Frost and Liz Maud breezed into the interview room where a sullen, unshaven and bleary-eyed Tom Jackson greeted them with a scowl.
'Good of you to come in to help us, Mr Jackson,' said Frost, flopping down into the all too familiar chair.
'Don't give me that crap. I'm dragged out of bed with no word of explanation. It's not flaming right.'
'It's inexcusable,' agreed Frost. 'But while you're here, perhaps you could answer a couple of questions?'
'Questions?' frowned Jackson. He spotted Liz Maud who was ramming a cassette tape into the recorder. 'Not her again! Who am I supposed to have raped this time – Lily Savage?'
'Since you've asked,' said Frost, sliding across a photograph of Helen Stokes. 'Recognize her?'
'I never look at their faces when I rape them,' grunted Jackson. He squinted at the photograph, then pushed it back. 'I'm never that hard up.'
'She was one of your passengers,' prompted Frost.
'I don't doubt it. I have hundreds of passengers.'
'Just after one o'clock, Saturday morning, outside the Samaritans.'
Jackson picked up the photograph for another look. 'I don't remember picking her up and I don't remember raping her. Can I go home now?'
'You did pick her up,' insisted Frost. 'Where did you drop her off?'
'If I picked her up then I dropped her off wherever she asked to flaming well go, and she would have left my cab with her handbag and her knickers intact.' He leant across the table. 'What the hell is this all about?'
Frost turned the cover of his file. 'Just looking at your form sheet, Tommy. You can be quite violent with your fares when you like, can't you?'
Jackson leant back and folded his arms. 'We having this again? Three o'clock in the morning, peeing with rain and on my way home when these two toms flag me down. Out of the kindness of my heart I agreed to take them to the railway station. When we get there, they've just missed the last train so they want me to take them to Lexton. "Don't worry about the fare, cabbie," they say. "Whatever it is, we'll pay it." We gets there, I hold out my hand for the money and they now tell me they've had a lousy night and they're skint. One of them lifts up her skirt and says, "Take your fare out of this, cabbie." '
'And you said, "Haven't you got anything smaller?" ' said Frost.
'Spare me the ancient jokes,' sighed Jackson, 'I've heard them all. Neither of them was worth the tip, let alone the fare, so I lock them in and tell them I'm driving them to the nearest cop shop. They then started attacking me and I had to defend myself.'
'You did more than defend yourself, Tommy – you broke her jaw.'
'I didn't break it, only cracked it. Anyway, what's all this got to do with her?' He nodded at the photograph.
'She got a bit more than a cracked jaw, Tommy. She was murdered.'
Jackson stared at Frost. 'Murdered?'
'She was seen getting into your cab, Tommy. The next time she was seen, the poor cow was dead.'
The man scooped up the photograph yet again. He studied it carefully, only to toss it back to Frost. 'I've never seen her before in my life.' His eyes narrowed and he jabbed a finger. 'Wait a minute! Saturday morning! Samaritans! Now I remember. The cow wasn't there. She orders a cab, I flog my guts out to get there in ten minutes, but when I arrive there's no sign of her.'
'Come off it, Tommy – you were seen picking her up.'
'Whoever saw me wants their eyes tested. I tooted my horn a couple of times, but no-one turned up, so I drove off. Lucky for me a bloke flagged me round the corner, and I took him instead.'
Frost lit up a cigarette. 'Then how come your boss has you logged in for doing this shout?'
'Because I was flagged in the street and it's against the law for an unlicensed cab to pick up passengers who haven't booked in advance. I didn't tell Max. He'd have screamed blue murder if he knew I was putting his business at risk.'
'Fair enough, Tommy. Give us your passenger's address and we'll check out your story.'
'I don't know his flaming address. I took him to the multi-storey car-park where I assume he'd parked his motor.'
'There's a pity,' said Frost, shaking his head in mock sadness. 'We could have checked it and cleared you.' His expression hardened. 'Gone one o'clock in the morning, vulnerable woman, car broken down. Why wasn't she there waiting?'
'How the hell do I know? Perhaps a licensed cab drove by and she hired that.'
Frost dismissed this with a snort. 'It's a cul-de-sac, Tommy. Why should a licensed cab be cruising down there?'
