“It’s very expensive after-shave,” rebuked Mullett, pushing out the tiniest of smoke rings and coughing until his eyes watered.
“You’d be surprised what gets shaved these days,” began Frost, but Mullett didn’t let him expand.
“Thought I’d put you in the picture, Frost. First of all, allow me to pass on Sir Charles’s congratulations. He’s absolutely delighted that we have been able to completely clear his son.”
“Not completely,” corrected the inspector. “We’ve still got him on conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, making false statements, falsely reporting his car was stolen… and that’s just for starters.”
Mullett took off his glasses and began to polish them, slowly and deliberately, so he wouldn’t have to look at Frost. “I was wondering whether it was absolutely necessary to involve the son? It’s entirely up to you, of course.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” said Frost, adding his cigarette ash to the corpses of two fat cigars in Mullett’s large ashtray.
“The girl’s admitted everything. Roger was only trying to help her.
Should he be punished for that?”
“Yes,” said Frost.
Mullett sighed a mouthful of cigar smoke. The inspector wasn’t being at all understanding. He readjusted his smile and pressed on. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering, of course, but I can’t help feeling that everyone’s interests would be better served if we didn’t make it known that Roger Miller falsely claimed his car was stolen. It can only complicate things.”
“Oh?” grunted Frost.
“Yes,” said Mullett, bravely plunging on to deeper and more dangerous waters. “If we remove that element he was beaten. Wearily, he stood up. “All right, sir. Whatever fiddles you’ve arranged with your mate Sir Charles, you go right ahead. I just don’t want to know about it.” The slam of the door as he left rattled everything moveable in the office.
With only a brief frown at the manner of the inspector’s exit, Mullett sighed, relieved that the unpleasantness was over. He picked up the phone and dialled the ex-directory number Sir Charles had given him.
“Hello, Sir Charles. Mullett here. That little matter we discussed.
I’ve put it in hand, sir… Not at all, Sir Charles… my pleasure.” He hung up and tapped the receiver lightly with his fingertips. Most satisfactory. Sir Charles wasn’t the sort of man who would forget a favour.
Fuming and desperate for something to kick, Frost stamped back to his office. The wastepaper bin provoked him by standing in his path, so he booted it across the office floor. It bounced off the desk leg and voided its contents all over the feet of the scowling, Pm-going-home-and-just-you-try-to-stop-me Webster.
“Sorry, son,” muttered Frost, crashing down in his chair, ‘but there are some rotten shits in this station, and they’re all called Mullett. You’ll never believe what’s happened. Shut the door.”
He told the detective constable of the scene in the Divisional Commander’s office. Forgetting for the moment about going home, Webster sank into his own chair and listened with growing incredulity.
“You mean he destroyed the statements we took?”
“Yes, son. I think it’s called perverting the course of justice, but if you’re an MP with five thousand quid to spare, then it’s called a slight bending of the rules for a good cause. Sod the crime statistics, sod the overtime returns, and sod our beloved Divisional Commander. I’m going home.”
That was when the internal phone rang.
Control reporting another rape in Denton Woods.
A seventeen-year-old girl.
Bodies aching, feeling tired, dirty and gritty, Frost and Webster headed back to the car, which seemed to have been their home for most of the long, long day. As usual, Webster was driving too fast, but the dark streets were deserted and they passed no other traffic.
They reached the woods to find the ambulance had beaten them to it, its flashing beacon homing them into a lay-by alongside Charlie Alpha. The rear doors of the ambulance were open, and already the victim was being loaded into the back.
The wind whined and shook the trees, sending a confetti shower of dead leaves on Frost and Webster as they hurried across to the victim. The girl’s eyes were closed and one side of her face was swollen and bruise-blackened where she had been hit. All the time she shivered and moaned. Very carefully, Frost tugged down the blanket to expose her neck. And there they were, the familiar deep, biting indentations of the rapist’s fingers.
“Isn’t it about time you had a go at catching the bastard?” asked one of the ambulance men, who had a young daughter.
Frost said nothing. What the hell was there to say?
The ambulance lurched forward and sped on its way to Denton Hospital, its siren screaming for the road to be kept clear.
They turned their heads at approaching voices. Along the path came two police constables, Simms and Jordan. Between them was a youth of about nineteen. He had dark hair, tightly curled, and wore a gray jacket with black trousers. There was a swagger about him that reminded Frost of Dave Shelby. As the group came nearer he could see that there was a raw scratch running down his right cheek to below his chin.
Simms pushed the youth forward. “This is Terry Duggan, Inspector. The girl’s boy friend. He found her.”
“Hello, Terry,” said Frost, his eyes noting that in addition to the scratch on his face, there were nail rakes on the back of his wrists.
“The girl’s name is Wendy Raynor, she’s seventeen, and she works part time in a shop. They’d been to a disco…” began Simms.
“Let Terry tell me,” said Frost.
“We -left the disco at about half ten,” said the youth. “We had to leave early because her parents wouldn’t let her stay out late. On the way back we had this row, so she jumps out of the car and stomps off home on her own.”
