Read Online A Touch Of Frost by R. D. Wingfield - Free Book Online Page A

a Sweeney Todd cutthroat. That was the first time in my life I really prayed.”
    He snapped the lid shut and poked the case back under the bed, wondering what a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl would be doing with a thing like this.
    “By your left foot,” called Webster, pointing to the missing lighter.
    Frost retrieved it, lit up, and flopped back on the bed. He yawned. “I could stay here all night, son, especially if young Karen, all fresh, sweet, and clean-shaven, would slip under the sheets beside me.” He turned his head and saw the photographs. Two of them on the bedside cabinet, propped up against a tiny Snoopy digital alarm clock.
    He sat up to examine them. One showed Karen in the white ballet dress from the wardrobe, standing en pointe , hands outstretched, looking demure and sweet. The other was a beach scene, brilliant sky, silver sand. Two girls—one, young Debbie minus her glasses, flat-chested in a one-piece dark-blue bathing costume, looking as embarrassed as if she were stark naked; next to her, smiling with the sensuous mouth she had inherited from her mother, Karen Dawson, long-legged, well-developed, posing in a white two-piece swimsuit that caressed and stroked every curve of her young body. An entirely different Karen from the scrubbed school girl in the other photograph.
    “No sign of five o’clock shadow,” muttered Frost, looking closely before handing the prize over to Webster.
    The detective constable winced. Anything prurient and Frost flogged it to death. But the photograph certainly showed the girl in a different light. Unlike the inspector, Webster wasn’t convinced the girl had left home of her own accord. There was one way to check, of course. He asked Frost to get off the bed, then he rummaged under the pillow and pulled back the bedclothes.
    “I don’t think you’ll find her in the bed,” said Frost. He had pulled out the drawers of the bedside cabinet and was rummaging through the contents.
    “I was checking to see if her pyjamas were there,” sniffed Webster. “If she’d done a bunk I would have expected her to take them with her. They’re not here.”
    “But that doesn’t mean she’s taken them with her,” said Frost, pushing the drawers shut. “She might be like Marilyn Monroe and wear nothing in bed but her after-shave.” He lifted the top sheet and brought it to his nose. “Tell you what, though, my hairy son, she wears a pretty sexy perfume in bed . . .  smells like that stuff farmers use to get pigs to mate. Mullett’s wife smothers herself in it.”
    Webster took a sample sniff. It certainly was pretty heady stuff for a fifteen-year-old. He was reassessing young Karen by the minute. “Could we check the bathroom to see if her toothbrush and stuff have gone?” he asked. “No girl would run away without her toothbrush.”
    “Good idea,” said Frost, “I’m dying for a pee.”
    The first door they tried led to the Dawsons’ bedroom, a vast room with a canopied bed, the walls covered in some kind of padded velvet. The next door opened on to the bathroom, fully tiled in red Italian marble. It contained a large circular sunken bath that could have doubled as a swimming pool. The bath had taps made of gold, as did the matching sink basin. A red carpet matched the tiles, and all the towels matched the carpet.
    Frost surveyed the bath in awe. “If I had a bath like that, son, I’d definitely have to get out if I wanted a pee.”
    The bathroom cabinet was concealed behind a mirror over the sink. Webster opened it and was searching through its contents when the door burst open and Dawson charged in.
    He reacted angrily when he saw what Webster was doing.
    “Who gave you permission to go through our private possessions?”
    “We’re checking to see if your daughter’s toothbrush is still here, sir,” said Webster patiently. He had found two tooth brushes in a beaker, one red, the other green. He showed them to Dawson. “Do either of these belong to