'Perhaps he was dropping a passenger off,' suggested Jackson.
Frost grimaced ruefully. He hadn't thought of that. 'Where's your cab?'
'Why?'
'We'd like our Forensic boys to give it a sniff. If we find her blood all over the seat, it might refresh your memory.'
'You'll have to ask Max Golding where my cab is.'
'Why?'
'The cab doesn't stand idle just because I'm not driving it. When I get out, another driver gets in. The seat's red hot sometimes.'
Great! thought Frost. Bloody great!
He took one last swig from the mug of canteen tea, then committed his cigarette end to a sizzling death in the dregs. He was back in the murder incident room with the rest of his team. 'As you know, we've got yet another prime suspect. Tommy Jackson, minicab driver with form for violence. He was due to pick Helen Stokes up Saturday morning but claims she wasn't there when he arrived. He reckons another cabbie dropped off a passenger and picked her up. DC Burton has been checking all the cab firms to see if they had anyone in the vicinity at that time of the morning.' He raised an enquiring eyebrow at Burton who stood up.
'I've checked all the local minicab and licensed cab firms. None of them had cars in that immediate vicinity Saturday morning and none of them had drops anywhere near the Samaritans.'
'Right,' added Frost. 'I've been back to the Samaritans. Jackson said he tooted his horn when he arrived but there was no-one there waiting. Melvyn, the bloke in charge, thinks he might have heard a horn from the street, but he was on the phone and can't be certain of the time.'
'Which isn't much help to Jackson, or to us,' said Arthur Hanlon.
Frost grunted his agreement. 'Forensic are giving his cab the once-over, but I'm not optimistic. Other people have driven it as well as Jackson. However, Inspector Maud has been proving she's not just a pretty face.' He nodded for Liz to make her report.
She stood up. 'I checked the duty rotas at Denton Minicabs. Jackson was on duty every night the murder victims went missing.'
A buzz of excited conversation.
'Secondly,' continued Liz, 'I checked the pick-up records for the nights the victims were last seen. The firms don't always record destinations, only the pickup points, but the night Big Bertha went missing, Denton Minicabs had a call from Downham Street, which is in the red light area, to Fenton Street, which is where Bertha shared a flat. Jackson was the driver, but, surprise, surprise, he told his firm there was no one there when he arrived.'
'We've got enough to charge him,' said Sergeant Hanlon.
'But not enough to get a conviction, Arthur.' The phone rang. Burton answered it. 'Forensic, Inspector. About the cab.'
Frost took the phone without much enthusiasm. Forensic hadn't been much help in the past. 'Right, give me the good news. You've found matching bloodstains, a pair of knee-length knickers and a signed confession?'
'No, Inspector,' said Harding patiently, 'but we did find a used condom so we can do DNA checks to see who used it and on whom. We also found fibres from that fur coat you were on about and traces of a considerable amount of dried blood on the carpeting which we are currently matching against the blood of the victims. Apart from that, little of interest.'
Frost squeezed the phone hard and stared up at the ceiling. 'Say that again.'
Harding said it again.
Frost beamed. 'The next time anyone says you're a lot of useless bastards, tell them I don't entirely agree.' He put the phone down and spun round. 'We've got him,' he said.
Jackson's scowl had deepened when he was brought back into the interview room. He snatched at the cigarette Frost offered.
'So you smoke cigarettes?' Frost commented, clicking his lighter.
'What else can you do with cigarettes,' snarled the cab driver, 'stick them up your arse? It's not a crime, is it?'
'Depends where you stub them out,' said Frost. He pulled out a wad of photographs of the murdered women and dealt them out, one by one. 'Recognize any of these?'
Jackson bent over to study them. 'I know most of them. They've used my cab quite a few times. They're prostitutes.'
'Dead prostitutes,' Frost told him. 'And by a strange coincidence, they all went missing on the nights you were on cab duty.'
'Hardly surprising, considering I only work nights.'
Frost flicked across the photograph of Big Bertha taken on the autopsy slab. 'Toms who phone for cabs on the nights you are on duty end up looking like that!'
Jackson screwed up his face and quickly turned his head away. 'That's sick. Just because they ride in my cab, it don't mean I murdered them. If they rode on a bus would you arrest the flaming bus driver?'
