Mullett was finding it difficult to control his emotions. “Whoever did this,” he said, “I want him. I don’t care how many men it takes, I want him.” To Frost he said, “I’m putting Mr. Allen in charge. You will take over his cases.”
“Right,” acknowledged Frost, who hadn’t really expected Mullett to allow him to handle an investigation of this importance.
Mullett cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. He spoke to Frost but didn’t look at him. “Someone’s got to tell Shelby’s wife,” he said.
His wife! Young Mrs. Shelby, not much more than a teenager, with two kiddies, one three, the other eighteen months, and a third on the way.
“I thought you’d be doing that, sir,” said Frost.
Mullett stared straight ahead and slapped his palm with his leather driving glove. “I want the news broken gently,” he said. “If she sees the Divisional Commander turning up on her doorstep… I understand she’s pregnant… the shock… It might be better if you
…” He let the rest of the sentence hang.
“You’re ordering me to do it, then?” asked Frost, determined not to volunteer.
“Er, yes,” muttered Mullett, wishing the inspector wouldn’t drive him into a corner like this. “It would be best.”
For you, you bastard, but not for me, thought Frost bitterly. “All right, Super. If you say so.”
Mullett, relieved to have wriggled out of the unpleasantness, put on his sincere expression. “And tell Mrs. Shelby that if there is anything at all I can do to help in her moment of sorrow, she has only to ask. Her husband was one of my finest officers.” As Frost moved off, he called after him, “And tell her we’re going to get the swine who did it.”
“Yes, that should cheer her up no end,” muttered Frost as he called Webster over and opened the door of the Cortina.
Lying back wearily in the passenger seat, he shook the last cigarette from the packet. “This is one bloody job I hate, son. I’ve done it enough times, so I ought to know.” A stream of smoke hit the wind-screen and spread out. “Back to the station, first. There’s something I’ve got to do.” He had remembered the candid photographs in Shelby’s locker. He didn’t want some well-meaning person parcelling them with the dead constable’s effects and sending them to his widow.
The mood at the station was one of cold shock and white-hot anger. “He was a bloody good bloke, Jack,” said Bill Wells. “One of the best.” Frost said nothing.
Shelby’s death had upset him as much as it had anyone, but Shelby wasn’t a bloody good bloke. He was shifty, lazy, a lecher, and a liar.
He made his way to the locker room. It was empty. He found the key that worked before and opened up Shelby’s locker. The camera was there but the photographs were not. He swore softly and locked up, then went to rejoin Webster in the car.
They sped through the main roads, all traffic lights with them just when Frost wanted delay, wanted to put off as long as possible the moment when Shelby’s wife opened that door.
Shelby’s two-storey semi was on a corner its downstairs lights behind bright-red curtains glowed welcomingly. Webster slid the car into an empty parking space on the other side of the road and switched off the engine. Frost made no attempt to move. He found a fresh packet of cigarettes and slowly stripped off the cellophane. He took his time lighting a cigarette to his satisfaction, then crushed it out in the car’s overfilled ashtray. “Damn and sodding blast!” he cried. “This is what Mullett’s paid his inflated bloody salary for, to do lousy jobs like this.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands and seemed to cheer up now he had got that off his chest. “Come on, let’s get it over and done with. You go and find a woman neighbour who can stay with her, and I’ll break the news.”
Through a red-painted gate and up a small path to the front door, where he thumbed the buzzer. Excited voices from inside. Quick, light footsteps, then the door opened slowly. A child, a three-year-old boy in light-blue pyjamas and smelling of Johnson’s bath soap, regarded him with a puzzled frown. “I thought you were my daddy,” he said.
“Is your mummy there?” Frost asked, again mentally cursing Mullett for being a cowardly bastard. This was going to be harder than he thought.
A young woman opened a door at the end of the hall. When she saw Detective Inspector Frost standing there, and not her husband, the colour seeped from her face and she briefly held the doorframe very tightly to steady herself. “Go in the other room and play for a bit, Tommy,” she told the child, doing her best to keep her voice sounding normal. As the boy pushed past her, she walked slowly to the front door.
