The lift purred up to the fourth floor and deposited them on to a red-and-black-patterned carpet which deadened their footsteps as they walked to a mat black door bearing the number 43. Frost pressed the bell push with one hand and hammered at the door with the other. He waited, then hammered again.
“Listen!” he exclaimed, like a bad actor. “Is that a cry for help?” Before Webster could reply that he couldn’t hear a damn thing, Frost unlocked the door with the pass key and stepped inside.
“Mr. Miller?” Silence. Frost slid his hand down the door frame to locate the switch, and clicked on the light. The flat looked and felt empty. They were in a large lounge, its walls decorated with coloured prints of vintage racing cars; the centrepiece was a framed original poster advertising the 1936 Grand Prix at the old Brooklands racing circuit.
On the doormat were a couple of letters. Frost bent and picked them up. One was a circular, the other a letter from Bennington’s Bank, Denton. “Either he doesn’t bother to pick up his post, or he hasn’t been in tonight,” he said, dropping them back where he found them.
“Anyway, he’s not here,” said Webster. “Let’s go.”
“Patience, son, patience,” said Frost and padded across to a half-open door which led to the bedroom. The bed was made up and didn’t appear to have been slept in. Above the bed was a brushed-aluminium framed print of two naked lovers, facing each other, kneeling, mouths open, kissing, their bodies just achingly touching. Frost gave it his full attention, then starting poking into drawers, riffling through their contents.
Webster was getting fidgety and anxious. They had no right to be there, let alone search through private belongings. If Miller came back and caught them, reported them to Mullett… “We ought to leave,” he said edgily. “We shouldn’t be here.”
‘ We shouldn’t, son,” agreed the inspector, ‘but Master Roger should. According to his car-theft report, he was just off to bed when he remembered he’d left his briefcase in his motor. He went out to fetch it, and presto, the Jag had vanished. So why isn’t he in bed, crying his eyes out?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Webster, inching toward the door. “Let’s talk about it back at the station Now what are you doing?”
“Just being nosey, son.” He had opened the sliding doors of a huge built-in wardrobe to expose row upon row of expensive suits packed tight on the rails next to hangers sporting tailored silk shirts, all monogrammed RM. “Don’t you hate the bastard for having all these clothes?” he said. On the wardrobe floor, side by side in serried ranks of shoetrees, were dozens of pairs of hand-sewn leather shoes, intricately patterned in brown and cream. Frost measured one against his own foot. “Do you reckon he’d miss a pair, son?”
Webster folded his arms and waited for the inspector to stop playing his silly games, his eyes constantly moving to the door, waiting for Roger Miller to burst in and demand to know what they were up to.
“All right,” said Frost at last, “I’ve seen all I want to.” He looked at his watch. “Sod the returns, son. Let’s go home.”
I should bloody-well think so, thought Webster.
They gave the worried caretaker his keys back. He had been sitting by his phone, his ears straining for the fusillade of gunshots which, together with the two dead policeman, would give the flats some bad publicity. “Seems clear up there,” announced Frost. He then asked where the tenants kept their cars.
“In our basement car park,” replied the caretaker. “Why?”
“We’d better give it the once-over,” said Frost. “He might be after nicking an expensive motor.”
The caretaker took them down to the basement in the service lift. Some forty cars were parked in areas marked off with the tenants’ flat numbers.
“What do you expect to find?” Webster muttered sarcastically. “The Jag dripping with blood? You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to leave it here?”
“You never know your luck,” said Frost, turning to call to the caretaker. “Where is Mr. Miller’s parking space?”
“Over there in the corner that’s his car.”
Frost looked at Webster in triumph. They squeezed through gaps between cars to reach the section marked Flat 43. But the car parked there wasn’t blue and it wasn’t a Jaguar. It was a black Porsche.
“Of course that’s Mr. Miller’s car,” insisted the caretaker. “He goes to his office every day in that.”
“What about his Jag?” queried Frost.
“There’s only room for one car per tenant. He parks his Jaguar round the corner, down a side-turning.”
Webster didn’t bother to hide his smirk at Frost’s deflation. That was exactly where Miller said the Jag was stolen from. It looked as if his story about the theft might prove to be correct.
With slumped shoulders Frost shuffled back to the lift that would take them up to ground level. Then he remembered one last important question. “Did Mr. Miller drive the Porsche to the office today?”
“Yes,” replied the caretaker, “I saw him.”
Webster couldn’t understand why that answer made Frost look a lot more cheerful.
Back across the road to the Cortina. The car radio was buzzing away.
“Control to Mr. Frost. Come in, please,” pleaded Bill Wells for the twentieth time.
“Frost!”
“Thank God I’ve caught you, Jack. I’ve just spoken to Mr. Mullett about this hit-and-run business. He’s going spare. He says on no account repeat no account are you to attempt to contact Roger Miller. He wants this handled with kid gloves and everything done strictly according to the book. So please, Jack, stay away.”
“But of course,” said Frost, sounding hurt. “I wouldn’t dream of seeing Miller without Mr. Mullett’s express permission.”
He passed the handset back to Webster.
“I’ve had enough, son. Let’s go home.”
Wednesday day shift (I)
The briefing room at Demon Police Station was looking very much less than its best. Like most of the assembled police officers, it was suffering from the effects of the previous night’s party. Empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays were everywhere on chairs, on window ledges, and dotted around the floor. In one corner a waste-paper bin had been knocked over, spilling its contents screwed-up crisp packets, half-eaten sandwiches, and assorted rubbish into a sticky, spreading puddle of lager.
There were a dozen or so police officers present, both uniform and plain clothed some looking decidedly fragile. Most were sipping coffee from plastic cups, and the subdued burble of conversation was mainly about hangovers, upset stomachs, and the party.
Detective Inspector Allen stood outside in the corridor watching the second hand of his watch inching its way toward zero hour. Punctuality was his keyword, and he would not enter the briefing room until 9 o’clock on the dot. Thirty seconds to go. He was annoyed to note that Frost hadn’t shown up yet, although that bearded ex-inspector was there, sitting by himself in the corner and trying to look superior to everyone else.
Allen reached for the door handle. The minute hand of the wall clock quivered, then clunked up the hour. He flung open the door and swept in.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.”
He climbed up on to the raised dais where Detective Sergeant Ingram was in attendance with all the various files and roneoed orders laid out on the table. Behind the table was the wall map, and pinned on the blackboard next to it were photographs of the five previous rape victims, exactly as the inspector had requested.
The room went quiet. Allen paused, surveying the green-tinged faces, then his nose wrinkled. The room reeked of flat beer and stale cigar smoke. The inspector didn’t smoke and wouldn’t tolerate any of his subordinates indulging the habit in his presence. “This room stinks,” he snapped. “Someone open a window.”
Collier scrambled up from his chair and eased open one of the windows a fraction.
“I said open it!” bellowed Allen. “Fresh air won’t kill you.”
Collier flung the window open to its fullest extent, and the cold air came roaring in. The assembly shivered, which made Allen smirk with satisfaction. He had noticed a few barely stifled yawns as he entered. That should keep the bastards alert, he thought. A final scan of the room for the dirty mac and the maroon scarf. “Mr. Frost not graced us with his presence? Then we’ll start without him.”
He rocked gently on the balls of his feet, his eyes travelling from face to face, making certain he had everyone’s full attention. “Those of you who were at Mr. Harrison’s farewell party will know that our old friend, the so-called “Hooded Terror”, struck again last night. As we hadn’t heard from him for six months, I’m sure we were all hoping that he’d retired or had some dreadful accident with a carving knife that would put an end to his raping career, but it seems he was just biding his time. Last night he attacked his sixth victim, a woman by the name of Paula Grey who works at The Coconut Grove where she does a striptease act under the billing of Paula the Naughty Schoolgirl.”
Someone sniggered. Allen’s cold eyes searched the room for the offender. “Have I said something funny?” He waited in case someone dared to answer, then went on. “I said her name is Paula Grey, but she is also known as Nellie Drake, Sadie Kendal, and Molly Partick, and under each of these has had the odd conviction for soliciting for offering gentlemen the use of her body in exchange for a small fee. That, however, is by the way. She was not soliciting last night. She was proceeding in a lawful manner from her home to her place of employment.
‘like Mr. Frost, it would seem that punctuality is not her strongest point. On several previous occasions she had been late for her spot, and her boss, nature’s own gentleman, Harry Baskin, had warned her that if she was late one more time she would be for the chop. Last night she overslept, waking up at 10.35. She was due to go on at The Coconut Grove at 11.15. In order to save time, she slapped on her stage make-up, put on her stage clothes, which were those of a schoolgirl, and took the shortcut through Denton Woods. As I have so often pointed out to you, ladies and gentlemen, the shortest way is not always the quickest.”
He took a pointer from the table and turned to the wall map. “She departed from her flat in Forest View at approximately 10.50. She went down this road, turned into the woods, then took this path.” The pointer scraped the map as it traced her route.
“She left the main path here and cut down this little side route, which should have brought her back to the main road. But she never made it.”
From the back of the room the rasp of a match being struck. Allen froze. Without turning around, he said, “I hope no-one intends smoking during my briefing.” The sound of a match hastily blown out. He relaxed and continued. “She had reached this point here, where the path curves, and that was where the bastard was waiting for her. Exactly the same tactics as he employed with all the rest. The cloth chucked over her head, the hands around her throat to semi-strangle her into unconsciousness. Her attacker then dragged her from the path, behind some bushes, about here’ the pointer jabbed the map ‘where he stripped her down to her stockings. But at this point, to everyone’s surprise, including his victim’s, he deviated from his usual pattern. He didn’t rape her. Instead, he viciously kicked and punched her, breaking her nose, her jaw, and some ribs.
“At five minutes to one this morning, Sergeant Wells received a telephone message from an anonymous male caller reporting the body of a girl in the woods. We don’t know who this man was, but we want to trace him. This call was followed up by Constables Simms and Jordan in Charlie Alpha. They were later joined by Mr. Frost and Inspector
… I do beg his pardon… Constable Webster, our refugee from Braybridge District.” He smirked as Webster smouldered, and waited for the laughter to subside so he could continue.
As he turned back to the map he heard the door to the briefing room open and close. Obviously Frost trying to sneak in unseen. “So kind of you to grace us with your presence,” he began sarcastically, but he was horrified to hear the scraping of chairs as everyone rose and sprang to attention. “So sorry, Superintendent,” he said hastily. “I thought it was Mr. Frost.”
Mullett, in a mint-condition uniform straight from the tailor’s, graciously nodded his acceptance of the apology, then smiled and waved a hand for everyone to sit. He then sat in one of the chairs in the back row, folded his arms, and assumed an expression of intense concentration. “Please carry on, Inspector.”
“I spoke to the victim in the hospital,” Allen well ton “As in the case of all the previous victims, she could tell me absolutely nothing about her attacker. I’m hoping to question her further today when the surgeons have patched her up, but the current position is that six women have been attacked and we do not have even the vaguest description of the rapist. All we know from semen samples is that his blood group is type O, a group shared by more than forty-four percent of the male population.”
The briefing room door was flung back on its hinges and a late comer lurched in, managing to kick over an empty lager tin which rolled down the aisle and bounced up on to the dais, only halting when it touched Allen’s shoe. Delicately, the inspector pushed it to one side with his toe. He didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. There was no doubt this time who the newcomer was. “Good morning, Mr. Frost. I’m afraid we had to start without you.”
“That’s all right,” said Frost grandly. “I completely forgot about this bloody meeting. It won’t take long, will it? I’ve got a post-mortem at ten.” He shivered. “It’s a bit nippy in here.” He slammed shut the open window, flopped into a chair in the back row, and lit up a cigarette.
Allen’s eyes glinted. A chance to cut Frost down to size in front of the Superintendent. “I don’t like people smoking during my briefing sessions, Mr. Frost.”
“That’s all right,” beamed Frost, the cigarette waggling in his mouth. “I don’t like people jabbering away while I’m smoking, but I put up with it.” The burst of laughter that followed was withered to silence by the ice of Allen’s expression. Grinning broadly, Frost puffed away at his cigarette, making as much smoke as possible. He turned to share the joke with the person sitting next to him, and to his horror it was Mullett, all immaculate uniform, gleaming buttons, and wintry disapproval. “A word with you afterward, Inspector,” he hissed.
“Yes, Super, of course,” muttered Frost, wriggling uneasily in his chair and wishing he’d chosen somewhere else to sit.
Allen’s smirk tightened. Now to rub salt into Frost’s raw wound. “By the time I arrived on the scene the ambulance was taking the victim to hospital. Mr. Frost, who’d seen her, told me she was fifteen years old. During her short ambulance ride she must have aged twenty-three years, because when I saw her in hospital she was thirty-eight. I’m not sure how anyone could have made such a mistake, but perhaps the inspector would care to explain.” He moved back, extending an open hand, inviting Frost to take the stage.
Frost’s fixed smile clearly said, “You bastard!” but he kept his face impassive as he ambled up and leaned against the table, his eyes half closed against the smoke of his cigarette.
“As Mr. Allen has told you, I made a real right burke of myself last night not for the first time, and certainly not the last. We’d just come from a house where a fifteen-year-old kid called Karen Dawson was missing. She hadn’t been seen since she left school yesterday lunch time. The woman in the woods was stark naked. Her face was smashed in and smothered with blood from where the bastard had booted her. Scattered around her were articles of school uniform, so I jumped to the wrong conclusion. I shouldn’t have made such a stupid bloody mistake, but I did.”
He paused, took the butt end from his mouth and used it to light another cigarette. “The scene when we got there? As I’ve said, the poor cow was naked, except for stockings. She was lying on her back, her clothes scattered on the grass around her where they’d been torn off. There was also a carrier bag which contained her non-working clothes and a purse. That’s really all I can tell you.”
“Thank you, Inspector,” said Allen, moving back to the stage. Frost spotted an empty chair in the front row and sat down. It was the farthest from Mullett he could get.
“Any questions?” asked Allen.
A plainclothes man in the centre row raised his hand. “Any idea why this one wasn’t raped, sir?”
Allen nodded. “I formed a theory about that.” He pointed to the five photographs pinned on the blackboard.
“These are the first five rape victims. Number one, Peggy Leyton, nineteen, a student nurse, raped on April 4th while taking a shortcut across the golf links. Number two, Sarah Finch, eighteen, an office worker, raped on April 5th, also on the golf links. Next we have victims three and four, Genette Scott, unemployed, aged twenty, but looks a lot younger, and Kate Brown, a student, also twenty. Both were attacked and raped in Meads Park, April 20th and 21st. Last, we have Linda Alwood, a shop assistant, aged nineteen, raped May 2nd on a piece of waste ground near the Denton Factory Estate. All these attacks took place some eight miles from Denton Woods, but they each have one thing in common. The victims were all very young and in some cases looked a lot younger than their age. My theory, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Demon “Hooded Terror” likes fresh, young meat. He can only make it with young birds. When he saw Paula Grey prancing through the trees in her schoolgirl clothes, he must have thought he’d hit the jackpot with a nice, tender young virgin, but when he found he’d got an old boiling fowl he did his nut. Old women are a turnoff to him.”
Webster, in his corner seat, nodded. Allen’s theory made a lot of sense. You might hate him as a man, but he was a damn good police officer. He sneaked a look at Frost, lolling in his front row chair, looking as if he’d spent the night in the gutter. There was no comparison between the two men. One was a policeman, the other was rubbish.
Allen bent down and picked up a bundle of clothes which he dumped on the table. “These are the clothes the girl was wearing prior to the attack.” He bent again and added a white plastic carrier bag to the pile. “This is the bag she was carrying. We’ve had photographs taken of a model of similar appearance to Paula Grey, dressed in this clothing and carrying this bag. You’ll each be given a copy. I want every house in the vicinity of Forest View and on the way to the woods to be called on. I want every single resident to be shown the photograph. Did they see a girl wearing these clothes last night? I’m sure a well-developed, thirty-eight-year-old woman wearing school clothes must have caught someone’s eye. Did they see her? Did they see anyone following her or taking an interest in her? Did they see any strangers loitering? Has anyone going through the woods during the past week or so seen a man lurking, acting strangely? Has any woman been assaulted and not told us? A thorough investigation, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the questions you should ask. All witnesses, even those wha only think they might have seen something, are to be brought to the station so I can question them personally. Understood?”
A few grunts of confirmation.
“I’m splitting you up into teams. Sergeant Ingram will give you details as you leave. Team A will be knocking at doors, asking questions, Team B will be doing an inch-by-inch search of the area of last night’s attack, and Team C will be locating, and bringing in for questioning, all known sexual offenders in the area even those who were completely eliminated from our previous inquiries. Any questions?”
He looked around expectantly, but no-one had anything to ask. “Right.
Off you go.”
They were shuffling through the door, passing Ingram, who handed them their duty allocation briefing sheets, when Allen suddenly barked, “Hold it, everyone.” They all stopped and turned, except for Frost, who ha red it off to his own office. Allen had completely forgotten Mr. Mullett, seated in solitary state in the back row. “Did you want to address the teams, sir?”
Mullett stood and showed his whiter-than-white teeth. “Only to say “Good luck everyone”,” he boomed, just like a vicar starting off the whist drive.
They all clattered out, clutching their roneoed briefing notes and duty schedules. Methodically, Allen replaced his notes back into the folder and waited as Ingram unpinned the photographs from the wall board. Mullett glided over. “An excellent briefing, Inspector. A model for us all.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Allen, suspicious of the Superintendent’s motives. He took the photographs from
Ingram and dismissed the sergeant with a curt nod, then made great play of consulting his watch. “Did you want to see me, sir? I’ve got rather a tight schedule. The press will be screaming blue murder when they hear about last night’s little shindig in the woods “Hooded Terror Strikes Again… Police have no clues”.”
Mullett nodded sympathetically as if distancing himself from any criticism that might be levelled against the police. “Don’t talk to me about the press, Inspector. My phone’s been ringing nonstop about this wretched hit-and-run business… the press, the Chief Constable
… even Sir Charles Miller himself.” He looked at Allen, hoping that the recital of this all-star cast would impress him.
Allen again looked pointedly at his watch. “What was it you wanted to see me about, sir?”
The Superintendent adjusted his gaze to a spot a few inches above the inspector’s head. “What cases are you working on at the moment?”
Allen’s eyes narrowed. “I hope you don’t intend dumping anything else on my plate, sir. I’ll be working all the hours God sends on this rape investigation and there’s going to be no time for anything else.”
“I fully appreciate that,” said Mullett, twisting his neck to look at the large-scale wall map, avoiding having to look the detective inspector in the eye. “I want you to hand the rape case over to Frost.”
Allen stared at Mullett as if he were mad. “Over my dead body!”
“Only for a few days, Inspector.”
“Not even for a few minutes and that’s just how long it would take Frost to sod everything up.” In his agitation he began to stride up and down, pounding his palm with his fist. “Why, sir? Please tell me why!”
Mullett raised a placating hand. “I’ve got another case for you one that requires all your skill, tact, and expertise.”
“Oh yes?” said Allen warily, knowing that it would be a real stinker.
“Do you know anything about this hit-and-run?”
“Only that Roger Miller was involved.”
“That isn’t certain. He claims he wasn’t driving, that his car had been stolen.”
Allen straightened the papers inside the folder and tucked it under his arm. “Balls!” he said bluntly.
Mullett, who could never stomach crudity, winced. “His father, Sir Charles Miller, is convinced of his son’s innocence.”
“I. hardly think Sir Charles is that stupid, sir.”
Pulling a chair forward, Mullett sat down after hitching his trousers legs to preserve the lethal edge of their creases. “This is all top-level stuff, Allen. Sir Charles phoned the Chief Constable this morning, and, as a result of that call, the Chief Constable phoned me at my home. If this case goes to court, Sir Charles intends to engage a top-flight QC
“Rich man’s privilege,” sniffed Allen.
“Precisely, Inspector. But a good QC would tear a badly prepared case to ribbons, and that would reflect badly on this division. I do not intend for that to happen.”. “If we get a good prosecuting counsel, then it won’t happen,” said Allen.
“All right,” said Mullett, “I’ll put my cards on the table. There’s a slim chance that Roger Miller is telling the truth and that his car was stolen. If we can prove that he’s innocent, it would buy us a lot of goodwill with Sir Charles. He’s always been anti police what a feather in our caps if we could turn this man our way.”
“But supposing our investigation proved his son to be guilty?” asked Allen.
“Then at least we’d go to court with a watertight case. In either event the investigating officer would come out of the affair with credit.”
“Would he?” asked Allen shrewdly. “With respect, sir, you’re being naive. This case is a political hot potato. Sir Charles Miller isn’t short of enemies, also in very high places. Feelings are bound to be running high… a poor old boy knocked down and killed by a rich man’s son. If we clear Roger, there’ll be screams of “Police cover up,” and if we prove him guilty, well, it’s no secret that Sir Charles can be a vindictive swine when he likes. He’d use every dirty trick to get back at the man who nailed his beloved boy. Each way we lose, so I’m having no part of it.”
Mullett sucked in his cheeks. It was time to exert his authority. “What you want, or don’t want, doesn’t come into it, I’m afraid. By arrangement with the Chief Constable, Sir Charles Miller is calling here this morning. He has been promised that a senior officer will carry out this investigation, and that means you. I can’t give it to a rank lower than inspector.”
Sir Charles calling here this morning! thought Allen. So that’s why the virgin uniform has come out of mothballs. “You don’t have to give it to a rank lower than inspector. Give it to Frost.”
A scornful laugh. “Frost? On a case as delicate as this?”
Allen moved nearer to the Superintendent and lowered his voice. “Consider this, sir. If there’s got to be a loser, Frost is the ideal man.” He paused, then added significantly, “He’s the one we can spare the most.”
Mullett chewed this over and liked the taste. A chance of getting rid of the troublesome Frost. It was tempting. Very tempting. But how could he possibly introduce that scarecrow to Sir Charles and claim he was the best they had. “No way Inspector. No way at all. I’m sorry. I’m ordering you to do it.”
Allen quietly produced the trump card he had been holding back for such an emergency. “You know, sir, if the story were leaked to the press that a senior officer was taken off a serious rape case in order to try and clear an MP’s spoiled brat of a son, it could be very nasty. Very nasty indeed.”
Mullett looked at Allen. Allen looked at Mullett. Mullett’s look said, “You wouldn’t dare’, Allen’s said, “Just try me.”
The Superintendent was the first to lower his gaze. He stood up and started to stride around the room, scratching his chin thoughtfully with his forefinger. He stopped as if struck by a brilliant thought and turned slowly to the inspector. “Come to think of it, Allen, Frost would be the ideal choice. He’s got bags of local knowledge, he’s got, er…” He paused because he had run out of things to say in Frost’s favour.
“He’s got the George Cross,” said Allen.
The George Cross! Incredible but true. The previous year Frost had blundered into a hostage situation at Bennington’s Bank, where an armed robber, high on drugs, was holding a gun on a woman and her baby. Believing the man was bluffing, Frost had tried to take the gun away, getting himself shot in the face for his pains but managing to overpower the robber in the process. For this he was awarded the George Cross, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Frost rarely spoke about it, and the medal was jumbled up with other debris in one of the drawers of his untidy desk. But it would very much impress Sir Charles, thought Mullett…! “Yes, Sir Charles, one of my best men he’s got the George Cross, you know.” He smiled at Allen. “Yes, Frost is definitely the best man for this job.”
Allen took his leave hurriedly before Mullett changed his mind. Mullett dashed back to his office and told Miss Smith to get out the best coffee cups. Only the best was good enough for Sir Charles Miller.
Frost was at his desk, rummaging through mounds of paper like a housewife searching for bargains at a jumble sale. He didn’t find any bargains, only the overtime returns and the crime statistics which should have gone off the previous night. He piled them on top of the other papers in his in tray. Somehow or other he would have to find time to do them. He picked up the latest burglary report, and skimmed through it, ready to lay it to rest with all the others in the filing cabinet.
Householder’s name: Lil Carey (Mrs)
Address: 26 Sunford Road, Demon
Scene of crime (if different from address above): As above. list of goods (not money) taken (with approx. value): Nil
Value of cash taken: 79
At first glance it appeared little different from all the others.