'If he was in the habit of beating up his passengers, I might, and if I found forensic evidence inside his bus, I damn well would.'
'Well, you found nothing inside my cab.'
'I'm afraid we did, Tom.' Frost tapped a finger on the photograph of Sarah. 'She was wearing a tatty fur coat the night she was murdered. We found fibres from it inside your cab.'
'I didn't say she'd never been in my cab. I just said I didn't pick her up the night she went missing,' smirked Jackson.
'At 2.36 last Thursday, this lady,' and Frost held up the photograph of Big Bertha, 'phoned for a cab to collect her from Downham Street. Max Golding gave the pick-up to you, but you claimed she wasn't there when you arrived, just as you claim Helen Stokes wasn't there when you arrived, and like Helen Stokes, the next time we saw her, she looked like this.' He waggled the autopsy photograph.
Jackson pushed the photograph away. 'If she wasn't there, she wasn't bloody there.' He clicked his fingers. 'I remember now. Yes, I radioed Max that the customer wasn't there so he gave me another pick-up just round the corner.'
'Another pick-up? I don't suppose you remember what it was?'
'No,' snarled Jackson. 'When you're murdering prostitutes all the time, you don't remember trifling little details like that. Max booked it, he'll know.'
Frost nodded for Liz to go and get the details from the minicab firm. 'Would you have any objection to giving up samples for DNA testing?'
'Why?'
'The killer raped the toms, using a condom. found a used one in your cab.'
Jackson folded his arms and smirked. 'Take all the samples you like, Inspector. My bodily fluids are at your disposal.'
You're too flaming sure of yourself, thought Frost. 'So how do you suggest the condom got there?'
A pitying look from the cab driver. 'Don't you know anything about the late night cab trade, Inspector? If the tom hasn't a place to take the punter to, and the punter hasn't got a motor, how do you think they consummate their passion? They call a cab and have it away on the back seat, that's how. Some mornings, after a busy night, I'm cleaning out used condoms by the shovelful. But if you want to do a DNA test, be my guest.'
Frost groaned inwardly. His pile of hard evidence was shrinking fast. But there was still the blood to be tested… A tap at the door and Liz beckoned him outside.
'The call from Big Bertha,' she told him, 'came in at 2.36. At 2.50 Jackson radioed back to base to say there was no-one there. Luckily, Golding had another customer for him, a man in Felford Road who had cut his hand on a corned beef tin and wanted to be driven to the casualty department at Denton Hospital to have it stitched up. I went through to the hospital and got the man's name and telephone number. I phoned him. He says the minicab arrived about five minutes after he made the call and took him straight to the hospital.'
Then there was no way he could have picked Bertha up and parked her somewhere before he took the other pick-up?'
'None at all. And there's more bad news. The man said he was bleeding like a stuck pig all over the back seat of the cab.'
'Shit!' said Frost.
'I can go?' asked Jackson in mock incredulity. 'Can't you think of anything else you can charge me with? What about that skeleton you dug up in that garden? Perhaps he rode in my cab.'
Frost ignored the sarcasm and tried not to show it was hitting home. He had nothing on Jackson and knew that the blood in the cab would turn out to be from the man who had the fight with the corned beef tin. 'Don't leave Denton. We may want to talk to you again.'
Shoulders slumped, he made his way back to the murder incident room but was waylaid by Mullett and led into the old log cabin.
'Have you charged him?'
'No… not enough evidence,' mumbled Frost, giving Mullett the details.
'This isn't good enough, Frost,' barked Mullett. 'You're arresting people left, right and centre, trying to make them fit the crime then having to let them go through lack of evidence. This has already led to one tragedy.' He shook his head reproachfully. 'I want a result, Frost. I want a result, quickly.'
'You should have said so before,' grunted Frost. 'I'd have tried harder.'
Mullett reddened. 'Don't give me your smart answers, Frost-' He was cut short by the phone.
'I told you to hold all my calls. Oh… I see.' He held the receiver out to the inspector. 'For you. A man on the phone in answer to my television appeal. He says he was with that Sarah woman last night.'
