Alison Miller wrapped her sensible brown tweedy dressing gown more tightly round her flannelette nightdress and glared angrily at the two detectives who had banged on her door at this unearthly hour. ‘This had better be extremely important,’ she said. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
Frost glanced at his watch. ‘It’s three o’clock, mum,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep. I know how much you need it.’
She gave him a hard stare, never knowing whether he was being deliberately rude or not. Frost’s innocent expression made her decide, reluctantly, to give him the benefit of the doubt. She glanced at the warrant, then at him. ‘What are you playing at? This is the same address as before.’
‘You’ve got a marvellous memory, mum,’ said Frost. She winced each time the wretched man called her ‘mum’.
‘Ma’am,’ she snapped icily.
‘Sorry, mum,’ said Frost. ‘Yes, the same address, but this time I’ve cast-iron information from a very reliable source that items belonging to the dead girl, Debbie Clark, are in the house.’
‘And might I know the name of this reliable source?’
‘I had to give him an assurance that his name wouldn’t be revealed and I know you wouldn’t want me to break my word. As soon as you sign this warrant, we’re going straight to the house and I am 200 percent certain that, thanks to your cooperation, we will find the evidence we are looking for to convict the poor girl’s killer.’
She looked at the warrant again and shook her head. ‘I don’t like this, Inspector, I don’t like it one little bit.’
‘It does you credit, mum,’ said Frost, ‘that even though you don’t like it, you realise that catching the murderers of two schoolkids overrides any doubts you may have.’
She pursed her lips, still reluctant to do anything to help someone who dragged her out of bed at three in the morning. But it was cold standing at the front door in her dressing gown and her warm bed was beckoning and she was too tired to argue. She took Frost’s offered Bic and scrawled her signature.
She blinked and realised she was standing alone, empty-handed, without a word of thanks, hearing the sound of a car roaring off at speed. ‘Not even a thank-you,’ she sniffed as she made her way upstairs to bed.
The lights were still on in Kelly’s house. Frost sent Jordan and Simms round the back to block that escape route, then nodded for Morgan to hammer at the knocker and jam his finger on the doorbell. ‘Open up. Police,’ he bawled.
Footsteps rang down the hall, a chain slipped on and the door opened a fraction. ‘What the hell is it this time?’
Frost waved the warrant at the partially open door. ‘Open up, Kelly. I’ve got a warrant to search these premises.’
‘A warrant?’ The warrant was snatched through. ‘Wait a minute. ..’ The footsteps retreated up the hall.
‘He’s going to flush his drugs down the karzy,’ said Frost. ‘Smash the door in.’ He stepped back as Lambert swung the ram at the door. At the second blow the door crashed open and they charged in. Kelly was at the top of the stairs with an armful of polythene packets, hammering frantically at the bathroom door. ‘Open up, you silly cow. The cops are here!’
From inside came the sound of retching.
Frost strode up the stairs, his hand out stretched.
‘Are those packets for me, Patsy?’ he smirked, then nodded at the bathroom door as the sound of vomiting continued. ‘Morning sickness? Congratulations. Call him Jack after your favourite cop.’
‘You think you’re so bloody funny,’ snarled Kelly, peering down the stairs as the sound of crashing and banging came from below. ‘What are they looking for?’
‘Other illicit substances you might have overlooked, Patsy.’ Frost ripped open one of the packets. ‘And what have we here?’ He dabbed a finger into the powder and licked it. ‘I don’t think it’s sherbet. I do believe it’s coke.’ He turned to PC Lambert. ‘That’s against the law, isn’t it, Constable, or am I thinking of parking on a yellow line?’
‘I’ve never seen these packets before in my life,’ said Kelly, moving slightly to one side to block the airing-cupboard door.
‘I spy with my little eye an airing cupboard,’ said Frost, pushing him out of the way. ‘What have you got in there that you don’t want me to see?’ He shoved Kelly to one side and flung open the door. Then he did a double take and his heart sank. The box containing the phone – it wasn’t there! He knew where he had left it and it wasn’t there. There were two other boxes that hadn’t been there before. He pulled them out and lifted the lids. More packets of coke – Kelly’s visits to the Blue Parrot were clearly made to collect fresh supplies. Sod the drugs – what had Kelly done with the bloody phone? Had the bastard forestalled him? Had he moved it?