A
quick in-and-out job with seventy-nine pounds in cash being taken. The thieves always took cash it was instantly negotiable, it couldn’t be traced and it made the task of the police almost impossible. Frost sniffed. He knew Lil Carey. She was an unregistered money lender, lending out small sums of money, usually to housewives, at exorbitant interest rates. She’d never miss seventy-nine pounds. He wished the thieves had got away with more. But then he realized the had been scratched through by the reporting officer and the word ‘sovereigns’ added. Seventy-nine sovereigns! Frost wasn’t sure of the current rate for sovereigns, but that quantity must surely be worth much more than four thousand pounds for the gold content alone; even more if they were Victorian and in mint condition. He stuffed the report in his pocket. They would call on old mother Carey this morning without fail.
The door was kicked open and Webster entered with the two cups of tea, his expression making it quite clear how much he relished being asked to perform these menial tasks.
“Thanks, son,” muttered Frost, who had learned that it was best to ignore the constable’s repertoire of frowns, scowls, and grimaces. He disturbed the mud of sugar with his ballpoint pen and took a sip. “Tastes like cat’s pee.” He swivelled in his chair. “Something important we had to do this morning. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was.”
“The dead man in the toilets. You had to break the news.”
“That was it!” exclaimed Frost.
“Mr. Dawson phoned,” Webster told him.
“Dawson?” Frost screwed up his face. “Who’s he?”
“The father of the missing schoolgirl. He wanted to know if there was any news. I told him we’d circulated her description.”
Frost nodded. “Ah yes. Young, clean-cut, clean-shaven Karen. If she doesn’t turn up soon, I’ll have to try and sneak a chat with the mother without the father being present. There are one or two things about Karen that don’t quite add up.” His attention was caught by a note in his own writing which he had circled in red as important.
He studied it with a puzzled frown. “PM 10.00? We’re not expecting Mrs. Thatcher are we?”
“The post-mortem,” explained Webster wearily.
Frost tipped the remainder of his tea into the waste bin and reached for his mac. “Life is one round of constant pleasure. Come on, son, we mustn’t be late.”
There was a brisk knock at the door. “Not today, thank you,” called Frost.
The door opened and Mullett walked in. His expression didn’t indicate that his life was one round of constant pleasure. Frost quickly pulled the crime statistics from his in-tray and put them in the centre of his desk as if he were working on them. “Sorry, Super. Didn’t know it was you.”
Mullett gazed stiffly around the room. What a shambles the place was. Piles of paper everywhere, even on the window ledge, where the piles were held down by unwashed teacups. There were even salted peanuts and bits of potato crisp dotted around the floor. “This office is a mess, Inspector. An utter and disgusting mess!”
“We were just about to tidy it up as you knocked, sir,” lied Frost cheerfully. “Shift the muck off that chair, son, so the Super can sit down.”
Webster removed the dog-eared stack of files, looked for somewhere to put them, then decided his own desk top was the only free space. He offered the chair to the Superintendent who declined it with a disdainful sniff. He wasn’t going to risk his brand-new uniform on that. His eye caught sight of the overtime returns in Frost’s in-tray. “Some talk of the men not getting their overtime payments for last month, Frost.”
“Yes,” agreed Frost. “It’s that bloody computer. It’s always going wrong.” He stared Mullett out, then remembered the busy morning he had planned. “Have you just come in to give me a bollocking, sir, or is it something important? I’ve got a hell of a lot to do. They’re filleting Ben Cornish down at the morgue in half an hour.”
“I’ve something more important for you than that,” snapped Mullett. “Roger Miller… the hit-and-run. I’m putting you in charge of the investigation.”
“Right, Super,” said Frost. “I’ll have the little bastard put away for you, don’t you worry.”
Mullett gritted his teeth and wished he hadn’t let Allen talk him into this. “You don’t understand, Frost,” he said, and told him just what was expected of him.
Sergeant Johnson, the duty station sergeant for the day shift, had been down to the cells to check on the occupants. He was irritated to find that Frost had let Wally Peters stay the night, with the inevitable result. The cell was being hosed down now.
“Mr. Frost!” he yelled sternly as Webster and the inspector cut across the lobby on their way to the car park.
“Yes, Johnny?” called Frost from the door.
“We’ve got a friend of yours downstairs. He’s piddling all over the floor and stinking the place out.”
Frost’s face creased in mock perplexity. “What is Mr. Mullett doing down there?” he asked.
Wednesday day shift (2)
He hovered in the hall, by the letter box, waiting, and as soon as the boy pushed the newspaper through he grabbed it, opening it up to the headlines. The big story was COACH CRASH HORROR FIVE KILLED! Nothing about the attack. He turned from page to page, his eyes racing over the various headlines. Nothing. Back to the front page. And there he found it. Four blurred lines of stop-press squeezed as an afterthought down in the bottom right-hand corner. Woman attacked in Denton Woods. A woman was assaulted and raped late last night in Denton Woods. Police are looking for a man believed to have carried out similar assaults in the area over the past few months.
Four lines! He felt like crying. It was so unfair. Part of his pleasure was reading about it afterward. Sometimes the papers included an interview with the girl in which she described her terror at what had happened. He loved reading about it. It made him feel excited all over again.
Four lines. Four miserable little lines. And the paper was lying this time. It said he had raped her. He hadn’t. He couldn’t. He had picked her because he thought she was a young, untouched schoolgirl. But she was a tart. A dirty bitch with painted breasts who sold herself to men and was probably crawling with disease. She’d even tried to pick him up two nights before. The cow, the slag. Wearing those clothes to lure him on.
He screwed up the paper and hurled it to the floor, then went into the bedroom and took the well-thumbed book from its hiding place. Time was running out. He would try again tonight. For a young one. He opened the book and started to read.
They had arranged the unpleasant jobs in this order: first, the call on Mrs. Cornish to break the news about her son, Ben; second, the post-mortem. But for Frost, arrangements were made be broken. There was another call he now wanted to make first. “A quick diversion, son,” he said, pulling the burglary report from his pocket and filling Webster in on Lil Carey and her sovereigns. “Could be the break we’re looking for with these petty robberies. Shouldn’t take us more than a couple of minutes.”
Webster looked at his wristwatch. There was no way they were going to make the post-mortem in time. They were late already, and here was Frost making yet another detour.
“Pull up there, son. By the lamppost.”
Sunford Street was a row of dreary-looking terraced houses. Out of the car, across the pavement, and they were in the porch of number 26, a house even drearier-looking than its neighbours. Frost hammered away at the knocker. They heard low, shuffling footsteps from within, then a harsh female voice demanding to know who they were.
“Jack the Ripper and Dr. Crippen,” called Frost through the letter box. “Come on, open up. You know bloody well who we are. You’ve been giving us the eyeball through the curtains ever since we pulled up.”
The clanking of chains being unhooked, keys turned and bolts drawn, then the door creaked open. Facing them was a small, wiry old dear wearing a moth-eaten fur coat over a too-long nightdress, the bottom of which was black with dirt where it constantly dragged over the floor. Her ensemble was topped by an ill-fitting, ill-suited brown nylon wig in a Shirley Temple bubble style; it wobbled and threatened to fall off each time she moved her head. Her face was knee-deep in make-up, the cheeks rouged like a clown’s. She was at least seventy years old and possibly much nearer eighty.
“Tell your mummy the cops are here,” said Frost.
“Never mind the jokes,” she retorted. “Where was you while I was being robbed?”
“Paddling in pee down a toilet,” answered Frost. “Can we come in, Lil?”
She took them into the front downstairs room, a cold, damp little box packed tight with heavily carved, gloomy furniture treacled with dark-oak varnish. In the centre of the room a knock-kneed table sagged under the weight of bundles of ancient newspapers tied with string. A piano, complete with candle holders, cringed sulkily in a corner; it, too, carried more than its fair share of bundled newspapers. The one window was hidden by thick, dusty, velvet curtains, tightly drawn so that passers-by couldn’t get a glimpse of the treasures within.
Frost thumbed through one of the yellowing newspapers. “Looks as if Mr. Atlee’s going to win the election,” he said. He pushed it away. “Right, Lil, so what happened?”
“You know what happened, Inspector,” she said, the wig wobbling furiously. “I put it all down in that form. It’s all rotten forms these days. Soon you’ll have to fill up a form to go to the lavatory.”
“I fill up a bucket myself,” murmured Frost. “My hairy colleague can’t read, Lil, so tell him what happened.”
She gave Webster a searching look and decided he just might be worthy of her confidence. “You listen, young man, because I’m only saying this once.”
The day before, she had travelled to Felby, a town some fifteen miles away, to visit her sick sister. She left the house at three, catching the 3.32 train from Denton Station. A few minutes before leaving she had checked that the sovereigns were safe. She was indoors again by ten o’clock that night but, tired out after the journey, went straight to bed.
“If I’d known my life’s savings had been stolen, I wouldn’t have slept a wink,” she said. “First thing after breakfast I went to the hiding place and I nearly had a seizure on the spot. The tin was empty all the money I had scraped and saved for, my little nest egg, my burial money all gone. They should bring back hanging.”
Poor old girl, thought Webster. “Where did you keep the tin?”
“In the piano.” She waddled to the corner, removed two piles of newspapers and opened the piano top, then, standing on tiptoe, plunged her hand into the depths. With a twanging of strings, she pulled out a biscuit tin decorated with pictures of King George V and Queen Mary. This she opened, holding it out by the lid to demonstrate its complete emptiness.
“It’s empty, all right,” agreed Frost. “I’ve never seen a tin more empty. Who else knew where you kept it hidden?”
“No-one!” she said.
“The thief knew,” said Frost.
“Was anything else taken?” asked Webster.
She wobbled the wig from side to side. “No, thank God. I’ve checked everywhere. Just my seventy-nine golden sovereigns.”
“What sort of sovereigns, Lil?” asked Frost.
“They were all Queen Victoria,” she answered. “My old mother, God rest her soul, left them to me on her deathbed.”
“Would you know them if you saw them again?”
“I know every mark, every scratch on them. I’d know them as if they were my own children and I miss them as much as if they were.” She dabbed her eyes and trumpeted loudly into a large handkerchief which looked as if it, too, dated from Queen Victoria’s time and hadn’t been washed since. The wig slipped down over one eye.
“And the tin was put back again in the piano?”
She nodded.
Frost prodded his scar. The same old pattern, a quick in-and-out job, but this time the thief knew exactly what he was after and where to find it. So how did he get in? The window, perhaps?
He squeezed past the table and pulled back the curtain, then tried to open the sash window. It wouldn’t budge. Early in its life it had been thickly painted with cream paint which had seeped over the catch to seal it tight. So the thief didn’t get in that way. More than likely he came in through the front door.
The front door almost wilted under the weight of the hardware attached to it bolts, bars, and various heavy-linked security chains. But none of these could be applied from the outside, and when Lil went to visit her sister, all that had secured the door was the door lock. It looked solid enough, but, as in many of these old houses, the pattern was such that the lock could easily be snapped back with a flexible piece of plastic.
“Odds are he got in through this door,” he told Webster, ‘but you’d better take a look around the rest of the house in case there’s any sign of forced entry.” He gave the old dear a grin. “You’d better go with him, Lil, in case he pinches anything. You know what sticky fingers we cops have.”
Webster didn’t think it at all funny, especially as Lil took the remark seriously and followed him suspiciously through every room of the house.
Left on his own, Frost quickly began opening drawers and peering inside. Then he lifted the bundles of newspaper off the piano lid so he could get to the keyboard. Lying on the yellowed keys were various bank-deposit books, post-office savings accounts, and building-society savings books. He quickly thumbed through them to see how much money the poor old dear had. That done, he shuffled through a wad of family-allowance books kept together by a thick rubber band. These were at the other end of the keyboard. He was prevented from studying these in detail as he heard footsteps descending the stairs. Quickly, he replaced everything where he found it, moved to the window, and put on his most innocent expression.
Webster had found no signs of forced entry, but he was shocked at the poverty-stricken conditions in which the old lady lived. The bedroom was a horror with no heating, bare boards on the floor, and old coats on the bed instead of blankets.
They knocked on a few doors, but none of the neighbours would admit to seeing anyone suspicious lurking about the house the previous day. There was little else they could do, apart from Lil’s suggestion that they should inform Interpol.
The biscuit tin was dropped into a plastic bag to be tested back at the station for alien prints, and then it was time to go. She saw them out, plucking at Frost’s arm as he was about to leave. “Please get my money back for me, Mr. Frost.”
Frost shrugged. “If we can, Lil, but we’ve got a lousy track record.
We haven’t recovered a penny of anyone’s money up to now.”
With her lower lip quivering she looked pathetically at Frost, as if he had told her that her entire family had been wiped out in an air crash.
“It was my burial money,” she said, blinking hard to hold back the mascara-streaking tears.
Webster felt choked-up as he slid into the driving seat. “Poor cow,” he said. “I feel so sorry for her… and you should see the rest of the house. She probably hasn’t got two half-pennies to rub together.”
“You should see her bank book,” said Frost. “She’s got at least twenty thousand quid in the building society, fifteen thousand in the bank, and God knows how much more in her other accounts.”
“You’re joking!” exclaimed Webster.
“I’m not, son. I had a little nose around while you and she were up to no good in her bedroom. Years ago she used to carry out back-street abortions fifty bob a time, including a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit afterward. She was known as the “Fifty Shilling Tailor.” If it weren’t for Lil and her crochet hook we’d be suffering from a population explosion. But as soon as the government made abortions legal she went over to money lending… short-period loans at exorbitant rates of interest to people desperate for ready cash housewives who’ve spent the housekeeping on Bingo and don’t want their old man to know, loan club organizers with sticky fingers. She also makes loans to young people behind on their HP payments, usually taking their family-allowance books as security. There was a wad of them in her piano. You needn’t get your beard wet with tears over her, my little hairy son.”
Time was hurtling on. The visit to Mrs. Cornish would have to wait until after they had attended the post-mortem on her son. Webster broke all speed records driving to the mortuary, pulling up with a screech behind a Rolls-Royce hearse, all agleam with black and silver like Mullett’s new uniform.
Out of the Cortina, up a slope and through double doors into a small lobby where the notice on the wall read All undertakers to report to porter before removing bodies. At the inquiry counter two undertaker’s assistants in funereal black were arguing with a little bald-headed mortuary attendant who was firmly shaking his head as he thumbed through the papers they had presented to him.
“But I keep telling you,” the exasperated undertaker was saying, ‘the bloody funeral is in an hour. We’re burying him at twelve.”
“Don’t you swear at me,” said the attendant, drawing himself up to his full height. “Without the death certificate you’re burying bugger all!”
“Excuse me,” said Frost, elbowing his way through like a referee parting two boxers. He showed his warrant card. “I’m here for the Cornish post-mortem.”
The attendant craned his neck up at the clock. “You’re a bit late, Inspector.”
“Don’t tell me it’s started?” asked Frost.
“Nearly finished, I think. You know how punctual Dr. Bond is. He don’t sod about.”
They pushed through another set of double doors into the white chill of the green-tiled autopsy room where a sharp antiseptic smell held a cloying aftertaste of something nasty.
A sheeted trolley stood against the wall to the left of the entrance doors. Frost twitched back the sheet and looked down on the blue, shrivelled, waxen face of an old lady. “Sorry, love,” he murmured gently, covering her. “I thought you were someone I knew.”
At the far end of the room a rubber-aproned mortuary attendant in abattoir-style Wellington boots was hosing down the guttered and perforated top of a post-mortem operating table. Water suddenly overflowed as something blocked one of the drains, but the assistant cleared the blockage with his finger and carried on with his work. Webster shuddered to think what the blockage was caused by. Frost tapped the attendant on the shoulder. “The Ben Cornish post-mortem?”
“All over,” said the attendant, too engrossed in his work to stop. “The pathologist has gone, but Dr. Slomon’s in the office waiting to see you.”
In the office Slomon was pacing up and down, very agitated and worried.
As soon as Frost entered, he dashed over and grabbed him by the arm. “Thank goodness you are here, Inspector.” His worry increased when he saw Webster. “Who is this?”
Frost introduced his assistant. Slomon hesitated. “It’s a bit delicate,” he said, making it clear he wanted Webster to leave.
“If it’s police business,” answered Frost, ‘then he’s in on it.”
Slomon compressed his lips, checked the hall to make sure no eavesdroppers were hovering, then closed the door firmly. He lowered his voice. “We’re in trouble, Inspector.”
“I’m always in trouble,” said Frost, finding himself a chair. He didn’t like the way the doctor had said “We’re in trouble.” His tone seemed to imply that Slomon was in trouble but wanted Frost to share a large part of the blame. He listened warily to what the man had to say.
“No-one could examine a body properly in the conditions we had to cope with last night, Inspector. They were intolerable and if we missed anything it was through no fault of our own. It’s important that we each stress that fact in our reports. People are always too ready to point the accusing finger.”
Now Frost was really worried. What the hell had they missed last night? “What did the post-mortem show, Doc?”
“Come with me.” Slomon took Frost’s arm and steered him into the adjoining storage area with its neatly tagged refrigerated units set into the wall like filing-cabinet drawers. “Where are the frozen peas?” asked Frost. Slomon was in no mood for jokes. He tugged at one of the drawers, and a body, smoking with curling wisps of frozen carbon dioxide, slid silently forward on rollers.
The haggard, strangely clean face of Ben Cornish stared up, horrified as if in protest at the indignities the postmortem had subjected him to. “Look at this!” Slomon indicated a nasty-looking green-tinged bruise in the area below the corpse’s left eye.
Puzzled, Frost crouched over the body. “How come we didn’t spot this last night, Doc? It looks so bloody obvious now.”
“Last night,” explained Slomon. ‘he was covered with filth and vomit.
This only came to light when the body was stripped and washed clean.
There was no way I could have spotted it.”
He pulled the sheet down to expose the torso and upper legs. The dead man’s right arm was one angry mass of suppurating sores where he had been injecting himself. The chest and abdomen were vividly slashed with extensive autopsy wounds, which had been crudely restitched after flaps of flesh had been torn back to facilitate the removal of internal organs from the stomach cavity. The flesh of the stomach was one massive, sprawling, yellowy-green bruise.
Slomon traced the bruised area with his finger. “As you can see he was beaten up pretty badly just before he died.”
Frost’s heart dropped down to his own stomach cavity. He was beginning to realize what was coming. Did a fist do this?”
“Not a fist,” replied Slomon. “A boot. He was punched, knocked down, then, when he was helpless on the floor, his assailant brought up his foot and stamped with all his weight on the abdomen.”
Frost gritted his teeth and winced. He could feel the pain shooting across his own stomach. But Slomon hadn’t finished. From a stainless-steel cabinet in the corner he brought over two sealed specimen jars containing a mass of mangled human offal half immersed in a bloodied liquid. The sight of it made Webster flinch, and his stomach gave one or two protesting churns, but Slomon lectured dispassionately as if to students. “As you can see, his liver has virtually exploded. In the whole of my professional career I have never seen such terrible internal injuries. Further, the blows actually split the pancreas, and the main blood vessel to the heart is torn. Really shocking injuries.”
“And that’s what killed him, Doc?” Frost asked, fearful that the sheet might be pulled down to reveal further horrors.
“They would have killed him,” answered Slomon. “In fact there is no way he could have recovered from such injuries. However, the initial blows to the abdomen caused the expulsion of the stomach contents. He choked on his own vomit, so, to my credit, in spite of the appalling conditions, my diagnosis was perfectly correct.”
To your credit? thought Frost. No-one comes out of this with any credit, Slomon. He stuck his hands deeply into his mac pockets and swore softly to himself. Why the hell wasn’t any of this spotted last night? Damn bloody Slomon for not wanting to get his feet wet, and damn my own bloody incompetence. I was so keen to get away to that lousy party, I bungled the investigation. I should have insisted Slomon do a proper job.
“I don’t want the body touched further,” he said. “It’ll have to be photographed. I’ll send one of our blokes down… and I’ll need his clothes for forensic examination.” He looked again at the dead face and then recalled the scene in the toilet the previous night. The cubicle with the splintered door. He could picture the scene. Ben cowering inside in terror while his assailant kicked the door down, then dragged him out and stamped him to death. He draped the sheet over the dead face and pushed the drawer firmly shut. “Come on, son,” he said. “Work to do.”
“Don’t forget to emphasize in your report that we did everything possible last night,” called Slomon as they were leaving. Frost waved a vague hand. He would report exactly what happened, nothing more, nothing less. He had no doubt that Slomon’s report would dump all the blame on the police, but he hadn’t time to play such games.
They pushed through the swing doors and out into the mortuary lobby, where a side door had been opened to allow the two undertakers to carry a coffined body straight through to the waiting Rolls Royce hearse. Behind his desk the mortuary attendant was booking out the corpse and adjusting his stock records. He was whistling happily as if someone had tipped him a fiver. There was no sign of the death certificate on his clipboard.
Outside the air smelled marvellously fresh and untainted. As they waited for the hearse to move away, Frost said, “Why would anyone want to do that to a poor old sod like Ben?”
“Robbery,” suggested Webster.
“He had bugger all to pinch,” said Frost.
“Drugs?” was Webster’s next suggestion. “Another drug addict wanted Ben’s heroin so he killed him for it?”
For a few seconds Frost stared into space. Webster wondered if he had been listening, but then Frost turned and said, “I’ve been bloody stupid, son. I knew I’d missed something.”
“What?” Webster asked.
“His carrier bag. That’s where he kept all his worldly possessions food, odds and ends, his hypodermic. He was never without it. But it wasn’t with his body last night. Whoever killed him took it.”
He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, then leaned over for the handset and called Johnny Johnson at the station. He wanted to know if Wally Peters was still in the cells.
“No, thank God,” was the reply. “We kicked him out half an hour ago. Now we’ve got all the windows open, and we’re burning sulphur candles and scratching like mad.”
“I want him brought in,” ordered Frost. “Get the word out to all units.”
“Brought in, Jack? Why?”
“We’ve just come from the post-mortem. Ben Cornish was murdered.”
“Murdered?” gasped Johnson. “Why would anyone want to murder him?”
“Probably for the few bits and pieces in his carrier bag,” replied Frost. “It’s missing… and Wally was seen lurking about outside those toilets last night. So I want him.”
“Right,” said Johnny. “Consider it done. By the way, Jack, you won’t be long, will you? Mr. Mullett’s got Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor sitting in his office, all craving an audience with you about the hit-and-run.”
“Flaming hell!” cried Frost, “I forgot about them. We’re on our way shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”
He replaced the handset. “Back to the station, son.” Webster reminded him they hadn’t yet called on Ben Cornish’s family. “Hell,” said Frost wearily, ‘we’ll have to do that first.” As they were on their way to the house, he remembered that he had meant to ask Tom Croll some more questions about the Coconut Grove robbery while they were at the hospital. His finger gave his scar a bashing. There was so much to be done, and he didn’t seem to be getting through any of it.
Then he saw her. “Stop the car!”
Webster slammed on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt
A young girl in school uniform was looking into the window of a dress shop. Frost’s hand was moving toward the door handle when the girl turned and stared directly at him.
She was blonde, wore glasses, and looked nothing like Karen Dawson.
“Drive on, son,” said Frost.
Wednesday day shift (3)
Frost banged the knocker a couple of times. This started a chain reaction of noise from inside the house. A dog barked, setting off a baby’s crying. Footsteps thudded down uncarpeted stairs; a sharp, angry shout followed by a yelp from the dog, then the front door opened.
“Police,” said Frost. He didn’t have to show his warrant card. Danny Cornish knew him of old.
Danny didn’t look at all like his brother. Four years younger, stockily built, he had thick black hair and bright red cheeks which betrayed the family’s gypsy origins. His meaty hand was hooked in the collar of a black-and-brown mongrel dog whose immediate ambition seemed to be to sink his teeth into the throats of the two policemen.
Webster stepped back a couple of paces as the dog’s jaws snapped at air. Frost was looking warily at Danny, whose face reflected the savagery and hatred of the dog and who seemed all too ready to let his hand slip from the collar. The mongrel, almost foaming at the mouth, was getting more and more frantic as its efforts to rip the callers to pieces were frustrated.
One eye on the mongrel, his foot ready to kick, Frost said, “You’d better let us in, Danny. It’s about your brother.”
The man cuffed the dog. It stopped barking but, instead, began making menacing noises at the back of its throat, its lip quivering and curling back to expose yellow, pointed teeth.
“Ben? What’s he done now?”
“Don’t let the bleeders in.” Behind him, advancing out of the dark of the passage, they could see a young woman, not much more than nineteen. She carried a ten-month-old baby, its squalling almost drowning the snarls from the near-apoplectic dog. This was Jenny, Danny Cornish’s common-law wife, once pretty, now hard-faced, her features twisted with hate.