Another time-waster, thought Frost. These media appeals brought all the cranks and weirdo's crawling out of the woodwork. He shouldered the phone to his ear as he poked a cigarette in his mouth. Mullett quickly skidded the heavy glass ashtray over before the carpet was smothered in ash.
The call came from a public phone box. Frost could hear traffic roaring past in the background. 'Are you the detective handling that prostitute killing?'
'Yes,' said Frost, trying to sound interested.
'I think I'm the man you want to talk to. I was with her last night.'
'Oh yes?' said Frost, stifling a yawn.
'I picked her up in Fenton Street about half-past two.' Exactly what we said in the telecast, thought Frost.
We give these sods too many clues. 'I went to a tall tart first, but she was too dear.' Frost sat bolt upright and signalled frantically to Mullett. He clapped a hand over the mouthpiece. 'Trace this call and get someone over there to pick him up… he's our man.'
Back to the phone as Mullett dialled. 'Sorry about that,' Frost apologized, 'I was looking for my pen. So you picked her up? Then what?'
'We drove down a cul-de-sac and we had it away. I don't like speaking ill of the dead, but she was rubbish. Then she had the flaming cheek to ask me to drive her home to Castle Street.'
'And did you?'
'No, I bloody didn't. I live near there and I didn't want anyone to see me with her in the car… she was hardly quality. I told her I wasn't going that way, so she asked me to drop her off at a phone box so she could call a cab.'
'What phone box?'
'The one by the railway arch in Vicarage Street.' Frost looked hopefully across to Mullett who had the phone clamped to his ear. Mullett shook his head. 'Still trying to trace it,' he mouthed.
'Do you know what cab firm she was going to Phone?' Frost asked.
'I didn't hold a conversation with her. I just wanted her out of my car.'
'Had you been with her before?'
'If I'd been with her before, I'd never have gone with her last night. She wasn't bloody worth it.'
'So you said,' murmured Frost, again raising enquiring eyes to Mullett who signalled back, winding his hand for Frost to keep the conversation going. 'Look, sir, I promise you'll be kept out of it, but it would be helpful if we could have your name.'
'No way.' A click and the purr of the dialling tone.
Frost slammed the phone down. As he did so, Mullett raised a finger. 'The public call box outside the main post office. Charlie Alpha is on the way.'
'I hope he'll have the decency to wait for them,' grunted Frost, heaving himself out of the chair. 'The bollocking will have to be put on hold, Super. I've got to follow this up…'
The phone in the murder incident room rang. Burton answered it. 'Charlie Alpha,' he announced. 'No-one in the phone box when they arrived.'
Frost gave a resigned shrug. 'I don't think there's any more he could have told us.' He was more concerned with getting a reply from British Telecom to tell him the number dialled from the call box in Vicarage Street. 'Come on, come on,' he moaned at the phone. 'I haven't got all flaming day.' He snatched it up on the first ring. British Telecom had the number, and it wasn't Denton Minicabs. Frost dialled it.
'Speedy Radiocabs,' announced a woman's voice.
'This is Denton police. You received a call around 2.30 yesterday morning to pick up a woman in Vicarage Street. Can you tell me which of your drivers handled it, please?'
A pause and the rustling of paper. 'Got it. Woman wanted to go to Castle Street. Our cab got there in ten minutes, but she wasn't there. We've had quite a few of these abortive calls lately.'
Frost put the phone down and spun round. 'She called for a cab. When it arrived she wasn't there. Jackson said the same thing happened for him with Helen Stokes and Big Bertha. This changes everything. We're not looking for someone pretending to be a punter. We're looking for someone posing as a minicab driver.' He got off the chair and paced up and down excitedly, teasing out his thoughts. 'A couple of years ago we had this pirate cabbie listening in to the other firms' calls on his radio so he could get to their pick-up before they did. I bet my flaming pension this is what our bloke is doing. He lurks about late at night, hears a call from a tart wanting a cab and gets there first. By the time the poor cow realizes he's not taking her where she wants to go, it's too late.'
'Possible,' acknowledged Hanlon.
'It's more than possible, Arthur. I've got one of my infallible feelings. Right, drop everything else. I want every minicab and licensed cab firm in Denton called on. Find out if they had calls the nights any toms went missing and if there was no show when they arrived. And I also want someone to check out the bloke with the pirate cab and see if he's up to his old tricks. The slightest suspicion, like a dead tom in the back of his motor, bring him in.' This was better. This was what he liked. Action.