A stack of folded tea towels had toppled over. Had it fallen on the box containing the phone when he hurriedly rammed it back earlier? It had to be that. It just had to be.
Holding his breath, he lifted up the tea towels. He breathed again. The box was there! He pulled it out. ‘What’s in here then, Patsy?’
Kelly gave it half a glance and shrugged. ‘No idea. Something you’ve planted, I expect.’ Frost shook his head in mock sadness. ‘Come now, Patsy. We only do things like that as a last resort.’ He riffled through the contents, leaving the phone until last. ‘Watches, credit cards, debit cards… all sorts of flaming cards, but none in your name. I wonder why that is? Flaming credit-card companies – they never seem to get your name right.’ He held one aloft. ‘This one’s made out to Susan Carter.
‘I’ve never seen them before in my life,’ repeated Kelly.
‘I must be a mind-reader,’ beamed Frost. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’
He continued his rummage. ‘More watches… keys… and, hello – what’s this?’ He carefully lifted out the mobile phone.
‘It’s a mobile phone,’ said Kelly. ‘I don’t nick mobile phones.’
‘Someone else got the franchise?’ asked Frost. He held the phone aloft. ‘Now I wonder whose phone this is?’ He turned to Jordan, who had by now come in through the back door to join him. ‘Isn’t there some way a phone will tell you its own number so we can check the owner’s name with the phone company, because Mr Kelly says it isn’t his?’
‘Yes,’ nodded Jordan. ‘I’ve got one exactly like that.’ He carefully took the phone from Frost and turned it on. He frowned, switched it off and on again, then shook his head. ‘Battery’s dead.’
‘Where’s the charger?’ Frost asked Kelly.
‘You should have brought the flaming charger along when you planted the phone,’ he answered.
‘I always forget little things like that,’ grinned Frost. ‘There’s one back at the nick. We’ll finishing searching your gaff, then we’ll nip down to the station.’
The toilet flushed, the bathroom door opened and a sweaty, green-faced Bridget Malone staggered out. She was dark-haired and plump, in her mid-forties. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I knew that lobster was off,’ she snarled at Kelly. She focused blurry eyes on Frost and his team. ‘What are the flaming police doing here?’
Frost held up the mobile phone. ‘Ever seen this before, Bridget?’ She stared, then shook her head, not looking at him. ‘No.’
Guilty as arseholes, thought Frost. ‘We’re going to continue this little tete-a-tete down the station. Get your coats.’
‘I’ll go in a separate car to her,’ said Kelly. ‘She spews up every five minutes. My car’s swimming in it.’
‘Good point,’ nodded Frost. ‘Taffy – take her in your car.’
Frost stirred his mug of tea with his Bic pen, sucked the sugar from the cap and sighed. ‘All this sodding hanging about.’
‘Kelly won’t talk to you until his brief arrives, Jack, you know that,’ said Sergeant Wells.
‘Give me back the good old days,’ said Frost. ‘If your suspect wouldn’t talk you kneed him in the groin, wrote his statement yourself and forged his signature.’ He sighed deeply. ‘The golden days.’ He looked up at the clock. Four thirty ‘How’s Jordan getting on with that flaming phone?’
‘Still looking for a battery-charger, Jack. Our one is the wrong sort.’ He drained his mug and lowered his voice. ‘Are you sure it’s the girl’s phone?’
‘Of course I’m bleeding sure,’ answered Frost. ‘I checked it before I got the flaming warrant.’
Wells looked alarmed and moved hurriedly to close the open door. ‘For Pete’s sake, Jack, I don’t want to know.’
Frost sank into a chair. ‘I wish he’d hurry up with that charger. Even when Kelly’s brief Slippery Sam arrives, without confirmation that it’s Debbie’s phone I can only question him on the drugs and the piddling jewellery and credit cards, nothing else – and that other kid, Jan O’Brien, might still be alive.’
