Frost woke with a start, screwing his eyes against the glare. The sun was hammering at the bedroom window and the room was as bright as day. Hell, he’d overslept with a vengeance. He fumbled for the alarm clock. Ten twenty-seven. A vague feeling of unease told him that some thing was wrong. His brain was out of focus.
Then it hit him.
Last night! That bloody disaster. Skinner, slumped on the floor, blood everywhere. Mullett bleating away, shovelling all the blame on to him. ‘You are solely responsible for his death, Frost. As sure as f you pulled the trigger, you killed him… You could have saved him, but you let him die…’
He lay back and stared at the ceiling, his head throbbing. As he tried to piece everything together, a jumble of flashbacks elbowed their way through his brain.
The visit to the hospital. Seeing Taylor unconscious, all drips, wires, blood-soaked bandages and tubes that gurgled from his throat, while the faltering monitors were bleeping away.
‘He’ll live,’ the weary junior doctor had told him. ‘We might be able to repair most of the jaw, but he’s shot away the best part of his tongue, so there’s nothing we can do there.’
‘When will he be fit for trial?’ asked Frost.
The doctor shrugged. ‘God knows – if ever…’
He organised a team of uniforms to keep vigil, although it was a waste of time as Taylor wasn’t going anywhere. But the man was a murderer and someone was bound to scream if he was left unguarded, even if he only had half a face.
Then back to the station, where the phones didn’t stop ringing
… the press, TV channels wanting facts and quotes, other forces offering condolences. Then the disgruntled Investigating Officer from County arrived, short-tempered at being dragged out of bed and trying to drum up some sense of urgency in the already knackered Frost, who he eyed with displeasure after accepting Mulleit’s version of events without question.
‘An officer’s life needlessly lost. There will be a thorough investigation. I want a full written report of what happened, and I want it now.’ And this at four o’clock in the morning.
He’d staggered back to his office, opened the window to tip out the contents of an overflowing ashtray on to the roof of Mullett’s car then started on the report. He’d barely put his name, rank and number when the phone rang yet again. ‘Yes?’ he snarled.
It was Beazley. At that hour of the night, flaming Beazley. ‘I’ve just heard on the radio that you’ve caught the bastard. What about my money?’
‘We’ve recovered a substantial amount,’ yawned Frost. ‘Too many other things to do than bother to count it.’
‘It had better be all there. When do I get it back?’
‘When we’ve checked that it’s your money.’
‘Of course it’s my money. That prat Taylor didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together. Whose bleeding money do you think it is?’
‘If the banknotes’ numbers tally with those issued by the building society, you stand a good chance of getting your money back. Until then you ‘ll just have to wait.’ He slammed the phone down. It rang back almost immediately. He ignored it and pulled open the desk drawer for his whisky. He swigged it down from the bottle. It didn’t make him feel any better.
He managed to catch young PC Collier, who was on his way to keep a watchful eye on Taylor at the hospital in case the man gathered up all the drips and wires and made a dash for it.
Collier drove him home.
He was still dead tired, fed up and miserable. Why had he had that flaming whisky? And he felt battered and bruised. Whether or not it was his fault that Skinner had died, guilt was chewing away at him. He still felt that part of him had wanted the sod to die and that he deliberately hadn’t let the WPC go in to take his place as hostage.
Sod it. He didn’t want to go to the station and face everyone, but with Skinner dead and no one to take over his cases, he’d have to bloody well go in.
After a quick wash and a half-hearted shave, he headed out of the front door. But his car wasn’t waiting for him in the street outside. Had some bastard nicked it? Then he remembered leaving it at the station when Collier drove him home.
He called a minicab.
‘Denton police station,’ he grunted.
‘What have the bastards nicked you for then?’ asked the chatty driver. ‘Speeding? The bastards copped me the other night. Driving in a bus lane… ten minutes to midnight, no bleeding buses until the morning and they nicked me. Passenger was in a hurry, so I took a chance and they nicked me. Police cars do it all the bleeding time. One law for them bastards, another for us.’