His head snapped around to her. “Shove it, for Christ’s sake. And keep that bloody kid quiet!” His angry tone caused the infant to howl even louder, and this, in turn, spurred the mongrel on to greater efforts. Cornish yanked its collar and dragged the animal down the passage where he slung it out into the back yard. As he slammed the door shut, there was a resounding thud as the dog hurled itself against it, trying to get back in.
“In here.” He took them into more noise a small kitchen where a whistling kettle on a gas ring was spitting steam and screaming for attention in competition with a transistor radio blasting pop music at top volume. Favouring neither, he pulled the kettle from the ring and snapped off the radio.
At the sink a gaunt, straight-backed woman of sixty, hair and eyes jet black, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was methodically dicing vegetables with a lethal-looking knife. She didn’t look up as they entered. “It’s the police, Ma,” said Danny. “About Ben.” She turned, hostile and belligerent, then she seemed to read something in Frost’s face. Carefully, she set the knife down on the draining board, then wiped her hands on her skirt. “Sit down if you want to,” she said.
They sat at the stained kitchen table with its cover of old newspapers. Frost fiddled for his cigarettes. He needed a smoke to bolster his courage.
Webster’s foot was nudging something. A large cardboard box tucked out of sight under the table. He bent and lifted it up. An unpacked VHS video recorder. He looked at the man. “I suppose you’ve got a receipt for this.”
Frost winced. “For Christ’s sake, son, there’s a time and a place
…”
But he was too late to stop Danny from snatching an old Oxo tin from the dresser and emptying the contents out on the table in front of the detective constable. “Yes, I have got a receipt.” He scrabbled amongst odd pieces of paper, then, in triumph, stuck a printed form under webster’s nose. “Here it is. You’d better check it in case it’s a forgery.”
Webster took the receipt, read it briefly, then handed it back. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry you haven’t caught us out, you mean?” The receipt was stuffed back in the Oxo tin. “Now say what you’ve got to say and get the hell out of here.”
Stone-faced, Webster stared out through the uncurtained kitchen window into the back yard, which was strewn with parts of a dismantled motorbike. The dog had given up trying to break down the door and was nosing a
It had been days since he’d had any proper sleep.
“The lavatories where Ben was killed,” answered Frost. “We should have gone there first people have been peeing all over the evidence since eight o’clock this morning.”
Webster reminded him that the Divisional Commander was expecting him at the station to see the MP and his son.
Frost gave his forehead a wallop with his palm. “Flaming rectums. Mullett will never forgive me for keeping dear old Sir Charlie-boy waiting. Right, son, this is what we’ll do. I’ll drop you off at the toilets. Turf everyone out whether they’re finished or not, and seal the place off. Then search it from top to bottom for any sign of Ben’s carrier bag, or blood or anything I should have spotted last night. And radio the station for a scene-of-crime officer to help. He can take photographs of the graffiti and dust the toilet seats for fingerprints. I’ll drive on to the station for the hit-and-run interview. Remind me when we meet up that we’ve got that other security guard to interview about the robbery the one Harry Baskin duffed up. Oh, and remind me about seeing Karen Dawson’s mother.”
Webster nodded wearily. He would never get used to Frost’s method of working. Webster liked order and forward planning. Frost seemed to thrive on chaos, lurching from one crisis to the next. He considered reminding the inspector that they still hadn’t started on the overtime returns, let alone finished the crime statistics, but what was the point?
Frost shouldered through the swing doors of the lobby carrying, in a large polythene bag, the filthy, vomit-sodden clothes removed from Ben Cornish.
“Bought yourself a new suit, Jack?” called Johnny
Johnson. “I must say it’s an improvement on the one you’re wearing.”
“It’s cleaner, anyway,” said Frost, holding the bag under Johnny’s nose and watching him recoil. “I might do a swap.” As he swung off to his office to make out the forensic examination request, the sergeant, reaching for the phone, called him back.
“Mr. Mullett’s been screaming for you for the past half-hour. He wanted to know the minute you arrived.”
“I can’t think what’s keeping the inspector, Sir Charles,” said Mullett for the sixth time, his lips aching from the effort of maintaining the false smile. His phone rang. He snatched it up. “What? No, don’t send him in. I’ll be right out.” He expanded the smile. “Mr. Frost has just arrived, Sir Charles. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll pop out and brief him.”
As he passed through his outer office he instructed Miss Smith to make some more coffee. Strong this time. He felt he would need it.
Even before he reached the lobby he could hear Frost’s raucous laughter bellowing down the corridor. And there he was, slouched over the counter, exchanging coarse comments with the station sergeant, completely indifferent to keeping his Divisional Commander, and an important V.I. P, waiting.
“Your office, please, Inspector,” ordered Mullett brusquely, marching down the passage. When he reached Frost’s office he was extremely annoyed to find that he was alone and that he had to stand there, fuming, until Frost had finished relating some anecdote to the sergeant.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Inspector. For over half an hour. Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor.
I specifically told you they were coming. I specifically asked you to be present…”
Frost wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. He hated Mullett’s bawlings out. He always had such difficulty keeping a straight face. As Mullett bur bled on, Frost spotted a pencilled note on his desk telling him that Mrs. Clare Dawson wanted to speak to him about her missing daughter. His hand was reaching out for the phone when he realized that Mullett was still in full flow, so he adjusted his face to a contrite expression and tried to form a mental picture of the luscious Clare Dawson, all warm, creamy, and bouncy in a topless bikini, her sensuous lips parted, her tongue flicking over them… A strange silence. He switched his ears back on. Mullett had stopped speaking and was leaning back, ready to receive Frost’s grovelling apologies.
“Sorry, Super, but something more important turned up.”
Mullett’s mouth opened, poised to demand what could possibly be more important than a summons from one’s Divisional Commander, when Frost continued.
“That stiff I found last night
“The tramp?” asked Mullett. “In the public convenience?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust, his expression indicating that he held Frost personally responsible for the fact that the body had been found in such unsavoury surroundings.
Frost nodded. “It now looks as if he was murdered. The autopsy shows he was beaten up and his stomach jumped on while he was on the floor. You should have seen his internal organs. The doc reckons his liver had exploded.”
The mental picture of an exploded liver made Mullett shudder. This case was getting more and more unsavoury by the minute. He gritted his teeth and listened as Frost filled him in on the details, including a graphic, stomach-churning description of the human offal floating in the specimen jars. When, thankfully, Frost had finished, he was forced to admit that, under police rules, a murder inquiry took priority over everything else.
Frost offered a little prayer of thanks to Ben Cornish for getting himself murdered and saving him from a grade A bollocking. But Mullett wasn’t going down without a fight.
“What I don’t understand, Inspector, is why none of these facts emerged last night. It’s now more than twelve hours since the body was found, and we have no photographs of the body, no forensic examination of the surroundings, and only now is a search being made for the missing carrier bag. The question I have to ask myself is whether you are competent to be trusted with a murder inquiry, even one as hopeless as this.”
“The body was blocking the urinal drain,” Frost explained patiently, “The place was flooded. When you’re up to your armpits in cold wee you’re inclined not to be as thorough as you might be. To add to the fun, he’d spewed up all over himself.” As proof, he heaved the polythene bag of clothes under Mullett’s nose.
“All right, all right,” pleaded Mullett, queasily waving the white flag. “We’ll talk about it later.”
The internal phone rang. Frost answered it, then handed it to the Commander. “Your secretary.”
Miss Smith reminding him that Sir Charles was getting restless.
“Make some more coffee,” said Mullett. “We’re on our way.” Then he saw Frost’s shoes. Scuffed, unpolished, and water-stained from the previous night’s adventures. If there had been time he would have insisted that Frost repolish them and give his suit a thorough brushing. But there wasn’t time. Sir Charles would have to take him, crumpled suit, unpolished shoes, warts, and all. But he made Frost put the polythene bag down.
The cleaners hadn’t found time to clean up the briefing room because Mullett had commandeered them for his own office, which now sparkled and gleamed and reeked of polish. Added to this was the rich smell of cigar smoke.
Sir Charles Miller, MP, buffed and gleaming from good living, sat in one of the blue moquette armchairs, which were reserved exclusively for important visitors, and glowered at his watch. He seemed singularly unimpressed with the nondescript scruff that the grinning-like-an-idiot Mullett introduced as Detective Inspector Frost. If this piece of rubbish was the best they had to offer…
“Sorry I’m late, Sir Charles,” breezed Frost. “I was held up on a murder inquiry.”
“A murder inquiry?” exclaimed the MP, leaning forward with interest.
“How fascinating!”
Mullett pushed forward a hard chair. “You’d better sit here, Inspector,” he intervened hastily, determined to stop Frost from enlarging on the unpleasant details. Then he pointedly placed a large glass ashtray within easy reach on the corner of his desk. No use telling Frost not to smoke. He’d do it anyway, and if there was nowhere to put his cigarette ends he was quite likely to drop them on the blue Wilton and crush them under his heel.
“It might be better if I explained to the inspector what this is all about,” said the MP, determined that things be run his way. Mullett nodded weakly.
Miller sucked hard on his cigar. “I’ll be brief, Inspector. Through no fault of his own, my son, Roger, has been involved in this nasty hit-and-run business. Roger wasn’t driving; he wasn’t even in the car, but, as you can imagine, my political opponents are sharpening their knives. You can picture the headlines: “Son of Law-and-Order MP Butchers Old-Age Pensioner in Hit and Run.” Now, I’m not asking for special treatment just because I happen to be an MP. All I want is a fair and unbiased investigation.”
“You’d have got that anyway,” said Frost.
“I don’t doubt that for one minute,” went on Miller in his sincere voice. “Your Chief Constable, who happens to be a personal and very good friend of mine, has already assured me of that. My son, of his own free will, has come here to assist you in any way he can. The important thing is to prove his innocence so conclusively that we can scotch rumours before they have a chance to spread.”
There was the rasp of a match as Frost lit his fourteenth cigarette of the day. Mullett edged the ashtray forward to receive the spent match, but was too late. Frost’s foot ground the carpet, and the smell of burning wool joined the other aromas.
The cigarette waggled in Frost’s mouth as he spoke. “If your son’s innocent, I’ll prove it, Sir Charles, but if he’s guilty I’ll prove that as well.”
“That’s all I ask,” said the MP. “Do your duty, Inspector.” A pause, then, slowly and significantly, he added, “Clear my son and you won’t find me lacking in gratitude.” Frost’s eyes narrowed as the implication registered, but Mullett was up, steering him by the arm, and pushing him through the door before he could snap back.
“Roger Miller is in the interview room with his solicitor, Inspector. I want you to see him right away and let me know the outcome.”
Police Sergeant Johnny Johnson stilled his rumbling stomach as the wall clock told him he had another forty-nine minutes to go before he could take his lunch break. A breeze from the lobby doors as Jack Frost clattered through on his way to the interview room. The very man! He flagged him down.
“Mr. Frost!”
Frost ambled over. “I’m very busy, Johnny.”
“Too busy to notice the smell?”
Frost tested the air, then smiled. “You’ve got Wally Peters for me?”
“He’s down in the cells awaiting your pleasure.”
“I’ll see him now,” said Frost forgetting all about Roger Miller. He turned toward the cells.
“Hold it. I’ve got stacks of messages for you.” He scooped up some notes. “First, from Mr. Baskin of The Coconut Grove. Wants to know what’s the latest on his robbery.”
Frost took the note and, without reading it, screwed it into a ball and tossed it in the rubbish bin. “If he phones again, tell him we’re vigorously pursuing our inquiries. Next.”
The second note was passed over. “A Mr. Max Dawson asking if we’d found his daughter. He wants to see you.”
This note Frost put in his pocket. “I’ll fit it in as soon as Webster gets back. Any more?”
“Yes. Message from the hospital. Tommy Croll discharged himself this morning.”
Frost whistled softly.” Did he leave a forwarding address Las Vegas or the Bahamas?”
Johnny lowered his voice. “You reckon Tommy nicked that money, then?”
“I sincerely hope he did,” replied Frost, scratching the back of his head. “He’s the only suspect I’ve got. Send a car round to his house and bring him in. Is that the lot?”
Hopefully, he turned to go, but the sergeant had one last bullet to fire.
“Mr. Gordon of County buzzed through. It seems that the absence of Denton Division’s crime statistics is holding up the computer return for the entire county.”
Hell, thought Frost. When am I ever going to get the chance to do them? He went down the stairs to the cells.
The cell area had its own peculiar smell. From the drunk cell the stink of stale beer, urine, and vomit; from others the heady aroma of unwashed bodies too-long-worn socks, and carbolic. But all of these well-established odours were fighting a losing battle with the unwashed Wally Peters. Frost paused outside the cell door, lit a cigarette, took his last lungful of nontoxic air, then marched in.
“Blimey, Wally,” he spluttered, ‘you stink to high heaven!”
“I don’t make personal remarks about you, Mr. Frost,” retorted Wally huffily. He was seated on the edge of his bunk bed, huddled over an enamel mug from which he noisily sucked tea with much working of his Adam’s apple. “What am I here for?”
Frost rested his back against the painted brick wall. “It’s about Ben Cornish, Wally,” he said gravely. “About what you did to him.”
Wally didn’t even blink. He took the mug from his mouth and belched.
“I enjoyed that, Mr. Frost.”
“I thought so from the sound effects, but what about Ben, Wally? You’d better tell me.”
Wally sniffed hard and looked up at the detective. “You told me he choked to death, Inspector.”
“I was wrong, Wally. He was murdered. Beaten up and jumped on until he died.”
The tramp’s lower jaw sagged and tea dribbled down the dirty grey stubble of his chin. “Murdered?”
“That’s right, Wally, and all his belongings pinched. What have you done with them?”
“I wouldn’t hurt a fly, Mr. Frost, you know that. And I wouldn’t hurt Ben we was mates. Murdered? God, I’m never going to sleep down them lavatories again.”
Frost flicked cigarette ash on the stone floor. “You were hanging about there last night. Did you see anything?”
“Only that copper sniffing around.”
“When did you last see Ben?”
“Yesterday afternoon, about four o’clock down by the railway embankment. He was twitching and sweating and he kept clawing and scratching himself. He said he was going to meet some blokes down the toilets that evening who were going to sell him some drugs.”
“What blokes?”
“A couple of new blokes. He said they hadn’t been in Denton very long.”
“And how was he going to pay for the stuff?”
“He said he thought he knew where he could get some money. He wouldn’t tell me where, though. That was the last time I saw him, Mr. Frost, on my dead mother’s eyesight, I swear it.”
Frost shook a couple of cigarettes from his packet and gave them to the tramp. “Thanks, Wally. You can go now if you like.”
“They’re getting me a dinner, Mr. Frost,” explained Wally. “I’ll go when I’ve had it. Thanks for the fags.”
“All part of the service,” said Frost, banging on the cell door to be let out. “Tell your friends.”
Webster was waiting for him in the office. A search of the convenience and the surrounding area revealed no trace of anything like a plastic bag, full of Ben Cornish’s odds and ends, or empty. The scene-of-the-crime officer had crawled over the premises and had probably found the fingerprints of everybody who had used the toilets since Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, but none likely to be of any help.
Frost filled Webster in on Wally Peters and the claim that Ben Cornish intended to buy drugs from two new pushers. “Get on to Drug Squad, son. I want to know about two new suppliers who are supposed to have come into the district recently. And ask them to check up on all known users with a history of violence where they were between nine and eleven last night when Cornish was being killed.”
As he waited for Webster to finish the phone call, his internal phone buzzed. Control to report that the allegedly stolen Jaguar owned by Roger Miller had been found. Charlie Alpha had located it in a clearing to the east of Denton Woods. There was no doubt it had been involved in an accident. The near-side headlamp was missing, as was the front licence plate, and there were traces of blood all over the wing. Control had arranged for the vehicle to be towed in for a detailed examination. Frost thanked Control, then scribbled a note to remind himself to check whether or not the plastic screws from the Jaguar’s licence plate had been recovered.
That done, he had a quick look into the Crime Statistics file in the vain hope that someone might have crept in during the night and finished it off for him. No such luck, so he dropped it back in the filing cabinet.
Webster finished his call to the drug squad. They were aware that two new pushers were operating in the district but had no details on them yet. They would also check on addicts with a history of violence but pointed out that all addicts could be driven to extreme violence when they were desperate.
Frost received the news gloomily. “Trust them to complicate matters.” He pushed himself up from the desk. “I think we’ll sneak out and have some lunch now, son.”
Before they could move, Johnny Johnson looked around the door. “You do know Roger Miller and his solicitor are waiting for you in the interview room, don’t you, Jack?”
“Of course I know,” said Frost. “We were just on our way to them, weren’t we, son?”
It should have been possible to get from Frost’s office to the interview room without a diversion, but Frost thought of one. They were turning the corner from the passage when he stopped, looked cautiously around to make sure they weren’t being observed, then told Webster his suspicions about Dave Shelby. “I’d like to know what he was doing, poking around those toilets, son. He said he saw the broken gate from his motor, but that’s impossible. I spotted him stuffing something into his locker last night.”
Webster was unimpressed. “It could have been anything.”
“Yes,” nodded Frost, ‘but wouldn’t it be interesting if it was Ben Cornish’s plastic bag crammed full of heroin?” He plunged his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a large bunch of assorted keys. “We could take a little look just to satisfy our curiosity.”
Webster was horrified. “You’re going to search an officer’s locker behind his back without his permission? The Police Federation will go berserk.”
“I’m hoping they won’t find out,” said Frost, sorting through the bunch for a suitable key.
Webster took a step back as if distancing himself from the insane act Frost was proposing. “This is a murder inquiry. Even if you found any evidence, the court would tear you to pieces.”
Frost brushed these objections aside. “If there’s nothing there, then no harm’s done. But if I do find something, I leave it where it is, I don’t tell a soul what I’ve done, and I apply for a search warrant.” He moved toward the locker room, the bunch of keys jangling in his hand.
Webster didn’t budge. “I’m sorry, but I want no part of this.”
“Oh,” said Frost, crestfallen. “I was hoping you’d be my lookout man.”
“No way,” said Webster firmly.
Frost’s shoulders sagged. “Fair enough, son. Can’t say that I blame you. You don’t want to get into any more trouble. Stay here, I shouldn’t be long.” And he was off down the passage.
You’ll be caught, you bloody fool, thought Webster. You’ll be caught, and you’ll be kicked out of the force, and it will serve you bloody right. “Wait for me,” he called, hurrying after him.
Frost paused by the locker-room door, a relieved grin on his face. “Thanks, son. All you have to do is stand outside. If anyone comes, just whistle.” A quick look up and down the passage, and he opened the door and slipped inside.
It was a room full of dove-grey metal lockers, standing shoulder to shoulder in rows. The locker with Shelby’s name on it was about halfway down the left-hand wall. Ever the optimist, Frost tried the handle, but it was securely locked. He offered his selected key. It was too big even to fit into the lock. He tried another. This one slipped in easily enough, but it wouldn’t turn. It was taking far longer than he’d thought. He sorted through the key ring and tried another.
Outside, leaning against the wall, his heart steam-hammering, Webster felt like the lookout man for a smash-and-grab job. He tried to look inconspicuous, but there was no reason for him to be there. The swing doors at the head of the corridor parted suddenly, and two uniformed men marched purposefully through, heading directly for the locker room. He puckered his lips and tried to whistle the warning, but his mouth was too dry. And the men were getting nearer. He fumbled at the door handle and jabbed his head inside the locker room. Frost was kneeling on the floor in front of Shelby’s locker, working at one of his keys with a nail file, then testing it in the keyhole. He was unaware the door had opened.
“Inspector!” hissed Webster urgently.
Frost jumped up, and cracked his head painfully on the protruding locker handle; the sound of the impact boomed like a drum, echoing on and on around the room.
Webster spun around. The two uniformed men walked straight past the door and out the back entrance to the car park.
“I don’t think we’re cut out for a life of crime,” said Frost, rubbing his head ruefully as Webster returned to his lookout post. He pushed the filed key into the lock. It clicked home. Carefully, he rotated it. Two more clicks. He turned the handle and pulled: the locker door swung open.
Shelby’s overcoat swung from a hanger. His street shoes were on the locker floor. Next to the shoes, in a leather case, was an expensive Polaroid instant camera with auto-focus, flash, and delayed action. Frost patted the overcoat pockets. Something bulged. He dived his hand in and pulled out Shelby’s driving gloves. Beginning to think it was all a waste of time, he poked his hand around the back of the overcoat to feel for the metal shelf at the rear of the cabinet. His fingers scrabbled blindly, exploring by touch. Nothing
… nothing… something! A packet of some kind. Of heroin? He pulled it out so he could examine it.
A plastic wallet secured with an elastic band. He looked inside. Photographs. A wad of coloured photographs taken with the Polaroid and making full use of the flash and the delayed action. Shelby and various women. In various bedrooms. In various positions of the sexual act. Shelby liked to keep permanent records of his conquests.
A spluttering attempt at a whistle from outside. The door opened. “Someone’s coming,” hissed Webster. With fingers that didn’t seem to want to act quickly, Frost stuffed the photographs back into the wallet. One fell to the floor. He snatched it up, then looked at it again. A bedroom like all the others. Shelby lying on the bed, facing the camera. A woman poised over him, back to camera. Both were naked. There was no way the woman could be identified, but something in the room was familiar.
No time for further study. Back it went into the wallet, and the rubber band was slipped over. Hastily, even as voices were raised outside, he rammed the wallet back on the shelf and slammed the door shut. It clanged as if hit by a hammer. He hadn’t time to move away from the locker before Johnny Johnson came in. Johnson looked at Frost, looked at the locker then closed the door behind him.
“What are you up to, Jack?”
“Nothing,” said Frost, feeling like the window cleaner caught with trousers down by the husband.
“Mr. Mullett has ordered me to find you and take you by the scruff of the neck to the interview room.”
“On our way,” said Frost.
When the inspector had left, the sergeant read the name tag on the locker. He tried the handle. It was locked. Frost was up to something, and Shelby was involved. Right,
Jack Frost, he thought. You’ve got some explaining to do.
“Well?” asked Webster as they quickened their pace to the interview room.
“Nothing,” replied Frost. “Not a bloody thing.”
Wednesday day shift (4)
Roger Miller was sprawled on one of the chairs in the interview room, dragging silently at a cigarette. At his solicitor’s suggestion he had discarded his trendy gear and was wearing a quiet grey business suit to present an illusion of soberness and responsibility.
Next to him, sitting bolt upright, was his solicitor, Gerald Moore, fat, pompous, and humourless, conservatively dressed in black. For the umpteenth time Moore sifted through his briefcase and rearranged the order of his papers.
Roger pushed himself up from the chair. “I’m not prepared to wait here any longer. I’m going.”
Gerald Moore raised an eyebrow in mild reproach. “Your father would wish you to stay.” The solicitor returned to his briefcase sifting.
Roger tore the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it on the floor. He’d been stuck in this miserable little room for nearly two hours. He wasn’t used to people keeping him waiting. Usually he only had to mention that he was Sir Charles Miller’s son and doors were flung open.
The door of the interview room was flung open, and a dishevelled character in a crumpled suit slouched in, immediately followed by a smartly dressed, younger, bearded man. Obviously a plainclothes man and his prisoner, concluded the solicitor, frowning at the intrusion and wondering if the scruffy prisoner was dangerous. He was about to point out they had come to the wrong room when the criminal dragged a chair over to the table, flopped down opposite his client, and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Frost.
A detective! thought Moore. This tramp! No wonder the crime rate is soaring.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, gents,” said Frost, ‘but a murder inquiry was taking our attention. I understand you’ve got something to tell us, Mr. Miller?”
Miller started to speak, but Moore cleared his throat loudly to remind his client that he was to be the spokesman. You had to watch every word you said to the police. “My client has prepared a statement. This is it.” He removed a neatly typed sheet of paper from his briefcase and slid it over to the inspector. Frost let it lie on the table.
“Before I read it, sir, spot of good news. We’ve found your Jag, Mr. Miller. It was parked in a lay-by near Denton Woods. Fairly undamaged once the blood and bits of brain have been washed off it, it should be as good as new.”
The solicitor tightened his lips.
“Naturally we are pleased at the recovery of the car,” he said, making it absolutely clear that he was the one who was going to do all the talking, ‘but we are most distressed that while it was stolen and out of my client’s possession, it was involved in a death.”
“Stolen?” said Frost. “Is that what’s supposed to have happened to it?”,
Roger Miller thrust his face forward. He didn’t like the attitude of this nondescript little pip-squeak. “I’m here to answer questions, not listen to your cheap insinuations.”