“Hello, love,” said Frost, realizing he had forgotten to check at the station to find out what her first name was. “Do you think I could come in? I’ve got something to tell you.”
She took him to the kitchen, looking in at the lounge on the way through to make sure the children were all right. A small, warm, friendly kitchen. Frost could smell something cooking the appetising aroma of a casserole, a meal that could be kept in the oven on a low heat for ages without spoiling. Ideal if your husband was inclined to come home late. On the small kitchen table, which was laid with a white tablecloth, were two place settings. She invited Frost to sit, then went over to the hob to stir something in a saucepan, her back to him. He remained standing.
Very busily engaged in stirring what didn’t need stirring, she asked, “Is he hurt?”
“He’s dead, love,” said Frost bluntly. Her back stiffened. She carried on stirring, the spoon clack, clack, clacking against the side of the saucepan.
“I knew something was wrong when I phoned the station. They kept saying he was working late, but I knew.”
“I wish you’d cry,” said Frost. “I wish you’d bloody cry.”
And then her face crumpled and her body was racked with sobbing.
Frost held out his arms and gripped her tightly. “That’s right, love, just cry.” He could feel her scalding tears running down his face, trickling on to his neck. He held her, saying nothing, sharing her grief. Then she was still. “How did it happen?” she whispered.
“He was shot, love. He was trying to stop a cowboy with a gun.”
She moved away from him and rubbed her face dry with her apron, then she turned off the oven and the hob and slumped down heavily in one of the chairs at the table. Frost pulled out the other chair and sat next to her, his face wet and stinging from her tears.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Me?” said Frost in surprise. “I’m fine, love.” But his hands were shaking.
“He was a marvelous husband,” she said, ‘really marvelous. He idolized me and the kids. We were all he lived for. He would never look at another woman, although they kept looking at him. They all fancied him, he was so good-looking, you see; but he was mine. We loved each other.”
“I know,” said Frost. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said.
The voice at the other end said “Denton Echo, here. Could I speak to Mrs. Shelby, please?”
“Piss off,” said Frost, hanging up. It rang again. He disconnected it from the wall. She was bound to be plagued by the media, all eager to know what it felt like to be the widow of a policeman who had had his face blown off. He made a note to get her calls intercepted and to ask the station to place a man on guard outside the house. That was the least Mullett could do for her.
“People will have to be told,” she was saying. “His parents. It will break their hearts.”
Frost nodded. She was trying to sound calm, but he could see she was on the edge of hysteria. Where the hell was Webster with that woman neighbour?
An excited shout, followed by a fit of giggles, came from the other room. “Will the kids be all right?” he asked
She nodded. “I’ll put them to bed in a minute.”
The door buzzer sounded. At bloody last, he thought. “My colleague with your neighbour,” he told her. “We thought you might need company.” As she started to protest, he added,
“You can always send her away if you don’t want her.”
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I’m glad it was you.”
He gave her a hug, then made his way to the front door. Coats and hats were hanging from hooks in a recess under the stairs, and on the end hook was Dave Shelby’s police greatcoat. Looking back to ensure the kitchen door was shut, he quickly went through the pockets, heaving a sigh of relief as his fingers closed around the packet of photographs. He slipped it in his mac pocket, then opened the front door to Webster and a fat, motherly-looking woman from next door. “She’s in the kitchen,” he whispered, letting the woman squeeze past.
“How did she take it?” Webster asked when they were back in the car.
“Bloody badly,” said Frost. “It seems Shelby was the world’s greatest husband never even looked at another woman in his life.” He didn’t tell Webster about the photographs.
Webster turned the key in the ignition. “Back to the station?”
Frost shook his head. “I don’t think I could stand it, son. All the bloody gloom. We’ve had all of Inspector Allen’s cases dumped on us, so let’s nip over to the hospital and chat up that poor tart who didn’t get raped last night.”