The door crashed open and Taffy Morgan burst in. 'I've tracked her down, guv… Nelly Aldridge, the lady with the nipples.'
'Damn,' said Frost. 'I'd forgotten about her. What cemetery is she buried in?
'She's alive and well, guv. Lives in a smallholding at Hill Lane on the outskirts of Denton. No sign of a son.'
'She must be pushing eighty. I bet her nipples aren't worth looking at now.'
'She's a tough old bird by all accounts, won't let anyone go near the place. The Social Services lady tried to call and got the chamber pot emptied all over her for her trouble.'
'We'll have to send Mr Mullett round in his best uniform. How long has she been there?'
'Over forty years. The previous owner died and the council had the place down in their records as empty and derelict. They only recently realized someone was living there.'
'How did they find out?'
'The old girl fell and broke her wrist. She got herself to Denton Hospital and they wanted to keep her in, but she refused. That's why they sent the Social Services lady round there.'
Frost checked his watch. If they could get this one tied up and out of the way they could concentrate on more important things. 'Right, Taffy. You and me will pay her a visit and see if she remembers burying her son in a neighbour's garden.'
Hill Lane was narrow, rutted and steep, and tested the car's springs to the limit. A bumpy, uncomfortable ride, so it was almost a relief when the lane petered out to a muddied footpath and they had to get out and walk, fighting their way, heads down, against a driving wind. A dank and desolate area with hostile branches and brambles scratching and tearing as they sloshed their way through rain-filled pot-holes. The lane twisted and started getting steeper. 'Are you sure this is right?' asked Frost. It doesn't seem to be leading anywhere.'
'It's definitely up here somewhere, guv,' Morgan told him. 'Not easy to reach, the lady said.'
'Ladies never say that to me,' said Frost. 'Ah..' They had reached the summit and were looking down on the untidy sprawl of the smallholding, mud dotted with piles of rubbish and battered corrugated sheeting.
Rusty wire held in a few scrawny chickens who squawked in protest at the invasion of the two detectives. From somewhere behind the chicken shed they could hear a goat bleating. The small house looked neglected with boarded-up windows, peeling paint and sections of guttering hanging limply down like a broken arm.
As they scrunched their way down a swampy cinder path, Morgan screwed up his face in disgust. 'What's that smell, guv?'
Frost indicated a small brick outhouse with a corrugated iron roof. 'That's an earth privy – a wooden seat and a bucket. If she offers us rhubarb and custard, say no.'
There was no knocker or bell push on the cracked front door so he thumped with his fist. They waited. Nothing.
'Perhaps she's out,' suggested Morgan, wishing they'd never started this.
'Perhaps she's filling up the chamber pot,' said Frost, stepping well back. 'You take over the knocking.'
Nervously, Morgan gave the door a tentative rap, then tried to look through the window, but the thick grime barely let him see through to the drawn, dirt-heavy curtains and all he saw was his own blurred reflection. He hammered the door again. 'Police -open up.'
'Clear off!' An old woman's voice. The upstairs window had opened.
Morgan hopped back quickly as a bucketful of something nasty splattered down. 'I don't think she's too keen to see us, guv,' he muttered.
'It's just her way,' said Frost as the window slammed shut again. He gave the door a savage kick. 'Open up, missus, or we'll kick the bloody door in.'
The window again creaked open. 'Go away. I'm sick.' The voice was weak and quavering.
'You'll be a bloody sight sicker if you don't let us in,' bellowed Frost.
They waited as footsteps slowly descended the stairs, then countless bolts were drawn and the front door slowly creaked open.
She was very old, leathery skin, wispy grey hair, wearing a bloodstained sacking apron over a faded floral dress. Her deeply wrinkled face was dirt-grimed and she studied Morgan's warrant card suspiciously with red-rimmed eyes, then jerked her head for them to come in.
Frost peered into the dark depths and sniffed gingerly. The earth privy seemed preferable. He took one last lungful of cold, clear air, then stepped inside. 'Thanks.'
They followed her over the bare boards of a dingy passage, their noses assailed by a mixture of smells, stale fat, ancient food, paraffin, and a lurking, earthy odour of something worse.