‘There’s no justice,’ muttered Frost.
‘See one of the sods got shot last night,’ continued the cabby. ‘Hope it was the bastard who nicked me.’
‘Shouldn’t these back seats be fitted with safety belts?’ asked Frost, fishing out his warrant card.
‘Honey, I’m home,’ he called to Bill Wells, carefully stepping over the heaps of flowers and wreaths that covered the lobby floor. ‘Mullett’s mum and dad getting married?’
Bill Wells grinned. ‘Morning, Jack. Seen the paper? Headline news.’
He held out a copy of the Denton Echo – the headline read:
POLICE HERO KILLED SAVING CHILD.
‘Nothing about Skinner, then,’ sniffed Frost, pushing it away. He’d seen it all happen. He didn’t want to read about it.
Wells looked at his scratch pad. ‘Everyone wants you, Jack. Mullett wants to see you the minute you arrive, Sandy Lane wants you to phone him and that nice Mr Beazley has phoned about eight times.’
Frost held up a hand to cut him short. ‘They can all wait. I’m going to get myself some breakfast.’
The phone rang. Wells answered it and held it out. ‘It’s for you, Jack. Meyers from the Crown Prosecution Service.’
Frost took the phone. ‘Yes?’
‘Graham Fielding was granted bail.’
Frost’s jaw dropped. ‘What!… A bleeding murderer? He raped and killed a girl.’
‘A long time ago, Inspector, and the defence are querying the DNA evidence. He’s married, with a business to run. The bench didn’t think he posed a risk. There was no one from the police to oppose bail
… I thought Detective Chief Inspector Skinner – ’
‘Skinner’s dead,’ said Frost flatly.
‘Oh…’ said Meyers, not really taking this in. ‘Sorry to hear that – then you, as second in charge…’
‘I’ve been up most of the night. I’ve only just come in.’
‘Well, it might have made a difference, but no use crying over spilt milk. He had to surrender his passport, his father-in-law met the?10,000 bail demanded and he’s now a free man. The trial has been set for next March.’
‘Thanks very much,’ snapped Frost, banging down the receiver. ‘They’ve only let Fielding out on bleeding bail,’ he told Wells.
Before Wells could answer, a voice roared down the corridor. ‘Inspector Frost… my office, now!’
‘Flaming hell,’ muttered Frost. ‘Mullett! I thought he couldn’t come out in the sunlight.’ He called back sweetly, ‘Coming, Super,’ then turned to Wells. ‘Probably wants me to put a stake through Skinner’s heart in case he comes back from the dead.’
Mullett was wearing his best uniform, a black tie and a black armband. If the press or television wanted to interview him, he was ready. He frowned as Frost shambled in and flicked a finger at a chair. ‘The Chief Constable is very upset,’ he snapped.
‘Few of us are laughing,’ said Frost, flopping into the chair. ‘What did you want to see me about?’
‘What happened at court today?’
‘Fielding got bail.’
‘I know he got bail, Frost. I want to know why. Why weren’t you there to oppose it?’
‘Me? It was Skinner’s case.’
‘You knew he was dead. Who else could go in his place apart from you?’
‘Things were a bit bloody abnormal last night,’ retorted Frost. ‘We did have other things to worry about.’
Mullett fluttered a dismissive hand. ‘Excuses, excuses, always excuses. The case files are on DCI Skinner’s desk. I want you to take them over for the time being until we get a replacement. This, as I am sure you will appreciate, makes no difference to your joining Lexton division, although that will depend on the result of the inquiry into Skinner’s death. I can’t back you up there, as you know, so your future in the force is in doubt. And in that respect, County want a full report from you on what happened last night. Detailed, Frost – not a couple of lines of your usual scribble.’
‘Right,’ said Frost, rising from the chair. ‘Was that all?’