He shook a cigarette from the packet and offered one to Wells, who shook his head. Frost lit up and moved over to the window, staring down to see if the solicitor’s car had arrived. ‘Bloody nine-to-five solicitors,’ he muttered.
There was a tap at the door and Jordan looked in. ‘I found a charger, Inspector, and it is Debbie Clark’s phone.’
‘I’d be flaming surprised if it wasn’t,’ said Frost, ‘but well done, son.’
‘And even better news, Inspector. The last call she received was from Kelly’s phone!’
Frost punched the air with delight ‘Then we’ve got the sod!’ He peered out into the car park again. ‘Where’s that flaming brief?’ He turned to Jordan. ‘And how’s Molly Malone?’
‘Still throwing up,’ said Jordan. ‘I don’t know where it’s all coming from. She wanted us to send for a Harley Street specialist, but she’s got the duty quack.’
‘We’ve got to talk to her,’ said Frost. ‘She’ll be the one who made the phone call to Sandy Lane about the video tape.’
Car doors slammed in the car park. Frost turned back to the window. ‘Slippery Sam’s here. Look at the bleeding posh car he’s got.’ He swilled down the dregs of his tea and cuffed his mouth dry. ‘Right, let’s get cracking…’ He stopped dead and smacked a palm on his forehead. ‘Shit! That last call on the flaming phone – that was me checking if it was Debbie’s mobile!’ He spun round to Jordan. ‘Is there any way we can erase it?’
Jordan thought for a moment. ‘We could probably wipe it off the phone’s memory, but the phone company will still have a record.’
‘Human dung!’ cursed Frost. ‘All right. If it comes to it, they will have to prove they didn’t make the call and I’ll do what every good police officer does – lie my bleeding head off!’ He rubbed his face with his hands. He was always skating on thin flaming ice. One day it would crack and he’d fall in the freezing water.
PC Collier looked round the door. ‘Sarge, Kelly’s solicitor is here. He wants to see his client.’
‘Coming,’ said Wells.
Frost looked at his empty mug. They would have to wait until Kelly had briefed Slippery Sam on the lies he was going to tell before he could be questioned. ‘Any more tea on the go?’ he called.
Deadly silence.
‘Then someone bloody well make some,’ said Frost, giving Taffy an encouraging kick. ‘Tea all round, Lloyd George.’
Taffy reluctantly pulled himself out of his chair, where he was half asleep. ‘Tea, Guv? Right away,’ he yawned.
Frost didn’t have to wait long. Halfway through the next mug of tea Bill Wells came back.
‘They’re ready for you, Jack, and Kelly wants bail.’
‘I want a sex-mad teenage virgin,’ said Frost, ‘and Kelly’s got the same chance as me!’
With Morgan tagging along, he made his way to the Interview Room, where he nodded at the solicitor, a weaselly-faced man you definitely wouldn’t buy a second-hand car from – he looked more of a villain than Kelly, who was sitting beside him. Frost waited for Morgan to set up the tape recorder, then opened his folder.
‘As you know, Mr Kelly, on information received we obtained a warrant enabling us to search your premises, where we found you in possession of these items.’ He reached down and pulled up a polythene sack filled with the packets of coke Kelly had been carrying in the house. He took out one of the packets and showed it to the solicitor. ‘Forensic tests haven’t yet been carried out, but we have every reason to believe they contain an illegal substance.’
‘As I explained to you earlier, Inspector,’ said Kelly, in his reasonable voice for the tape recorder, ‘I found them in my airing cupboard. I had never seen them before. Someone must have planted them there.’
‘You were found with these packets in your arms and were intending to flush them down the bog.’
‘Hold on, Inspector,’ interjected the solicitor. ‘You have no idea what my client’s intentions were.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Simpson,’ said Kelly, still in his reasonable voice. ‘The inspector is quite right. To my shame, I did intend to flush them down the loo. I wanted to get rid of them. I knew he would never have believed they were planted. Inspector Frost is not a very trusting man.’
‘Planted?’ scoffed Frost. ‘Then who would have had access to your airing cupboard?’
