DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

you phone to check?’
    ‘Well . . . we assumed . . .’
    ‘You stupid sod!’ roared Dawson, his face red with anger. ‘Hold on.’ He put down the phone and charged up the staircase to Karen’s room. Flinging open the door, he looked in. The curtains were drawn, and the room was quiet and still. No sound of breathing. He fumbled for the light switch and clicked it on. Karen’s bed was empty, still neatly made up from the morning. He raced down the stairs, grabbed the phone, and shouted, ‘She’s not here! If anything has happened to my daughter, I’ll kill you, you bastard!’ He was shaking with rage.
    ‘What is it?’ asked Clare, clutching his arm. ‘Where’s Karen?’
    ‘That’s what I’m damn well going to find out.’ He raised the phone. ‘Is Debbie there?’
    ‘Of course, Max . . . but she’s asleep.’
    ‘Then wake her, you fool. She might know where Karen’s got to.’
    As he held on for what seemed like hours, anger fighting with apprehension, Clare drifted over to the bar and refilled her glass. ‘Your daughter is missing,’ he snarled, ‘and all you can do is get bloody drunk.’
    Clare burst into tears. He turned his back on her and waited impatiently for Debbie.

    He scuttled through the woods, eyes and ears alert. He thought he had heard something. A scream. A piercing sound that tore a jagged hole in the silence. But all was quiet now . . . as quiet as the woods ever were at night above the rustlings and the murmurings and the moanings. Sometimes, when he was lucky, the murmurings and the moanings came from lovers, hot, sweating, coupling lovers too busy to realize they were being observed. The things some of them got up to . . . you’d never believe it! And some of the girls were worse than the men . . . far worse.
    He squeezed between two bushes, taking a shortcut. He knew all the shortcuts. There was something in the long grass. Something black. He picked it up. A brassiere. A black, lacy, deep-cupped brassiere, the fastener hanging by a thread as if someone couldn’t wait to undo those fiddling little hooks. He pressed it to his cheek and slowly rubbed it up and down the side of his face then, folding it carefully, pushed it deep into his pocket.
    On through more bushes. The moonlight gleamed on something silvery white. He stiffened and stood stock still. It was the white of bare flesh. Holding his breath and moving quietly, with the skill of long practice, he inched forward, parting branches so he could get a better view.
    Dear sweet Mother of God!
    On the ground, ahead of him, lay the naked body of a young girl, her face raw and battered, the mouth and chin hidden under a mask of blood. Her body was mottled with livid green bruises. Strewn around, on the grass, her clothes. He crouched, making himself smaller in case whoever had done this was still lurking about. He listened. Silence.
    It seemed safe, so he inched forward until he could touch her. The flesh was cold. Ice cold. He lowered his ear to her bloodied mouth but could detect no sound of breathing. Slowly his eyes travelled down the bruised and bleeding body to her thighs, then her legs. She was wearing thick black stockings which made the flesh of her thighs appear even whiter by contrast. The pieces of clothing strewn around the body seemed to be a school uniform of some kind. The girl’s black-stockinged legs fascinated him, the stockings’ tops circled by wide red garters, garters that were meant to be seen, not hidden. He would have thought school wear was far less sexy. This one must have been a right little teaser, deserving everything she’d got.
    How marvellous it must be, he thought, to have a partner of one’s own as quiet and submissive as this one. He had never touched a naked girl before. He had sweated and groaned in vicarious excitement as he watched other men caress, fondle, and make love to them. But he had never touched one himself. Not properly. Kneeling beside her, he gently stroked the flat stomach.
    A twig snapped. He whirled around. Nothing. But this wouldn’t do. Suppose someone saw him touching the body. Saw him and told the police. The police would think he had done this. He stood up and backed away from her, then turned abruptly, crashing through the bushes to the path that would take him to home and safety.
    As he neared the phone box he knew he would have to call the police. Tell them about her. He wouldn’t say who he was, but if anything went wrong . . . if they suspected