“Slow down, son,” interrupted Frost. “I’m not at my brightest at this time of night. What was the row about?”
The youth gaVe a sheepish grin, blushed, and moved his hand vaguely.
“You know, just trivial stuff a difference of opinion.”
“And she made you stop the car?” asked Webster.
Terry shifted his gaze to the bearded bloke. “No, we’d already stopped. We were parked.”
“Where?” This from the down-at-heel one.
“Over there.” Terry pointed into the dark. “Round the back of that big tree.”
“Why?” demanded the bearded one, another miser with words.
“Why?” repeated Terry in a tone that suggested the answer should be obvious. “Why does anyone bring a bird to the woods at night?”
“I see,” said Frost, motioning for him to carry on.
“Anyway, we’re steaming away through the preliminaries in the back seat, and I’m trying to get her tights off her, when she suddenly goes all stiff and calls me a dirty sod. Then she starts struggling and scratching and pushing me off. I don’t reckon she’d ever done it before. Still, I wasn’t going to let the money I’d lobbed out on those disco tickets go to waste, so I tried again. This time she panics, jumps out the car screaming blue murder, and goes dashing down that path, pulling up her tights.”
“Did you run after her?” asked Webster.
“No bleeding fear!”
“Seventeen years old,” said Webster, getting angry, ‘never done it before, gone eleven o’clock at night, and you let her run off in those woods on her own?”
“She was already screaming I was trying to rape her,” said Terry. “If I’d chased off after her, I reckon she’d have thought I was trying to finish the job.”
The wind stirred, shaking the trees until the branches creaked. Frost shivered and wound his scarf tighter. “What did you do then?”
“I drove home and got my head down. About half past midnight, my phone starts ringing. I staggered out of bed to answer it, and it’s Wendy’s old man screaming and shouting because she isn’t home yet. I told him we’d had a bit of a barney and she’d legged it off on her own, but he sounded so worked up I said I’d go and look for her. I drove back here, then followed the path around.”
“Show us,” said Frost.
He took them along a narrow path which narrowed even more as it plunged deeper into the woods. A wall of thick bushes on each side brushed their shoulders as they pushed through. After some forty feet, Terry stopped.
“When I reached here I heard this moaning noise. At first I thought it was a couple having it away, then I realized it was Wendy. I forced my way through those bush things there.” He indicated a gap between the bushes where branches had been bent back and broken. “It wasn’t like that when I first saw it the ambulance men smashed it down getting their stretcher through- Anyway, that’s where I found her, stark naked, her face beaten up, her clothes all over the place. The poor bitch was moaning and whimpering. I piled her clothes all over her to keep her warm, and legged it back to the car. Then I drove round until I found a phone box and called the law.”
Frost pushed through the gap and shone a torch around. A small glade, the grass flattened and trampled, but probably all from the ambulance men, the youth, and Jordan and Simms. A pair of laddered tights, screwed into a ball, was caught in a patch of stinging nettles which hugged the base of a beech tree. There seemed little point in picking them up, so he left them there. He switched off his torch and rejoined the others.
“I suppose I’d better go and tell her father what’s happened,” said the youth.
“I wouldn’t,” said Frost. “If I was her father I’d half bleeding kill you.”
Jordan had moved some way down the path and was speaking quietly into his personal radio. He caught Frost’s eye and beckoned him down.
“Charlie Bravo has been round the girl’s parents’ house and taken them to the hospital, sir. It seems there’s a bit of a discrepancy. The lad do here says he was home in bed around eleven. The girl’s father says he kept phoning him, didn’t get a reply, so he took a cab round there. He was at Terry’s place just after midnight. Terry’s car wasn’t outside. The father nearly kicked the door in, but got no reply so went back home. When he phoned at half past twelve,
Terry answered the phone on the second ring and didn’t sound as if he’d been woken up from a deep sleep.”
“I can well do without complications like this,” muttered Frost gloomily. “What do you reckon, then?”
“My guess is Terry raped her, sir. He got all worked up in the car, then, when she ran off, he followed, looking for her. I reckon he found her and jumped her. Then he drove home and pretended he’d been in bed since eleven.”
Frost sniffed and thought this over. “I doubt it, young Jordan, but far be it from me to dampen the enthusiasm of young coppers. Take Duggan back to the station say it’s for a statement and then get the clothes off him and send them over to Forensic for examination. And tell the police surgeon to give him a going over. I want to know if he’s had sex recently.”
They walked back to the others. Frost tried to light a cigarette but the wind kept blowing out his matches, so he gave up in disgust. “I want you to go down the station with these officers to make a statement, Terry. We’ll get the doctor to have a look at those scratches while you’re there they might turn septic’
He waited until they were out of earshot, then he filled Webster in.
Webster listened intently. “So Jordan reckons Terry raped her?”
“That’s the suggestion, son,” said Frost, crouching to windward of a large oak and managing this time to light up. “It’s possible, but I’m not really sold on the idea. I can’t see Terry going to the trouble of stripping her off. I see him as a tights down, skirt up, unzip the old Levis and crash, bang, wallop sort of man. I could be wrong, though. He might be the romantic type and like to strangle and strip them first.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and frowned at it. The wind was making it burn unevenly down one side, charring the paper. It tasted terrible. “My money’s still on the old Denton rapist.”