Kelly smiled. ‘Someone who wanted to get me into trouble, Inspector. Perhaps the very same person who gave you the information you used to obtain the search warrant.’
Frost reached down beneath the table and brought up the box containing the credit cards, jewellery and mobile phone. ‘We found this hidden at the back of your airing cupboard too,’ he told Kelly.
Kelly shrugged. ‘Never seen it before in my life. Whoever is planting these things is doing a good job.’
‘Just a moment, Inspector,’ interjected the solicitor. ‘What is the significance of this? What have these items got to do with the drugs that were planted on my client?’
Frost took a swig of cold tea. ‘Serendipity Mr Simpson. We looked for drugs, the rest was a bonus.’ He glanced at Kelly. ‘Drugs might be the least of your client’s problems, Mr Simpson.’
‘Oh?’ said the solicitor. ‘Perhaps you could elucidate.’ He leant back smugly, arms folded.
Frost poipted to the mobile. ‘That phone, which we found hidden in your client’s airing cupboard, was owned by Debbie Clark.’
Simpson gave a scoffing sniff. ‘The dead teenager? Tut, tut, Inspector, you are scraping the bottom of the barrel this time. I am sure there are thousands of phones of that make and model.’
‘But not with the same phone number,’ said Frost, playing his trump card. He leant across to Kelly. ‘We’ve checked the phone number. The phone we found in the airing cupboard is Debbie Clark’s phone. We are now talking murder.’
Kelly jerked back as if he had been hit. ‘I’ve never seen the bleeding phone before. It’s been planted. It’s been bloody well planted. Bloody hell. On my mother’s life… Drugs, yes. Bleeding murder, no.’
‘Then how did the phone come to be in your possession?’ demanded Frost.
Before Kelly could answer, the Interview Room door crashed open and a red and sweaty-faced, angry-looking Detective Chief Inspector Skinner burst in, swaying slightly, quivering with rage. ‘Frost! Out here. Now!’
It was Frost’s turn to be angry. ‘Didn’t you see the red light? I’m interviewing a suspect.’
‘I don’t give a sod what you’re doing. Out here – now!’
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ apologised Frost to the solicitor. ‘I believe my superior wants to commend me for something.’ He rose and walked out to confront Skinner in the passage. ‘How bloody dare you interrupt me when I’m questioning a suspect?’
‘Don’t try your high and mighty larks on me, Frost,’ retorted Skinner, breathing out clouds of whisky fumes. ‘What are all these officers doing in the Incident Room – on overtime unauthorised by me?’
‘We are following a line of investigation,’ said Frost, trying to remain calm.
‘You don’t follow any lines of investigation without getting my approval first, especially for a tuppence-ha’ penny-possession-of-illegal-substances and receiving-stolen-goods pull. Send all those men home, now.’
‘I’m questioning a suspect in connection with the murder of Debbie Clark and Thomas Harris.’
Skinner stared at Frost with eyes he was finding difficult to focus. ‘A suspect?’ He grabbed Frost by the arm and pulled him into his office. ‘Tell me about it.’
Frost told him, skipping the details about breaking into Kelly’s house first.
Skinner leant back and considered this. ‘You got a warrant on information received. What information?’
‘An anonymous phone call, about the drugs,’ said Frost. ‘He’s phoned me before and his gen is always bang on.’
Skinner folded his arms and grinned with smug satisfaction. ‘You looked for drugs, you found the phone. Bleeding marvellous. You reckon they killed the kids and took the video?’
‘They’ve got the girl’s phone,’ said Frost. ‘That’s a good enough start for me.’
‘And for me,’ nodded Skinner. ‘OK, Frost. Piss off home now, I’m taking this case over. Don’t try to muscle in on any of my cases again. You find a suspect, you find me. You don’t try to steal the bloody glory.’
Frost stamped out to the lobby to commiserate with Sergeant Wells.
‘At least you won’t have to do all the questioning, Jack. He’d have taken the kudos for cracking the case anyway.’
