the doc out of the way first. I don’t want to shock him with our rude talk.’
‘I’ve got nothing more to tell you,’ said Maltby, dropping a thermometer in his bag and snapping it shut. ‘You’ll have my written report today. Any joy with our poison pen writer?’
‘No,’ Frost told him. ‘I’ll go and see Wardley in hospital when I get a chance.’ The doctor lurched towards the open door. A curse as he appeared to miss his footing on the stairs.
‘He’s drunk!’ hissed Gilmore.
‘He’s tired,’ said Frost. ‘The poor bastard is over worked. He never refuses a call day or night and people take advantage of him.’ He whispered something to Burton who chased after Maltby and called, ‘Give us your keys, doc. I’ll drive you home.’ Maltby handed them over without a murmur.
‘Follow on in the Panda and take Burton back to the station,’ Collier was told. Frost lit up another cigarette. ‘So what’s on your mind, son?’
‘The suicide note’s missing,’ said Gilmore.
‘What makes you think there was one?’
Gilmore steered the inspector across to the bedside cabinet. ‘One ballpoint pen.’ He pointed. On the floor, by the bed, was a pad of Basildon Bond writing paper. ‘One notepad.’
‘So she had the means to write a suicide note,’ said Frost. ‘But it doesn’t follow she wrote one. I don’t have to do a pee just because I pass a gents’ urinal.’
‘Look at the glass with the water in,’ continued Gilmore. ‘Right on the edge of the cabinet. If she was lying in bed when she took the pills, she’d have replaced the glass on the side nearest to her. If she took them before she lay on the bed, she’d have put the glass somewhere in the middle.’
‘I’m sure this is all significant stuff,’ Frost said, ‘but I’m such a dim sod I can’t see it.’ He wandered over to the window and opened it to let out the smell of tobacco smoke. In the darkened street below, the street lights were just coming on.
Gilmore sighed inwardly. He knew the man was thick, but surely he didn’t have to explain every detail. ‘I’m saying the glass was moved by someone else. I’m saying she left a suicide note and weighed it down with the glass. The stepfather found the body, saw the note and because it implicated him, he destroyed it. There’s two sets of prints on the glass. I’m laying odds they’re the girl’s and the stepfather’s.’
Frost squinted at the glass. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes,’ said Gilmore. ‘I’ve got a feeling about the step father. He’s hiding something. I just know he is.’