Mullett patted some papers into a neat pile on his desk. ‘There is one other thing… the funeral. There will be a police presence, of course. You – er – have got another suit? That one is hardly appropriate.’
‘I’ll rake out my old Teddy Boy suit,’ said Frost. ‘It should still fit.’
Frost mooched into Skinner’s office and shivered. The room felt cold. Why did a dead person’s office have a different feel to a living person’s office? He crossed to the filing cabinet where Skinner kept his fiddled car expenses and gave the top drawer a tentative tug, but it was locked. None of the keys on his ring worked, neither did his nail file or an opened-out paper clip. Skinner had had an expensive new lock fitted. Shit!
He sank into Skinner’s chair and tried the deep filing drawer. It slid open to reveal a couple of bottles of Johnny Walker. Serendipity! Well, Skinner wouldn’t want them anymore. He took them out and scurried back to his own office, hid them in his desk drawer, then returned to Skinner’s room.
A small stack of case files awaited his attention. He pulled them towards him. The one on the top was for the Fielding rape and murder case, which Skinner had had ready for his court appearance. Frost opened it and idly flicked through the contents, pausing as he reached all the old papers from that distant Christmas when the girl’s body was discovered in that frozen churchyard. He shivered again, the cold of the room transporting him back to that frosty Christmas morning with hard-packed snow scrunching underfoot. And it put him in mind of his return home and his young wife, in that red dress… He shook his head to shake away the memories.
He closed the file and pushed it to one side. Then he paused. Something inside his head was telling him that he had spotted something in the file, something significant. There was something he had skimmed over, which had subconsciously registered in his brain. So what the hell was it?
He opened up the file again. Among the top papers were the computer printouts of Fielding’s petty criminal record – all minor traffic offences. Nothing there – or was there? Speeding.. . dangerous driving… Manchester. Manchester! He stared, snatched up the file and scurried into the Incident Room, waving the folder at Collier and Morgan, who were seated by the computer.
‘Come and have a look at this.’
They crowded round him as he opened up the file. ‘This is the list of Fielding’s past offences, right?’
‘Pretty trivial stuff though, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘Motoring offences.’
Frost jabbed a finger. ‘This one. Dangerous driving, Manchester, 22 September.’ He looked at them expectantly. They looked back, puzzled.
‘Are we missing something?’ asked Collier.
‘The date,’ said Frost. ‘The bloody date!’
They still stared back blankly.
‘September 22nd. The day that girl went missing. The girl whose body we found on the railway embankment. Fielding was in Manchester the day the girl went missing.’
‘Coincidence?’ suggested Morgan.
‘I don’t believe in flaming coincidences, especially when they don’t suit me,’ said Frost. ‘The girl was abducted on the 22nd September and we reckon she was abducted by someone from Denton. We have someone on a rape and murder charge who comes from Denton.’
‘Possible,’ conceded Collier begrudgingly.
‘Try not to be too bleeding enthusiastic,’ said Frost ‘There’s other motor offences in other towns. I want you to check back with the forces concerned and see if any girls went missing or if there were rapes or attempted rapes on the day of the offences.’
‘Right,’ nodded Collier, taking the file and picking up the phone.
Wells came in. ‘Mullett wants you again, Jack.’
‘What, again? He’s man-mad,’ said Frost.
The Superintendent was standing in Frost’s office, the bottles of whisky from Skinner’s filing cabinet on the desk before him. Mullett was glowering and pointing an accusing finger at them.
‘When I went into DCI Skinner’s office this morning there were two bottles of whisky in his drawer. When I checked just now, they had gone. I come into your office and there they are. This is outrageous, Frost. Stealing from the dead – absolutely outrageous.’
‘I thoroughly agree with you, Super,’ said Frost. ‘Sneaking into someone’s office and going down their private drawers. I expected better of you.’
‘Me?’ croaked Mullett, pointing a finger at himself in shocked outrage. ‘Me? You take whisky from a deceased colleague… a colleague in whose death you are deeply involved. This is despicable, Frost. It is nothing short of theft.’