‘I laid my bleeding job on the line by breaking into Kelly’s house,’ wailed Frost. ‘I do all the flaming dirty work – ’
They both looked up as, with a blast of cold air, the doors opened and a young, flashily dressed girl in high heels tottered in. She had clearly been drinking and it was an effort for her to walk over to the desk. Over-made-up, her lipstick was smudged and her lavishly applied cheap perfume battled with the aroma of gin. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded of Wells. ‘How much longer have I got to sit in that bloody car.’
‘Where is who, madam?’ asked Wells.
‘John. That big copper – grey suit, red tie. He’s supposed to have a room booked at the hotel for us. I’m bleeding shagged out waiting.’
Eyebrows raised, Wells and Frost looked at each other, silently mouthing the word ‘Skinner!’
‘I’ll go and get him for you,’ volunteered Frost.
Skinner, who was just about to enter the Interview Room with a bundle of case files under his arm, scowled as Frost approached. ‘I told you to piss off!’
‘This is important,’ said Frost. ‘Your granddaughter is in the lobby. She’s going off the boil waiting for you.’
Skinner glared. ‘You’re pushing your bleeding luck, Frost.’ He dug in his pocket, fished out his wallet and extracted a twenty-pound note which he handed over. ‘Stick her in a taxi. Tell her to wait for me in the hotel, and tell her I might be a bit late. And then leave me in peace.’
Frost stuffed the note in his pocket as Taffy Morgan emerged from the Interview Room, dismissed by Skinner. ‘You got your car here, Taffy?’ he called.
‘Yes, Guv.’
‘There’s a load of quivering crumpet in the lobby. Take her to wherever she wants to go,’ said Frost.
‘Right, Guv.’
‘And keep your trousers on.’
‘Yes, Guv.’
Frost mooched back to his office, his spirits flagging. It was far too late to go to bed, and in any case his mind was still churning over the night’s events and there was no way he would be able to go to sleep. He suddenly realised he was hungry. He’d send out to the all-night chippy for some nosh.
He gave Collier Skinner’s twenty pounds. ‘Who wants fish and chips?’ he called. ‘I’m buying.’
Everyone wanted fish and chips. As Collier was taking the orders the phone rang. ‘It’s for you, Inspector,’ called Jordan.
Frost glanced up at the clock. Who the hell was calling him at this unearthly hour? ‘It had better not be bleeding double glazing,’ he growled, taking the phone.
It was Sandy Lane from the Denton Echo.
‘What the hell do you want, Sandy?’ asked Frost, putting his hand over the mouthpiece to tell Collier he wanted sausage in batter with his chips. ‘Tell them that last bit of cod I had from them was off.’ Everyone began changing their orders from cod and he had to shout to make himself heard on the phone. ‘What do you want, Sandy? Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘I was in bed. The office phoned me. They’ve just had another phone call.’
Frost flapped an urgent hand for silence. ‘Another phone call? When?’
‘A couple of minutes ago. Same woman as before. She said, “Ask the fuzz about the whipping.”
Frost went cold. The lash marks on Debbie’s back. They hadn’t released that information to the press. ‘Where did she phone from?’
‘A call box – not the same one as before. I got the number, but the exchange wouldn’t give me its location.’
‘We’ll get the location,’ said Frost. All public call boxes were supposed to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance, but he’d pulled everyone off for the Kelly caper. His white-knuckled hand was squeezing the living daylights out of the handset. Whoever the tart was who had phoned, it certainly wasn’t Bridget Malone.
‘What’s this about a whipping? Was she beaten up?’
‘Later, Sandy, later. Just give me the flaming phone number.’ He scribbled it down and banged the phone back on the handset. ‘Forget fish and chips,’ he yelled. ‘That tart has phoned again about the video.’
‘I thought we had her banged up,’ said Lambert.
‘Unless she’s in two places at once, we’re bloody wrong.’ He gave Collier the phone number. ‘Speak to the phone company and find out where this call came from.’ As Collier picked up the phone he turned to the others. ‘The rest of you, get in your cars and start driving around. There can’t be many motors on the road at this hour. I want registration numbers of the lot, so shift… Now!’