“Then hadn’t we better make a search of the area?” suggested Webster.
“A search,” said Frost. “No thanks, son. It’s too bloody cold. We’ll let Forensic have a sniff round if they want to, but I’m for going back to the station and getting warm.”
“If I were in charge of the case,” said Webster stiffly, “I wouldn’t hesitate to organize a search, just as Mr. Allen did last night.”
“And a fat lot of good it did him,” Frost pointed out. “But if you feel like organizing one, be my guest, so long as you don’t expect me to take part.”
Someone’s call and the wave of a torch let them know that the experts from Forensic had arrived. Two of them. A miserable man and a little fat jolly man. Frost took them to the clearing where the jolly little one surveyed the scene with delight.
“Plenty of footprints here,” he said.
“Yes,” replied Frost. “Two ambulance men, two policemen, my detective constable, a suspect, me, and the girl. If you find anything else, let me know.”
Webster’s mood showed itself in his driving. He was furious at Frost’s refusal to arrange a search. Frost was always looking for shortcuts but there were cases that didn’t lend themselves to the inspector’s slipshod methods. This was one of them.
“So how exactly do you intend to proceed?” he asked, savagely twisting the wheel as they turned into Market Square.
“We’ll get Terry out of the way first, then we’ll think about it,” answered Frost. He looked up, startled, as the car bumped the kerb after too wide a turn. “Careful, son, you’re driving like I do.”
The station lobby looked as tired as they did. “Susan Harvey is waiting for you in your office, Jack,” called Wells. Suddenly Webster felt a lot less tired.
Susan was in Webster’s chair, hugging a mug of instant coffee. She had returned from the hospital, where she had managed to talk to seventeen-year-old Wendy Raynor.
“Fractured jaw and a few bruises,” she told them. “And she’s in a state of severe shock. She’s been sexually assaulted. Before the assault she was a virgin.”
Frost sat in his chair and began to swivel from side to side. “And who does she say raped her?”
Susan put the mug down on the desk. “Terry Duggan. He tried it on in the car. She ran off, but he followed and raped her.”
Webster’s eyes flashed. “The bastard!”
“He looks lovely when he’s angry, doesn’t he, Sue?” murmured Frost. He thought for a while, tapping his cigarette on his thumb. “My money wasn’t on the boy friend.”
“Then you were wrong, weren’t you?” said Webster with an ill-concealed sneer.
“I’m always wrong,” admitted Frost. He studied his cigarette, decided he had tapped it enough, and popped it in his mouth. “She’s positive it was Terry?”
“She’s confused, but she swears it was him. I don’t think she actually saw him. He jumped, threw something over her face, and started to strangle her. When she came to, there was Terry staring down at her.”
“But that could have been when Terry came back to look for her,” said Frost thoughtfully. “And if it was Terry, then he’s infringed the “Hooded Terror’s” copyright the cloth over the face, the strangling.. .”
“A copycat crime,” said Webster, determined that Frost should be wrong, “He read about it in the papers and copied it.”
The phone rang. Webster answered it. The hospital. Swabs taken from Wendy Raynor were on their way to Forensic.
Frost opened the door and yelled to Bill Wells, “Has the doctor seen Terry Duggan yet?”
“He’s with him now,” the sergeant yelled back.
“We’ll soon know,” said Frost, once again swivelling from side to side. “The thing is, she never actually saw him.” Then he grinned. “Did I ever tell you that old wartime joke about the girl munitions worker who was raped in the blackout?”
Jokes! thought Webster. A seventeen-year-old’s been raped and he makes jokes.
“The police asked the girl who did it, and she said she couldn’t say because it happened in the blackout. “But I can tell you this,” she said, “the rapist was definitely one of our foremen.” “How can you be so sure?” asked the fuzz. She said, “Because he kept his bowler hat on all the time and I had to do all of the work.” He guffawed with laughter as he reached the punchline. Webster maintained a stony silence, but Susan was convulsed and almost choked over her coffee.
A tap on the door, and the duty doctor, a plump little Welshman, came in.
“You’ve just missed a good joke,” said Frost, wiping his eyes. “The girl who was raped in the blackout ‘
“And the foreman did it,” said the doctor, dumping his bag on Frost’s desk. “You tell me that every time there’s a rape.” He knocked some papers off a chair and sat down. “I’ve examined this young man, Duggan. There are fingernail scratches down his face and wrists, which I’m sure you’ve already noticed. I’ve taken a blood sample, which is on its way to your forensic laboratory, together with his clothes. And he has had sex within the last couple of hours.”
“Which is more than I’ve had,” said Frost. He pinched his nose. “Well, young Webster, it’s beginning to look as if you might be right. I suppose we’d better see what he’s got to say for himself.”
Terry Duggan, wearing only a police-issue red-and-grey blanket and a loaned pair of gym shoes some four sizes too big, leaped up angrily as Frost and Webster entered the interview room.
