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.