They thudded out while Frost waited impatiently for Collier to finish the call.
‘Shouldn’t you let Skinner know about this, Jack?’ suggested Wells.
‘He said he wasn’t to be disturbed and I always do what I’m told, especially when he asks so nicely.’ He turned back to Collier, who still had the phone pressed to his ear. ‘Come on, son…’
The other phone rang. He snatched it up. ‘What the bloody hell is it now?’ It was the Fortress Building Society – another five hundred pounds had just been withdrawn from the cashpoint.
‘You’ve made my day,’ he grunted, banging the phone down. Hell! Beazley would be on to him first thing in the flaming morning. It never rained but it peed down. Still, one lousy crisis at a time. He turned his attention back to Collier. ‘Don’t take all flipping day, son.’
Collier snatched up a pen and scribbled on a pad. ‘Thank you.’ He hung up. ‘The call box under the railway arch by Levington Street – the one I should have been watching.’
‘Don’t rub broken glass in the flaming wound,’ said Frost, grabbing his scarf. ‘Come on, let’s take a look.’
Levington Street, with its cobbled roadway, snaked up a hill, under a railway arch, then fizzled out. Redevelopment work which would have transformed it into a more modern slum area had been on hold for six years. There were no CCTV cameras anywhere near to film traffic. That tart knew what she was doing when she picked this spot, thought Frost.
The door to the darkened call box, with its smashed light bulb, was ajar. It stank of urine, with torn yellowing pages of the phone directory carpeting the floor and a batch of prostitutes’ calling cards stuck to the wall. ‘Mind where you put your feet,’ grunted Frost. ‘Hello.’ He bent and picked up a small square of paper – a Post-it self-adhesive note. Holding it carefully by the edges, he shone his torch and read it. ‘655555.’ He beamed triumphantly. ‘That, my son, is the phone number of the Denton Echo, and this is what we call in the trade a clue!’ He foraged through his pockets, found a used envelope and slipped it in. ‘Just in case she’s obliged us by leaving her dabs.’ He plucked one of the calling cards from the wall. ‘Flaming heck – is she still going? She went to school with my gran.’
With his handkerchief he carefully lifted the handset and studied it under the beam of his torch. ‘Wiped clean. If I had a suspicious mind I’d reckon she didn’t want us to find her finger prints.’ He replaced the phone, then thought for a while, staring at the coin box. ‘You know, son, I reckon hardly anyone uses this call box It’s stuck out on the arsehole of Denton on a road leading to nowhere, and the way it smells you’d be better off making your phone calls down a sewer.’
‘What are you getting at, Inspector?’ Collier asked.
‘I bet there’s hardly any coins in that coin box and they’ll all have fingerprints on them, and one will have the dabs of our lady caller.’ He pulled his penknife from his pocket and began to saw away at the flex on the handset.
Collier looked on, horrified, turning his head from side to side in case anyone could see what Frost was up to.
Frost examined the flex. His knife had made hardly any impression. ‘I don’t know how these bleeding vandals do it,’ he said. ‘There’s a pair of wire-cutters in the glove compartment of my car. Fetch them for me, son.’
The cutters sliced through the flex in one go. ‘Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job,’ said Frost in his Churchill voice.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Collier.
‘Because I don’t want anyone else using this phone until we’ve got all the coins out of the box for testing. When we get back to the station, phone British Telecom. I want one of their engineers to liaise with someone from SOCO at the crack of dawn. I want the coins removed and fingerprinted.’
‘But she could have been wearing gloves,’ said Collier.
‘If she was wearing gloves, my son, she wouldn’t have had to wipe the handset clean after using it. Oh, and you can tell BT that some vandalising bastard has hacked the handset off – give them Skinner’s description if you like.’
Skinner charged out of the Interview Room and yelled down the corridor to Wells, ‘That bleeding woman’s thrown up all over me. Get her to Denton General. Look at my suit – it stinks of puke.’ His jacket was splattered with vomit.
‘Dear, dear,’ tutted Wells, trying not to laugh.
‘Get me a tea towel or something to wipe this off. Where’s Frost?’