She led them into the kitchen, a smelly little room with a tiny window too high to see out of and too dirty to let much light in. A Primus stove stood on a rickety rusted metal stand next to a chipped, brown-stained sink piled high with dirty dishes encrusted with ancient food. Hanging from a nail on the wall, a recently killed, scrawny chicken dripped blood from its beak on to the gritty stone floor. She sat herself down at a scarred-topped wooden table, picked up a lethal-looking kitchen knife, wiped it on her sacking apron and started hacking away at the corpse of another plucked chicken which lay beside a pile of feathers. 'Sit down, if you like,' she grunted.
Frost glanced around. None of the chairs looked particularly appetizing. 'No thanks. You used to live in Beresford Street?'
'Yes.'
'When was that?'
'A long time ago.'
'When did you move here?'
'A long time ago.'
Frost raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. 'Can't you give us some idea of dates?'
'No.' The knife crashed down like a guillotine blade and the severed head of the chicken dropped into a bin half-filled with food debris.
'Where's your son, Mrs Aldridge?'
For the briefest of moments the old woman froze, then the knife began sawing away as she dismembered the bird's legs. 'Haven't got a son.' The yellow, muddy legs joined the neck in the bin. She hacked off blooded chunks of meat and dropped them in a battered saucepan.
'Come on, love,' said Frost, through clenched teeth. 'You had a son when you lived at Beresford Street.'
'My son is dead,' she said bluntly, wiping blood from the knife with her sacking apron then dragging some carrots and onions towards her. The vegetables looked as if another wash under the tap wouldn't do them any harm.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Frost, not sounding it.
'When did he die?'
'A long time ago.'
'What, five, ten, twenty years?1
'I don't remember.'
Let's have a look at his death certificate and we'll be off.'
'Don't know where it is.' She began slicing the vegetables, the knife a blur, barely missing her fingers as she pushed them under the blade.
'Then where is he buried?'
'Don't remember.' A handful of sliced vegetables were tossed on top of the blooded chunks of meat in the saucepan.
Frost was losing patience. 'Come on, missus. You might forget a lot of things, but not where your only son was buried. Was it in Denton?'
She pulled more vegetables towards her. 'I'm old. I forget things. It might have been, or perhaps he was cremated somewhere.'
'Well, that narrows it down,' snorted Frost. He tried a different tack. 'What was his name?'
A sad smile. 'Boy. I called him Boy.'
'What was his proper name?'
She raised her head. 'Boy. That was his proper name.'
'Would Boy be buried in a garden in Nelson Road?' Her head dropped. The hand holding the knife shook for an instant before she steadied it and slowly and deliberately gave all her attention to cutting up more vegetables, although already there seemed to be more than enough in the saucepan. 'No.'
'Only we found a body.' He was watching her closely.
'Nothing to do with me.' Chop, chop, chop.
'Do you have any living relatives who might have better memories than you?' Taffy asked.
'There's no-one.'
'What about Boy's father?'
'Dead. Everyone's dead.'
'What was his name?'
'Don't remember.'
'How old was your son when he died?'
'Don't remember.'
Frost was getting fed up with this. They were getting nowhere and he wanted to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of this tiny, dirty scullery. 'Just bloody concentrate. We found a skeleton of a man in a garden in Nelson Road. We're trying to establish who he is. Could he be your son?'
She gave the saucepan a shake. 'No.'
Frost dug into his mac pocket and pulled out the wrist-watch. He thrust it at her. 'Is this your son's watch?'
She jerked her head away. 'No.'
'Look at the damn thing before you say no.'
'Don't have to. Boy couldn't tell the time. He didn't have a watch.' She rose painfully from her chair and unhooked the other chicken from the nail and started to tear out its feathers. 'I want you to go now. I've got work to do.' The knife crashed down, completely severing the chicken's head and nearly splitting the table top in two. The old girl wasn't as frail as she looked.
She followed them out to the front door and banged it shut behind them. They could hear bolts slamming home.
Frost's nose twitched. 'Doesn't fresh air smell funny.' He shivered and tightened his scarf. After the fetid fug of that kitchen, the cold cut like a knife.