“Right,” said Frost, blandly, giving the twenty-year-old youth a twitch of a smile, “I’ll read your statement and then ask my questions.”
The statement read:
I returned home from the office at 6.25 p.m. I had brought some work back with me and I worked on it in my flat until 11.15 p.m.” at which time I realized that some papers I needed to complete my work were still in my briefcase in my car. At 11.20 p.m. I left the flat and walked around the corner to Norman Grove, where I had left my car, a Jaguar, registration number ULU 63A. To my concern, the car was not there. I presumed it had been stolen so I immediately phoned Denton Police Station to report this fact. I then returned to my flat and went to bed. The first I knew about the tragic accident which caused the sad death of Mr. Hickman was when a reporter from the Denton Echo phoned me at my office at two minutes past nine this morning. I was extremely distressed to learn that my car was apparently involved, and I immediately contacted my solicitor and arranged to come to the police to help them in whatever way I can.
“Beautifully typed,” commented Frost when he finished reading it. He let it fall to the table. “You work for your father, I understand, Mr. Miller?”
It was the solicitor who confirmed for his client. “That is correct.
In the head office of Miller Properties Ltd, the holding company.”
“I see,” said Frost, his head swinging from one man to the other. “And you’ve approved this statement, Mr. Moore?”
“Yes, and my client is now prepared to sign it.”
“I want to sign it right now,” said Roger Miller, pulling a rolled-gold Parker pen from his pocket. “I’ve wasted two hours already and I’ve got better things to do with my time than hang about here.”
“And I’m sure Mr. Hickman would have had better things to do with his time than having to hang about on a slab in the morgue,” murmured Frost, ‘but we can’t always choose what happens.”
“For a public servant you’re bloody insolent,” snapped the youth hotly, his pen scratching his signature across the foot of the page. He thrust the paper at Frost. “Can I go now?” He jerked his head at his solicitor, implying that whatever the inspector’s answer, they were leaving.
“Just a few minor points if you don’t mind, Air Miller,” said Frost, whose finger had directed Webster to stand in front of the door, blocking their exit. “Please sit down. It shouldn’t take long.” He gave them a disarming smile as they returned to their chairs. “My trouble is, gentlemen, I’m not very bright. There are a couple of things in your statement that don’t seem to add up. I’m sure it’s my stupidity, so if you could see your way clear to explaining…”
“I’m sure it’s your stupidity, too,” said Miller condescendingly, ‘but try to be as quick as you can.”
Frost scratched his head as if completely out of his depth. “The first thing that puzzled me, sir, is the question of your leaving your briefcase in the Jag.”
Miller gave Frost a patronising smile. “And why should that puzzle you, Inspector?”
“According to all the witnesses we’ve spoken to, sir, you never drive the Jag to your office. You always use the firm’s car, the Porsche. So how did your briefcase get in the Jag?”
The solicitor confidently turned a questioning face to his client, then realized to his dismay that the youth was floundering, trying to think of an answer. Roger shook his head helplessly. Quickly, the solicitor said, “If you don’t mind, Inspector, I’d like a word with my client in private. I may have misunderstood his instructions.”
Frost and Webster trooped outside and waited. After five minutes they were called back in again.
“A lapse of memory,” explained Moore, removing the cap from his fountain pen, ready to amend the statement. “My client intended using the Jaguar car the following day, so he transferred his briefcase from the Porsche.”
“Let me get this straight,” Frost said, his finger drawing circles around his scar. “Your client drove the Porsche from his office, parked it in the basement car park at the flats, took out the briefcase and walked with it round the corner to Norman Grove, where he put the briefcase in the Jag, and then walked back to the flat?”
“Yes,” said Moore weakly. It didn’t sound at all plausible to him now the inspector queried it.
“Very logical, sir. So if you’d like to alter the statement to that effect we can all get on to more important matters.” Moore’s pen began drafting a suitable amendment. The words wouldn’t flow, and he had to keep crossing out and altering the text. “Oh, just one other thing,” Frost added. “As I said, we’ve recovered the Jag but the briefcase wasn’t in it.”
Miller gave a superior sneer. “I imagine the thief took it.”
Frost seemed to receive this suggestion with open arms. “Of course, sir, I hadn’t thought of that. Briefcases full of office papers must be a very valuable commodity.” He paused, then said with studied casualness, “Just one other thing…”
Moore’s pen stopped in mid stroke and he tried not to show his anxiety. What bombshell was going to be dropped now? He wasn’t used to criminal work and was no longer positive that his client was telling the whole truth. He waited apprehensively, his eyes moving from the inspector to his client.
“You say in your statement, Air Miller, that you reported the theft to the police, then went straight to bed in your flat.”
“That’s right,” answered Miller.
“You may not be aware of it, sir, but in the early hours of this morning we had an anonymous phone call reporting that a man had been seen trying to break into the balcony window of a fourth-floor flat at Halley House. We investigated. On getting no reply from your flat and fearing for your safety, we used the caretaker’s passkey to enter. Happily, there was no sign of an intruder. But the puzzle is, there was no sign of you, either, sir and your bed had not been slept in.”
Miller sprang to his feet, sending his chair skidding across the floor. His face was brick red with anger. “You impudent swine! Are you telling me you had the temerity to sneak into my flat to check up on me behind my back?”
His solicitor stood up, hissing at Roger to calm down. Miller, fists clenched, chest heaving, fought to gain control of himself. At last he nodded to his solicitor, then sat down. But if looks could kill, Frost would be stone-cold dead.
Moore capped his fountain pen and scooped up the statement, which he replaced firmly in his briefcase. “My client and I wish to reconsider our position, Inspector. At this stage we have nothing further to say.”
But Frost hadn’t quite finished. He addressed the youth. “Sorry to be a nuisance, but there is one more thing. I think it’s only fair to mention it so you can clear up all the lies in one hit. We have a witness who saw you driving the Jaguar away from Norman Grove yesterday evening.” Frost caught Webster’s puzzled look and beamed at him. It wasn’t true about the witness, but why should Miller be the only one allowed to lie?
With an unsteady hand, and feeling quite battered by the past few minutes’ experience, the solicitor zipped up his briefcase and led his client to the door. “We hope to be back to you within the hour,” he announced.
“I don’t think we can allow your client to leave,” said Frost. “This is a very serious charge.”
“Then I demand some time alone with my client.”
“Fair enough.” Frost gathered up his cigarettes and his matches. He was reaching for the door handle when Miller’s resolve broke.
“Wait, Inspector.”
Frost dropped his hand and slowly turned around.
Miller, the arrogance completely drained out of him, fumbled in his pocket for a slim, gold-and-black-enamelled cigarette case. He removed a cigarette which he kept tapping on the case. “I think I’d better tell you the truth.”
Moore pushed in front of him. “Not until you’ve discussed it with me.” He moved to Frost. “We have nothing to, say until we have reconsidered our position.”
“I didn’t park the Jag in Norman Grove,” continued Roger doggedly. “I wasn’t at my flat at all last night.”
Moore was shaking with rage. He grabbed his client’s shoulder and spun him around. “If you wish me to continue representing you, Mr. Miller,” he spluttered, ‘you will remain silent until we have talked together.”
“If you want to continue being my father’s solicitor, men shut up, you fat slob,” snapped Miller. “And take your greasy hands off of me.” The solicitor collapsed heavily on to a chair and dabbed at his forehead with a white handkerchief.
Making sure that Webster had his notebook open and his pen poised, Frost asked, “So where were you last night, sir?”
“I was with a girl… I couldn’t mention her before -she is someone my father would strongly disapprove of.”
“In that case I’m beginning to like her already,” said the inspector.
“How long were you with her?”
“From seven yesterday evening until a little after eight this morning. The car was stolen from outside her flat. Damn it, Inspector, I couldn’t let my old man know where I was, so I pretended it had been taken from Norman Grove. Obviously, I had no idea it had been used in a hit-and-run when I phoned the police, otherwise I would never have tried it on.”
Frost said nothing. Webster’s pen sprinted across the page. Moore took off his glasses and held them to the light so he could better examine the dirt on the lenses. Then he put them back on his nose. “You were with her all night, from seven until eight this morning? You didn’t go out?”
Roger nodded.
“Would the girl corroborate all this?”
“Of course.”
The solicitor’s deep sigh of relief was followed by a smile of triumph. “In that case, Inspector, there is no way my client could have been involved in the death of that unfortunate man. He has an alibi.”
Frost’s deep sigh was one of regret. He was hoping for a confession, not more flaming checking up to do. “Would you mind giving us the lady’s name and address, sir?” he asked the young man sweetly. “Just in case we wanted to check your story.”
Her name was Julie King. She lived in an older-type house that had been divided up into six single-bedroom flats. It was situated in Forest View, a quiet backwater overlooking Denton Woods. The unlocked front door allowed access to a small hall containing a letter rack, a pay telephone, and a fire extinguisher. Julie King’s flat was on the first floor.
A flight of stairs took them up to a landing where two doors stood side by side. On the first, a card attached by a drawing pin read “J. King’. The door to the other flat still had a morning newspaper poking through the letter box and a pint bottle of semi skimmed milk lurking on the step.
“Flats of a couple of prostitutes,” observed Frost, making one of his ill-considered judgements. “One works days, the other nights. Let’s call on the day shift.” He thumbed the bell to Julie King’s flat.
“This isn’t a bad neighbourhood,” remarked Webster as they waited.
“As long as you don’t mind being raped,” said Frost. “The woods are only a couple of streets away.”
The door, held firm by a strong chain, cautiously opened a few inches.
A female voice demanded, “What do you want?”
“Police,” said Webster, holding out his warrant card to the gap. A hand with long orange fingernails took it, then withdrew. The door slammed shut, then there were sounds of the chain being unhooked before the door opened fully.
A sexual fantasy of nineteen or twenty throbbed and vibrated in the doorway. Her jeans were powder blue and skintight, and her lemon T-shirt was a second skin over a pair of primed, highly explosive breasts with the safety catch off. Her hair was golden blonde and her figure strictly X certificate.
“Yes?” she asked huskily.
Frost’s voice sounded a trifle high-pitched so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Miss Julie King?” She nodded. “A few questions, miss. Do you think we might come in?”
She ushered them into a sparsely but adequately furnished room. It was a flat for people who didn’t stay very long and it echoed none of its tenant’s personality. A green leather-cloth settee that had seen better days, and had long since forgotten them, lolled lumpily in front of a two-bar electric wall fire. Next to the fire, screwed firmly to the wall, was the landlord’s coin-in-the-slot electricity meter, finished in tasteful ex-Government surplus olive green. On the far wall, a door was slightly ajar and allowed a glimpse of sink, refrigerator, and cooker. A closed door next to it would lead to the bedroom. The thought of Roger Miller going through that door and taking this sizzler to bed made Webster hate the man all the more.
“Nice and compact,” observed Frost, perching himself on the arm of the settee and taking out his cigarettes. “Perhaps you’d question the lady, son. I seem to have done nothing but ask questions all day.”
Julie took one of Frost’s cigarettes, leaning over to give him a bird’s-eye view of deep, inviting cleavage as he lit it for her, his hand none too steady. She dropped down on the settee, patting the cushion for Webster to sit next to her. He sat. It was a very small settee and they were close together. He could feel the radiated animal heat of her body and was getting the full blast of her perfume. His hatred of Roger Miller was increasing by the minute.
He cleared his throat. “Would you mind telling us exactly what you did last night, Miss King. From, say, six o’clock onward?”
‘ She smiled at him. The sort of smile that crept under his shirt and gently stroked the pit of his stomach. “Nothing much to tell. I was here all the time. In the flat.”
Webster scribbled away in his notebook. “On your own?”
She pursed her lips, and kissed out a tiny puff of smoke. “No. With a friend.”
“Could I have his name please… assuming it was a “he”, of course?”
“Miller. Roger Miller.”
“Master Miller, the MP’s son?” chimed in Frost, who had now wandered over to the kitchen. “Just like in Happy Families. Where did he park his car?”
Webster scowled. He thought he was supposed to be conducting this interview. “Are you taking over the questioning, Inspector.”
“Me? Good heavens no, son. You carry on, you’re doing fine.” He had now edged over to the bedroom door and was silently turning the handle.
Back to the girl. “What time did Mr. Miller arrive?”
“Five and twenty past six. I remember looking at my wristwatch as he rang the bell.” Her hand moved to show Webster her watch, a ridiculously tiny thing in gold and black with what looked like real diamonds at every quarter hour.
“And how long did he stay?”
She pouted out a smoke puffball. “He left about eight o’clock this morning. I was still in bed.”
Behind the girl’s back, Frost had quietly opened the bedroom door and had disappeared inside. Webster tried hard not to stare in that direction. He didn’t want the girl following his gaze. “Did Mr. Miller come by car?”
“Yes,” she answered. “His blue Jag. He was going to leave here about twenty past eleven, but when he went out he found someone had stolen it. So I said he might as well stay for the rest of the night.”
Frost had now emerged from the bedroom, carefully closing the door behind him.
“Where was the car parked?” continued Webster.
“Just across the road.”
“I wonder if I can ask a personal question?” said Frost suddenly.
Webster groaned in exasperation. How could he possibly conduct an interview with this idiot butting in every five minutes. “It is important, Inspector?” he asked resignedly.
“Vital,” said Frost, disarming the girl with a friendly grin. “Tell me, miss, do you have a little mole on your right buttock?”
Webster could only stare dumbfounded. The man had gone mad, there was no other answer. The girl just looked stunned.
“A little mole, like a beauty spot just about here?” prompted Frost, jabbing his thigh.
She stood up and crushed out her cigarette in a tiny ashtray on the mantlepiece. “What if I have? What the bleeding hell has it got to do with you, you dirty old git?”
I couldn’t have put it better myself, thought Webster, noticing that in moments of stress the girl’s accent became pure cockney.
Frost pulled a postcard-size photograph from his mac pocket. “Just being curious. I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was a fly or a mole.” He displayed the photograph. A nude study. A girl in thigh-high jackboots, carrying a whip. The face was covered by a leather mask, the breasts by nothing at all. Behind the girl a full-length mirror reflected the full glory of her rear view. It also reflected a dainty mole like a beauty spot on the right buttock.
She snatched the photograph from him. “Where did you get that?”
“I was looking for the bathroom,” Frost explained unconvincingly. “I went into your bedroom by mistake. One of the chests of drawers was open, and this photograph was on the top. I just happened to spot it.”
“You just happen to be a bloody liar,” she retorted. “That drawer was shut tight, and the photographs were right at the bottom. If you must know, they’re my publicity stills.”
“Publicity stills?”
“I’m in show business a specialty dancer. I work at The Coconut Grove.”
“The Coconut Grove?” repeated Frost. Then the penny dropped. “Of course. You’re one of Harry Baskin’s strippers. Then you must know that other bird… Paula Grey… the one who nearly got herself raped.”
“Of course I know her,” said the girl. “She lives in the next-door flat. Your lot were all over the place this morning asking if I’d seen anyone suspicious hanging about. The stupid cow. She was just asking for trouble cutting through those woods you get flashers and God knows what in places like that.”
“She was late for work so she took a shortcut,” explained Webster. “She was afraid Baskin would give her the push.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “That’s just the sort of thing the rotten bastard would do.”
“The rotten bastard got himself robbed last night, did you know that?” asked Frost.
“Robbed? Harry Baskin robbed?” She threw back her head, her body shaking and her breasts jiggling as she laughed. “That’s made my day!”
You’ve made my day as well, thought Webster, wishing she would laugh more often. But they weren’t here about the robbery or the rape, so why couldn’t Frost stick to the point? “We came about the hit-and-run,” he reminded the inspector.
“So we did, son,” agreed Frost, looking about the room. “Where’s your television set, miss?”
She blinked at the pointless question. “I haven’t got one.”
“And you’re asking me to believe that you and Master Roger were stuck in this prison cell of a flat from half past six yesterday evening until eight o’clock this morning with no telly to keep you amused? I can’t even see any books to read. So what do you do to keep yourselves amused?”
“We happen to love each other,” she said simply. “What do you think we did?”
But Frost wasn’t having any of this. “Come now, miss, there are limits. If it were me, I could stare all night at your mole and want nothing more than a dripping sandwich and a cup of tea. But Master Roger isn’t the stay-at-home type. He couldn’t sit still for hours in a pokey little hole like this. He’d want to get out, go somewhere, knock some poor wally down with his expensive motor and then get some silly little tart to provide him with an alibi.”
Her eyes spat fire. “I find you offensive.”
“Then you’re in good company, Miss King. Mind you, I find it offensive that rich men’s sons can kill innocent people and get away with it.”
The girl caught her breath and looked frightened. Very frightened.
“Killed? You mean the man’s dead?”
Frost looked up in surprise. “You didn’t know he was dead? Surely your boy friend didn’t keep that tidbit of news from you before asking you to fake his alibi?”
She stared unbelievingly at him, then looked pleadingly at Webster for him to tell her it wasn’t true.
“He died late last night, miss,” the constable confirmed.
She dropped heavily on to the settee, hands twisting her handkerchief into a tight silken rope, her face as white as a hospital sheet.
“So you see, miss,” said Webster quietly, ‘it’s a very serious matter.”
“He’s not worth lying for,” added Frost. “He wouldn’t lie for you.”
She tugged at the handkerchief as if she were trying to rip it in two, then jerked her head up defiantly. “I’m not lying. Roger arrived here yesterday evening. He stayed with me until eight this morning. We did not go out. We couldn’t have gone anywhere even if we wanted to. Roger didn’t have any money. He was broke.”
“Broke? Come off it, love. He’s rolling in it.”
“He had some debts to pay off- to Harry Baskin, as it happens. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him. Which is why we had to stay in
… all bloody night. Are you satisfied?
There’s only one way you could satisfy me, love, thought Frost, and that involves showing me your mole. His eyes held hers. She tried to meet his gaze, but her head dropped. I know you are lying, he thought, but I just can’t prove it. He expelled a sigh. “All right, miss. We’d like you drop in at the station sometime today to give us a written statement. It shouldn’t take long.”
He straightened his aching back and buttoned up his mac. A loose button was hanging by a single thread. He would have to find someone to sew it on for him before he lost it. Julie King didn’t look the sort of girl who knew what a needle and thread were for.
“If you want my opinion, she’s lying,” announced Webster when they were back in the car.
“Probably,” said Frost, who had just found the note in his pocket that he had scribbled earlier, ‘but there’s something else that worries me, something that makes me wonder if the girl might, perhaps, be telling the truth. It’s that bloody licence plate. It was too damn convenient, our finding it. It’s like a crook leaving his name and address, or a rapist leaving a photograph of his dick.”
“The plate fell off when the Jag crashed into the dustbins,” said Webster, who saw nothing illogical about that.
“How many licence plates have you known to fall off?” asked Frost, reaching for the handset so he could call the station.
Johnny Johnson was delighted to hear from him. “Mr. Frost! We’ve been trying to reach you. Mr. Mullett wants to see you. Something about the crime statistics.”
“Sorry,” said Frost, ‘can’t hear you. This is a very bad line.”
“I can hear you perfectly,” the sergeant told him.
“Good. Then tell me something. I asked for someone to check the spot where we picked up that licence plate to see if they could find the plastic screws. Any joy?”
“No, Jack. Charlie Bravo did a thorough search of the area. Couldn’t find anything. Now, about Mr. Mullett…”
“Still can’t hear you,” said Frost quickly. “Over and out.” He switched off the radio in case the station tried to call back, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If the licence plate fell off, the screws holding it to the car would have had to come off just before it dropped. So where are they?”
“No idea,” shrugged Webster.
“Secondly,” Frost continued, ‘we’ve got to suppose that both screws came out simultaneously.”
“Why?”
“If only one screw fell out, the other would hold it, causing the plate to pivot down. It would have dragged along while the Jag was still going at top speed. But the plate was undamaged.”
“It wouldn’t necessarily drop down,” said Webster. “The remaining screw could have been holding it so tightly it stayed in position.”
“If it was holding it as tightly as that, son, there’s no way it could have unscrewed itself to let the licence plate drop off. No, that licence plate was deliberately removed, carried in the car, then chucked out near the accident so the dumb fuzz could find it.”
Webster looked at Frost pityingly. “I imagine the last thing Roger Miller would have wanted to do was leave his licence plate behind.”
“If he was driving, I agree. But supposing it was someone else who wanted to get him into trouble?”
The detective constable could only shake his head in despair. This was getting beyond him.
Frost settled back in his seat. “Try this out for size, as the bishop said to the actress. The girl told us that Miller bets with Harry
Baskin and that he’s short of money. Let’s suppose he’s run up a dirty great gambling debt and he can’t pay. like I’ve told you, Harry has his own roguish little ways of speeding up slow payers he sets their car alight, or cuts their cat’s head off. Suppose Harry decides to put the screws on Roger by getting one of his minions to nick the Jag, drive it around at speed, knocking a few dustbins over in the process, and drop off the licence plate so there’s no doubt as to whose car it was… a warning to Miller that there’s worse to come if he doesn’t cough up. That’s the plan. But it went wrong. The minion knocks an old man down and kills him. He has to abandon the Jag and leg it back to
The Coconut Grove the car wasn’t found all that far away from the club if you recall.”
Webster chewed this over. “There’s a lot of loose ends, but I suppose it’s possible,” he grudgingly admitted.
“Yes,” said Frost. “The only trouble is, if I’m right, then Master Roger is innocent, and that would be contrary to natural justice.” He tugged at the seat belt and fastened it across his lap. “Ah well, we have other cases to occupy our fertile minds. Let’s go and see Old Mother Wiggle-Bum.”
Webster turned the key in the ignition. “I presume you mean Mrs.
Dawson?”
The inspector nodded, chewing his lower lip as another nagging doubt rose to the surface. “She worries me, son. It was bloody windy in the town yesterday afternoon.”
With a grimace, Webster said, “Was it?” He wondered what the old fool was drivelling on about now.
Frost looked out on the trees of Denton Woods as the car cruised along the ring road. “Near gale force. It would have blown your beard all over the place. If you were a woman who wiggled her bum and you had just had your hair done for a very important do, would you risk walking in the wind for a couple of hours?”
“No,” said Webster.
“Old Mother Dawson did,” said Frost. “Before we see her we’ll nip into the town and call on a few hairdressers. We might even let them give your beard a blue rinse.”
Wednesday day shift (5)
Max Dawson gave the barrel of the rifle a final polish with a soft duster, then carefully rested the butt against his shoulder, and lined up the sights to the exact centre of his sleeping wife’s forehead. Then, very gently, he squeezed. A metallic click. She stirred a little and slept on.
He lowered the rifle, almost wishing it were loaded. How could she sleep? Her own daughter missing, possibly even lying dead somewhere, and all she could do was sleep.
The rifle was replaced in its leather case and zipped in. He carried it out to the metal cupboard which, in compliance with his firearms certificate, was fixed to the wall beneath the stairs by bolts set in concrete. He was turning the key in the security lock when the phone rang.
It was Karen. It had to be Karen.
He raced back to the lounge, scooped up the phone, and croaked, “Yes?”
The ringing had woken up Clare. “Is it Karen?”
An impatient flick of his hand ordered her to silence. He listened, his face red-hot with anger. He turned his head incredulously to his wife. “Would you believe it? It’s the bloody office with some piddling little query.” Enraged, he yelled into the phone, “Get off this bloody line, you bitch. Don’t you dare phone me at home again.” He slammed the receiver down with such force he feared he might have broken it. He checked, and heard the reassuring purr of the dial tone. His hand still shaking, he replaced it carefully this time.
Clare pushed herself from the armchair, where she had been huddled in an uneasy sleep, and stretched to straighten out the kinks in her back. A quick glance in the mirror over the mantlepiece while she fluffed up her hair, then she padded across to her husband and gently squeezed his arm.
“Shall I make some coffee?”
He jerked his arm away. He didn’t want her touching him. He blamed her for Karen’s disappearance. If she had been here yesterday afternoon when Karen came home early from school, none of this would have happened. “I don’t want any coffee.”
Shrugging off the rejection, she knelt on the padded window seat and looked out across the landscaped garden. Thin sunlight trickled down and an edgy wind ruffled the shrubs and the water of the ornamental fish pond.
The bray of a horn as a car turned off the road and into the drive. She went cold. “Max, a car!”
He almost leaped across the room to join her at the window. He recognized the Ford Cortina. “It’s the police,” he told her. “Those two idiots who were here last night.” She reached out for the comforting reassurance of his hand, but he drew away, watching the Ford pull up at the front door, watching the two policemen get out, both looking grim.
