Frozen Read Online Free Page B

in this maze of run-down streets.
    Even in daylight it was depressing. She crawled past dough-faced women standing at a bus stop, cheap coats pulled close around their hunched bodies. Despite the bitter wind the younger ones wore no tights or socks, their mottled legs stuffed into ill-fitting shoes.
    Megan looked away, scanning side roads for the street name. She pulled up at a set of temporary traffic lights. Suddenly she caught sight of it. A graffiti-covered sign on a factory wall: Inkerman Place. It was a short blind alley with the rusting metal gates of an abandoned printworks at its far end.
    The lights changed and Megan swung the car into the alley. Now she could see the high wooden fence of the factory car park where Donna’s body had been dumped. She got out of the car, walking past the padlocked gates along the length of the fence. Although many of its spars were missing there was no gap large enough to get a body through. Above the fence was a length of barbed wire, so it was unlikely that the killer had climbed over. If he had thrown Donna’s body over the fence the forensic examination would have revealed post-mortem bruises and fractures.
    She peered through one of the gaps. The car park was littered with broken bottles and used condoms. Megan wondered how long ago the factory had closed. She suspected that prostitutes had been working the nightshift long before those rusting gates had been locked for the last time. So there could be another way in – a back or side entrance known to the women who worked in the red light area. Whoever killed Donna knew about it too.
    The theory that he was a local pimp was certainly plausible. So was the idea that he was a policeman. But other men would know of that second entrance: anyone who had worked at the factory or visited it regularly. And then there were the punters, led there with assurances that no one would be watching …
    Megan got into the car and drove back down Inkerman Place, turning right and right again to follow the perimeter of the factory site. There was no other entrance that could be seen from the road.
    She parked and got out of the car again, pulling her collar up against the wind. A row of straggling laurel bushes rustled against the fence where it joined the high wall of the building next door. Megan wondered if it was possible to get behind them. She stepped onto the rubbish-strewn patch of earth and peered into the foliage.
    Yes! She felt a stab of triumph. The bushes were concealing a big gap in the bottom of the fence. There was just enough space behind them to get through without being scratched to pieces.
    She ducked behind the leaves and met a wall of black plastic. The wheelie bins. Something crunched beneath her feet and she looked down to see half a dozen syringes lying on the ground. Megan stepped over them as she edged round the bins. She glanced up at the backs of a row of houses whose first floor windows overlooked the car park on one side. They looked derelict. Filthy windows, uncurtained or with scraps of tatty fabric hanging askew.
    She caught a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye and whipped her head round. A face. She was certain she had seen a face pressed against one of the gaps in the fence, looking at her. She scrambled back out and jumped into the car, driving round the block again. But she saw no one.
    On the car radio a news bulletin was just coming to an end. She glanced at her watch, tutting under her breath. She was due at a meeting in the city centre in twenty minutes. As she picked up speed, she glimpsed a woman in thigh-length boots, mini skirt and a short fur jacket standing on a corner. God, she thought, it’s a bit early. She wondered what sort of man would go looking for a prostitute at ten past two on a Monday afternoon.
    *   *   *
    The BTV building soared above the newly-developed canal basin in the centre of Birmingham. Megan almost ran to the revolving doors of