They trudged down the path. Morgan nodded at the potato ridges in the kitchen garden. 'She must be as strong as a horse, guv.'
'She smells like one,' grunted Frost.
'I mean, all on her own, digging the garden, tending the chickens and the goat. She must be as old as the Queen Mum.'
'I was wondering who she reminded me of,' said Frost.
'What's our next move?'
'We forget it, Taffy. She probably killed her son, but we're never going to prove it. We let it drop.'
But Morgan wouldn't let it drop. He kicked a lump of the dug-over earth. 'She could have more bodies buried here, guv.'
Frost groaned. 'What the hell are you on about now?'
'Where did she get the money from to buy this place? The council said they'd heard the old boy who used to live here had died, but they had nothing official. Perhaps she killed him, buried him, then pretended he'd sold it to her. I reckon we should dig the place up.'
Frost's hand flicked this suggestion aside. 'We've got enough flaming dead bodies without digging around to find more, Taffy.'
'If she killed her son and the old boy, guv, she should be made to pay.'
'The old cow's pushing ninety. She lives in a shit-house. Prison would be like the Mayfair Hilton in comparison. How is that making her pay?' He sighed. 'Sod it, Taffy. I hate it when you're keen. All right, you can do the ferreting. Get the old boy's name from the town hall and find out if he was still in the land of the living after he was supposed to have sold the place…'
It was chicken casserole for lunch at the canteen, but Frost didn't fancy it. He grabbed himself a sausage sandwich and was half-way into it when he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be attending the post-mortem of Sarah Hicks. Dropping the remains of the sandwich in his pocket, he dashed down to the car and was still wiping crumbs from his mouth as he charged into the autopsy room to be greeted by a scowling Drysdale. 'Just made it, doc,' he panted. 'I thought I was going to be late.'
'You are late,' snapped Drysdale. 'I said two o'clock.'
'Oh,' said Frost. 'I could have sworn you said twelve minutes past.' He shuffled on a green gown. 'If you could speed it up, doc, I've got lots to do.' He hoisted himself up on a stool and watched as the pathologist took a scalpel and scratched a preliminary red line down the stomach. Suddenly it hit him. Only a few hours ago he had been talking to the poor cow. Only a few days ago he had sat on this same stool while Drysdale performed the autopsy on little Vicky Smart. Someone was killing toms, someone was killing little girls, and he was supposed to be leading the hunt for the killers, but was getting absolutely nowhere. All his brilliant theories had proved false, all his dead cert leads had fizzled out. He no longer had any faith in his rogue cab driver theory, expecting it to blow up in his face like all the others. The responsibility was too bloody great. He was out of his depth. The pillow case flaming burglar was more his mark and he was getting nowhere with that case either.
'Are you still with us, Inspector?'
He snapped out of his mournful reverie. Drysdale was talking to him. 'Sorry, doc. What was that?'
'I said the condition her arteries were in, she could have suffered a heart attack at any time.'
Frost nodded gloomily. It didn't make him feel any better.
Four o'clock in the afternoon, dark as night outside and the pub was already crowded. The autopsy had depressed him and the awareness of his own inadequacy hung heavily over him. He couldn't face going back to the station without a drink inside him.
As he pushed his way through to the bar a familiar raucous laugh made him stop and turn. Leaning across the bar, chatting up the bespectacled barmaid, was Taffy Morgan clutching a beer glass. His back was to Frost, but some sixth sense told him he was being observed. Morgan turned and started guiltily. 'You looking for me, guv?'
As good an excuse as any. 'Yes,' lied Frost, 'I've been looking everywhere.'
'Sorry, guv. I was so busy getting the gen on that old farmer, I didn't have time for any lunch, so I popped in here for a quick sandwich.'
'Yes,' grunted Frost, 'I saw you drinking it. You can buy me one now, a pint!' He sipped the beer as the DC filled him in.
'I've tracked down that old boy's family, guv,' he began. 'It looks as if I was wrong about her killing him. The old girl bought the place from him for Ј3,500 in 1957 – paid cash apparently. The old boy died in his bed three years later. They showed me the death certificate.'
'Cash?' queried Frost. 'That was big money in those days – something over thirty thousand quid today.' He scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'In arrears with her rent, then suddenly comes up with that sort of money?'