By now Webster needed no directions to find his way to the hospital. Indeed, so automatic was his driving that he suddenly realized his head was dropping and had to jerk it up to stop himself from falling asleep. He wound down the window and let the slap of cold air keep him awake.
Inside the hospital it was the same round of long, lonely corridors, the same smell of antiseptic and stale cooking. They passed a young nurse, a stray wisp of hair over her forehead, scurrying off on some errand. She was the same nurse Dave Shelby had been chatting up the night before. She had now lost forever her chance of appearing in his photographic collection.
Paula Grey was in Sinclair Ward. Frost didn’t need to ask the way. His wife had been in Sinclair Ward. His wife! He felt guilty that he couldn’t honestly mourn her death. Everyone should have somebody who would grieve at their passing. Even poor Ben Cornish.
The night sister was expecting them and pointed to a bed by a window. Paula Grey was sitting up, propped by two stiffly starched hospital pillows which crackled as she moved. The flesh around her eyes was purple and puffy. Below the eyes, her face was encased in a mask of bandages with a slit for her mouth. A cigarette poked through the slit and she puffed away at it greedily. Her bedside cabinet was loaded with a bowl of fruit and a vase of bronze-coloured chrysanthemums which propped up a card reading Get well soon, Paula — from the girls at The Coconut Grove. The blackened eyes narrowed suspiciously as the two men approached.
“Present from Mr. Baskin?” asked Frost, nodding at the fruit as he drew up a chair to the side of the bed.
The cigarette waggled furiously. “Baskin? That lousy git? He wouldn’t make you a present of the time of day. So who the hell are you?”
“Frost, Detective Inspector Frost. Old Father Time at my side is Detective Constable Webster. You’re not going to be able to eat that fruit with a broken jaw are you, Paula?”
She waved a hand toward the dish. “Help yourself.”
Webster didn’t want anything. Frost took a banana and began peeling it. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about last night.”
“I’ve already told everything to Old Misery Guts.”
“Old Misery Guts is off the case. It’s mine now,” explained Frost.
“Tell me what happened.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I walked through the woods, I got jumped on. But I’ll tell you this. The bastard had better not try it again. I’ll be ready for him.” She reached for her locker and took out a flick knife. “I’ll rip the bastard to pieces! I’ll emasculate him!” She said it with such vehemence that Frost was quite prepared to believe her.
“Did you see him? Would you know him again? It would be a pity if you cut the wrong man’s dick off.”
“That’s the trouble: I never saw the sod. He jumped me from behind.”
“But you must have some idea,” insisted the inspector. “Was he young and well built like me, or old and decrepit like George Bernard Shaw here?”
Not more bloody beard jokes, fumed Webster, refusing even a token smile. The blackened eyes turned toward him and a long stream of smoke was ejected from the slit in the bandages.
“He’s nice, isn’t he?” said Paula.
“If you like them hairy,” said Frost, hiding the banana skin behind the flower vase. “But you’ve got to help us, Paula love. You’re his sixth victim, and we haven’t had one decent description. For all we know he’s a one-legged Chinaman. Now think, love. Any little clue?”
She bowed her head in thought, then shook it negatively. “Sorry.”
“Then tell us, in detail, what happened. It might bring something back.”
“I’m late for my spot at the club. I’m legging it as fast as I can, taking the shortcut through the woods. Suddenly, something black is chucked over my face.”
“A cloth?” asked Frost.
“No, plastic of some sort. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I try to scream but hands go round my throat and start squeezing. I reach up to his face, ready to claw his bleeding eyes out, but he squeezes harder and I’m choking. Then I passed out.”
“You say you reached for his face?” asked Frost excitedly. “Was he hairy like my colleague, or nice and clean-shaven like me?”
“He had a mask on plastic of some kind. All I could feel was plastic.
He even had plastic gloves on his hands.” She sunk back on the pillow.
