A Touch of Frost djf-2 Page 13

… 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 al
one; 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 trea
cled 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.