“What’s the bloody game?” he demanded. “I’ve been stripped, my clothes have been taken away, I haven’t been allowed to leave, and no-one will answer my questions.” He paused for breath. “And another thing, that bleeding doctor did more than examine my scratches. He got bloody intimate.”
“He gets carried away,” said Frost. He opened a folder and drew out a typed sheet. “Is this the statement you have just made to the police officer?”
Terry squinted at it. “Yes.”
“And you’re sticking by it?”
The youth jutted out his chin defiantly. “Of course I am.”
“Then I must ask you to sign it.” Frost borrowed a ball-point pen from Webster and passed it to Duggan, who scrawled his name at the foot of the document. Frost and Webster added their signatures as witnesses.
Frost tucked the statement back in the folder, then shook his head reproachfully. “You’re a silly sod, you know?”
“Why?” asked the youth, staring him out.
“You’re in serious trouble, my son, and you make it worse by telling us a pack of lies.”
Terry clutched the blanket closer to his body. “What do you mean, about me being in serious trouble?”
Frost motioned for Webster to break the news.
“Wendy tells us it was you who raped her. Sonny Jim.”
Duggan looked first at Webster, then at Frost. They both stared back coldly. He tried to laugh, but it wasn’t very convincing. “Rape? Me? Do me a favour. I’ve never had to fight for it in my life. If they don’t give it willingly, then I don’t bloody want it.”
“You fought for it in the car,” said Frost.
Duggan shrugged. “They always put on a show of reluctance at first they don’t want you to know that they’re as eager for it as you are. But as soon as Wendy started marking me with her nails, I packed it in.”
‘… and you drove straight back home,” read Frost from the statement.
“That’s right.”
“Parked your motor outside your house and, in a highly emotional but unfulfilled state, you crept into your little bed and went straight off to sleep?”
“That’s right.”
“So, by 11:30 you were indoors and in bed and your motor was parked in the street outside?”
A slight hesitation, but again the answer was “Yes.”
“And yet when Mr. Raynor, Wendy’s father, called at your house at midnight, there was no car outside, and although he kicked and banged on the door, there was no answer.”
“I didn’t know her old man called round my place,” exclaimed Terry.
“Well, he damn well did,” chipped in Webster. “But you weren’t in, were you? You were down in the woods raping his seventeen-year-old virgin daughter. Don’t try to deny it, Sunshine, the medical examination you just had proves -it.”
Terry sat down heavily in the chair and readjusted the blanket. It was prickly and scratchy and was making him feel itchy all over. “All right, so I didn’t go back home right away. I went back to the disco to see if there was any spare talent knocking about. I didn’t want the night to be a complete washout.”
“Any witnesses who saw you back in the disco?” asked Webster.
“No. I never got inside. I met this bird in the car park. She didn’t look very tasty, in fact she looked a bit of bleeding rough, but at least she was available, so we got inside the car and we had it away.”
“Her name and address?” barked Webster.
“No idea, squire. I’d never seen her before and I hope I never see her again. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I wouldn’t have touched her with a barge pole.”
“Didn’t you drive her home afterward?”
“Home? That’s a joke. She’d been sleeping rough. She asked me to drop her off at the main road so she could thumb a lift up north on a lorry.”
Webster snapped his notebook shut and walked across to the youth. He grabbed the blanket, screwing it tightly in his fist, and jerked him to his feet. “You must think we’re bloody stupid, Duggan. You tried it on with Wendy. She wouldn’t have it, which was an insult to your virility, so you chased after her, choked her, broke her jaw, and raped her.”
“I didn’t. If there’s no bleeding co-operation, then I don’t want it,” cried Duggan, trying to pull away, but the detective constable’s grip was vice like
“Before you leave this room you are going to give us a signed statement admitting everything.”
“I want a lawyer,” said the youth.
Webster snatched away the blanket. “When you’ve given us a statement, you bastard.”
The phone rang. As Webster had taken over the questioning, Frost had to answer it. He listened, thanked the caller, then hung up.
Webster, his fists clenched, was standing toe to toe with the naked Duggan, his face red and angry. The youth looked terrified.
Frost stood up and pocketed his cigarettes and matches. “That was Forensic, son,” he said casually, ‘with the results of their tests. The man who raped Wendy has blood group O, and young Terry here is blood group A.” He gave Webster a sweet smile. “I’ll see you back in the office.”
And he went out, leaving the constable to make his apologies to the suspect.
When Webster returned to the office he was fuming. He had been made to look a proper fool in front of a suspect, forced to offer grovelling apologies to a sneering young bastard.
Frost was at his desk shuffling through papers. Webster was all ready to give him a mouthful when Susan Harvey came in.
“Hello, Sue,” said Frost. “You still here?”
She looked inquiringly at Webster. “I said I’d drive her home,” he told Frost.
“Home?” said Frost in surprise. “It’s not time to go home yet, is it?”
“It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning, Inspector. I’ve been on duty for more than sixteen hours on the trot. I’d fill in an overtime claim if I thought it stood the remotest chance of getting to County accounts.” Immediately he said it he wished he could have bitten his tongue because Frost’s head moved to the Overtime Return file still in the centre of Webster’s desk.