“They won’t let me have a mirror. How bad is my face?”
“It looks like a baboon’s backside,” said Frost, bluntly, ‘but it will heal. Now what about your attacker? Did he have any minor blemishes that might help us identify him, such as a wooden leg, or a plastic dick, or a mechanical appliance?”
The cigarette was threatening to set fire to the bandages. She took it from her mouth and dropped it into the flower vase. A woman after my own heart, thought Frost.
She thought for a while. “His trousers,” she said. “There was something about them.”
“What about them?” asked Frost quickly.
“I could be wrong. It was as I was passing out. I reached down
… to grab him, you know. I got the impression his trousers were made of some sort of to welling
Frost sat up excitedly. This was something new. “Like jogging trousers, or part of a track suit?”
“Could be,” she said.
“Anything else?”
“Sorry,” she said, sounding tired. “I can’t help any more. You wouldn’t have a fag on you by any chance?”
Frost located her mouth through the slit and pushed a cigarette in. He lit it for her. “You know he didn’t rape you?”
“Yes. That’s the final bloody insult, that is.” She inhaled deeply and coughed, her head banging on the pillow. “I can’t tell you anything else.”
“You’ve been a big help,” said Frost, standing up. “If anything comes to mind, here’s my card.” He laid a grimy card next to the one from the girls at The Coconut Grove. “And here’s some fags.” A fresh packet was pressed into her hand. He waved goodbye and was halfway down the ward when he remembered something else he had wanted to ask her. Telling Webster to wait, he ambled back to the bed.
“Quick,” she said, pulling back the clothes, ‘get in before Sister comes back.”
He grinned. “If only I had the time, love, I’d be in there like a ferret up a rabbit hole. Couple of quick questions. You live in the same flats as Julie King, don’t you?”
“That’s right. Why?”
“Happen to know if she was in last night?”
“Yes. She had her posh boy friend with her that MP’s stuck-up son. I happened to look out of my window about sixish and saw his car pull up.”
“What time did you leave for The Coconut Crove?”
She tapped her chin as
she thought. “About ten to eleven.”
“And was Roger Miller still there when you left?”
“As far as I know.”
“Oh,” said Frost, sounding disappointed.
“Julie went out, of course, but Roger didn’t.”
Frost felt his heart misfire a couple of times before it started beating faster. If Julie had gone out, she could no longer alibi her boy friend. “How do you know she went out?”
“I saw her, didn’t I? I was dashing off down the street, worried about being late and what bastard Baskin would say, when Julie roared past in that Jag.”
“Roger’s Jag?”
“Yes.”
“Was Roger with her?”
“No, only Julie. I yelled after her, hoping for a lift, but she didn’t hear me. If she had, I wouldn’t be in this lousy place.”
“You saw Julie driving off in Roger Miller’s car about ten to eleven last night?” repeated Frost, anxious there should be no misunderstanding.
She nodded. “How many more bleeding times?”
Frost beamed with delight. “Paula, my love, if ever you feel like being raped again, any hour of the day or night, just give me a ring and I’ll be right over.”
He clattered off down the ward and grabbed Webster’s arm, urging him to move faster as he explained the latest development. As soon as they were back in the car he radioed through to Control, requesting that Julie King be brought in for questioning immediately.
Wednesday night shift
Frost could smell her loin-tickling perfume the minute he entered the lobby. It made him forget the misery of the previous few hours.
“She’s in the interview room,” called Bill Wells, ruling a line under the previous entry in the Incident Book. “Jordan and Simms have just brought her in.”
Webster was sent to relieve the two uniformed men from their arduous task of keeping an eye on Julie King while Frost shuffled over to the station sergeant.
“She’s a nice bit of crumpet,” commented Wells.
“Yes,” agreed Frost. “So long as you don’t mind getting run over. Any progress with the murder investigation?”
Wells shook his head sadly. “That was a lousy business, Jack. A damn fine officer.”
A Touch of Frost djf-2 Page 23
