preserve the knots, doc,’ Frost explained. ‘The murderer might be a Boy Scout.’
‘We don’t yet know it’s murder,’ commented Forensic pedantically, as he delicately sliced through the plastic sheeting.
‘Bleeding hard to commit suicide and then tie yourself up in a parcel,’ sniffed Frost.
Forensic moved away. ‘All yours, doctor.’
As Maltby laboriously peeled aside the black plastic which tried to cling to the moist, rotting flesh, both Forensic and Gilmore found it necessary to move nearer the door and the sweet night air.
‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Frost. ‘It’s a woman.’
Gilmore forced himself to look. He saw the the bloated body of a female, stark naked, hunched in a foetal position, knees bent to breasts and trussed with string which bit deep into wet, oedematous flesh. The hair, stained and discoloured, looked dark, almost black.
‘She’s wearing shoes!’ cried Frost. He bent over. No tights or stockings, just flat-heeled brown shoes, tightly laced over swollen naked flesh. ‘I want photographs.’
The doctor moved to one side to let Ted Roberts, the burly Scene of Crime Officer, take photographs, then began a close, careful examination, gently forcing open the mouth, then scrutinizing the neck. ‘She’s in too bad a condition, but I’d guess at manual strangulation.’ His examination continued downwards. He asked for the string to be cut so he could see the lower part of the body. He parted the legs slightly. ‘Dear God!’ he exclaimed, visibly startled at what he saw.
The lower stomach and genital area was a mass of blackened and charred weeping flesh.
Frost dropped on his knees beside the doctor and gasped. ‘Look at this, Gilmore. Some bastard’s burnt her.’
A fleeting glance was enough for Gilmore who stood well back, willing his stomach to keep calm while camera motors whirred and flash tubes crackled.
Maltby’s nose scraped the blackened area. ‘To do this sort of damage you’d need a blow-lamp.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Frost. ‘Was it done before or after death?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I hope it was after.’
No longer hunched up, she looked smaller than Frost had first thought. ‘How old is she, doc?’
‘Young,’ Maltby told him, again exploring the mouth. ‘Fifteen . . . sixteen.’
‘Fifteen!’ echoed Frost. ‘And dead eight weeks?’ His head sank. ‘There ought to be a mole on the right shoulder, doc. Have a look, would you.’
Maltby moved some strands of hair and nodded.
‘Shit,’ cried Frost. ‘Shit and double shit!’
This putrid mess of tortured flesh was the missing newspaper girl.
They had found Paula Bartlett.
‘I didn’t see what he looked like,’ the church warden told Frost. ‘He just dashed off into the dark.’
‘Was he tall, short, fat, thin . . .? You must remember something. It’s bloody important. He’d just dumped a girl’s body in there.’
‘Just a dark shape, that’s all I saw.’ Then he hesitated. ‘I think there might have been more than one of them.’
‘More than one?’ yelled Frost. ‘Blimey, you kept that up your bloody sleeve.’
‘As I was pedalling up, I thought I heard voices – men’s voices.’
‘So why didn’t you tell us this before?’ demanded Gilmore.
‘Because I didn’t think it was important. I thought we were dealing with vandals, not a flaming murder. I didn’t hear what they were saying and I didn’t see anyone else.’
‘You’re a fine bloody help,’ moaned Frost. ‘A body dumped right under your nose and you see damn all! We’re looking for one or more men with no description.’
‘Don’t you blame me for the shortcomings of your lot,’ snapped Turner, picking up his bike. ‘If the police were doing their job, they’d have caught them. They were supposed to have two men on watch for vandals . . . so where the hell were they? Boozing in some pub, I imagine.’
Frost went cold. He hadn’t considered this aspect. ‘Bleedin’ hell, son,’ he muttered to Gilmore. ‘I’ve just given Mullett my head on a platter.’
By the time the pathologist and his secretary arrived, some forty minutes later, Forensic and Maltby had left and the mortuary squad were waiting outside, shuffling their feet impatiently, anxious to pick up the remains and get out of the rain. The pathologist was in a foul temper, furious that Frost had disturbed the body before he had a chance to see it and angry to learn that Maltby, who had been most rude to him after a clash of medical evidence in a recent court case, had done a detailed examination. ‘If I’m called in no-one, but no-one – let alone jumped-up general practitioners – touches one hair of the corpse, do you hear?