Night Frost (7 page)

George Arthur Jenkins

Born and Died

Feb 6th 1865

Suffer the little children to come unto me

   "There's one poor little sod who never drew his old age pension," he muttered moodily, letting the wind extinguish the match.

   The sky was black and heavy with rain and the graveyard looked as lonely and as miserable as a graveyard should look at half-past ten on a cold, wet night. They were in the old Victorian section among weather-eroded angels who wept granite tears over the graves of long-dead children, and where overgrown grass straggled over the crumbling headstones and collapsed graves of their long-dead grief-stricken parents. Through the rain, way over on the far side, Frost could see the serried ranks of stark white marble marking the modern section, where the recently deceased slept an uneasy, decaying sleep. One of the cold marble headstones marked the grave of Frost's wife. He hadn't visited it since the funeral.

   Detective Sergeant Gilmore, shutting his ears to Frost's constant moanings, was squinting his eyes, trying to focus through the lashing rain to something over to the left, near an old Victorian crypt. Was it the wind shaking the ivy, or could he see someone moving about?

   Frost peered half-heartedly in the direction of Gilmore's pointing finger and grunted dismissively. "There's sod all there. It's the wind." He perched himself on the infant Jenkins' headstone and sucked hard at his cigarette. "How long have we been here now?"

   "Eight minutes," replied Gilmore.

   Frost ground his cigarette to death against the headstone and stood up. "That's long enough. We're going."

   "But Mr. Mullett said . . ."

   "Sod Mr. Mullett," called Frost, scurrying back to the car. "If anyone wants to vandalize graves in this pissing weather, then good luck to them."

   Gilmore stared hard across the ranks of marble. The wind rattled the ivy again. There was someone there, he was sure of it. But a cloud crawled across the moon and it was too dark to see. When it passed, there was nothing.

The pub was packed, thick-fogged with eye-stinging smoke, and very noisy. Disco music belted out and voices were raised to overcome it. A group of teenaged girls, clutching vodka and limes, were shrieking with high-pitched laughter at the punchline of some dirty joke. No-one took any notice of the disc jockey framed by flashing disco lights up on the small stage, who was chewing a microphone to announce the next number. In counterpoint to the throbbing beat of the disco, a drunken Irishman in the far corner was singing "Danny Boy" in a high tenor voice to a fat lady in black who had tears in her eyes.

   Gilmore was edgy. His very first night on duty in Denton and they had disobeyed Mullett's express orders. He decided he would choke his drink down and tell Frost he was going back to the cemetery, as ordered by his Divisional Commander, and would continue the surveillance on his own if necessary.

   By waving a £5 note Frost managed to grab the attention of the barman who lip-read his order. As he waited, he let his professional eye wander over the throng. The girls with the vodkas were silent, poised ready to shriek anew as the next joke reached its climax. The drunken Irishman had fallen in mid-song and was face down on the table while the fat lady, no longer tearful, thumbed through his wallet.

   The main doors were still swinging behind someone who had left hurriedly and Frost recalled a face, a blur in the crowd that had seemed alarmed at the entrance of the two detectives. It was a face he should know, but couldn't place. He shrugged. What the hell. They were here for a drink, not to feel the collar of some petty crook.

   The barman pushed the two lagers across and was back from the till with Frost's change when the bar phone rang. He answered it, then, holding the receiver aloft, yelled, "Is there a Mr. Frost here?"

   Frost swapped worried glances with Gilmore. Who knew they were here? Flaming hell, had Hornrim Harry sent his narks after them to report on their every movement? Gingerly, be took the phone and pressed it tight against his face, his finger jammed in the other ear to deaden the background noise. The caller was mumbling and he couldn't hear what the man was saying. "You'll have to speak up," he shouted and then, as clear as a bell, he heard the words "dead body". "Say that again?"

   "Seventy-six Jubilee Terrace. Upstars bedroom. The old girl's dead. I think the husband's killed her."

   "How did you know I was here? Who's this speaking?" A click as the caller hung up. Frost swore to himself and slid the phone back across the counter. If it was someone's idea of a joke, it wasn't a very funny one. And that voice. He knew it. It went with the face he glimpsed leaving the pub as they came in. The harder he tried to remember, the further it slipped out of his grasp.