Bloody right, thought Frost, his mind racing, trying to think of a way to get out of this one. Then he had an idea. He pulled open a desk drawer and took out the note Sandy Lane had sent with the whisky he had given him. ‘If you had looked more carefully, in DCI Skinner’s drawer, Super, you would have found this note from Sandy Lane of the Denton Echo.’ He handed Mullett the scribbled note, which read: ‘You kept asking for whisky in return for inside information, so here it is.’
‘Skinner seems to have been taking bribes from the press. I’m sure even you wouldn’t have wanted that to come out, Super.’
Mullett frowned at the ‘even you’.
‘In respect to the Detective Chief Inspector’s memory.’ said Frost, wiping away a non-existent tear, ‘I thought it best to remove the evidence. I’m sorry you found out, Super, but the last thing I expected was that you would sneak into my office and rummage in my drawers, trying to prove I was a thief. I’m afraid I thought better of you.’
Mullett’s mouth opened and closed like a gulping goldfish. ‘My dear Frost… what can I say?’
‘You’ve hurt my feelings, but your apology is enough,’ said Frost. ‘In your own way, you probably meant well.’
Mullett squeezed out a smile of gratitude. ‘What do you intend doing with the whisky?’
‘I shall take it to a charity shop,’ said Frost, putting the bottles back in the drawer. ‘I think Skinner would have wanted that.’
‘Charity shop?’ Mullett frowned. He didn’t know charity shops took whisky, but being wrong-footed by the inspector had completely thrown him. He nodded. ‘A good idea, Frost… yes, an excellent idea.’ He made a hurried exit.
Frost looked up hopefully as Collier came in. The PC shook his head. ‘Nothing on record for any of those dates, Inspector.’
‘Damn. I suppose it was too much to hope he would oblige us by getting tickets everytime he did a bird in.’ He drummed his fingers on his desk. ‘It’s him. He’s our rapist and killer. I just know it. His DNA matches that old murder and rape case, he was in Manchester when the other girl went missing and turned up dead, and his car was picked up on CCTV when that girl was raped in the car park. It’s just too much of a flaming coincidence.’
‘His DNA didn’t match the sperm sample from the girl in the car park,’ reminded Collier.
‘Don’t put bloody difficulties in my path, son. The bastard did it.’
‘But we’ve got no proof.’
‘Proof? I don’t need proof. I just know.’ He leant back in his chair and sighed. ‘OK, son. Thanks for trying.’
He opened up the next box file, which contained details of the Debbie Clark/Thomas Harris killings, as well as copies of the video tape, and the mobile phone. Skinner had dismissed Patsy Kelly and Bridget Malone as possible suspects. Skinner was probably right, but they were all that Frost had. And the mobile phone… was her mother wrong? Did Debbie leave it behind in her locker for Malone to steal? He held the phone aloft in its sealed plastic bag. ‘If only you could speak, you sod.’
The last file was on the missing teenager Jan O’Brien. They’d searched everywhere they could and found sod all. They’d reported her as a missing person. Nothing. She could have run away from home as she had done so many times before, but she’d always come back before. She had no money and, like Debbie Clark, they had found her mobile phone. Skinner had scrawled ‘Don’t waste too much time on this one’ across the main report sheet. Frost wasn’t so sure. The woman who had phoned Sandy Lane about the video of Debbie Clark had mentioned a video of the other girl. Was she talking about Jan O’Brien? If so, were they still holding her, or was she dead? Shit! Bridget and the mobile were the only leads they had got. They were not going to get anywhere until they could clear up the mystery of the phone. If Mrs Clark was right and Debbie took it with her that night, then the only way Bridget could have got it was from the girl. If the mother was wrong, then Bridget could have pinched it from Debbie’s locker. But back to Jan O’Brien. There was nothing they could do until, they either heard from the girl or found the poor kid’s body. He shuddered. They had enough young girls’ dead bodies. He didn’t want any more. What next? The flaming detailed report County wanted. Shit. He was in no mood for that.