The door bell chimed. He couldn’t move. He didn’t want to move. If he didn’t open the door, he wouldn’t have to hear their awful news and Karen wouldn’t be dead.
A second ring, longer this time.
Clare again examined herself in the mirror, adjusted the hem of her sweater, then went to the front door. His eyes followed her. Look at her! Her only daughter dead and she’s preening herself.
She was up, facing him, her breasts quivering with indignation. “How dare you…!”
He gently pushed her back down into the chair. “If it helps to find your daughter I’ll dare as much as I like. All I’m trying to do is see if we can’t eliminate this mystery man from our inquiries.” The lighter clicked on, off, on, off. He felt like doing what her husband had done the night before take it away from her. “I’m asking you, point-blank, can I eliminate him or not?”
She found the lighter of consuming interest.
“I promise you, Mrs. Dawson, if he was just here for a bit of spare, I’ll keep him out of it. Can I eliminate him?”
“Yes, damn you, you can.”
Frost heaved a sigh of relief. The first hurdle safely over. “I checked with your hairdresser. Your appointment was originally for two o’clock, but you phoned yesterday morning and put it back until five. Is that correct?”
“If you’ve checked with the hairdresser, then it must be,” she answered defiantly.
“OK,” said Frost. “So we take it that you altered your appointment because your boy friend was popping in to see you.”
“Yes.”
“And you were both here when Karen came home?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We were in here, on the settee. We were kissing… my dress was unbuttoned. We didn’t hear Karen come in. We didn’t expect her. That bloody school should have phoned. Karen saw us. She ran out of the house.”
“Any idea where she is?”
“No. But I’m sure she’ll be back. My husband doesn’t know it, but she’s been off like this before. Karen’s not quite the innocent he thinks she is.” She put the lighter on the floor then walked to the bar where she slopped a shot of vodka into a glass. Staring defiantly, she raised the glass to her lips. Then she crumpled. “You won’t tell my husband? He’ll kill me if he finds out.”
Frost shrugged. “If it’s not necessary for him to know, then I won’t tell him. But your daughter is bound to spill the beans when she comes back.”
“I can take care of Karen,” she said significantly.
“Right,” said Frost, rewinding his scarf. “We’ll keep an eye open for her, but we won’t worry too much for a day or so. If you get any news, let us know.”
The lounge door opened for the return of Max Dawson and a dusty, cob webby Detective Constable Webster.
“She’s not down here,” said Frost. “We’ve looked everywhere.”
When they got back to the car, Frost took a chance and switched the radio on. Control was calling him. Charlie Bravo had gone to Tommy Croll’s place to pick him up. No sign of Croll, but his rooms had been broken into and all the furniture systematically ripped and smashed. “We’re on our way,” said Frost.
Detective Inspector Allen rapped at the door of the Divisional Commander’s office and went in. Mullett, sitting ramrod-stiff behind his satin mahogany desk, smiled and indicated the inspector should sit.
“You look worn out, Allen.”
Allen sat down wearily and stretched tired muscles. “Thought I’d better put you in the picture with the rape investigation, sir. I’m sorry to say we’ve made no progress at all. A mature woman dressed in schoolgirl clothes walks from her home to the woods and we haven’t been able to turn up a single witness who saw her. We’ve knocked on doors, we’ve asked everywhere. I’ve been thorough ‘
“I’m quite sure you have, Inspector. That goes without saying,” smarmed Mullett.
“I’ve put our usual circus of known sexual offenders through the hoop… still some more to question, but nothing positive up to now.”
“Any joy from your radio and television appeals to the public?”
“We’ve had a fair amount of response, which we’re following up, but most of it useless old maids who reckon the man next door must be the rapist because he always looks over the fence when she hangs her knickers on the line, that sort of thing. I hate to have to say it, sir, but at the moment it looks as if we’ll just have to wait until the rapist strikes again and hope that this time he might leave the odd clue behind.”
Mullett pulled a face. “We can’t leave it like that, Inspector. He must be stopped before he claims another victim. Have you traced the anonymous phone caller?”
“No, sir. We’ve appealed for him to come forward, but he hasn’t obliged yet. I do have one suggestion, sir.” He looked hopefully at the Superintendent.
“Yes?” asked Mullett uneasily, feeling he was about to be forced into making a decision.
“We set a trap, send in a decoy a policewoman tar ted up to tempt the rapist into having a go at her.”
Mullett readjusted his moustache and smoothed the bristles down “I don’t like this, Allen. It could be dangerous.”
“Let me show you the plan, sir.” Allen left his chair and moved to the large-scale wall map behind the Superintendent’s desk. “We would have men hiding here, and here. Also a couple of radio cars on the surrounding roads. I’d have more men back here, and two more staked out here.” He jabbed at the map. “The woman decoy ‘
“Only one?” Mullett queried.
Allen nodded. “It’s safer that way. We want to keep the operation confined to as tight an area as possible, so we can get to the decoy before he can harm her.”
Mullett studied the map over Allen’s shoulder. “You’re pinning all your hopes on him operating in the same area as last night. Those woods are vast. You could all be over the west side while he’s raping victims to the east.”
“To cover the entire area, sir, would require so many men there wouldn’t be room for the rapist to get in. If the bait’s attractive enough, I’m hoping he will come to us.”
“How many men are you talking about?” asked Mullett.
“About fifteen or twenty.”
“I don’t know,” said Mullett evasively as he returned to his chair. “There’s too much left to chance. And the overall cost would be terrific fifteen or twenty men, all on overtime. I’m under severe pressure from County to cut down on our manpower costs. Let me show you the memo they sent me.” He unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out the memo with “Strictly Confidential’ typed in red capitals across the top.
Allen barely gave it a glance. He didn’t want to see these stupid pieces of paper. “Then you’re saying we do nothing at all, sir? We simply sit back, twiddle our thumbs, and wait for our man to pick his next victim. Is that what you’re saying, sir?”
Mullett could feel the wall pressing hard against his back. “What can I do?” he said weakly, waving the memo like a flag of truce. “We’ve got to cut down on expenditure. I mean I could authorize it, and you could waste night after night, fifteen men all on overtime, expenses soaring and nothing to show for it. County would crucify me.”
“Let’s restrict it to five nights only, then, sir.”
“Three,” countered Mullett, feeling he was scoring a victory.
“Fair enough, sir. Three,” agreed Allen. “And then we can decide whether to extend it or not.”
“But let me see a costing first,” called Mullett as Allen made for the door.
“Of course, sir,” smiled the inspector. “I’ll have it on your desk in half an hour. I’ve already started working it out.”
“This is how we found it, Inspector,” said PC Kenny, leading Frost and Webster into Tommy Croll’s rooms.
The two rooms were a chaotic mess with upholstery slashed, drawers pulled out, cupboards yawning open and their contents strewn all over the floor. The mattress in the bedroom had been dragged from the bed and knifed, its lacerations bleeding horsehair. A heap of clothing tumbled from the wardrobe had a snowy coating of feathers from ripped pillows. In the kitchen the contents of packets of soap powder and corn flakes had been spewed all over the floor where they scrunched noisily underfoot.
“It’s been done over, sir,” said PC Kenny.
“Funny you should say that,” said Frost, “I was thinking the same thing myself.” He kicked at a tin of baked beans which rolled to rest against some broken slices of bread. “No sign of Croll, I suppose?”
“No, sir. His landlady downstairs didn’t even know he was out of hospital.”
“Does she know who did this?”
“No, sir. Says it happened while she was out.”
Frost picked up a battered transistor radio from the floor. “Well, there’s no mystery about who did it a couple of Harry Baskin’s heavies searching for the stolen money and putting in the frighteners at the same time.” He plugged in the radio and clicked it on. An angry crackle followed by a blue flash. He switched it off. “We’ll have to find Tommy before Baskin’s boys get hold of him. We don’t want him ending up like his mattress, with his innards poking out.” He told Kenny to ask Control to put out a priority signal that Croll was to be found and brought in immediately for questioning in connection with the robbery at The Coconut Grove.
Their next stop was at the house of the other security guard, Bert Harris, who lived in one of the newly built houses east of the main Bath Road. Harris, a cropped-haired, thickset man in his late twenties, sported a black eye and a bruised nose, souvenirs of his reprimand from Harry Baskin the previous night. He didn’t seem at all pleased to see the two policemen.
“It’s not really convenient, Mr. Frost,” he protested, but the inspector pushed past him.
“We don’t mind if it’s a bit untidy, Bert.” He opened the lounge door and peeped inside. A carbon copy of Croll’s place with slashed upholstery and emptied cupboards. “Looks like my house on a good day,” commented Frost as he managed to find a dining chair with its seat intact so he could sit down. “I take it some friends of Mr. Baskin’s have paid you a visit.”
“I’ve got no comment to make on that,” said Harris.
Frost lit up a cigarette.” Did they find the money before they left?”
Harris laughed hollowly. “They couldn’t find it because I haven’t got it. I had nothing to do with that robbery.”
“It had to be an inside job, Bert, which has got to mean you and Tommy Croll.”
Harris pulled a tobacco tin from his pocket and began to roll a hand-made. “We’re talking about five thousand lousy quid, Mr. Frost. If me and Tommy split it down the middle, that is two and a half thousand apiece. Do you seriously think I’d risk Harry Baskin’s boys ripping me open for a lousy two and a half thou? Look at this bloody mess!” He indicated the rubble of his lounge. “There’s at least a thousand quid’s worth of damage. If I was going to stitch Harry Baskin up, I’d pick a night when there was at least ten thousand quid in the office, and when I’d nicked it, you wouldn’t see my arse for dust. I wouldn’t hang around so Harry could use me as a punching bag.”
Frost was forced to admit that this made sense. “So who do you reckon took the money… Tommy Croll?”
“It’s not for me to say, is it, Inspector? But he’s stupid enough, and it’s bloody funny he’s done a runner from the hospital.”
The radio was talking to an empty car. “Control to Mr. Frost. Come in, please.”
Frost picked up the handset and in a mock, quavering baritone, sang, “I hear you calling me.”
A pause from the other end, then a reproving voice sniffed, “Please observe the correct radio procedure, Inspector.”
It was Mullett!
“Sorry, Super,” said Frost. “We seem to be on a crossed line.”
County had been on to Mullett about the non arrival of the crime statistics, and Accounts had contacted him wanting to know where the overtime returns were. Frost breezily told Mullett that both returns would go off that day without fail, then signed off quickly.
“Next stop The Coconut Grove, son. I think we should have a little talk with lovable Harry Baskin.”
Like an ageing prostitute who’d had a rough and busy night, The Coconut Grove didn’t look its most seductive in the harsh glare of daylight. Shafts of gritty sunlight grated in through grimed windows, spotlighting every blemish. On asking for Baskin, Frost and Webster were directed through a back door, across a yard piled high with crates of empty beer bottles, and on through to another building from which the sound of a misused piano floated out.
Pushing through a side door marked Staff Only Keep Out, they found themselves in a darkened hall. At the far end of a well-lit stage a long-haired blonde girl, wearing nothing more than a bright-red bra and matching G-string, was twisting and gyrating to the repetitive thump of Ravel’s Bolero, which a pretty, golden-haired man in a floral shirt was bashing out on the stage piano.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” asked Webster.
“Definitely,” replied Frost.
They were halfway down the aisle when the music reached a climax and the girl suddenly twisted around, whipped off the bra with a flourish and stood bare-breasted, nipples quivering, arms triumphantly outstretched, panting with exertion, and smiling into the dark of the auditorium.
“No, no, no,” yelled a man’s voice from the front row.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Frost, thudding down the aisle.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Frost,” said Baskin. The girl looked startled, then embarrassed, and immediately covered her breasts with her hands.
“Get those bloody hands off,” called Baskin. “You’ve got to get used to people seeing you stripped. Flaunt them, darling, flaunt them.”
Baskin was slouched in one of the front-row-centre seats, an enormous cigar in his mouth pointing almost vertically upward like a Titan rocket ready for launch.
“Breaking in a new girl,” he explained as Webster and Frost filled the seats on either side of him. “She’s still a bit shy.”
“I reckon it’s your cigar that’s frightening her,” said Frost.
“From the beginning,” yelled Baskin. The girl put the bra back on and the pianist started butchering Ravel all over again.
“You got my money back yet?” asked Baskin.
“Not yet,” said Webster.
The three men sat side by side, talking to each other but looking straight ahead, their eyes glued to the stage where the blonde was working herself up into a fair simulation of erotic frenzy. The building reeked with the aphrodisiac combination of cigar smoke and female sweat.
“You’ve been up to your old tricks again, Harry,” reproached Frost, eyes dead ahead. “Putting your fright-eners on people. Wrecking their rooms.”
“Now don’t take the bra off so quickly,” pleaded Baskin. “Get the audience drooling for you to unpack your goodies. Tease them, just like you teased me last night.” He turned his head to Frost. “Don’t know what you’re talking about Inspector. I don’t put the frighteners on people. I’m a respectable businessman. She’s got terrific knockers, hasn’t she?”
“Has she?” said Frost vaguely. “I was so engrossed in the music, I didn’t notice. Tell me something, Harry. Do you know Roger Miller?”
Baskin flicked about half a pound of ash from the end of his cigar. “The MP’s son? Of course I know him. He plays the gee-gees. Knocks around with one of my show girls.”
“How’s his luck with the horses?”
Baskin shrugged. “Sometimes he wins, but not often. Usually he loses. His trouble is he doesn’t know when to stop. He burned his fingers last month doubling up. Would have cost me a packet had he won, but, thank God, he didn’t.”
“Does he owe you any money?”
Baskin waggled his cigar reproachfully. “My client’s personal affairs are strictly confidential.”
“Very reassuring,” said Frost. “You should be a doctor at a VD clinic. Gawd, look at that!” The girl had reached the end of her routine and stood stark naked in the centre of the stage, the spotlight sparkling on tiny dewdrops of sweat which glistened on her body like jewels. Frost nudged Webster heavily in the ribs. “The Intimate Bikini Styler Strikes again!” he commented coarsely.
Applauding loudly, Baskin leaped from his seat then he made a circle with his forefinger and thumb and kissed it wetly. “Perfect, darling, absolutely perfect… take a breather.” She draped a red bathrobe over her shoulders, straddled a rickety chair, and began talking earnestly with the pianist, looking even more erotic half covered than she did when she was naked.
“You know Roger Miller’s Jaguar?” asked Frost, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the girl.
“Concorde on four wheels? Yes, I know it. Why?”
“It knocked down an old man last night,” said Frost, watching Baskin closely.
“Oh yes?” murmured Baskin, apparently more concerned with getting his cigar to draw properly.
“The old man died,” continued the inspector.
A streamer of smoke drifted from Baskin’s mouth and lazily twisted and turned as it hit the beam of the spotlight. “I always knew he’d end up killing someone. He drives like a bloody maniac’
“Is he a good customer?” asked Frost.
“He’s a good customer when he wins,” Baskin replied.
“Trouble is, when he loses he don’t want to pay. You have to give him a little nudge.”
“Put in the frighteners, you mean?”
Baskin laughed out a cloud of smoke. “Frighteners? You’re becoming obsessed with that word, Inspector. I sent one of my accounts executives round to his flat to remind him of his obligations. Mr. Miller apologized for his regrettable oversight and immediately gave him a cheque in full settlement.”
“When was this?” asked Webster.
“Two days ago. Why? How come it’s of interest to you?”
It’s of no bloody interest at all, thought Frost dejectedly. Another of his theories had been well and truly booted in the groin. If Miller didn’t owe Baskin any money, then Baskin had no cause to nick Miller’s Jag for a joyride. “Come on son,” he told Webster, ‘time to go.”
They were out amongst the beer crates when Frost stopped dead in his tracks. He looked back at the rehearsal hall and a smile crawled across his face. He jabbed a finger at Webster. “Do you know what we are, son, you and me? Do you know what we are?”
What now? thought Webster, shaking his head wearily and asking, “What are we?”
“A couple of stupid twits, that’s what we are, son. Under our bleeding noses, and we missed it. The bikini line, son, the sleek bloody bikini line!”
Webster leaned resignedly against a tower of crates to listen to Frost’s latest output of garbage. The old fool had been obsessed about this ever since they’d found that shaver in Karen’s bedroom. He was like an overgrown, sniggering schoolboy.
Realizing the constable still hadn’t twigged, Frost took the coloured photograph of Karen Dawson from his pocket and passed it to Webster. “Forget the blonde hair, son, it’s been bleached. Look at the face.
Look carefully at the face.”
Webster stared at the photograph. He still didn’t know what Frost was getting at. Then it hit him. He took the photograph and stared again. The blonde stripper they had been watching on the stage was fifteen-year-old Karen Dawson. The girl that Harry Baskin had mauled with his greasy hands, kissed with his fleshy lips, boasted of taking to his bed, was a kid, an underaged schoolgirl. The swine. The dirty, stinking pig. He was running back to the hall, Frost at his heels, trying to keep up with him.
Baskin was at the door of the hall, lecherousness all over his filthy face. Webster’s feet hammered the ground as he thundered toward him, his hands already balled into fists. Too late Frost realized what was going to happen. “Hold it, Webster!” he yelled, but nothing could hold him now. He seized Baskin by the lapels and slammed him hard against the wall.
“You bastard! You dirty, lecherous bastard!” Before Frost could pull-him off, his fist had smashed into Baskin’s face and there was blood everywhere.
“You stupid sod!” cried Frost, pushing between the two men and shoving Webster away. Baskin’s face was dead white in contrast to the vivid red of the blood pouring from his nose, splashing down his suit and on the ground. One of Baskin’s heavies came thudding around the corner. Frost held out his warrant card and yelled, “Police. Piss off!” The heavy faltered, then turned back.
Webster was still shaking with rage, his shoulders heaving up and down as he fought to gain control of himself. A trembling Baskin stared incredulously at the blood that still cascaded down. He fumbled in his top pocket for a handkerchief and tried to stem the flow. “My God!” he croaked, as the handkerchief rapidly changed colour, “I’m bleeding to death.”
“Hold your head back,” ordered Frost, then, taking him by the arm, steered him toward his office. Webster moved as if to join them. “You stay here,” hissed Frost. “And don’t move an inch not one bloody inch.”
Inside the office he sat Baskin in a chair, his head well back, the now sodden handkerchief held to his nose. Frost’s fingers gently explored the swollen area. “Nothing broken, Harry.”
“No bleeding thanks to that pig out there,” snarled Baskin. “Get me a drink.” Feeling he deserved one himself, Frost poured two drinks.
Baskin was now pulling himself together. He gulped down the whisky, hurled the sodden handkerchief into the wastepaper basket, and found himself a clean one in his desk drawer. “You bastards will pay for this. I’m suing you, I’m suing that sod outside, and I’m suing the whole bloody police force from the Home Secretary downward.” He picked up his phone and began dialling the number of his solicitor. Frost reached out and pressed down on the cradle, cutting him off.
“Forget it, Harry.”
“Forget it?” shrieked Baskin. “No bloody way!” He dragged a mirror from his desk drawer and examined the damage to his face. “Look what that bastard has done to me.”
“No worse than what you did to your security guard last night,” murmured Frost. “So let’s say this evens the score.”
Baskin shook his head so firmly it started his nose bleeding again. “No way, Inspector. That gorilla of yours has gone too far this time.” He moved the phone from
Frost’s reach. “I am now going to phone my solicitor and instruct him to institute proceedings.”
Now it was the inspector’s turn to shake his head. “No you won’t, Harry. If you attempt to sue my detective constable for assault, I shall be reluctantly forced to lie my head off. I’ll swear on oath that you attacked him first and that he was compelled to act in self-defence. It’ll be my word against yours the word of a heroic police officer with the George Cross against the word of a strip-club owner who deflowers fifteen-year-old schoolgirls.”
Baskin stared at Frost as if the man had gone mad. “Fifteen-year-old schoolgirls? What the hell are you going on about?”
In answer, Frost produced the coloured school photograph, pushed it, facedown, across the desk, then flipped it over as if it were the final ace to complete his running flush. “That stripper you’ve been bedding, Harry her name is Karen Dawson. She’s a schoolgirl, and she’s fifteen years old.”
Baskin jabbed a finger at the photograph, then snatched it back as if it had come into contact with something red-hot. He looked pleadingly at Frost for some indication that it was all a mistake. “Fifteen? I don’t believe it.”
“A week ago today she was only fourteen, Harry. I reckon you’re good for at least seven years. The courts hate child molesters. But from what I saw this afternoon, I’ve no doubt she was worth it.”
Harry found a clean section of his handkerchief and used it to mop the sweat from his forehead. Refilling his glass, he downed the contents in one gulp. “You’ve got to believe me Mr. Frost, I had no idea. Blimey, who could tell by looking at her? I’ve seen twenty-eight-year-old women with smaller knockers than she’s got.”
“You don’t tell a lady’s age by the size of her knockers,
Harry. That’s a fundamental principle of English criminal law.” As the whisky bottle was handy, Frost topped up his own glass. “Cheers.”
“Look,” said Baskin, ‘this is all a silly misunderstanding. I’m sure there’s some way of clearing it all up.” As he spoke, he brought out a fat, bulging wallet and riffled his thumb significantly through a hefty chunk of fifty-pound notes.
Frost stiffened. “Aren’t you in enough bloody trouble, Harry?”
The wallet was hastily replaced. “You’ve got to get me off the hook, Mr. Prost.”
Head on one side, lips pursed, Frost pretended to give it some thought. “There’s the question of this assault charge you’re going to make against my constable.”
“What assault charge?” asked Baskin, sounding sincerely puzzled. “I tripped and banged my nose on the wall.”
“No more taking the law into your own hands with your security men? We want Tommy Croll in one usable piece.”
His palms spread upward, Baskin said, “On my word of honour.”
“And lastly,” said Frost, ‘that poor slag of a stripper -who got herself beaten up in the woods. It would be a noble gesture if you kept her on your payroll until she was well enough to work again.”
“Now hold hard,” Baskin protested. “That could take ages… months.”
‘ But nowhere near as long as seven years,” Frost pointed out.
A deep sigh of total surrender. “All right. I’ll pay her.”
Frost drained his glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stood up. “I can’t make any promises,
Harry. I shall simply tell the girl’s parents that she applied for an audition here as a dancer and that’s where we picked her up. I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea the girl will keep her mouth shut, but there’s no way I can force her.”
“I owe you one,” said Baskin.
“Where do I find the girl?” asked Frost.
“In her dressing room, first left, the end of the corridor.”
Webster was waiting outside, still glowering but inwardly feeling sick in the knowledge that this was the end of his career in the force. Why, oh why, couldn’t he learn to control his temper? As Frost approached he glared at him with all the bitter resentment of a man who knows he is completely in the wrong. Let him say one word, just one bloody word, he thought.
With a curt jerk of his head, Frost ordered the constable to follow him. When at last he spoke, the rebuke was fairly mild. “That was bloody stupid, son.”
“Thank you, I’ve worked that out for myself,” snarled Webster. “I suppose you can’t wait to report me to Mullett?”
“Report what to Mullett?” asked Frost. “I saw nothing. Baskin tells me he tripped and banged his nose against the wall. From the size of his hooter I’m inclined to believe that’s more than possible.”
At first he couldn’t take in what the inspector was saying. In that one punch he was sure he had thrown everything away, but suddenly, with his feet on the gallows trap, the last-minute reprieve. Relief made sweat trickle coldly down his back. He wanted to thank Frost but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “How did you get Baskin to agree to that?”
‘ By telling him we wouldn’t bring any charges in respect of the girl.”
Webster stopped dead in his tracks. “No charges? After what he’s done? He’s corrupted a juvenile.”
“Corrupted?” repeated Frost. “Do you really think Baskin was the first? Your sweet, innocent fifteen-year-old virgin has been on the pill for God knows how long…”
Webster stared at him blankly. “On the pill..”.”
“Yes, son. I found the packet in her bedroom last night. They were prescribed for the mother, who must have passed them on to Karen.”
Webster was stunned. “You never told me?”
“I didn’t think it had anything to do with the case, son. The kid was missing. We were called in to find her. Anything else was between her and her mother. Ah, this must be her dressing room.”
They had turned the corner and were in a short corridor with three doors leading off it. One door was marked Staff Toilets Men, another Staff Toilets Women and the door in between, Artists’ Dressing Room. The glamour of show business, thought Frost. “Right, son. She’s inside. Go and get her.” He stepped back.
Webster rapped on the door.
“Yes,” called a girl’s voice.
“Karen, it’s the police.”