‘Gone home, I think,’ Wells told him.
‘The bastard’s never here when you want him. What about the rest of the team?’
‘I believe Inspector Frost sent them home. He said you’d instructed him to do so.’
‘He picks and chooses what flaming orders he wants to obey,’ snorted Skinner. ‘Sod it. I haven’t got time to waste on a drug-possession and petty-thieving case. Bang Kelly up and I’ll finish questioning him in the morning.’
‘What about the dead girl’s phone, sir?’ asked Wells.
‘That Malone woman probably nicked it. She threw up when I asked her. She claims she nicked the other stuff from lockers at the school. She also says there’s about half a ton of bog rolls she knifed in their garage. If Frost had done a proper search he would have found them. I can’t see anyone who nicks bog rolls being a killer, somehow. Bloody Frost. The sooner he’s out of Denton the bloody better…’
The hands on the wall clock in the Incident Room crawled round to five fifty-eight. Frost yawned and rubbed his stubbled chin. His team had returned with the registration numbers of the few vehicles that had been spotted, but none had had woman drivers or passengers, so they didn’t look at all promising. He yawned again. ‘We’ll check the CCTV footage later. Might find some thing we missed on there.’ He stretched his aching back. ‘The important question of the moment is this: do we go home and grab a couple of hours’ kip before reporting to Skinner for a bollocking, or do we go down to the all-night cafe and have a fry-up?’
'I’m starving,’ said Lambert.
‘Then you speak for all of us,’ said Frost, reaching for his scarf. ‘Let’s go.’
He turned his head as Morgan, looking well satisfied with himself, sauntered in. ‘Sorry it took so long, Guv. Something came up.’
‘Something went up, you mean,’ said Frost. ‘You were supposed to take that tom to the hotel and come straight back. Skinner will have your guts for garters if he finds out he’s not a first-footer.’
‘She didn’t want to go to the hotel, Guv. She wanted to go home. She was shagged out.’
‘And we all know by whom,’ grinned Frost. ‘Care for some brekker?’
He slept for a couple of hours at his desk and was woken by the clanging of the cleaners’ buckets as they mopped up the corridor outside. He clicked on his desk lamp and looked at the wall clock. Eight forty-five. He’d had barely two hours’ sleep and felt shagged out and dirty. He rubbed his eyes, reached for his cigarettes then pushed the packet away. He’d smoked himself sick last night and his mouth tasted like the contents of a week-old ashtray. The fried food from Nick’s cafe was churning away in his stomach and making him feel queasy. Coffee, that’s what he wanted. He detoured to the washroom on his way to the lobby, to splash cold water on his face. He looked at the weary drawn, grey face staring back at him from the mirror. ‘You poor old sod,’ he muttered, dabbing himself dry.
The coffee helped a little. Johnny Johnson grinned as Frost came down the stairs.
‘Had a rough night, Jack?’
‘Bleeding rough,’ nodded Frost. ‘Has Skinner charged Kelly and the cockle-seller yet?’
‘He’s charged Kelly with the drugs, but the woman was taken violently ill and is in Denton General.’
‘Ill?’
‘Food poisoning, I think. She threw up all over Skinner’s best suit.’
‘I’m beginning to take to her,’ said Frost. ‘I think I’ll nip over to Denton General and have a few words with her. What did she say about the phone?’
‘He couldn’t get much sense out of her.’
‘And she’s in Denton General? I’ll just nip over and try and jog her memory.’
‘Skinner won’t like it,’ said Johnson.
‘Which adds to the pleasure,’ smirked Frost.
The cleaners were mopping and polishing the seemingly endless corridor that crawled round the hospital to Nightingale Ward, where Bridget Malone was a patient. The staff nurse in charge had just come on duty and had to refer to the admission doctor’s notes.
‘Nothing too serious. Food poisoning. She can go home today.’
‘I’ll just pop over and cheer her up,’ said Frost. Bridget Malone’s complexion was still tinged with green. A plate of cold, congealed porridge lurked sullenly on a tray beside her. She was sipping a bright-yellow mug of hospital tea with obvious distaste.