Bill Wells poked his head round the door. He had an envelope in his hand. ‘Like to contribute to Skinner’s wreath, Jack?’
‘No,’ snapped Frost. ‘I hated the bastard.’
Wells grinned. ‘We all did, Jack, but we’re still chipping in.’
‘Because you haven’t got the courage of your flaming convictions. Now pee off. I’ve got a detailed report to write for County about the shooting. How do you spell “Good riddance”? And I want to stress that Mullett, the senior officer, was there throughout – how do you spell “slimy bastard”?’
‘Be careful how you write it, Jack,’ warned Wells. ‘They’ll be looking for a scapegoat.’
‘If I caused his death, I’d be proud to take the credit,’ said Frost. ‘The silly sod killed himself. Creeping into a house he’d never been in before, knowing that the bloke inside was round the bend and armed – he was a prat.’
‘He didn’t deserve to die in that way, Jack.’
‘No – he deserved to be eaten to death by rats. This was too good for him.’ He looked at the blank report sheet with distaste. ‘Sod it. County will have to flaming well wait.’ He tossed it into his in-tray and pulled the files towards him. ‘As a reward for killing Skinner, Mullett is moving forward my transfer. The new Inspector – a friend of Skinner’s, so he’ll be a charmer – arrives at the end of next week.’
He drummed his fingers on the files. ‘I want to get these outstanding, cases cleared before I go, but there’s little chance of that.’ He tucked the files under his arm. ‘I shall miss this bloody place.’
‘We’ll miss you, Jack,’ said Wells.
‘Bleeding car expenses,’ snorted Frost. ‘It wasn’t as if I needed the money. It was my way of jabbing two fingers up at the system. And now the bastards are jabbing two fingers up at me.’
‘You got anything black for the funeral?’ called Wells after him as he left the office.
‘Yes – black fingernails and a black look for Hornrim Harry.’
Frost surveyed his team in the Incident Room. Most of them looked as tired as he felt. ‘Right, let’s stop sodding about. I’m definitely being booted out in a couple of weeks and I want to tie up at least one of our outstanding cases before that happy day.’
He passed his cigarettes around and perched himself on the corner of a desk. ‘Debbie Clark and Thomas Harris. We’ve missed something. I don’t know what it is, but we’ve bloody missed something. So let’s go over it, step by step. If anyone has any bright ideas that I can pinch as my own, don’t be coy – shout them out.’ He flipped open the file. ‘Right. Girl beaten, raped and strangled on video. Woman phones wanting us to tell the press about the video. The theory so far, a snuff movie. They haven’t got an up-to-date photo of Debbie so they don’t get any money unless we confirm it is her. The boy went with her, was caught and killed to keep his mouth shut. The girl took a bikini and we reckon was expecting a photo session – she always wanted to be a model. Whoever killed her must have known this. There’s at least two people involved – a man and a woman. The girl calls out a name – Millie, Molly or something similar. The mother is positive the girl took her mobile with her. Bridget Malone reckons she pinched the mobile from the kid’s locker the day after the girl disappeared – kids should lock their lockers, but too often they don’t bother, so she just helped herself.’
‘Guv – ’ Taffy Morgan was waving a hand.
Frost looked up wearily. ‘You should have done one before you came in.’
‘Not a wee, Guv. If you remember, I searched Debbie’s locker the morning after she went missing.’
‘And the phone wasn’t there?’
‘That’s right, Guv… just an envelope with a fiver inside, for a school outing.’
Frost frowned. ‘Hold on, Taff. A fiver? How come Bridget didn’t pinch that? She took the mobile. She would have taken the readies too, surely.’
‘That’s the point I’m trying to make, Guv. Debbie’s locker was locked. I had to get the key from the headmistress to open it.’
Frost leant back in amazement. ‘Locked! You never mentioned this in your report.’