   "Trouble?" Gilmore asked anxiously. It was always trouble with Frost. If it was Mullett who had phoned, he'd make it quite clear that he had obeyed Frost's orders under protest.

   Frost scooped up his change. "Knock back your drink, son. I might have another corpse for you to look at."

The man on the bike tucked his head down against the rain as he took the short cut through the cemetery after his meeting with the vicar. This damn rain seeping through his mac wasn't going to do his cold any good and he hoped he wasn't in for a dose of this flu thing that everyone seemed to be catching. Row after row of headstones slipped silently past as he pressed down on the pedals. Graves and tombs didn't frighten him, not even at this hour of night, but he would still be happier once he was out through the cemetery gates and on to the main road.

   And then he nearly lost control of the bike as a sudden sound reverberated around the churchyard. A funeral bell. His head swivelled as he tried to locate the source. There! It was coming from the old Dobson vault! Someone had broken in and was tugging at the rope inside, tolling the bell installed some 150 years ago by old William Dobson who was terrified of being buried alive and wanted to be able to summon help should he awake in his coffin.

   Through the rain he could see a light bobbing. He yelled and someone burst from the crypt, and hared off into the darkness.

   He turned his bike and pedalled for all he was worth back to the vicarage where he called the police.

Jubilee Terrace was a cul-de-sac of Edwardian terraced houses and would soon be torn down when the next phase of the new town development was reached. Number 76, the fanlight still showing a light, was the end house standing next to a high brick wall which guarded an electricity sub-station. The rain had eased off slightly and the reflection of a lamp standard shimmered in a large puddle where the drain was blocked.

   Gilmore knocked at the door and waited, his fingers drumming impatiently on the porch wall. No-one came. He knocked again louder this time.

   The door to number 74 opened and a shirt-sleeved man looked out. "No use knocking there, mate. The old git's as deaf as a post."

   "Actually, it's the lady of the house we want," said Frost. "Do you know if she's in?"

   "She's got no choice . . . she's bed-ridden. Never goes out."

   "I heard she was dead," said Frost.

   "Dead? You must have the wrong house, mate. He may be deaf but he makes a lot of noise. These walls are paper thin. I can hear them talking and rowing—if my luck's out, I can even hear him gobbing down the sink."

   "I'm not sure I've got their names right."

   "Maskell—Charlie and Mary—he's Charlie, she's Mary."

   "Oh,
he's
Charlie!" Frost pretended to make an alteration in his notebook, then, as soon as the man went in he dropped to his knees and squinted through the letter-box. A dimly lit hall papered in dreary, dark chocolate brown.

   "How can she be dead if he's heard them talking?" protested Gilmore. "This has got to be a wind-up."

   "You're probably right, son," grunted Frost, still at the letter-box. Then his nose twitched and he knew it wasn't a wind-up. The bad breath of decay. He could smell death.

   The detective sergeant took his turn to sniff then shook his head. "It's damp and stuffy, that's all."

   "It's more than that, son." He gave one more knock which shook the front door. Noises inside, but no-one came. "Let's try the back way."

   A lowish wall muddied their trousers as they clambered over to land with a splash in a small back yard, a few square feet of puddled concrete containing a dustbin and an outside toilet, its gaping door hanging from one hinge. Ever the optimist, Frost tried the back door, but it was locked and bolted. A downstairs sash window, curtains drawn and no light showing, defied the efforts of Frost's penknife.

   "Let's leave it," said Gilmore, edging back to the wall. They were trying to break into someone's house just on the say-so of an anonymous phone call.

   But Frost wasn't listening. He had now transferred his attention to the upstairs window. Difficult to tell from that angle, but it appeared to be open at the bottom. "Keep watch, son. Give a yell if anyone comes." He climbed up on top of the dustbin which seemed ideally sited for the purpose and heaved himself up on the outside toilet roof and then to the sill.

   Yes, a gap at the bottom he could get his hand under. For a moment he hesitated. It all seemed too good to be true; the dustbin conveniently placed and the window invitingly open. But there was no turning back now. He lifted the window and dropped inside.