‘We left a urine sample in a yellow mug on a tray near here,’ said Frost, dragging a chair to the side of the bed. ‘You haven’t seen it by any chance?’
‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked, then she remembered. ‘You’re the copper who was at the house last night.’
‘Once seen, never forgotten, love,’ said Frost. ‘I want to talk about that mobile phone.’
‘What mobile phone?’
Frost sighed deeply. ‘Don’t sod me about, Bridget. You know damn well what phone. The mobile we found in your airing cupboard. The murdered girl’s phone.’
The woman’s jaw dropped. She stared wide-eyed at Frost. ‘Dear Sweet Mother of God. Not little Debbie – not that poor girl?’
‘Yes, that poor girl.’
‘Dear Mother of God. I never knew…’ She crossed herself. ‘May I die in the bed I’m lying in, Inspector – I never knew. I’d never have taken it had I known.’
‘Taken it? From where?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t bleeding know? Don’t sod me about!’ roared Frost.
There was a clatter of footsteps as the staff nurse came over. ‘Please keep your voice down. There are sick people here.’
‘Sorry love,’ muttered Frost. He turned back to the woman. ‘If you can’t remember where you got it, I’m arresting you for murder and you’ll be doing porridge as well as bleeding eating it.’
‘Murder? I wouldn’t have touched a hair on that poor innocent child’s head. Those girls, they just left stuff lying around. They were just asking for it to be pinched.’
‘You stole stuff from the kids’ lockers?’
‘All the lockers. I was teaching the school a lesson. I was going to put it all back.’
‘I bet you bleeding were,’ sniffed Frost. ‘So when did this happen?’
‘On my mother’s life, Inspector, if I hadn’t been taken sick, I’d have put it all back.’
‘You’re a lying cow, Bridget. When did you nick it?’
She screwed her face in thought. ‘Let me see… Wednesday. .. Yes, it was Wednesday, the day before I was taken sick.’
‘You’re a bleeding liar, Bridget. Debbie was killed on Tuesday night and she had her phone with her. You and Kelly killed her, didn’t you?’
Her eyes spat fire. ‘Don’t you dare accuse me of a thing like that, Inspector. You can go to hell. If you want to talk to me, get my solicitor. I’m not saying another word.’
Frost stood up and scraped his chair back against the wall. ‘I’m going for now, Bridget. But remember what big Arnie said… “I’ll be back.”
Back in the car, he radioed the station to send a WPC to stay with Malone until she was discharged and take her straight to the station. Then he turned the car off the main road and headed down the side streets to Debbie’s house.
Mrs Clark was haggard with grief. Her hair was uncombed as before, her dress not buttoned properly. The house felt cold and empty – it felt like a place where someone had died. She took him into the living room. Cards of condolence were strewn on the carpet.
‘It’s about your daughter,’ began Frost uneasily.
She stared at him as if deeply surprised. ‘She’s at school. My Debbie is at school…’ Then her body shook and she collapsed into a chair. ‘She’s not at school… she’s dead. My Debbie is dead.’
‘I know, love, I know,’ sympathised Frost. God, this was going to be bloody difficult. He sat him self down in a chair opposite her. ‘A couple of questions and I’ll be on my way… it won’t take long.’
She stared at him intently, then leant forward dropping her voice. ‘Her father killed her. He lusted after her. He was jealous of that boy.’
‘You might be right,’ nodded Frost gravely, ‘but we’ve got to get a few facts straight before we can make an arrest. It’s about Debbie’s mobile phone. You said she took it with her the night she went missing?’
She blinked at him. Her phone? I bought it for her twelfth birthday.’
‘Yes, love. But the night she went missing, did she take the phone with her?’
‘I made her take it. Every time she went out, I made her take it. I said terrible things might…’ Her body shook, racked with sobs, ‘… terrible things might happen.’
‘And she took it?’
‘I always made her show it to me. She held it up. She said, “Look, Mum, I’ve got it.”
‘You’re sure about this, Mrs Clark? It’s very important.’
‘Of course I’m sure.’