Morgan looked shamefaced. ‘I didn’t think it was important, Guv.’
‘Every bleeding thing is important in a murder case, you prat. But locked? That tart Malone said she only went to the ones she could open and she wouldn’t have bloody well locked it up again.’
‘Exactly, Guv. What I’m saying is, if it was locked and there was no phone when I unlocked it, then Bridget Malone never got the phone from there.’
‘Then she’s lying,’ said Frost. ‘The cow’s lying. Bring her in.’
‘This is harassment,’ she screamed. ‘Sheer harassment.’
‘Shut up, Bridget,’ sighed Frost. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’ He slid Debbie’s mobile in its polythene bag across the table. ‘I want the truth about this phone.’
She glared at him. ‘So I nicked a flaming phone. What am I going to get – life?’
‘You don’t know how right you are,’ said Frost. ‘Only the charge won’t be nicking, it will be conspiracy to murder.’
‘Murder? You must be hard up for suspects. I told you, I pinched it from her locker.’
‘There was a fiver in an envelope. Why didn’t you take that as well?’
‘So I’m guilty of not taking a fiver now? This is all rubbish.’
‘No. Your story is rubbish, Bridget. There is no way you could have got into her locker. Debbie’s locker was locked. The only way you could have got hold of that phone was by taking it from Debbie the night she was murdered.’
‘Then it must have been in someone else’s locker. I don’t bother with locked ones, and I certainly wouldn’t have missed a fiver. Can I go now?’ She stood up.
Frost flapped a hand. ‘Sit down, Bridget.’ He squeezed his chin in thought. Somebody else’s locker. Bloody hell. He should have thought of that. Bridget was a tea-leaf, but in no way a killer. He raised his head and looked thoughtfully at the woman. ‘Prove your story to me, Bridget. Think hard. Which locker did you get the phone from?’
She shook her head. ‘As sure as there’s a God in heaven, I don’t know. I just went round quickly in case anyone caught me. I tried locker doors. If they opened I saw what was worth pinching and I took it. It came from one of the lockers, that’s all I can tell you.’
Frost nodded wearily in despair. ‘All right, Bridget. I believe you. But if you can remember…’
She shrugged. ‘If I remember, I’ll tell you, but I don’t think I will. There were lots of lockers and it was all done in a rush.’
‘I’m clutching at flaming straws!’ moaned Frost. ‘Her and Kelly are not the type to do this sort of thing. I know that, so why did I suddenly decide they were guilty?’ He rammed a cigarette in his mouth. ‘Snuff movies. Bloody snuff movies, and the kick of seeing yourself doing these things to a kid.’
‘It’s lucky that bloke spotted the bodies,’ said Morgan. ‘They were so well concealed, they could have remained there like the other one.’
Frost stopped dead in his tracks, the match for his cigarette still in his hand. ‘I’m a prat, Taffy, a flaming prat. That’s what’s been nagging away at me all the time and I’ve not been listening. Get your car. We’re going round to where the bodies were.’
They were in the field with its burnt stubble where the corn had been harvested. Frost had made Morgan bump his car into the heart of the field. ‘Stop here, Taff. This is about it.’
Morgan stopped the car and switched off the engine. ‘Why here, Guv?’
‘Because my little Welsh wonder, this is where the tractor driver was when he spotted the bodies.’ Taffy followed as Frost headed out into the field.
Frost pointed. ‘They were behind that bush up there.’ The blue marquee had been removed.
‘I know, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘I was here, remember?’
‘Don’t get snarky with me, you Welsh git. Debbie was wedged behind that bush, Taff. Now there’s no way you could have seen her body from here.’
‘The driver wasn’t on the ground, Guv. He was higher up, in the cab of his tractor.’
‘Right. Get on the roof of your car… come on.’
Morgan looked doubtful, then clambered on to the bonnet. His foot slipped and his shoes scraped across the paintwork. ‘I’ve scratched the car, Guv,’ he said plaintively.