“Thanks for reminding me, son. I promised Bill Wells they’d go off today.” He scratched his chin. “Tell you what. We won’t bother adding them up. They’ve got dirty great computers at County that can do that for us. We’ll just scribble down the figures and send them off like that.”
“But it will still take hours,” protested Webster wearily.
“Not if we split it three ways,” said Frost. “You’ll help, won’t you, Sue?” And he dealt out three heaps of returns from the file as if dealing hands of cards.
So they pulled up their chairs and filled in page after page of figures copied from the men’s claim forms, allocating them to various categories of crime. Frost did a lot of groaning and smoking and seemed to be tearing up more forms than he filled in. Time hobbled along. Webster was finding that the figures had a tendency to blur into indistinctness. He staggered out and made some instant coffee, which helped a little. Then he realized he had been staring at the same column of figures for five minutes. He reached for another claim form. There were none. He had finished. Within another couple of minutes Susan, too, had finished her stint.
“Marvellous,” beamed Frost, dealing them out some more from his own pile. But in ten minutes the return, folded in its official envelope marked “Overtime Figures Urgent,” was all ready for transmission to County for inclusion in the next batch of salary cheques.
“We all deserve a pat on the back for that,” said Frost, looking at the envelope as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Yes,” grunted Webster, slipping on his overcoat, all ready for the off before Frost remembered the crime statistics.
Frost clicked his fingers. “Flaming hell, son… we forgot something!”
“What’s that?” grunted the constable, taking Susan by the arm and steering her to the door.
“The anonymous telephone caller who phoned about the girl in the woods last night. Dave Shelby said he knew who he was.”
Freedom only half a turn of the door handle away, Webster said, “But Shelby’s dead.”
“My memory’s not that flaming bad,” retorted the inspector. “Shelby said he’d seen the bloke. In which case he would have made an entry about it in his notebook.” He moved Webster’s hand, opened the door, and yelled, “Sergeant Wells!”
Wells approached and gave a mocking bow. “You rang, my lord?”
“Don’t ponce about when addressed by a senior officer,” rebuked Frost sternly. “Where’s Dave Shelby’s notebook?”
“I thought you knew,” said Wells. “It’s missing.”
Thank God for that, thought Webster. Now we can all go home.
Frost frowned. “Missing?”
“It wasn’t on the body, Jack, and it wasn’t in the car. Mr. Allen’s made a search, but no trace of it. He reckons it might have fallen from Shelby’s pocket when he was in the getaway car.”
“So what news on the getaway car? Someone should have spotted the Vauxhall by now.”
“Stan Eustace was always good at finding places to dump his stolen motors, Jack.”
“About the only thing he is good at.” He took the brown envelope from his desk and handed it to Wells. “I’m off home. Here’s your lousy overtime returns. Stick them in the post bag.”
Wells looked at the envelope, his eyebrows arched. “It’s gone three o’clock in the morning, Jack. The County collection was ages ago. If this doesn’t reach them first thing today it’ll miss the salary cheques and we’ll have a bloody mutiny on our hands.”
Frost waved an airy hand. “Don’t get excited. Webster can drop them in the County letter box.”
Webster’s beard bristled. “I can do what? It’s an hour’s drive each way.”
Another airy wave from Frost. “Fifty minutes at the outside a lot less if you’re not too fussy about obeying traffic lights. Use my car. You can take Sue with you and drop her off on the way back.”
As he crawled into the car, Webster realized that he wasn3t going to be able to do it. He was too tired. He’d fall asleep at the wheel. Susan got out and moved around to the driving seat. “Slide over,” she said. “I’ll drive. You’d better spend what’s left of the night at my place you’re in no fit state to drive back.”
Webster did a mental inventory of Susan’s tiny flat -no sofa and only one bed. He felt his tiredness slipping away but didn’t make it obvious. He stuffed the envelope into the dash compartment. “I didn’t bring my pyjamas,” he said.
“And I haven’t got a nightdress,” murmured Sue, turning the ignition. Webster leaned back in his seat and purred. The night wasn’t going to be a total disaster after all.
On the way back from County Headquarters he could fight sleep no longer. When he opened his eyes the sky was dawn-streaked. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Nearly there,” she told him. “I’m taking a shortcut.”
The shortcut was a narrow lane joining two side roads. A short, bumpy ride.
“Look out!” cried Webster. Something loomed up in front of them.
The headlights had picked out a car. A car parked bang in the middle of the lane, no lights showing. They could have run straight into it.
Carefully, Sue manoeuvred the Cortina to squeeze past. Webster twisted his head to look back. The lunatic who parked it so dangerously deserved to be booked. Then his heart sank.
The car was a red Vauxhall Cavalier.
The registration number was CBZ2303.
“Oh no!” croaked Webster in disbelief.
“What’s up?” asked Sue.
“Every bloody thing is up,” he said despairingly as he reached for the handset. He called Denton Control to report he had found Stan Eustace’s getaway car.