Frost groaned. Webster shouldn’t have given the game away. He should have barged straight in and grabbed her. His fears were confirmed by a scuffling sound from inside the dressing room, then two loud clicks as the door bolts were rammed home.
“It’s the police, Karen,” repeated Webster, banging on the door. “Open up.”
“Piss off,” screamed the young schoolgirl.
“Kick the door in,” ordered Frost. “Harry Baskin won’t mind.”
Webster stepped back and kicked, his toe landing just below the door handle. One kick was enough. The door crashed back. He stepped inside a cheerless room with a long, greasy finger marked mirror above a Formica ledge that ran the length of one wall. He couldn’t see Karen. Then someone in the mirror moved. He spun around and there was the girl, stark naked, her clothes bundled in her hand, moving quickly to the door. He reached forward to grab at her. She hurled the clothes in his face, then her knee came up savagely. He doubled up, breathless, almost screaming with pain. Sweet, innocent Karen certainly knew how to hurt a man! He reached out blindly and touched naked flesh, then jerked his head back as long red fingernails clawed bloodied lines down his face. He clutched her wrists, pulling her hands away, finding enough breath to yelp in agony as her teeth sank into his arm.
“I could do with some help, Inspector,” he roared, shaking his wrist free of teeth.
Frost’s head poked around the door, saw the problem, and hastily retreated. “Stand guard outside, son. I’ll send for a woman officer.”
Some fourteen minutes later Dave Shelby’s patrol car nosed its way to the club entrance, and Shelby, followed by detective constable Susan Harvey, climbed out. They sauntered across to the reception lobby where Frost was waiting.
“Here we are, Inspector,” Shelby announced. “One lady police officer delivered safe and sound, as requested.”
“Thank you, Constable,” said Frost coldly, not responding to Shelby’s jocular manner. He was going to have a few quiet words with him when he got him on his own, words that would knock the cockiness out of him.
Unabashed, Shelby asked, “You’re not on this rape inquiry, are you, sir?”
“No,” replied Frost. “If you want to confess you’ll have to see Mr.
Allen.”
Shelby flipped open his notebook. “Can I give you the details? I know who made that anonymous phone call last night. I’ve just interviewed him.”
Frost waved the notebook away. “Give it to Mr. Allen. I’m up to my armpits in naked fifteen-year-old girls at the moment.”
“Some people have all the luck,” called Shelby, quickly walking back to his car.
Frost watched him go. “He’s in a hurry. I’d have thought naked fifteen-year-olds were right up his street.” He turned to the woman constable. “Did he manage to keep his hands off you, Sue?”
She smiled. “He knows better than to try anything with me.”
Frost raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “I’ve summed you up all wrong then, Sue girl. I’d have thought one tickle of his Errol Flynn moustache on your cheek and you wouldn’t be able to get your knickers off fast enough.”
Susan grinned. “What’s the problem, sir?”
He filled her in on the details, then took her back to the dressing room where the wounded Webster, patiently mounting guard, managed a grin of delight when he saw Susan. “Karen’s wedged the chair against the door handle,” he told them.
Susan tried the handle and banged on the door. “Karen, I’m a police officer. Open up.”
“Piss off,” called the girl.
“That’s French for “go away”,” explained Frost. “Boot it in again, son.”
The door crashed back from the onslaught. Karen, her eyes blazing, fingernails clawed, was crouching, ready to meet them, like a karate fighter. She was still stark naked and was not going to let them take her without a fight.
Sue moved into the room; the girl lunged forward to meet her. At the last moment, the woman officer sidestepped and stabbed out her foot to catch the girl on the ankle, sending her sprawling to the floor. Then Sue was down on her, her knee in the girl’s back, her hand forcing the girl’s arm high above her shoulder blades. All Karen could do was scream obscenities and pound the floor impotently with her free hand.
“You can either get dressed,” said the woman detective pleasantly, ‘or I can handcuff you and take you out to the car as you are. Which is it to be?”
To Frost’s disappointment, Karen agreed to get dressed.
A quick phone call to Clare Dawson before the runaway was returned. Frost was hoping she could get her husband out of the house so mother and daughter could get their stories sorted out. When they arrived Max Dawson was out, cruising the streets, looking for his daughter, and wouldn’t be back for half an hour. Apparently his wife hadn’t yet passed on the good news, wanting to surprise him on his return.
With sulky defiance, Karen shrugged off her mother’s attempts to make a fuss of her and just stood staring, with a sly, superior, knowing smile on her face, the smile of one who has power over another. Just wait until my daddy comes home, the smile said. Just wait until I tell him why I ran away.
But Clare, from long practice, knew just how to handle her daughter.
“Do you still want to go to ballet school, darling?”
Instantly, Karen changed back to the fifteen-year-old, the dance-mad schoolgirl, her eyes bright with excitement. “It’s what I want more than anything, Mummy.”
“I think it can be arranged,” said Clare confidently.
“But Daddy has always said no.”
“You leave your father to me,” replied her mother. “But first we’d better have a little chat so we can explain to him what’s been going on.”
Clare showed them to the front door. “Thank you so much,” she gushed. Frost grunted his acknowledgement and walked with Susan to the car. As Webster followed, Clare took his hand and gave it a gentle, conspiratorial squeeze, her finger caressing his palm. “I’m alone here most afternoons,” she whispered. “Always glad of a bit of company.”
As he joined the others in the car, Webster didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or flattered. But he did know it was the best offer he’d had since he arrived in Denton.
“You look happy, son,” commented Frost as Webster slid in behind the steering wheel. “Your beard’s gone all stiff.”
Wednesday day shift (6)
The time had wormed its way around to three o’clock. None of them had eaten, so they took a meal break at a little back-street cafe. The food wasn’t up to much, but it was a happy time for Webster, who found he was hitting it off with Susan Harvey.
It was ten past four as they climbed back into the car. Webster, hoping the woman detective would sit next to him, was disappointed when she and Frost settled themselves down in the back seat. “The cop shop please, driver,” said Frost grandly, ‘and go the pretty way round via the gasworks.” Webster acknowledged the order with a petulant grunt. Frost’s pathetic attempts at humour had long worn paper-thin as far as he was concerned.
“Control to all units in the Denton area.”
Webster turned up the volume.
“Armed robbery at Glickman’s pawnbrokers, 23 North Street. Owner reported shot. Charlie Alpha in attendance but assistance urgently required.”
Frost leaned over to snatch up the handset. “Hello, Control. Frost here. We’re within two minutes of North Street. On our way. Over.”
Webster slammed the car around corners and in and out of back streets as he tried to meet the inspector’s rash and impossible estimate of two minutes. Frost and the girl were sent sliding from one side of the car to the other, their movements echoed by Frost’s spare pair of Wellington boots on the back ledge. Reaching the High Street, they slowed down to let Susan off, then roared away to North Street, a side-turning off Bath Road.
“Left here,” barked Frost. The Cortina nosed into North Street and pulled up abruptly behind area car Charlie Alpha.
The monotonous shrill of an alarm bell cut through the air. A small crowd of sightseers was being pushed away from the entrance to a shuttered shop by a uniformed police constable. Above the shop door a stout iron bracket supported the universal pawnbrokers’ trademark, three brass balls. A fading painted wooden sign announced s. glickman, jeweller and pawnbroker. The premises had a shabby, down-at-heel appearance and didn’t look nearly prosperous enough to warrant the attention of an armed robber.
They darted from the car to the shop, the uniformed man giving a nod of recognition to the inspector. Inside, their feet scrunched over shards of broken glass that powdered the carpet.
It was a tiny, dingy shop. A couple of paces and they were at a glass-fronted counter, its shelves stripped bare of the jewellery it once held. On the wall, to the left of the counter, a shattered glass showcase containing a mess of broken glass, cheap watches, and cigarette lighters. The wall showcase to the right of the counter contained nine-carat gold chains and pendants and appeared to be untouched.
The fat man in the shiny blue-serge suit dabbing blood from his face was Sammy Glickman, the owner. Balding, middle-aged, tiny shifty eyes behind thick-lensed glasses, and a few more chins than the usual allowance, Glickman was slumped on a chair in front of his counter. A police officer, PC Keith Sutton, was questioning him, jotting down his replies.
The sound of the alarm bell was magnified in the enclosed space of the shop. “Can’t someone turn that bloody thing off?” pleaded Frost.
Holding his now crimson and soggy handkerchief tightly against his forehead, the pawnbroker fished a bunch of keys from his pocket, sorted one out, and offered it to Webster. “There’s a switch under the counter… left-hand side.”
Webster killed the alarm. It died immediately but the ghost echo of its high-pitched ringing still scratched at their ears.
The shop was too small to hold four men comfortably, so Frost instructed Webster to go with the other officer and start knocking at doors to find out if anyone saw anything. “Have a look in the road for a licence plate,” he called. “You never know your luck.”
There was now room to move and Frost was able to get close enough to the pawnbroker to examine his injuries. The forehead wound was little more than a deep cut. “The radio reported you were shot, Sammy,” said Frost, sounding disappointed. “I was expecting to find you with your head blown off.”
“Another couple of inches and it could have been, Mr. Frost,” Glickman replied.
“I’ve sent for an ambulance, Inspector,” said Sutton, ‘but it’s not very serious.”
The eyes behind the thick lenses focused indignantly on the constable. “Not very serious? I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. It’s a miracle I’m still alive. He fired straight at me.”
“He missed you, though, didn’t he?” observed Frost, moving behind the counter to poke at the damaged showcase. “And you’re hardly a small target.” Amongst the fragments of shattered glass and the cigarette lighters he spotted some flattened lead pellets. He picked one up with his finger and thumb and displayed it to the constable.
“Yes, sir, I did notice,” said Sutton, sniffing. These damn plainclothes men seemed to think the uniformed branch was blind. “Shotgun pellets. The man fired a warning shot as he was leaving. A splinter of flying glass caused the damage to Mr. Glickman’s forehead.”
“It could have gone in my eye,” moaned Glickman. “Blinded me for life.”
“It could have gone up your arse,” snapped Frost, ‘but it didn’t, so let’s stick to what actually happened.” He dug out his cigarettes and offered the packet around, then had a nose around the shop, pulling at drawers, prodding at showcases. He opened a door behind the counter, and his nose wrinkled at the musty smell of old clothes. Clicking on the light, he faced dusty shelves piled with brown-paper parcels, old suitcases, and hangers full of outdated garments. He returned to the shop, where he examined the security bars and locks fitted to the inside of the main door and shop window. “He got nothing from the window display, then?” he asked.
“Only from the counter,” said Sutton. “Mr. Glickman said he was in and out in a flash.”
Frost nodded, then sat on the corner of the counter, swinging his leg.
“Right, Mr. Glickman. Tell me what happened.”
“What’s there to tell?” asked Glickman. “I’m in my shop, the bell on the door rings, telling me a customer has come in. I raise my head to greet him and I’m looking straight down the barrel of a shotgun. Behind it is this great hulking brute of a man wearing a stocking mask.”
As Glickman was talking, Frost studied the pattern of the shotgun pellet pockmarks on the wall. The spread seemed fairly concentrated and not widespread as would be the case if the gun barrel had been sawn off.
“This gun, Sammy. Was the barrel full-size or had it been sawn off?”
Glickman shrugged. “When a man pokes something like that at you, Mr.
Frost, you don’t get down and measure it.”
“That’s what the girl who was raped said,” murmured Frost.
PC Sutton’s shoulders shook as he tried not to laugh. “It’s pretty certain the barrel wasn’t sawn off, Inspector the damage is too localized. Someone from Forensic should be here soon. They’ll be able to tell us.”
“Yes, they’re such clever bastards,” commented Frost, who had little time for the geniuses of the forensic section. He nodded for Sammy to continue.
“He don’t say a dicky bird, just prods me in the gut with the shooter and indicates I should come around the front and lay facedown on the floor. I don’t need to be told twice. Down I go and I hear him sliding back the counter doors and scooping the cream of my stock into a plastic bag.”
“What sort of stuff, Sammy?”
“Rings, bracelets, brooches, all exquisite items twenty thousand quid’s worth.”
Frost snorted out a lungful of smoke. “Twenty thousand! Do me a favour, Sammy. We’re the police, not the insurance company.”
“All right,” said Sammy reluctantly, ‘perhaps it might have been nearer six thousand. Anyway, he then rams the gun in the back of my neck and says I’m not to move a muscle for ten minutes, otherwise he’ll blow my head off. So I lie there all still, but as soon as I hear the door close, I’m up in a flash and I’m out the street yelling, “Stop, thief”.” He dabbed his forehead again and was disappointed to see that the flow of blood had stopped. “Picture the scene, Air Frost. I’m out in that street yelling, “Stop thief,” and who’s there to hear me? Not a bloody soul! The only person in the street is the robber, climbing into his motor and yanking the stocking mask off his head.”
Frost slid down from the counter. “You saw him with the mask off? Did you see his face?”
“It was the only bloody face in the street. Of course I saw it.”
“Would you recognize him again?”
Glickman folded the handkerchief carefully and put it in his pocket. ‘listen, Mr. Frost, when a man robs me of thirty thousand pounds’ worth of prime stock, I promise you his face becomes memorable.”
“I suppose you didn’t get the registration number of the car?” asked Frost, not too hopefully.
“Of course I got the bloody registration number. It was a red Vauxhall Cavalier, registration number CBZ2303. They’re nice little motors my brother-in-law has one.”
Frost couldn’t believe his luck. Licence plates falling off Jags, and now an armed robber seen without his mask, his car details noted. He instructed Sutton to buzz Control and get the car’s particulars circulated.
“Already done, sir,” said Sutton flatly. He didn’t need to be told to do something as basic as that.
“And you’ve warned Control that the man is armed and dangerous?”
“Of course, sir.” Or as basic as that, either.
Glickman, piqued that he was no longer the centre of attraction, said peevishly, “Do you want to know what else happened, or am I of no further interest now I’ve done half your work for you?”
Frost hitched himself back up on the counter and waved for Sammy to go on.
“Like I said, I’m screaming to an empty street. He must have got fed up with me yelling at him because he swings his shooter round and fires point-blank range. But he misses me and hits that showcase.”
Frost looked at the showcase and lined up the angles. “Either he was a rotten shot, Sammy, or he only meant to frighten you.”
“He certainly frightened me, Inspector. I’ll be putting the biological washing powder to the test tonight, I promise you. Anyway, I fling myself facedown on the pavement until I hear the car roaring off. Then everyone comes running out to see what’s up. When I’m screaming, “Stop thief,” and being fired at, the street is empty. The minute he’s gone they’re standing eight deep on the pavement.”
The shop door opened and Webster, with the other uniformed man, returned to report that they hadn’t come up with a single witness who had seen anything other than a red, or a blue, or a black car roaring off in the distance. Plenty of people said they had heard the gunshot but thought it was a car backfiring.
“If it was an atom bomb going off, they’d say it was a car backfiring,” muttered Glickman.
Frost’s cigarettes were passed around again, and soon the little shop was thickly hazed with smoke. “One thing for sure,” said Frost, ‘whoever did this was either a smalltime crook or a first-timer.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Webster.
“Well,” said Frost, adding a salvo of smoke rings to the already murky atmosphere, ‘if you go in for armed robbery it’s a minimum of seven years, for starters. So why risk seven years robbing a little shithouse like this when, for the same risk, you could rob a bank or a decent jeweller?”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Frost,” said Glickman, sounding offended.
“My pleasure,” replied Frost. “Secondly, he didn’t saw off the barrel as any self-respecting gunman would do. This means he couldn’t keep the gun concealed in a deep pocket. He’d either have to tuck it inside his coat as he crossed from the car to the shop or blatantly wave it about. Finally, what does he do when he gets in here? He dashes in, sweeps odds and ends of Mickey Mouse jewellery into a dustbin sack and is out again in seconds. He could have taken his time and nicked all sorts of things of value, but he was in too much of a hurry. Why?” Like a schoolmaster, he looked around for an answer.
“Because he was bloody scared?” suggested Sutton.
Frost nodded his agreement. “Exactly what I think, young Sutton. It was all so amateurish.”
“It wasn’t amateurish the way he fired that gun at me,” objected Glickman. “He missed me by inches.”
“Thirty-six bloody inches,” said Frost. He pushed himself off the counter and wandered behind it to the till. “I suppose he didn’t touch the takings?” He pressed the No Sale key and the drawer shot open.
“Only the jewellery,” said Glickman, craning his neck to keep an eye on Frost. Some policemen had very sticky fingers.
The till drawer held about seventy pounds. Not rich pickings, but it would have increased the gunman’s haul by about ten percent. Frost was pushing the drawer shut when he saw the small envelope tucked behind the bank notes. He had seen envelopes like that before. Exactly like that. Taken from a drug addict, newly purchased from a pusher and full of heroin.
Sammy Glickman had been mixed up with a lot of shady dealings in the past, but never with drugs. Frost pulled the envelope out. It was far too heavy for heroin. The flap was sealed. He stuck a finger beneath it and ripped it open, then tipped the contents into his palm. Gold. Gold coins. Five golden sovereigns each bearing the head of Queen Victoria.
“I’m waiting to hear the ding of the till drawer being closed,” called the pawnbroker anxiously, finding it difficult to see what Frost was up to through the thickening smoke screen. Frost obliged him and firmly closed the drawer with a satisfying ding. But he didn’t put the sovereigns back. He walked back around the counter and held out his hand.
“What are these, Sammy?”
The eyes behind the thick lenses blinked furiously as they focused on the coins. “I buy all sorts of precious metal… coins, lockets, gold teeth. You can see the sign outside… Best Prices Paid… there’s no crime in it.”
“I didn’t say there was, Sammy.”
Webster craned his neck so he could see what the inspector had found. At first he didn’t realize what the coins were. They looked small and insignificant, not much bigger than a new penny. Then he saw the George-and-Dragon pattern on the reverse. Of course! The stolen Queen Victoria sovereigns. “Where did you get these?” he demanded.
The pawnbroker wriggled in his chair. “I’ve been robbed, I’m wounded, I’m in a state of shock. I demand to go to hospital.”
“Where did you get them?” repeated Webster.
“I bought them this morning. It’s all legitimate.”
If it’s legitimate, then why are you looking so bloody guilty? thought Frost to himself happily. “Who did you buy them from, Sammy?”
“A young bloke about twenty-five, dark hair cut short, black leather jacket. I’ve never seen him before. What’s this all about, Mr. Frost? I’m the innocent victim of a brutal crime. I’m entitled to sympathy, not harassment.”
The summonsed ambulance pulled up outside the shop. Sammy gave a sigh of relief. It would take him to the peace and quiet of the hospital and away from these searching questions.
“Send the ambulance away,” Frost instructed the two policemen, ‘then get back on patrol. Webster and I can handle it from here.”
Glickman’s face fell. “I need hospitalisation, Mr. Frost. I’m feeling bad. It’s delayed reaction from the shock.”
“I’ll get the police surgeon to have a look at you when we lock you up,” said Frost. He said it so matter-of-factly that at first Glickman couldn’t believe what he had heard. Then he did a double take as the import struck home.
“Lock me up? What are you talking about?”
R. D. Wingfield
A Touch of Frost
“Terribly sorry, Sammy,” said Frost, ‘but the sovereigns are stolen property. We’ll have to book you for receiving.”
Glickman’s eyes, magnified behind the lenses, opened wide with feigned amazement. “Stolen property in my shop? I can’t believe it. He said they were family heirlooms.”
“So they were,” said Frost. “Heirlooms of the family he nicked them from.”
“On my dear mother’s funeral plot, Air Frost, if I had the slightest idea they were stolen, I would never have touched them.”
“How much did you give for them?” asked Frost.
The pawnbroker’s tongue crawled around his lips which had suddenly become very dry. “Thirty pounds each… one hundred and fifty nicker the five.”
“Thirty lousy quid!” scoffed Frost. “And you didn’t know they were stolen? That’s less than half of the market value.”
“I offered him a low price, Mr. Frost, expecting he’d push it up higher. That’s business. But he said, “Provided it’s in used fivers, you’ve got yourself a deal.” So, if he was happy I was happy. I gave him the fivers, and he gave me the sovereigns all fair, square and above board.”
“Tell me the rest, Sammy.”
“The rest, Mr. Frost?”
“Thirty quid is a bulk price. He must have told you he had a lot more.”
“Really, Mr. Frost. I’d have known it wasn’t above board if he said he had a lot.”
Frost shook his head in disappointment. “OK, Sammy, we’re booking you for receiving stolen property.”
“Now hold on, Mr. Frost…” Suddenly his shoulders drooped. “All right. He said he had about fifty more. They were mine at the same price providing it was in used fivers. I didn’t have fifteen hundred quid in cash. I said I’d get it from the bank. He said he’d be back tomorrow.”
Frost grinned broadly. “Then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, Sammy. The minute he puts his foot inside that door, you will phone the station and you will make certain he doesn’t leave your shop until the fuzz arrive. If we catch him, I’ll drop the receiving stolen property charge, if not, you’ll be eating Her Majesty’s porridge for a very long time.”
“I’ll co-operate with you in every way I can, Mr. Frost.” “I knew you would, Sammy. Now put your coat on. We’re going walkies to the cop shop.”
The pawnbroker was crestfallen. “The station. But you said…”
“To look at some mug shots,” explained Frost. “To see if you can’t pick us out the bloke with the shooter. It’s part of co-operating with us every way you can.”
Glickman sat in Frost’s office hunched over yet another book of photographs that the bearded detective constable had dumped on the desk. His head was aching and the cup of stewed tea they had reluctantly provided to help him swallow the aspirins for his headache was sending acid ripples across his stomach. He wished he’d never admitted he could identify the gunman so he could now be indoors, in his cosy little flat above the shop, filling in his insurance claim form.
He sighed at the unfairness of life and opened the latest book, screwing his eyes as the monotonous rows of criminal faces shivered in and out of focus. He had looked at so many photographs he was now beginning to doubt his ability to recognize the man with the shooter even if he saw him face to face. A cough from the bearded detective prodded him to hurry so the current album could be replaced by yet another. The world seemed to be jam-packed with photographed criminals.
A creak as the door opened slowly, and Inspector Frost backed in carrying three more lethal mugs of stewed police tea. Dumping one in front of the pawnbroker, he asked, “Any luck yet?”
Glickman’s head shook from side to side. “I’ve never seen so many ugly faces in all my life.”
“You wait till you see Mr. Mullett’s wedding photos,” said Frost.
Glickman couldn’t even manage a polite laugh. He turned the page and scowled down on rows of faces all scowling back at him. Didn’t crooks ever smile? They were probably photographed after drinking this awful tea!
It was a job to concentrate with so much going on, so many people coming into and going from Frost’s tiny office. First there was a panic about a missing girl. It appeared that a neighbouring division had picked up a schoolgirl believing her to be a teenager called Karen Dawson who Frost had advised them was missing. As far as Glickman could gather, the trouble was that Frost had already found the girl but neglected to let the other divisions know. And then a little fat detective sergeant called Arthur Hanlon had been in to report on the interviews with various down-and-outs. It seemed that Frost was interested in the last hours of someone who was found dead, smothered in sick, down a public convenience. Glickman, shuddering at all the unpleasant details, felt like being sick himself.
Hanlon was sent out to find more tramps to talk to, and no sooner was he gone than there was a commotion about a return the inspector was supposed to have sent off the previous night, but hadn’t. And between all these interruptions, Glickman was expected to concentrate on page after monotonous page of faces that were all starting to look the same. He flicked over a page with barely a glance. A sharp tap on his shoulder from the frowner with the beard.
“You didn’t look at that page,” Webster admonished sternly.
Damn police. He felt like identifying anyone, whoever it was, just to end the ordeal. He turned the page.
Frost drained his tea, wiped his mouth, and poked in a cigarette. He clicked his lighter, but it failed to flame, so he rummaged through his desk for a box of matches.
“I can do you a nice automatic gold-plated lighter with your name engraved for only 29.95,” Glickman offered. “That’s cheaper than wholesale.”
“But a damn sight dearer than a box of matches,” said Frost. “You keep your big nose stuck in that book, Sammy, and stop trying to make a profit out of poor, overworked policemen.” He slouched back and stuck his feet up on his desk, knocking his mug over in the process. The phone rang. He picked it up and listened. “I’ve already told you, the crime statistics will go off tonight, definite… unless you keep interrupting me with these stupid phone calls.” He thumped the phone down.
No sooner had Frost disposed of that call than the door opened and a tall, important-looking policeman in a tailored uniform, all teeth, moustache, and buttons, marched in. The frowner stiffened to attention. Frost swung his legs off the desk, scrabbled for a file, and pretended to be adding up columns of figures.