‘I thought you might,’ said Frost. ‘That’s why I said we should come in your car.’ He rubbed his thumb along the scratch mark. ‘Nothing much to worry about – a complete respray ought to hide most of it. Now come on, hurry up.’
The DC heaved himself up on to the car roof, then stood gingerly, bracing himself against the wind. ‘Even up here I can’t see anything behind those bushes, Guv.’
Frost rubbed his hands with glee. ‘We’ve got the sod, Taff, we’ve got him. He couldn’t see Debbie’s body, but he knew it was there, because he planted it there.’
‘He could have stood up in his cab, Guv,’ offered Morgan. ‘He might have been able to see it then.’
‘Why the bleeding hell should he stand up in his cab? He was cutting bleeding corn, not looking for bodies hidden behind a bush. Right, let’s get back to Denton nick.’
‘Thomas Henry Allen,’ reported Collier, reading from the computer monitor. ‘Couple of speeding offences, nothing else. We’ve got him down at an address in Bristol.’
‘Bristol?’ queried Frost.
‘Yes, Inspector. He’s living in temporary rented accommodation in Denton, which is why he never showed up before. He’s working part-time for the farmer, who lets him live in a tied farm cottage.’
Frost nodded. ‘Right. What else?’
‘You’re going to love this, Inspector. He used to work for that modelling agency.’
Frost punched the air in delight. ‘We’ve got him. We’ve got the sod.’
‘A possible suspect, but not enough evidence yet, Jack,’ said Hanlon.
‘Proof,’ snorted Frost. ‘All you bleeding well think of is proof. In – ’
‘In the good old days…’ cued Hanlon with a grin.
‘Exactly. We didn’t need proof in the good old days. If we didn’t have proof we faked it.’ He leant back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. ‘Right. I don’t give a monkey’s what it costs, I want 24/7 surveillance on the sod. There’s a woman involved. They must meet up some time. And I want it doing properly. We mustn’t let him know he’s under suspicion, so leave your bloody helmets at home and let the only thing dangling be your dicks, not your handcuffs – don’t have your police radio blazing away.’ He nodded to Hanlon. ‘Sort out a rota, Arthur.’
‘Mullett will have to authorise it,’ said Hanlon.
Frost snorted. ‘Consider it authorised, Arthur. The four-eyed git is going to have to do what he’s told this time.’
‘You haven’t got enough to go on,’ protested Mullett. ‘He might have stood up in the cab.’
‘To scratch his arse? He was driving the flaming thing. It was moving. You don’t stand up in a moving tractor on the off chance that you might see a body.’
‘Couldn’t it wait until Skinner’s replacement arrives?’ Someone else to take responsibility for the outlay, Mullett thought, in case it blows up in our faces like so many of Frost’s enterprises.
‘He’s a temporary worker. He lives in Bristol. He could move back there any time now the harvesting is finished.’
Mullett sighed. ‘All right, I agree, but on a strictly limited basis. Two days, no more.’
‘Of course,’ said Frost, making for the door. He had no intention of packing in the surveillance early.
He was back in his office, waiting for something to happen. A break of some kind… a break of any flaming kind. His phone rang. It was Harding from Forensic. ‘That rape case, Inspector. We’ve got a DNA match on the sperm sample.’
‘Please tell me it’s Superintendent Mullett,’ said Frost, reaching for a pen. The break he wanted at last.
‘An eighteen-year-old boy. He was arrested nicking a battery-charger from Homebase. His DNA matches.’
‘Let’s have the details,’ said Frost, his enthusiasm taking a nosedive. Somehow he didn’t think an eighteen-year-old was the serial rapist they were after.
‘Peter Frinton, 22 Victoria Terrace, Denton. He’s currently out on police bail.’
‘Thanks,’ grunted Frost, hanging up. He stared at the name he had scribbled on one of Mullett’s memos, then shook his head. It didn’t ring a bell.