Thursday day shift
Webster sat in the car with Sue and waited. Within twenty-five minutes Detective Inspector Allen had arrived on the scene. He must have been asleep in bed when the call came through, but in those twenty-five minutes he had managed to shower, shave, and put on a freshly pressed suit. He looked immaculate. By contrast, Detective Sergeant Ingram, sour and crumpled at his side, looked as if he hadn’t slept properly for a week, which tended to underline the whispered rumours of his marital troubles. He looked even more sour when Allen doled out a few begrudging crumbs of praise to Webster.
“Well done, Constable. Good piece of observation.”
The obligatory acknowledgement over, Allen and Ingram approached the Vauxhall and sniffed gingerly around, looking but not touching. Webster had hoped he and Sue would now be allowed to drive off and get to bed but Allen didn’t seem ready to dismiss them yet.
Allen was standing on tiptoe to see over the hedge that bordered the lane. Behind it was a field of tall grass, heavy with early-morning dew. He dragged back his cuff to consult his watch. If he could do it in twenty-five minutes, what was holding up the forensic team?
Then the brittle early-morning quiet was shattered as carloads of hastily summonsed off-duty men and the team from Forensic arrived. Soon the area swarmed with men crawling over every inch of the Vauxhall and its surroundings. The car was dusted for prints inside and out, the interior was given microscopic scrutiny for traces of blood and tissue, and then the seat covers and carpets were removed and vacuumed to retrieve clinging hairs and fibres.
Other men were on their hands and knees, noses almost grazing the road surface as they looked for anything the murderer might have dropped. It was still dark, but the area was floodlit. The first success was the finding of a small patch of oil a few yards up the lane, indicating that another car had recently been parked on that spot for some time. More than likely this car was the backup that Stan Eustace transferred into after he had dumped the Cavalier. Judging from the amount of oil leakage, the other car must have been an old banger.
One team was given the task of knocking on the door of every house in the vicinity to ask if anyone had seen a car parked in the lane during the previous day, or if they had seen the Vauxhall drive up.
“I know it’s early and most of the householders are going to be tucked up in bed,” said Allen, addressing the team, ‘but that is their hard luck. Today they are all going to see the dawn break for a change. How you wake them, I don’t particularly care. Just do it. And if anyone complains that their beauty sleep is more important than finding the murderer of a police officer, let them write to the Chief Constable. Most important, I want you to make sure you speak to everybody in the house, not just the poor sod who staggers downstairs to open the door. Now off you go.”
Another two men went with Ingram to search the section of the field near the hedge. It wasn’t expected to yield anything but Allen, unlike Detective Inspector Jack Frost, always did things thoroughly.
Webster tried to catch the inspector’s eye to ask permission to leave, but Allen had marched straight past and was at the Vauxhall to talk to the two men dusting it for prints. “Anything yet?”
One of them looked up from his work and shook his head. “Not a damn thing so far, Inspector. It’s been wiped clean.”
As Allen turned away, Webster moved forward to let the inspector know he was going to make a move.
“Good morning, son. The whole bloody place stinks of coppers, doesn’t it?”
Webster visibly cringed at the familiar breezy voice. Where the hell had he come from? It was far too early in the morning to stomach a fresh dose of Jack Frost.
With a grin and a nod to his assistant, Frost, looking as if he had slept in his clothes in a ditch, shuffled over to the immaculate Allen.
“Hello, Frost,” said Allen without the slightest hint of enthusiasm. Events were going quite well and he didn’t want Frost’s jarring presence messing everything up. “Bit early for you, isn’t it?”
“Bit late, actually,” yawned Frost, rubbing an unshaven chin. “I haven’t been home all night. I fell asleep in the office.” With his head on one side he gave the Vauxhall the once-over, his hands scratching an itch on his stomach through his mac pockets. “So this is where Useless Eustace switched motors?”
“Yes,” acknowledged Allen curtly. “Your assistant spotted it.” He was now beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t be better served with Webster than with Ingram, who had been getting quite slapdash of late.
“It’s the way I train them,” Frost said, moving forward for a look inside the car. The two men from Forensic shifted out of his way as he poked his head inside the driving door. “I can’t see much blood.”
“We haven’t found any yet,” Forensic admitted, ‘but we’re still searching.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to look very hard for it,” said Frost. “Shelby’s head was half blown off. The inside of the car ought to be swimming with blood, brains, and bits of ear hole.”
Allen pulled a face. Frost’s crudeness was hard to take at the best of times, but at this tender hour of the morning…! “Eustace could have wrapped the body in waterproof sheeting. A sheet was missing from the boot of Shelby’s patrol car when we went through it yesterday.”
Frost tapped his first cigarette of the day on the packet and lit up. Then he had his first cough of the day. “I don’t care what you say,” he spluttered, “I just can’t see Useless Eustace as a police killer.”
Allen started to reply, but his attention was diverted by a shout.
“Mr. Allen!”
He looked up. An arm was being waved from behind the hedge. Ingram had found something. “Excuse me,” he muttered, hurrying over to see what it was.