   A pitch dark room. The torch he pulled from his pocket was on the blink, but its faltering light enabled him to steer a tiptoeing course through a maze of booby-trapped junk ready to topple at any moment—an old treadle Singer sewing machine, cardboard boxes gorged with useless items too good to throw away, the frame of a push bike and an old-fashioned pram from the late 1930s in pristine condition which, for some reason, made him think of the baby's grave in the churchyard.

   Cautiously, he turned the door handle. The door whined open.

   A landing from which stairs descended to the hall. To his right a door with a crack of light showing from inside. He moved towards it. From downstairs came the sound of someone lumbering about and talking in the overloud voice of the deaf. Crockery clattered. The old boy was making tea or something.

   The smell hit him as soon as he opened the door. And then he saw her. On the bed. An old woman, her head propped up with pillows. She didn't move. She couldn't move. She was a shrivelled, mummified husk and had been dead for many months.

   Shit! Just what he bloody wanted! He rammed a cigarette in his mouth, but didn't light it, then steeled himself to walk across and lift the discoloured bed sheet which made a tearing noise as it parted from the body. The stains on the bedding weren't blood. No signs of injury anywhere. There was something round the mouth. Mouldering food and a brown dribble of something still sticky. On a rickety card table alongside the bed was a cup of cold scummy tea and a plate of congealed food. Shit and double shit. He now knew what it was all about and wanted to get out of the room and back in the car and as far away as possible. The bloody cemetery was preferable to this.

   Before he could get to the door he heard someone coming up the stairs. The old boy, talking away to himself.

   He spun round, frantically looking for another way out There was a window behind thick, drawn curtains which belched death-scented dust. He parted them to scrabble at the window catch. But it was rusted in and wouldn't budge.

   A clatter of crockery then a tap at the door. "Your supper, love."

   Frost pressed himself tight against the wall, hoping the opened door would conceal him. The old man, tall and stooped, came in. A tray holding a bowl of soup and a plate of bread and butter rattled in unsteady hands. He frowned at the food on the card table then turned angrily to the husk in the bed. "You didn't eat it!" he shouted. "I cooked it for you and you didn't eat it!" Then his voice softened. "You know what the doctor said. You've got to eat to keep your strength up." He exchanged the old tray for the new and picked up a spoon. "You must try and eat some of this, love. It's full of goodness," and he spooned soup over the gaping mouth, dabbing with a handkerchief as it dribbled down the shrivelled chin. He was deaf. He didn't hear the thud of Frost's footsteps down the stairs and into the street.

   In the car, Gilmore listened incredulously, his face creased in disgust. "And he's still bringing her food? Flaming hell!"

   "The poor old sod won't accept her death," said Frost, sucking thankfully at a cigarette.

   Before Gilmore could reach for the radio to inform the station, Frost's hand shot out to stop him. "Forget it, son. We don't want to get involved."

   A shocked Gilmore said, "You can't just drive away and do nothing about it."

   "We're not supposed to be here," said Frost. "We're supposed to be tomb-watching."

   "But she's dead. He's probably still drawing her pension."

   "Big bloody deal," grunted Frost. "I'll try and live with it." And then the car radio which had been pleading urgently for attention to an empty car, tried again.

   "Control to Mr. Frost. For Pete's sake come in, please over."

   Frost snatched up the handset. "Frost."

   "At flaming last, Jack!" It was Bill Wells, the station sergeant. "Where are you?"

   Frost looked out of the window on to Jubilee Street. "On watch at the cemetery, as ordered," he replied, trying to sound puzzled at such an obvious question.

   "No, you're not, Inspector. If you were, you'd see the place was crawling with bloody police cars."

   "Ah yes . . . there does seem to be some commotion at the far end," said Frost, signalling for Gilmore to put his foot down and get the damn car back to the cemetery at top speed. "What exactly has happened?"

   "Vandals breaking into a crypt."

   Right. "I'll check it out and call you back." He switched off hurriedly and urged Gilmore not to heed the approaching red traffic light.