Peter Frinton, a sullen-looking, greasy-haired youth, glowered at Frost, who was sitting opposite him in the Interview Room.
‘Why have you dragged me in again? I’ve been bailed out. I told that other cop, I walked out of the store without thinking. I intended to pay, but forgot.’
‘You forgot to bring any money with you, either,’ Frost reminded him, flipping through the arrest report. ‘You didn’t have a brass farthing on you when you were arrested… and I see from your form sheet this isn’t the first time.’
The youth glowered at Frost and said nothing.
‘Actually, son,’ continued Frost, ‘this is about something a tad more serious than nicking a battery-charger. We’re talking rape.’
Frinton leant back in his chair and stared at Frost, wide-eyed. ‘Rape? I should be so lucky. You’re bloody joking. Who am I supposed to have raped?’
‘A fifteen-year-old girl – Sally Marsden.’
Frinton gave a derisive laugh. ‘Sally Marsden? You don’t have to rape Sally Marsden, you have to bloody well fight her off.’
Frost frowned. ‘You know her?’
‘Of course I know her… she’s one of my girlfriends.’
‘Where were you last Thursday night, around ten, eleven o’clock?’
‘A Thursday? I would be indoors. I always stay indoors Thursdays.’
‘Can anyone verify that?’
‘Yes, flaming Sally Marsden – ask her. She was with me. Came about seven, left at a quarter to ten.’
‘She told us she was with her girlfriend.’
‘She always pretends that’s where she’s going, and the girlfriend always backs her up if mumsy asks. Her mother thinks she’s too young to go with boys… she’d go berserk if she found out her darling daughter hasn’t been a virgin for at least a year.’
‘She was with you that night – and you had sex?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Unprotected sex?’
‘She’s on the pill.’
Frost chewed away at a hangnail. That bleeding girl. Steering them in the wrong bloody direction. He stood up. ‘We’re going to put you in a cell for a little while, son, and if your story checks out, you can go.’
He knew it was going to check out. The little butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth mummy’s girl had lied her head off and steered them away from Fielding, because the DNA in the sperm sample didn’t match his. ‘The bleeding trail’s gone cold now,’ moaned Frost. ‘If we could have caught him with his dick still steaming, we might have got something – more DNA perhaps from his clothes, but he’s been on remand, mixing with all types of villains, his brief would tear our evidence to shreds.’
The girl was tearful. ‘I’m sorry’ she kept saying. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She wiped her eyes and looked pleadingly at Frost. ‘Please don’t let me mum know. She’ll murder me.’
‘If it goes to court, of course she’ll flaming well know,’ said Frost. ‘If I was you, I’d tell her.’ He shook his head as Kate Holby took the girl back home.
He spotted Bill Wells in the far corner of the canteen and carried his tray over. ‘Hope you’re getting your five a day, Bill.’
Wells grinned. ‘So Fielding could be back in the frame for the first car-park rape?’
‘Yes. DNA evidence no longer clears him. He was in the vicinity. He had the opportunity, but that’s all we’ve got on him.’ He bit into a Jaffa Cake. ‘But it’s him, Bill. He’s the bloody rapist and I know it, I just know it. And I’m bloody sure he topped the girl from Manchester too.’
‘We ought to get him for the old crime, Jack,’ said Wells. ‘But there’s no way the court would convict him when the only evidence we’ve got is that he was in Manchester when that girl went missing and his car was seen near where Sally Marsden was raped. The fact that she lied won’t help us. You’re going to need a hell of a lot more than that.’
‘The bastard’s out on bail,’ said Frost. ‘I want 24/7 surveillance.’
‘Flipping heck, Jack. Mullett will never agree to that – you’re already watching the driver.’
‘Right, then I won’t ask Mullett. I’ll do it on my own authority… By the time the overtime returns come in I’ll be in Lexton anyway and he won’t be able to touch me.’
‘But Jack…’
‘Just do it, Bill. Just flaming well do it.’