DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost by R. D. Wingfield

Webster hard on his heels. ‘She’s still alive,’ Simms told him. ‘Some bastard’s smashed her face in.’
    Frost dropped to his knees and made his own check for signs of life, feeling for the pulse in her neck. Satisfied, he called over his shoulder to Webster. ‘Radio the station. We want an ambulance bloody quick. And you can tell Sergeant Wells, with my compliments, that the party’s over. We’ve got another rape victim.’
    As Webster was radioing through, Frost studied the extent of the girl’s injuries. It took some resolve to look at her face, which must have been kicked. He suspected the jaw was broken as well as the nose.
    Jordan was the last to arrive. He stared down at the girl, and what he saw made him shudder.
    ‘See what the bugger’s done to her neck,’ said Frost, indicating bruises cut deeply into the flesh where the rapist’s fingers had gripped and squeezed her into unconsciousness.
    ‘The same pattern as the other one,’ observed Simms dispassionately. ‘That nurse he raped over at the golf course. But she wasn’t beaten up anything like this.’
    Webster switched off the radio and dropped it into his pocket. ‘Ambulance on its way,’ he reported. Frost, still bent over the girl, acknowledged his message with a grunt, then ordered Simms out to the main road to home the ambulance crew in.
    ‘Is it Karen?’ Webster asked, only to wince and turn his head away as Frost moved back so Webster could see what the animal had done to the girl.
    ‘If it is, then she’s nothing like her photograph,’ muttered the inspector. ‘The poor cow’s been kicked in the face. Give me just five minutes alone with the bastard.’
    He pulled back the greatcoat so he could examine the rest of her. She was naked except for thick black stockings, the tops banded by sexy red garters. The stockings were short, coming not much higher than her knee, then there was an awful lot of white thigh. Somehow, it reminded Frost of dirty French postcards he had seen when he was a kid, all black underwear and white flesh. Her body, like her face, was mapped with huge green-and-yellow bruises. As gently as he could, Frost ran his hands along her sides. He thought he could detect at least two broken ribs. She moaned softly as he touched her.
    Could this possibly be young Karen? There was no way he could tell from the face. The body looked too well developed for a kid of fifteen, but girls seemed to be maturing earlier and earlier these days. He frowned and bent forward. The nipples. There was something odd about them. The colour was wrong. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed. The red came off. It was lipstick. Lipstick? He stood up and stared at the red on the handkerchief, unable to believe it. It couldn’t be Karen.
    ‘It’s Karen, all right,’ called Webster, and he showed Frost the school blazer he had picked up from the grass. ‘And there are pieces of school uniform all over the place.’ His torch stabbed out at the straw boater, the gym slip, the navy-blue knickers.
    ‘I’ve found this, sir,’ called Jordan, pulling a white plastic carrier bag out of a clump of nettles. Frost delved through the contents . . . sweater, jeans, bra . . . a complete change of clothing. Also a purse which held about a pound’s worth of silver, a worn, Yale-type key, and three packets of male contraceptives.
    School uniform, red garters, painted nipples, and contraceptives. It wasn’t making sense. And the Yale key, its chromium plating wearing away, looked far too old to be the key to the Dawsons’ elegant front door. He put everything back into the bag. Where was the ambulance? It should be here by now. As if in answer, the piercing warble of a siren came floating over the trees.
    Deep in thought, Frost followed the trail of flattened grass back to the bush where the rapist had stood hidden, waiting. He looked along the empty path, from where the girl would have come, trying to put himself into the mind of a man who