“I was expecting your further report on the hit-and-run investigation,” said Mullett stiffly.
“Sorry about that, Super,” said Frost. “Lots of things have happened.
We found that missing girl.”
“Yes, I heard, and apparently you failed to let other divisions know.”
“I got tied up with this armed robbery,” explained the inspector, who had hoped the Commander wouldn’t have heard about that little faux pas.
“I don’t want you to take on extra cases, Inspector,” Mullett told him. “I want you to concentrate on the hit-and-run. I get phone calls every five minutes from the House of Commons asking what progress we’re making. What about Julie King? I understand she confirms that Roger Miller was with her all night.”
“She looks the sort who would say anything, or do anything, for a couple of quid,” said Frost, failing to locate his ashtray and shaking ash over Mullett’s shoes.
Mullett stared down at his shoes and flicked them distastefully. “If, as he claims, the car was stolen from outside the girl’s flat, have you made house-to-house inquiries in the area in case anyone saw something?”
Flaming hell! thought Frost, I never gave it a thought, “The very next item on our agenda, Super,” he lied. “Just as soon as we’ve finished with this gentleman here. He’s the victim of the armed robbery.”
“The bullet missed me by inches,” said Glickman, putting in his two-penny-worth.
“And we’ve got a lead on those sovereigns,” added Frost, determined to throw in all the pluses.
Mullett drew in his breath. “All I am interested in, Frost, is the hit-and-run. I must have something positive to tell Sir Charles Miller. Put the house-to-house inquiry in hand right away.”
“Right away, sir,” Frost assured him, putting his thumb to his nose and waggling his fingers as soon as the door closed behind his Divisional Commander. Then he stood up and declaimed dramatically: “She was only a stripper’s daughter, so very good and kind No stain upon her character, but a mole on her behind.”
Webster’s scowl deepened. How childish could you get? He squinted at his wristwatch. Nearly five past seven. He smothered a yawn and felt tiredness creeping over him. Hardly any sleep last night, already on duty for ten hours solid and they still had the house-to-house inquiries about the stolen Jaguar to make. He wouldn’t see the inside of his rented room much before midnight. Later he would realize what an optimistic estimate that was.
The phone rang. Frost listened and frowned. “Thanks,” he grunted, “I expected as much.” He hung up. “The red Vauxhall Cavalier,” he told
Webster. “It was reported stolen at three o’clock this afternoon.” He stretched out his arms and yawned openly. “As soon as Sammy has identified the man with the golden gun, we’ll go home. I could do with an early night.” Webster reminded him of the house-to-house, but Frost wasn’t interested. “That can wait. We’ve got more important things to do than waste time trying to clear that little snot. No, we’ll have an early night.” He stared pointedly at Webster’s beard, then began to sing “Does Santa Claus sleep with his whiskers over or under the sheets
…?”
Glickman’s shoulders quivered with suppressed laughter. He thought the inspector was a real card. The bearded one had no sense of humour and was so easily riled. Glickman’s eyes travelled over a page filled with sneering punks and scowling skin-heads. He licked his finger and turned the page.
He stared. He blinked. Then stared again.
“It’s him!”
Frost and Webster leaned over his shoulder. “This one!” insisted Glickman, jabbing a pudgy finger on the glossy black-and-white.
“Are you sure?” Frost asked doubtfully.
“I’m one hundred fifty percent sure,” claimed the pawnbroker. “You can’t get any surer than that.”
The photograph was of a rather hopeless-looking individual with tight curly hair and a mournful expression. Webster read out his details. “Stanley Eustace, aged forty-seven…”
“I know who it is,” cut in Frost, who had found his matches but seemed to have lost his cigarettes. “Useless Eustace. He’s a petty crook, shoplifting, breaking and entering, nicking cars, stripping lead from church roofs. He usually gets caught because he’s so bloody stupid. But he’s never used a shooter in his life.”
“Well, he used one this afternoon,” Glickman said positively. “Can I go home now?”
No spare cars were available, so Glickman, bitterly complaining, was left to find his own way home. Frost then asked Webster to bring the Cortina around to the front. They were off to pick up Stan Eustace.
Webster hesitated. “He’s armed and dangerous. Hadn’t we better take some reinforcements with us… and a couple of police marksmen?”
But Frost scorned this suggestion. “I know him, son. I’ve nicked him enough times. He’s harmless. The gun was only for show.”
“For show!” exclaimed Webster. “He nearly blasted that showcase from the wall.”
“Probably got his finger caught in the trigger,” said Frost airily. “You can stay in the car if you like. I’ll go in the house and drag him out.”
He was slipping on his mac when an agitated Johnny Johnson poked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt you, Inspector, but you haven’t seen Dave Shelby on your travels, have you?”
“No,” replied Frost, ‘not since he delivered sexy Sue to us at The Coconut Grove round about two o’clock. Why?”
The station sergeant rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I’m dead worried, Jack. Since he left you he hasn’t made any routine calls, hasn’t contacted us or answered his radio. He was supposed to report to me, here, at seven he’s only doing a part-shift but he didn’t show up.”
Frost didn’t think there was any cause for concern. “He’s probably in bed with some woman somewhere and forgotten the time.”
“I’m really worried, Jack,” insisted Johnson, and he looked it. “For all Shelby’s faults he’s never once failed to report in.” He waved away Frost’s offer of a cigarette.
“Have you had a word with Mr. Allen, Sergeant?” inquired Webster.
“Shelby said he was going to see him about the anonymous phone call.”
“There’s your answer,” said Frost, tucking his scarf inside his mac. He sent Webster out to ask Allen. Within a couple of minutes Allen, accompanied by Sergeant Ingram, marched in.
“What’s this about Shelby?” snapped Allen. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
“I saw him this morning,” said Ingram, ‘but I’ve been off duty all afternoon.”
“He’s gone missing,” said Frost, giving brief details. “Johnny’s worried about him.”
“He hasn’t reported in for nearly five hours,” added the station sergeant.
“Five hours!” exclaimed Allen in disbelief. “Why have you waited five hours before telling anyone?”
The station sergeant looked embarrassed. “He was doing a job for Mr.
Frost taking a WPC over to The Coconut Grove. I thought Mr. Frost might have commandeered his services and told him not to answer his radio.” It was
Frost’s turn to look embarrassed. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had cut corners by doing that.
“For heaven’s sake,” said Allen, ‘he’s in a patrol car. You can’t lose a police officer and a patrol car.”
“I’ve asked all patrols to look out for him,” said Johnson. “No sightings yet.”
“Have you tried the hospitals?” asked Frost. The sergeant nodded.
“Then what about his home? He might have gone straight there.”
“He would have signed off first,” said Johnson.
“Try his home anyway,” ordered Allen, ‘but be tactful. We don’t want to get his wife worried.”
Anxiously watched by all the others, Johnson dialled Shelby’s house.
“No, he’s not back yet,” replied Mrs. Shelby. “I’m expecting him soon. Any message?”
“Not really,” said Johnson, trying to sound unconcerned. He’s probably on a job for Mr. Frost, but I wanted to grab him before he left. Ask him to ring me when he gets in, would you?” He replaced the receiver slowly, his head bowed. “I’m worried,” he said. “Bloody worried.”
Ingram walked across to the wall map behind Frost’s desk. “I’ve had a nasty thought,” he said, and he pointed to the wall map. “North Street is here. The armed man in the getaway car was heading off in this direction.. which would take him smack bang into Shelby’s patrol area.”
Allen squeezed past Webster to study the wall map himself. “You’re suggesting that Shelby could have spotted the getaway car and tried to intercept it?”
“It’s possible, sir,” answered Ingram, “The gunman’s armed. Shelby could have got himself into trouble.”
Allen tugged at his lip, then turned to Frost. “What do you think?”
Frost stuck his hands in his mac pocket and drew hard on his cigarette. “If Shelby spotted the car, he wouldn’t have gone after it off his own bat. He’d have radioed in.” Johnny Johnson nodded his agreement.
“But his radio might be on the blink,” said Allen, ‘which is why we didn’t get any calls earlier. He could have tried to stop the getaway car and the gunman could have turned nasty… wounded him, or taken him hostage.”
“The gunman,” interjected Frost, ‘is Useless Eustace -Stan Eustace. Glickman identified him. Stan would never hold a gun to a copper in his life.”
“And he would never have committed an armed robbery in his life,” retorted Allen with a sarcastic smile, ‘but he did this afternoon.” He looked once more at the wall map. “It’s pointless wasting time speculating. A police officer has gone missing, so we take no chances.” He moved his head to the station sergeant. “All leave is stopped, Johnny. You’d better start calling the off-duty men in. We’ll have to get a full-scale search organized.”
“While you’re getting it organized,” said Frost, edging toward the door, ‘me and Fungus Face will pay a visit to Stan Eustace’s house. If he doesn’t know he’s been identified, we might be able to pick him up with only minimum loss of life.” He beckoned for Webster to follow him and was away.
“Get the search organized,” Allen instructed Ingram. “I’ll go and break the news to Mr. Mullett.”
Wednesday day shift (7)
The tiny garden in front of Stanley Eustace’s semidetached house in Merchants Lane was overgrown with weeds, and the lawn had as fine a crop of thistles as Frost had ever seen. Lights were on downstairs and a radio was playing. There was no escape route from the back of the premises, so there was no need for the two detectives to split up.
Frost pushed the door bell. It wasn’t working, so he had to bang on the door with his hand. He tapped gently, hoping it might sound like an insurance salesman and not a visit from the fuzz.
Webster made a point of hanging back, expecting any minute to see the barrel of a shotgun break through a window. Frost could prattle on about Eustace being harmless until he was blue in the face. Webster remembered the story Johnny Johnson had told him only that morning of how Frost thought the Bennington’s Bank gunman was harmless and got himself a bullet in the face to prove him wrong.
No-one seemed to want to open the door, so Frost banged again, a little harder this time. He lifted the flap of the letterbox and peeked through- He was rewarded by a Cinemascope view of a white-slacked crotch approaching. He straightened up smartly as the door opened and Sadie Eustace, Stanley’s well-padded, tough little brunette wife, in white slacks, black jumper, and enormous blue doughnuts of dangling earrings, put her hands on her hips and demanded to know what they wanted.
“Stan in, Sadie?” asked Frost, pushing past her and jerking his head to the stairs for Webster to search the upper rooms.
“Where’s your warrant?” screamed Sadie, following behind the inspector as he opened and shut doors, looking for her husband.
“Warrant?” said Frost, going through the elaborate pantomime of patting his pockets as if trying to locate it. “I’ve got it here somewhere.” By the time he had patted the last pocket he had looked in every downstairs room.
There was a crashing of doors from above. “What’s that hairy bastard doing up there?” cried Sadie, frowning up the stairs where Webster, fearing a stomachful of lead shot, was flinging open doors, then pressing himself flat against the wall a la Starsky and Hutch. The last door he crashed open was the bathroom, where the shock waves sent a mirror tumbling down from a shelf to shatter on the floor. That was when Webster actually did fling himself flat on his face, hugging the carpet and inhaling dust.
“You all right, son?” called Frost up the stairs.
“Yes,” said Webster curtly, standing up and brushing dust from his clothes. “I slipped.” He thudded downstairs to the kitchen where Sadie, her arms folded, her earrings quivering angrily, was glaring at the inspector.
“You come bursting into my house without a warrant ‘
“I thought I had it on me, Sadie,” said Frost, not in the least shame-faced. “My mistake. So where is Stan out selling the loot?”
“Whatever you want him for, he didn’t do it. He hasn’t been out of the house all day. What’s it about?”
“Armed robbery,” Webster told her. Behind her he could see a stripped pine-wood paper-towel dispenser that Stan had fixed to the wall. It was hanging lopsidedly from one corner.
“Armed robbery? My Stan?” She laughed derisively. “Do me a favour!
You’re out of your tiny minds.”
“No doubt about it, Sadie, I’m afraid,” said Frost, trying to fix the paper-towel dispenser in place, then giving it up as a bad job. “It’s got your Stanley’s fingerprints all over it it was a balls-up from start to finish.”
The phone in the hall rang. Sadie stiffened. “Excuse me,” she said, trying to sound casual, but Frost barred her way. “Answer it, son,” he told Webster.
The phone was on a telephone table under the stairs. Webster picked it up and listened. The sound of pay-phone pips, which stopped when the money was inserted. “Hello… is that you, Sadie?” asked a man’s voice. In the background, Webster could hear traffic rumbling past the kiosk. “Sadie, it’s me, Stan. I’m in a spot of bother. I need your help.”
“Stan, it’s the bloody police,” Sadie screamed from the kitchen.
Immediately there was a click, then a splutter of the dial tone.
Webster hung up and returned to the kitchen.
“Stanley?” asked Frost. Webster nodded. “Well, he knows we’re on to him now, son.” He turned to Sadie. Her bosom was heaving and her eyes were ablaze with defiance. “Nice one, Sadie, but what’s the point? He can’t keep running all his life.” She said nothing. Her lethal expression said it all.
They let themselves out. As they closed the door behind them they could hear her crying.
Back in the car Frost was wondering whether to tuck it around a side-turning and wait a while in case Stanley returned, but he decided against it. Even Useless Eustace wasn’t that stupid.
Then the radio called him. Johnny Johnson, sounding grim.
“Yes, Johnny?”
“We’ve just had a phone call, Jack. A Mr. Charles Fryatt. He reports seeing an apparently abandoned police car.”
Frost stiffened. “Where?”
“In Green Lane, the cut-through to the main road.”
Frost felt his heartbeats quicken. “And Shelby?”
“Mr. Fryatt says he saw no sign of a driver, not that he looked very far. He thought he’d better get straight to a phone and tell us. Can you get over there?”
“On our way,” said Frost. “Over and out.”
Green Lane was little more than a bumpy dirt track turning out of Bath Road and almost petering out before it reached Denton Road. The Cortina jolted and shuddered as it picked its way over the potholes and followed the twisting lane down into a depression completely hidden from both main roads.
“Look out!” called Frost and Webster braked abruptly as the headlights swooped down on the bulk of something directly in their path. It was Shelby’s patrol car, the Ford Escort, looking lost and miserable in the darkness.
Cautiously, they approached. The driver’s door gaped open; a stream of police-channel chatter flowed from the radio. Frost’s torch beam pried inside. The keys swung from the ignition, a clipboard with the day’s standing instructions lay on the passenger seat. He picked up the handset and radioed through to Control to report they had arrived at the scene.
“Any sign of Shelby?” Johnson asked anxiously.
“Not yet,” replied the inspector.
“Don’t move!” called Webster urgently. “Just look down, by your feet.”
About an inch or so from where Frost was standing the beam of Webster’s torch glinted on something. The ground was wet. Stained with red. Frost dropped to his knees to examine it closer. He dabbed it with his finger. It was blood. A lot of blood.
“And look there!” called Webster, swinging his torch up to the rear-door window of the patrol car.
The window was a crazy paving of shattered glass, milkily opaque. Embedded in the glass, also held in the paint work of the door, were tiny flattened pieces of metal. Lead pellets, identical to the pellets found in the wall at the pawnbroker’s. Ingram’s theory wasn’t looking so farfetched now.
“Shit!” said Frost. He returned to the handset. “Johnny. It doesn’t look too happy, I’m afraid. There’s blood and shotgun pellets all over the place. You’d better send a full team down here right away.”
Within twenty minutes the area was cordoned off and was droning with mobile generators that fed the many floodlights illuminating the scene. Men from Forensic were crawling, inch by inch, over the car. Scene-of-crime officers were taking photographs with blinding blue flashes, dusting for prints and circling blood splashes and lead pellet pockmarks with white chalk. A group of off-duty men who had spent most of the previous night and this morning combing Denton Woods on their hands and knees now scoured the scrubland on their hands and knees.
Frost, leaning against his Cortina, watched gloomily, the smoke from his cigarette spiralling upward. This was the time for experts and specialists and for attention to detail, so he kept well out of the way. Webster, who had been talking to a couple of the Forensic men, came over to join him.
“Forensic says the ground’s too hard to leave any proper impression, but there are traces of a second car. The other vehicle was ahead of Shelby’s patrol car, probably blocking the road. It looks as if Shelby stopped, got out, and was fired on as he walked toward the other car.”
“Then where is he?” asked Frost.
“Probably been taken away in the other car. There are marks where something was dragged.”
“Why?” said Frost, scratching his head. “Why not leave him?” He looked up. “Hello… what does that toffee-nosed git want?” One of the Forensic team, a man with long grey hair, was waving Frost over to the abandoned car.
“Preliminary report, Inspector,” he announced briskly. “The blood on the ground and the blood splashed on the car is group B, which is Police Constable Shelby’s group. The quantity of blood spilt suggests the wounding must have been extensive. Obviously, without knowing the area of the wounding, we can’t be more specific. From the quantity of pellets we have recovered it seems pretty definite that only one cartridge was fired, and from the flattening of the pellets and the spread, I think we can safely say that the gunman was not much more than nine feet away from the patrol car. In other words, he would have been standing about… here.” He moved to a point some nine feet away and marked it with his heel. “Our reconstruction is that the other car had already stopped. Shelby got out of his vehicle and walked toward the other car. The gunman climbed from his car and shot your policeman, who fell to the ground, bleeding extensively. The gunman then dragged Shelby to his own car and drove off with him.”
Frost looked down at the darkening pool which sluggishly reflected the overhead lights. “Any idea how long the blood has been there?”
“I’m sorry, Inspector, I should have said. About four to five hours.”
Frost nodded gloomily. This would tie in with the time Stan Eustace was speeding away from the pawnbroker’s.
“We’d like to take the car back for detailed examination,” said another of the Forensic team.
“Sure,” agreed the inspector, trying to work out what he should do next. Everyone was looking for the red Vauxhall Cavalier, and until that was sighted all he could do was wait.
Two more cars pulled up. Mullett emerged from his silver grey Rover at the same time as Allen and Ingram climbed out of their black Ford. Like an army detachment, all keeping perfect step, they marched purposefully toward Frost.
“Nasty business,” said Mullett after peering into the abandoned Escort and examining the blood puddle. Allen, not trusting the garbled version he would get from Frost, took the situation report direct from Forensic before bustling back to join the Divisional Commander.
“Anyone who has lost that amount of blood is going to need medical treatment, and damn quickly,” Allen snapped. “I take it you’ve warned all doctors and hospitals, Frost?”
“Yes, I did manage to think that out for myself,” said Frost.
“Hospitals and doctors all advised.”
Missing with his first barrel, Allen fired the second. “And you’ve got a car watching Eustace’s house? He’s bound to try and sneak back.”
Bull’s-eye! thought Frost ruefully. “Actually we were just on our way there.” He began to move toward the car.
“No. You stay here,” said Allen, thinking what a feather in his cap it would be if he were the one who arrested
Eustace. “This requires a police marksman, like Sergeant Ingram.” He swung around to Mullett. “We’ll need to draw a revolver from the armoury, sir. Would you arrange the necessary authorisation?” And with the Divisional Commander’s agreement, he yelled for Ingram to join him and trotted off to his car.
Good bloody riddance, thought Frost, watching them drive away.
“Nasty business,” said Mullett again.
A squawk from a car radio. One of the uniformed men picked up the handset and answered the call, then waved and yelled, “Air Frost. Control wants to speak to you urgently.”
“Right,” said Frost, leaving Mullett with Webster, neither of whom could think of a thing to say to the other. Mullett dredged his mind for some innocuous small talk. “Getting on all right?” he said at last.
“Yes, thank you, sir,” replied Webster tonelessly, his eyes fastened on Frost, who was leaning against the car, the handset to his ear, his expression revealing that something was terribly wrong.
Frost walked slowly back to the Commander, his face grim. “Mr.
Mullett,” he said.
Mullett felt the cold of approaching bad news and shivered. “Yes, Frost?”
“PC Shelby, sir. They’ve found him in a ditch about three miles from here, just off the new Lexington Road.”
“Is he all right?” whispered Mullett. A silly question because he already knew the answer. The expression on Frost’s face simply screamed it out.
Frost looked down at the blood on the lane. “No, sir. He’s dead.”
“That must be him,” said Webster as the car headlights picked out the figure of a man flagging him down. The man in a thick overcoat and muddy boots was a farm labourer. He had found the body.
“He’s down here,” said the man, his boots clomping as he took them down a winding lane that snaked back to the farm where he worked. They followed in silence. Tall boundary hedges on each side made the lane very dark. A little way down, and they could hear the gurgle of water. It reminded Frost of the previous night when he’d followed Dave Shelby down those steps to the body of Ben Cornish. The clomping of boots stopped. The man pointed to where the lane started to make a lazy curve and where a drainage ditch, some two feet deep, hugged the side of a hedge-bordered field. From behind the hedge the plaintive lowing of cattle quivered gently in the darkness.
“He’s in there,” said the farm labourer. “In the ditch.” He wasn’t going any farther. He had seen it once. He didn’t want to see it again.
The two detectives moved forward. A narrow verge, overgrown with lank grass, separated the ditch from the lane. Flattened grass lurched over and combed the surface of muddied water which overflowed slightly at that point because of some obstruction. Webster fumbled for his torch and clicked the button.
A waxen hand, bobbing gently up and down, poked through green slime. The body was sprawled facedown in the stagnant murk. The water made the police uniform look jet black.
“I tried to pull him out,” called the labourer from the other side of the lane. “I thought he might still be alive. But when I saw his face
…”
Frost knelt on the wet grass and plunged his hand through the slime to grab Shelby’s hair so he could lift the head. As it broke through the surface, Webster stifled a cry and Frost felt his stomach writhe in protest.
The head, dripping water and blood, had only half a face. The left-hand side was bloodied pulp with part of the cheek and lower lip flapping down, showing teeth and bone. There was no left eye, only a spongy red socket, and the forehead was pocked with embedded lead shot. Frost couldn’t look any more. He released his grip, letting the head fall back in the ditch with a hollow plop. He dried his hand by wiping it on his mac.
Webster was the first to speak. “Shall we get him out?”
“No,” said Frost, staring into the distance. “Not until the police surgeon has seen him. You know what a fussy little bastard he is.” What is this, he thought, a rerun? I said all this last night.
After taking a few details, they let the farm labourer get off home. Then a scene-of-crime officer arrived with his expensive Japanese camera and his ultra fast colour film and took flash photographs of the ditch, the grass, and the bobbing white hand. Nothing else to photograph until the arrival of the police surgeon.
“There he is,” called Webster, watching a car gingerly nose its way up the lane, pulling up a few feet away from the two detectives. Slomon climbed out, nodded briefly to Frost, then peered into the ditch. “Have I got to get down there?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Frost, ‘you bloody well have. “Just let Slomon try to skimp this examination.
The doctor returned to the car for his Wellingtons. He pulled them on, removed his coat, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Then, very carefully, he stepped down into the ditch. “I’d like some light, please.”
Three torch beams homed in on him as he busied himself with his instruments and thermometers. In spite of the difficult working conditions, Slomon took his time, determined not to repeat the fiasco of the previous night. He explored the body very carefully before clambering out.
“At a guess, he’s been dead between four to six hours,” he reported, drying his hands on a towel from his car. “Impossible to be precise in these conditions, but the post-mortem will pin it down.” He rolled down his sleeves and shrugged on his jacket. “Again, the post-mortem will confirm, but I’m pretty certain he was dead before he was dumped in the ditch. He wouldn’t have survived long with those injuries, anyway.”
The poor bastard wouldn’t have wanted to live with his face looking like that, thought Frost. “Can we move him, Doc?”
“I don’t see why not. The pathologist won’t be able to do much with the body as it is.” Slomon went back to his car promising his written report within the hour.
The scene-of-crime officer seemed too busy with his camera to help, so Webster and Frost pulled off their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and stepped into the ditch. The water was as cold as death as it lapped around their bare legs, and their feet sunk into squelchy black mud. With Frost taking the shoulders and Webster the legs, they heaved. Shelby was heavy and stubborn. He clung to the bottom. They gritted their teeth and pulled. Suddenly, the body tore free from the grip of the thick mud and emerged through the slime, the head with its hanging flaps of flesh flopping down, streaming dirty stinking water. The proceedings were punctuated by blinding blue flashes ripping into the darkness as the scene-of-crime officer took photograph after photograph.
They laid Dave Shelby on the grass verge, well away from the flattened grass that Forensic would want to crawl over and examine. The scene-of-crime officer brought a plastic sheet from the boot of his car and they draped it over the body.