'Tell you what I was thinking, guv,' offered Morgan. 'Suppose she had her son insured and killed him for the insurance money?'
'Insurance companies don't pay out without a death certificate and you don't get one if you dump the body in someone else's back garden.' He worried at his scar. 'We haven't time to sod about with ancient history, but we can't leave it like this. A body's planted in the garden next to her and her son goes missing. Then she suddenly comes into three and a half thousand quid. I hate to say it, but sometime or other we'll have to go back to Shangri-la, or whatever she calls the bloody place.' He downed the drink and wiped his mouth. 'But some other time, not now. Let's get back to the station.'
As they left, Morgan turned to wave to the dark-haired, bespectacled barmaid. 'What do you reckon to her, guv?'
Frost gave her an approving look. 'I wouldn't kick her out of bed on a cold night.'
'You know what turns me on, guv?'
'Every bloody thing turns you on,' said Frost, feeling a lot more cheerful now. Morgan always had this effect on him.
'What turns me on is the thought of making love to a girl who wears glasses. She strips to the buff, but keeps her glasses on.'
Then you can breathe on the lens and she can't see how small your dick is,' said Frost.
He was about to dart through the lobby when he saw the grim, angular figure of Doreen Beatty in earnest conversation with Bill Wells. Frost froze and waited in the corridor until she left, then hurried across.
'What did old mother Beatty want?'
'She wanted you,' replied Wells. 'Reckons a man's been stalking her all around the town.' He glanced at the description he had noted down. 'Dirty, shifty-eyed, loose-mouthed and oozing lust.'
'Sounds like Mullett,' grunted Frost, pushing through the swing doors. 'He always fancied a bit of rough.'
He went through his usual ritual of riffling through the papers in his in-tray. The only item of interest was a copy crime report from Lexton Division concerning three robberies from private houses where pillows were found in the middle of the beds and the pillow cases missing. The pillow case burglar was working further afield. Frost hoped Lexton would have more luck than he did. If they caught the man it would automatically knock his outstanding crime figures down to a respectable level. There was also a request from Belton Division asking that the case of Big Bertha be added to the Denton Division list of unsolved crimes as the killing undoubtedly took place in Denton District, the body being simply dumped in Belton. A good argument, but it wouldn't help Frost's crime figures, so he buried it deep under all the other papers. He looked up as Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon came in.
'How did the post-mortem go?' asked Hanlon, dragging a chair over to the inspector.
'Told us nothing we didn't know already, Arthur,' grunted Frost. 'The poor cow died from a heart attack probably brought on from the terror of knowing what the bastard intended to do to her. There was something bloody weird there, though.'
'What was that?' asked Hanlon.
'It was when Drysdale scooped out her stomach contents.'
Hanlon pulled a face. He knew he wasn't going to enjoy hearing this.
'She'd been dead over twelve hours and yet in her stomach was this undigested sandwich.' He dug in his pocket and pulled out the remains of his sausage sandwich which he held up, parted the bread and looked inside. 'A sausage sandwich.' As Hanlon gaped in horror, Frost popped it in his mouth and gulped it down. 'Doesn't taste bad considering…"
Hanlon went green and shuddered, but Frost couldn't keep a straight face any longer and broke into a broad grin. 'You bastard!' Hanlon shrieked as Frost nearly fell off his chair laughing. 'You're having me on. I won't tell you what we found out from the cab firms now.'
Wiping tears from his eyes, Frost passed his cigarette packet over. 'If I couldn't find something to laugh at about that damn autopsy room, Arthur, I'd go stark, staring bonkers. The poor bitch lying there like so much meat and Drysdale slicing her open.' He flicked his lighter. 'Tell daddy about the cab firms.'
'We could be on to something, Jack. We've checked them all and on every night a torn went missing, one of them answered a call, but no-one was waiting for them when they arrived.
Frost punched his palm with his fist. 'I knew it! He's listing in on a all band radio and if it's a call from a women on her own, he gets there first. We're going to nail the bastard.'
'How?' asked Hanlon
'We use decoys, Arthur. Lots of lovely, juicy nubile policewomen as decoys.' Sod all the gloom. He was now feeling on top of the world.