Frost took a stroll across to the Cortina, where Webster, slumped in the front seat next to Sue, was fighting hard to keep his eyes open. Sue was talking to him, but he just didn’t seem able to take in what she was saying. Wasn’t it just his rotten luck spotting that car! If he’d kept his eyes closed, he would now be lying in the snug warmth of Sue’s little single bed, his arms locked around her un-night dressed body, caressing her gorgeous but why torment himself? He yawned. The thought of yet another long, dreary day muddling through with Frost seemed an unbearable prospect.
Frost spotted the yawn and, of course, with his one-track mind, misinterpreted it. “Tired, my son? Heavy night with Sue, was it? You should have tried getting some sleep instead.”
Webster was so tired he couldn’t even raise a scowl in protest.
“One thing about a beard,” bur bled Frost, rasping his chin again, ‘you don’t suffer from five o’clock shadow.” He turned his head. “Hello, what’s Old Clever Balls looking so happy about?”
Allen was striding over, Ingram trotting at his heels. “Thought you might be interested to see this, Frost, especially as you can’t see Eustace as a police killer.” He held up something in a polythene bag. “We’ve found Shelby’s notebook.”
Frost took the bag from Allen and turned it over and over in his hands.
“Where was it?”
Ingram pointed. “I found it in that field, close to the hedge, near where the Cavalier was parked.”
Frost looked puzzled. “And how the hell did it get there?”
Allen sucked in air, then sighed. How dense could you be? “I’d have thought that obvious, Inspector. Eustace found it in the car after he dumped the body. It must have fallen from Shelby’s pocket. It was incriminating evidence and he had to get rid of it in a hurry.”
“Oh, I see,” exclaimed Frost as if this now explained everything. “He wipes the car clean of prints, doesn’t leave a speck of blood behind, but he gets rid of vital evidence by just chucking it over the nearest hedge.”
“What did you expect him to do with it?” snapped Allen in exasperation. “Eat it? Stick it up his arse? He daren’t keep it on him, it linked him with the killing. What else could he do but chuck it?”
A uniformed man approached and gave Allen a smart salute. “Lady in the cottage down the lane, sir. Says she saw a black Morris Minor parked down here for most of yesterday afternoon.”
Allen’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Good work. I’ll be with you in a couple of seconds to talk to her.” He took the polythene bag from Frost and handed it back to Ingram. “I want the notebook checked for fingerprints. Odds are it’s been wiped clean, but you never know your luck.” He noticed Frost still hovering. “I’m sure you’re very busy, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up.”
“Actually, I want to take a look in the notebook. Dave Shelby was supposed to have interviewed our anonymous phone caller. I’m hoping he kept his mind on the job long enough to write down the name and address.”
Ingram held open the bag so Frost could carefully extract the notebook, holding it by its corners with his handkerchief. An elastic band looped around the unused pages allowed Frost to go directly to the entry, the very last entry Shelby had made before he died. It read Desmond Thorley, Dove Cottage. Interviewed re rape case phone call.
“Bingo!” cried Frost, snapping the notebook shut and dropping it into the polythene bag. He trotted across to the Cortina. Neither Webster nor Sue seemed willing to yield their front seats, so he climbed into the back.
“It’s all happening, son. I’ve got the name and address of the bloke who made the anonymous phone call. Drop Sue off, then we’ll go and pay him a nice early visit.”
Webster’s spirits plummet ted to a new low. “It’s barely four o’clock in the morning,” he complained. “He’ll be fast asleep in bed
…” He yawned conspicuously and added pointedly, “The lucky bastard!”
“He won’t still be in bed after I’ve kicked his door down,” replied Frost cheerfully. “Come on, son, hurry up. There’s lots to do.”
Even to Webster, punch-drunk through lack of sleep, Dove Cottage looked nothing like a cottage. The shape was all wrong. In the dark of early morning it looked just like a railway carriage, and as they neared it he could see that that was exactly what it was. A dilapidated Great Western Railway carriage of pre-war vintage, dumped on a piece of waste ground situated north of the woods. It stood on brick piers, allowing it to rise proud above islands of stinging nettles in a sea of coarse, waist-high grass. Tastefully dotted around to break the monotony of the landscape were mounds of crumbling oil drums, the rotting hulk of a Baby Austin car body, and odd rust-crusted relics of long-obsolete farm machinery.
Like explorers hacking their way through virgin jungle, they pushed through the wet grass, eventually arriving at the foot of a set of rickety wooden steps that led up to the carriage door with its brass turnkey handle.
“I think this is our train,” murmured Frost, risking the climb up the steps. He tried the handle, but the door seemed to be bolted on the inside, so he pounded at it with his open hand. The noise echoed like a drum, but there was no movement from within. He hammered again, much harder this time, making the whole structure shake on its brick foundations.
Inside a bottle toppled over and rolled. A crash of someone bumping into something, the shout of someone swearing, then a bleary voice demanded, “Who’s there?”
“Two lovely policemen,” called Frost. “Open up, Desmond.”
The door opened outward, almost sending Frost flying. Desmond Thorley, in his late fifties, very bald and softly plump, un gummed his eyes and squinted at his visitors. He wore a filthy dressing gown the front and sleeves stiff with dirt. Under the dressing gown, were a pair of grimy, food-stained pyjamas, the trousers held up by a rusty safety pin. He looked dirty. He smelled even dirtier.