From the dark distance they heard the plaint of an ambulance siren, then saw its flashing blue light bobbing over the top of the hedges as it picked its way through the winding lane. But before it reached them, other car headlights flared. The Rover and the Ford. Mullett, Allen, and Ingram approached, their faces set.
Frost stepped back from the covered body. Mullett bent over and lifted a corner of the plastic sheet, then, his face screwed up as if in pain, turned his head. “Such a waste. A fine young officer. Such a wicked waste.”
He moved away, his place taken by Allen, who knelt by the body, a torch in hand, peering at the horror of the shattered face as if examining a suspect piece of steak from the butchers. At last he replaced the sheet and straightened up.
Mullett was finding it difficult to control his emotions. “Whoever did this,” he said, “I want him. I don’t care how many men it takes, I want him.” To Frost he said, “I’m putting Mr. Allen in charge. You will take over his cases.”
“Right,” acknowledged Frost, who hadn’t really expected Mullett to allow him to handle an investigation of this importance.
Mullett cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. He spoke to Frost but didn’t look at him. “Someone’s got to tell Shelby’s wife,” he said.
His wife! Young Mrs. Shelby, not much more than a teenager, with two kiddies, one three, the other eighteen months, and a third on the way.
“I thought you’d be doing that, sir,” said Frost.
Mullett stared straight ahead and slapped his palm with his leather driving glove. “I want the news broken gently,” he said. “If she sees the Divisional Commander turning up on her doorstep… I understand she’s pregnant… the shock… It might be better if you
…” He let the rest of the sentence hang.
“You’re ordering me to do it, then?” asked Frost, determined not to volunteer.
“Er, yes,” muttered Mullett, wishing the inspector wouldn’t drive him into a corner like this. “It would be best.”
For you, you bastard, but not for me, thought Frost bitterly. “All right, Super. If you say so.”
Mullett, relieved to have wriggled out of the unpleasantness, put on his sincere expression. “And tell Mrs. Shelby that if there is anything at all I can do to help in her moment of sorrow, she has only to ask. Her husband was one of my finest officers.” As Frost moved off, he called after him, “And tell her we’re going to get the swine who did it.”
“Yes, that should cheer her up no end,” muttered Frost as he called Webster over and opened the door of the Cortina.
Lying back wearily in the passenger seat, he shook the last cigarette from the packet. “This is one bloody job I hate, son. I’ve done it enough times, so I ought to know.” A stream of smoke hit the wind-screen and spread out. “Back to the station, first. There’s something I’ve got to do.” He had remembered the candid photographs in Shelby’s locker. He didn’t want some well-meaning person parcelling them with the dead constable’s effects and sending them to his widow.
The mood at the station was one of cold shock and white-hot anger. “He was a bloody good bloke, Jack,” said Bill Wells. “One of the best.” Frost said nothing.
Shelby’s death had upset him as much as it had anyone, but Shelby wasn’t a bloody good bloke. He was shifty, lazy, a lecher, and a liar.
He made his way to the locker room. It was empty. He found the key that worked before and opened up Shelby’s locker. The camera was there but the photographs were not. He swore softly and locked up, then went to rejoin Webster in the car.
They sped through the main roads, all traffic lights with them just when Frost wanted delay, wanted to put off as long as possible the moment when Shelby’s wife opened that door.
Shelby’s two-storey semi was on a corner its downstairs lights behind bright-red curtains glowed welcomingly. Webster slid the car into an empty parking space on the other side of the road and switched off the engine. Frost made no attempt to move. He found a fresh packet of cigarettes and slowly stripped off the cellophane. He took his time lighting a cigarette to his satisfaction, then crushed it out in the car’s overfilled ashtray. “Damn and sodding blast!” he cried. “This is what Mullett’s paid his inflated bloody salary for, to do lousy jobs like this.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands and seemed to cheer up now he had got that off his chest. “Come on, let’s get it over and done with. You go and find a woman neighbour who can stay with her, and I’ll break the news.”
Through a red-painted gate and up a small path to the front door, where he thumbed the buzzer. Excited voices from inside. Quick, light footsteps, then the door opened slowly. A child, a three-year-old boy in light-blue pyjamas and smelling of Johnson’s bath soap, regarded him with a puzzled frown. “I thought you were my daddy,” he said.
“Is your mummy there?” Frost asked, again mentally cursing Mullett for being a cowardly bastard. This was going to be harder than he thought.
A young woman opened a door at the end of the hall. When she saw Detective Inspector Frost standing there, and not her husband, the colour seeped from her face and she briefly held the doorframe very tightly to steady herself. “Go in the other room and play for a bit, Tommy,” she told the child, doing her best to keep her voice sounding normal. As the boy pushed past her, she walked slowly to the front door.
“Hello, love,” said Frost, realizing he had forgotten to check at the station to find out what her first name was. “Do you think I could come in? I’ve got something to tell you.”
She took him to the kitchen, looking in at the lounge on the way through to make sure the children were all right. A small, warm, friendly kitchen. Frost could smell something cooking the appetising aroma of a casserole, a meal that could be kept in the oven on a low heat for ages without spoiling. Ideal if your husband was inclined to come home late. On the small kitchen table, which was laid with a white tablecloth, were two place settings. She invited Frost to sit, then went over to the hob to stir something in a saucepan, her back to him. He remained standing.
Very busily engaged in stirring what didn’t need stirring, she asked, “Is he hurt?”
“He’s dead, love,” said Frost bluntly. Her back stiffened. She carried on stirring, the spoon clack, clack, clacking against the side of the saucepan.
“I knew something was wrong when I phoned the station. They kept saying he was working late, but I knew.”
“I wish you’d cry,” said Frost. “I wish you’d bloody cry.”
And then her face crumpled and her body was racked with sobbing.
Frost held out his arms and gripped her tightly. “That’s right, love, just cry.” He could feel her scalding tears running down his face, trickling on to his neck. He held her, saying nothing, sharing her grief. Then she was still. “How did it happen?” she whispered.
“He was shot, love. He was trying to stop a cowboy with a gun.”
She moved away from him and rubbed her face dry with her apron, then she turned off the oven and the hob and slumped down heavily in one of the chairs at the table. Frost pulled out the other chair and sat next to her, his face wet and stinging from her tears.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Me?” said Frost in surprise. “I’m fine, love.” But his hands were shaking.
“He was a marvelous husband,” she said, ‘really marvelous. He idolized me and the kids. We were all he lived for. He would never look at another woman, although they kept looking at him. They all fancied him, he was so good-looking, you see; but he was mine. We loved each other.”
“I know,” said Frost. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said.
The voice at the other end said “Denton Echo, here. Could I speak to Mrs. Shelby, please?”
“Piss off,” said Frost, hanging up. It rang again. He disconnected it from the wall. She was bound to be plagued by the media, all eager to know what it felt like to be the widow of a policeman who had had his face blown off. He made a note to get her calls intercepted and to ask the station to place a man on guard outside the house. That was the least Mullett could do for her.
“People will have to be told,” she was saying. “His parents. It will break their hearts.”
Frost nodded. She was trying to sound calm, but he could see she was on the edge of hysteria. Where the hell was Webster with that woman neighbour?
An excited shout, followed by a fit of giggles, came from the other room. “Will the kids be all right?” he asked
She nodded. “I’ll put them to bed in a minute.”
The door buzzer sounded. At bloody last, he thought. “My colleague with your neighbour,” he told her. “We thought you might need company.” As she started to protest, he added, “You can always send her away if you don’t want her.”
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’m glad it was you.”
He gave her a hug, then made his way to the front door. Coats and hats were hanging from hooks in a recess under the stairs, and on the end hook was Dave Shelby’s police greatcoat. Looking back to ensure the kitchen door was shut, he quickly went through the pockets, heaving a sigh of relief as his fingers closed around the packet of photographs. He slipped it in his mac pocket, then opened the front door to Webster and a fat, motherly-looking woman from next door. “She’s in the kitchen,” he whispered, letting the woman squeeze past.
“How did she take it?” Webster asked when they were back in the car.
“Bloody badly,” said Frost. “It seems Shelby was the world’s greatest husband never even looked at another woman in his life.” He didn’t tell Webster about the photographs.
Webster turned the key in the ignition. “Back to the station?”
Frost shook his head. “I don’t think I could stand it, son. All the bloody gloom. We’ve had all of Inspector Allen’s cases dumped on us, so let’s nip over to the hospital and chat up that poor tart who didn’t get raped last night.”
By now Webster needed no directions to find his way to the hospital. Indeed, so automatic was his driving that he suddenly realized his head was dropping and had to jerk it up to stop himself from falling asleep. He wound down the window and let the slap of cold air keep him awake.
Inside the hospital it was the same round of long, lonely corridors, the same smell of antiseptic and stale cooking. They passed a young nurse, a stray wisp of hair over her forehead, scurrying off on some errand. She was the same nurse Dave Shelby had been chatting up the night before. She had now lost forever her chance of appearing in his photographic collection.
Paula Grey was in Sinclair Ward. Frost didn’t need to ask the way. His wife had been in Sinclair Ward. His wife! He felt guilty that he couldn’t honestly mourn her death. Everyone should have somebody who would grieve at their passing. Even poor Ben Cornish.
The night sister was expecting them and pointed to a bed by a window. Paula Grey was sitting up, propped by two stiffly starched hospital pillows which crackled as she moved. The flesh around her eyes was purple and puffy. Below the eyes, her face was encased in a mask of bandages with a slit for her mouth. A cigarette poked through the slit and she puffed away at it greedily. Her bedside cabinet was loaded with a bowl of fruit and a vase of bronze-coloured chrysanthemums which propped up a card reading Get well soon, Paula -from the girls at The Coconut Grove. The blackened eyes narrowed suspiciously as the two men approached.
“Present from Mr. Baskin?” asked Frost, nodding at the fruit as he drew up a chair to the side of the bed.
The cigarette waggled furiously. “Baskin? That lousy git? He wouldn’t make you a present of the time of day. So who the hell are you?”
“Frost, Detective Inspector Frost. Old Father Time at my side is Detective Constable Webster. You’re not going to be able to eat that fruit with a broken jaw are you, Paula?”
She waved a hand toward the dish. “Help yourself.”
Webster didn’t want anything. Frost took a banana and began peeling it. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about last night.”
“I’ve already told everything to Old Misery Guts.”
“Old Misery Guts is off the case. It’s mine now,” explained Frost.
“Tell me what happened.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I walked through the woods, I got jumped on. But I’ll tell you this. The bastard had better not try it again. I’ll be ready for him.” She reached for her locker and took out a flick knife. “I’ll rip the bastard to pieces! I’ll emasculate him!” She said it with such vehemence that Frost was quite prepared to believe her.
“Did you see him? Would you know him again? It would be a pity if you cut the wrong man’s dick off.”
“That’s the trouble: I never saw the sod. He jumped me from behind.”
“But you must have some idea,” insisted the inspector. “Was he young and well built like me, or old and decrepit like George Bernard Shaw here?”
Not more bloody beard jokes, fumed Webster, refusing even a token smile. The blackened eyes turned toward him and a long stream of smoke was ejected from the slit in the bandages.
“He’s nice, isn’t he?” said Paula.
“If you like them hairy,” said Frost, hiding the banana skin behind the flower vase. “But you’ve got to help us, Paula love. You’re his sixth victim, and we haven’t had one decent description. For all we know he’s a one-legged Chinaman. Now think, love. Any little clue?”
She bowed her head in thought, then shook it negatively. “Sorry.”
“Then tell us, in detail, what happened. It might bring something back.”
“I’m late for my spot at the club. I’m legging it as fast as I can, taking the shortcut through the woods. Suddenly, something black is chucked over my face.”
“A cloth?” asked Frost.
“No, plastic of some sort. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I try to scream but hands go round my throat and start squeezing. I reach up to his face, ready to claw his bleeding eyes out, but he squeezes harder and I’m choking. Then I passed out.”
“You say you reached for his face?” asked Frost excitedly. “Was he hairy like my colleague, or nice and clean-shaven like me?”
“He had a mask on plastic of some kind. All I could feel was plastic.
He even had plastic gloves on his hands.” She sunk back on the pillow.
“They won’t let me have a mirror. How bad is my face?”
“It looks like a baboon’s backside,” said Frost, bluntly, ‘but it will heal. Now what about your attacker? Did he have any minor blemishes that might help us identify him, such as a wooden leg, or a plastic dick, or a mechanical appliance?”
The cigarette was threatening to set fire to the bandages. She took it from her mouth and dropped it into the flower vase. A woman after my own heart, thought Frost.
She thought for a while. “His trousers,” she said. “There was something about them.”
“What about them?” asked Frost quickly.
“I could be wrong. It was as I was passing out. I reached down
… to grab him, you know. I got the impression his trousers were made of some sort of to welling
Frost sat up excitedly. This was something new. “Like jogging trousers, or part of a track suit?”
“Could be,” she said.
“Anything else?”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding tired. “I can’t help any more. You wouldn’t have a fag on you by any chance?”
Frost located her mouth through the slit and pushed a cigarette in. He lit it for her. “You know he didn’t rape you?”
“Yes. That’s the final bloody insult, that is.” She inhaled deeply and coughed, her head banging on the pillow. “I can’t tell you anything else.”
“You’ve been a big help,” said Frost, standing up. “If anything comes to mind, here’s my card.” He laid a grimy card next to the one from the girls at The Coconut Grove. “And here’s some fags.” A fresh packet was pressed into her hand. He waved goodbye and was halfway down the ward when he remembered something else he had wanted to ask her. Telling Webster to wait, he ambled back to the bed.
“Quick,” she said, pulling back the clothes, ‘get in before Sister comes back.”
He grinned. “If only I had the time, love, I’d be in there like a ferret up a rabbit hole. Couple of quick questions. You live in the same flats as Julie King, don’t you?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“Happen to know if she was in last night?”
“Yes. She had her posh boy friend with her that MP’s stuck-up son. I happened to look out of my window about sixish and saw his car pull up.”
“What time did you leave for The Coconut Crove?”
She tapped her chin as she thought. “About ten to eleven.”
“And was Roger Miller still there when you left?”
“As far as I know.”
“Oh,” said Frost, sounding disappointed.
“Julie went out, of course, but Roger didn’t.”
Frost felt his heart misfire a couple of times before it started beating faster. If Julie had gone out, she could no longer alibi her boy friend. “How do you know she went out?”
“I saw her, didn’t I? I was dashing off down the street, worried about being late and what bastard Baskin would say, when Julie roared past in that Jag.”
“Roger’s Jag?”
“Yes.”
“Was Roger with her?”
“No, only Julie. I yelled after her, hoping for a lift, but she didn’t hear me. If she had, I wouldn’t be in this lousy place.”
“You saw Julie driving off in Roger Miller’s car about ten to eleven last night?” repeated Frost, anxious there should be no misunderstanding.
She nodded. “How many more bleeding times?”
Frost beamed with delight. “Paula, my love, if ever you feel like being raped again, any hour of the day or night, just give me a ring and I’ll be right over.”
He clattered off down the ward and grabbed Webster’s arm, urging him to move faster as he explained the latest development. As soon as they were back in the car he radioed through to Control, requesting that Julie King be brought in for questioning immediately.
Wednesday night shift
Frost could smell her loin-tickling perfume the minute he entered the lobby. It made him forget the misery of the previous few hours.
“She’s in the interview room,” called Bill Wells, ruling a line under the previous entry in the Incident Book. “Jordan and Simms have just brought her in.”
Webster was sent to relieve the two uniformed men from their arduous task of keeping an eye on Julie King while Frost shuffled over to the station sergeant.
“She’s a nice bit of crumpet,” commented Wells.
“Yes,” agreed Frost. “So long as you don’t mind getting run over. Any progress with the murder investigation?”
Wells shook his head sadly. “That was a lousy business, Jack. A damn fine officer.”
“Yes,” muttered Frost flatly. “Pity he wasn’t so bloody good while he was still alive. So Allen hasn’t got anywhere yet?”
“He’s put an all-stations alert out for Stan Eustace. We’ll get him.”
“Assuming he did it,” said Frost, sounding doubtful.
Wells looked surprised. “Mr. Allen is convinced of it.”
“Ah, well,” sniffed Frost, ‘that’s the end of it, isn’t it? We needn’t bother with a trial.”
“The men were asking about their overtime,” said Wells, abruptly changing the subject.
“It’s my number-one priority,” said Frost, swinging his scarf around his head like a lasso and heading for the interview room and Miss Julie King. He almost made it.
“Mr. Frost!” It was Mullett, his face sombre.
What now? thought Frost. He dived in first with the good news. “We’ve learned Roger Miller wasn’t driving the hit-and-run car, sir. It was his girl friend. We’ve brought her in for questioning.”
Mullett twitched a smile. “That’s excellent news, Inspector. Sir Charles will be delighted.” The smile twitched off. “Did you see Mrs. Shelby?”
“Yes, sir. I broke the news.”
“How is she taking it?”
“She’s shattered, sir. I’ve arranged for a man to stand guard outside the house to keep the TV and press away.”
Mullett’s lips tightened. “Of course, Frost, quite right.” He bowed his head sadly and studied his shoes. “We’ll miss him, Frost. A damn fine officer.”
“So everyone keeps telling me, sir,” said Frost, thinking of all the colour photographs, most of which were taken when Shelby was supposed to be on duty. He turned to go, but he wasn’t quick enough. Mullett still had one more bullet left to fire.
“Did the crime statistics go off?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Frost, instantly regretting the lie. Mullett was in such a good mood about Roger Miller he might well have overlooked the truth.
In the interview room Julie King, wearing orange slacks, a yellow jumper, and a white beret, sat on the edge of one of the hard chairs, her fake leopard-skin coat slung over the back. She smouldered, her cigarette smouldered, and her orange-painted nails seemed ready to claw at the slightest provocation. And provocation was the only thing not denied her. They wouldn’t let her phone Roger, they wouldn’t tell her what it was about, and this bearded wonder wouldn’t even talk to her. He just stood leaning against the wall, his eyes half closed, ignoring all her questions. She was all ready to explode when in came Scarface, as scruffy as ever, a long scarf sweeping the floor as it trailed behind him.
“Why am I here?” she demanded. “No-one’s said a damn word. What is this, the bloody Gestapo?”
“A few questions, fraulein,” said Frost, settling himself down at the table and arranging his cigarettes and matches within easy reach.
She consulted her jewelled wristwatch. “I’m due at the club in thirty-five minutes.”
Frost flicked a match into life with his thumbnail and lit up. “I don’t think you’re going to make it, Miss King. We’ve found out you’ve been telling us fibs.”
She dug into her handbag for a nail file and began rasping away a couple of inches of orange nail. “Everything in my statement was true. Roger was with me all the time.”
A theatrical sigh from Frost. “You’d better tell her, Constable. I don’t like breaking bad news to girls with moles on their behinds.”
Webster dragged a chair over and sat beside her. “You were driving the Jag, miss, not Roger Miller.”
She studied her nails and decided some minor adjustments were necessary. She filed carefully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were seen driving the Jaguar.”
“Was I?” She blew away a puff of orange dust.
“Yes,” said Webster.
She gave him a sweet, pitying smile. “You must think I’m bleeding stupid. No-one saw me getting in the car for the simple reason I wasn’t in it.” She dropped the file in her handbag and snapped it shut. “I’m not obliged to stay here, and you have no right to keep me.” She stood up. “I’ll find my own way out.”
Frost stuck out a leg, barring her way. “We haven’t got time to sod about, miss,” he snapped. “You were seen by your next-door neighbour, Paula Grey. She yelled out, hoping for a lift. But you couldn’t have heard, because you roared straight off. I’m not bluffing. She’s given us a signed statement.” To prove it, he waved a piece of paper at her. It was only a typed request from County for the crime statistics, but it looked important.
Slowly, she sank back in her chair. Her mind seemed to be racing. “That’s right,” she said at last, “I remember now. I went out for some cigarettes. I bought some and came straight back.”
Frost was doing a trick with his chair, rocking it and making it balance on its two back legs. He beamed her a paternal smile of complete understanding. “I knew there would be a perfectly logical explanation. Where did you go for the cigarettes?”
She hesitated. “A pub. The Black Swan.”
“A twenty-minute round trip,” said Frost. “Ten minutes there, ten minutes back… plus the time it took for you to get served.”
“So?” she said warily.
“I’d have thought it was bloody obvious,” said Frost. During those twenty minutes, the hit-and-run took place. It was you who knocked Hickman down. It was you who killed him.”
She shivered and rubbed her arms, then pulled the fur coat over her shoulders. “It’s cold in here.”
“It’s colder in the morgue,” said Frost. He dribbled smoke through his nose. “Why prolong the agony, love?
There’s no way you can wriggle out of this. Get it off your lovely chest. Tell us the truth.”
He settled back in his chair while Webster took it all down in his notebook.
“I had never driven a Jag before. I asked Roger if I could take it for a thrash down the Bath Road. He said yes and gave me the keys. At about ten minutes to eleven I left. Roger stayed behind in the flat.
“I might have been going a bit fast round the old people’s flats, but I’m sure I was within the speed limit. It was dark, and as I turned a corner I felt a bump. I never saw anything and didn’t know I had hit anyone.
“When I got back to the flat Roger started moaning because the headlamp was broken. Then we saw the blood on the wing. I got frightened. Roger said he would report the car as stolen, so we hid it down a side street and then went back to the flat, where Roger phoned the police. I never knew at the time I had hit anyone, otherwise I would have stopped. And I hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t have a drink all night.”
When she had finished, she looked to Frost for his reaction. He showed none.
“Is that it?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Right, we’ll get it typed, then you can sign it. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in the cells.” Seeing her dismay, he added, “Not for long, only until we fix bail.”
After the girl was taken out, he yawned and stretched. “Right, son.
Let’s go and pick up Master Roger and see if he confirms her story.”
At first Roger Miller blustered, demanded to be released, and threatened all kinds of lawsuits that would leave Frost and Webster jobless, penniless and prospect-less. But when they told him that Julie King had made a statement admitting she alone was driving the Jaguar, he calmed down and without further prompting gave them a statement that confirmed the girl’s story in every detail.
Webster borrowed the station Underwood from Collier, dumped it on his desk on top of the crime statistics, and started pecking out the statements. Frost, who had found some salted peanuts left over from the previous night, was slouched in his chair, his crossed feet up on his desk, hurling peanuts in the air and trying to catch them in his mouth.
Mullett swept in without knocking. Frost flung his feet off the desk, managing to knock a file on the floor, splashing papers everywhere. But there were no frowns from the Divisional Commander, who was in a most affable mood. “Well done, Frost. I’ve’just put the phone down after speaking to Sir Charles. He is absolutely delighted to learn that you have been able to clear his son. In fact, he’s coming over to see me right away. Are the statements ready yet?”
“On the last one now,” said Webster, rubbing out a mistake and blowing away the rubber dust.
“Excellent,” said Mullett, smiling, “I’ll take them with me.”
The warning light at the back of Frost’s brain blinked on and off. What was the sly old sod up to now? “Take them with you, Super?”
Mullett’s insincere smile blinked on and off. “I’d like to show them to Sir Charles. He’s bringing his solicitor with him.”
He hovered over Webster, completely putting him off, causing him to hit the wrong keys repeatedly. But at last the final page was typed. Mullett snatched it from the machine and bore the statements away.
It was an hour later that Frost was summonsed into Mullett’s office, an hour spent grappling with the crime statistics that had supposedly already gone off. Webster, frowning and scowling more than ever as he tried to make some sort of sense out of the inspector’s hopeless jumble of figures, decided he had had more than enough. As soon as the door closed behind Frost, he hurled down his pen and stuffed the papers back into their folder.
He was dead tired, it was past one o’clock in the morning, and there were limits to the number of hours he could work without sleep. If it were something important, he’d have stuck it out, but not for the lousy crime statistics. It was Frost’s incompetence that had caused the trouble, and if he wanted them done tonight, he could damn well do them himself.
Webster grabbed his overcoat from the hat stand and put it on. Through the grime of the windows the night looked cold, windy, and unfriendly. He turned up the collar of his coat and awaited the inspector’s return.
It was time to assert himself.
Frost tapped at the door of Mullett’s office and went in. As soon as he was inside he started coughing and his eyes stung. The room, blue-fogged with smoke, stank of cigars and an overpowering after-shave, a legacy of the now-departed Sir Charles Miller.
“Come in,” boomed Mullett, valiantly drawing on a Churchillian cigar. Frost shuffled over to the desk and lit up a cigarene, his nose twitching as he sampled the air. “Smells like a lime house knocking shop in here, Super.”