DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

moustaches. The only man is the caretaker, but he’s pushing seventy.’ His fingers found a gap in his mac pocket. ‘Sod it!’
    ‘What’s up?’ asked Webster.
    ‘There’s a hole in this pocket. My lighter must have dropped out. Now when did I use it last?’
    ‘About five minutes ago. It’ll be near the bed.’
    Frost went down on his knees and began patting the thick pile of the shag carpet. As his hand explored the area beneath the bed he touched something. He dragged out a small metal case covered in pale-blue leatherette. The legend on the lid read The Intimate Bikini Styler for That Sleek Bikini Line . Flicking open the lid, he looked inside. ‘Here’s a weird-looking electric razor, son.’ He passed it over to Webster, who nodded curtly.
    ‘They’re called Bikini Stylers.’
    ‘I know that,’ said Frost, still searching for his lighter. ‘It’s printed on the lid, but I’m none the wiser.’
    Webster looked embarrassed. ‘Some of these modern bathing suits that girls wear . . . the bottom half is cut very low . . . they expose parts of the lower stomach . . . the very low lower stomach.’
    Frost looked at him blankly, then his eyebrows rocketed up as the penny dropped. ‘You don’t mean . . . ? Are you trying to tell me that women actually shave themselves down there before they put their bathing drawers on?’ He stared hard at Webster. ‘You’re having me on.’
    ‘It’s a fact,’ Webster insisted. ‘My wife uses one.’ His eyes glazed reflectively. ‘She looked a cracker in a bikini.’
    Frost regarded the dainty shaver, shaking his head in awe. ‘Now I’ve heard everything. I wish the hospital had one of these when I had my appendix out. Before the operation they sent in a short-sighted nurse with 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