“Meet Dirty Desmond,” said Frost to Webster.
Thorley clutched together his gaping dressing gown to cover his pyjamas. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Frost. I suppose you want to come in.”
“I don’t want to,” replied Frost, ‘but it’s one of the hazards of the job.”
They stepped into thick, greasy darkness that smelled of stale sweat, unwashed socks, and bad food. A match flared as Thorley lit an an old brass oil lamp which spluttered and spat out choking black smoke, but at least masked most of the other odours. He cranked up the wick, then replaced the glass chimney. They could now make out, dimly, the camp bed, some upholstered chairs rescued from a rubbish heap, and a card table on which were four food-encrusted plates and various half-finished tins of beans and pilchards. The floor was carpeted with dirty socks, unwashed underclothes, and empty spirit bottles.
“Be it ever so humble,” said Desmond, noting their disapproval.
“Humble?” snorted Frost. “It’s a bloody shithouse.”
“That,” sniffed Desmond, ‘is rude.” He fluttered a hand toward the chairs. “Sit down if you like, but be careful. The cat’s been sick somewhere and I’m still trying to find out where.” He flopped himself down, but they opted to stand.
“Did you have a visit from one of our police officers yesterday?” Frost asked him.
He flapped a vague, limp hand. “I might have done, Inspector, but my memory’s not at its best at this unearthly hour.” His tongue flicked along his lips. “You wouldn’t, by chance, have some alcoholic refreshment about your person?” He spoke like a failed actor, which is exactly what he was.
From his mac pocket, Frost produced a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker, part of the spoils from the party. He held it by the neck and swung it from side to side. Desmond’s eyes locked on to it like heat-seeking missiles.
“Information first, drinkie-poos second,” promised the inspector. “You had a visit from a policeman yesterday?”
A happy smile lit Thorley’s face as he recalled the incident. “A lovely boy, my old darling. His name was Shelby so good-looking and so macho. He suggested it was I who phoned the constabulary the other night when that poor woman was so brutally used.”
“And was it you?” asked Webster, keeping close to the door, where a thin whisper of air was trickling through.
Thorley’s gaze was transferred from the bottle to the constable. “Oh yes. I confessed all to him. How could I lie to someone with such long eyelashes as he had.” He leaned forward to study Webster’s face. “But not so long as yours, dearie.”
Frost tugged at Webster’s sleeve to remind him who was supposed to be doing the questioning. “Do your courting later, son,” he whispered.
“I couldn’t help your constable very much,” admitted Thorley. “I found the girl. Like any law-abiding citizen, I phoned the police. That was all there was to it.”
“Did you see anyone that night?” Frost asked.
“Not a soul, my dear.”
Frost put the bottle back in his pocket.
“I saw one person only,” added the podgy man hurriedly. “But not in the woods. As I was hastening to the phone box, there was someone in front of me, walking very quickly.”
The bottle came out again. “Description?”
“I only saw him from the back. Medium height, dark clothes.”
“What were you doing in the woods at that time of night?” asked Webster.
“Just taking a stroll,” replied Desmond.
“It was a bit more than that,” said Frost. “You like sneaking around in the dark spying on courting couples, don’t you Desmond?”
The podgy man grinned sheepishly. “A harmless hobby. And that’s how I found the girl. I was taking a late-night stroll, ears ever alert for the sounds of casual copulation, when I came across the poor dear all still and naked. I really thought she was dead.”
“Did you see anyone jogging during your prowl around?” Frost asked.
Desmond pushed out his lips in thought. “No, Inspector, I didn’t. You often see knobbly-kneed men in running shorts, or joggers in track suits going round and round the paths, but I don’t recollect seeing any last night.”
It was clear he could tell them nothing more, so Frost handed the bottle over and they took their leave. Like a good host, Desmond saw them out.
“I like your friend,” he whispered to the inspector.
“He’s not used to the ways of men,” said Frost, steering the scowling Webster out into the clean, fresh-tasting air.
They hacked their way back to the car.
“What time is it?” asked Frost.
Webster brought up his watch. “Four fifty-six.”
“Drop me off at my place and then let’s get some sleep. I’ll see you back at the station at noon.”
“Yes,” yawned Webster.
The sky was lightening. Somewhere, way off in the distance, a rooster crowed, then a dog barked. Lights were starting to come on in some of the houses. Denton was waking up. Frost and Webster were going to bed.
Police Superintendent Mullett looked once again at his watch and angrily reached out for the ivory-coloured telephone.
“No, sir,” replied Sergeant Johnson. “Mr. Frost still isn’t in yet.”
Mullett replaced the phone and snatched up his copy of the Denton Echo.
It was open at an inside page where the headline read fleeing jewel thief shoots policeman dead. Beneath it a recent photograph of David
Shelby smiled across four columns. But it wasn’t this story that was causing Mullett’s annoyance. It was the story that had relegated it to the second page. He refolded the paper to page one, where enormous banner headlines screamed