A Killing Frost

by R D Wingfield

  Frost forced a smile. “We’ve got a pretty rotten job for you, I’m afraid, love.”

  He received a sour smile in return. “Miss Pelham if you don’t mind,” she corrected. “I was told you wanted me to lip-read someone on a video tape without sound.”

  “It’s a pretty harrowing video,” Frost warned her.

  “I’m not easily shocked, Inspector.”

  Then I won’t show you my dick, thought Frost. Aloud he said, “Neither am I, but this shook me bloody rigid.” He briefly explained what was involved.

  She went white and shook her head firmly. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m the right person for this, Inspector. There must be other people who can lip-read. I don’t think I could bear to watch it.”

  “Please,” wheedled Frost. “Time is of the essence. We’ve got to catch the bastards who did this to a twelve-year-old kid. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t absolutely vital . . . Please . . .”

  A reluctant nod. She stood up, still clutching her handbag, and followed him to the Incident Room.

  Frost signalled to PC Collier, who switched the video player on and started the tape.

  Miss Pelham gave a gasp of horror, turned her head away from the screen and stood up to go, inching towards the door. “I’m sorry I can’t watch this . . . I can’t . . .”

  “Then we’ll never catch the bastard,” said Frost. “He’ll get away with it. He’ll be free to do this again to some other poor kid.”

  She hesitated then sat down again, bit her lip tightly and nodded. “All right.” She was shaking violently.

  Collier restarted the tape. The woman’s face went chalk-white as she stared at the screen, her lips moving in sync with the girl’s. Frost, leaning over her shoulder, also watched, but even he had to turn his head away as the girl slumped to the floor.

  The tape ended. Miss Pelham looked up at him. “Would you run it through again, please?”

  When it finished again, she fished a tiny handkerchief from her handbag and dabbed her eyes, then turned to the inspector. “Most of the time she is crying and saying nothing, but just before she is . . .” She hesitated and forced her self to continue, “. . . strangled, she looks at whoever is filming and says, ‘Please . . . something . . . stop him.’ ”

  “Something?” snapped Frost. “That’s no bloody good.”

  “Her head jerks away . . . it’s difficult . . . Something like ‘Millie’ or ‘Molly’. It isn’t clear.”

  “Could it be Maggie or Minnie or Maisie?” asked Frost.

  “No—I am almost certain it isn’t any of them.”

  “ ‘Please, Millie . . . stop him,’ ” muttered Frost to himself. “ ‘Please, Molly . . . stop him.’ You’re sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m not sure I can only say it’s something like that, Inspector. I can’t be definite. She moves her head away.”

  “Millie, Molly,” mused Frost. “Mandy? What about Mandy?”

  She thought this over. “It could be, but I don’t think so. There’s an ‘L’ sound there. There’s lots of strange names for girls now that I don’t know, it could be any of them . . . but I still think it’s Millie or Molly or something similar.”

  A woman operating the camera, thought Frost. Probably the same woman who made the phone call to Sandy Lane. He thanked her. “Send in your bill, love. I’ll see it’s paid quickly.”

  She paused at the door and shook her head.

  “Just find the killer and lock him up for life, Inspector. That’s all the payment I want.”

  Frost paced up and down the Incident Room in front of his assembled team, voicing his thoughts out loud. “Millie . . . Molly . . . first names. Someone she knew . . . someone she was on first-name terms with. Someone she bloody trusted and who was so flaming trustworthy she filmed Debbie being strangled.”

  “Could it be one of the girls at school?” suggested DC Morgan.

  “The voice on the tape last night wasn’t that of a schoolgirl,” said Hanlon.

  “Taffy might have a point,” said Frost. “The caller might not be the only woman involved. And as far as the phone call is concerned, Forensic reckon the woman is disguising her voice and is not the low-life bitch she sounds like, so all of Taffy’s girlfriends are out of the frame.” He sat on the corner of the desk and wished his head would stop aching. “This is what we do. I want someone to get a book listing girls’ names—they’re usually books for mothers with babies. See if there are any more names that would fit. Then I want someone to go on the computer and print out a list of all the people called Millie and Molly or something similar who are on record. Then I want all of those women visited and questioned about where they were and what they were doing the night Debbie Clark went missing. Any cocky cows who don’t answer, arrest them on any charge you can think of and bring them into the station. Sod civil bloody liberties. And someone go through the list of people who used to work at that office block and see if any of them have a name that matches.” He nodded at DS Hanlon. “You organise that, Arthur. I’m going to get something to eat, then I’m off to Debbie’s school to see if any of the girls there are called Molly or Millie.”

  He made it to the canteen, but the smell of greasy fried food made his stomach churn so he decided to skip breakfast—lunch as well, probably.

  “I’m off to the school,” he called out to Bill Wells.

  Wells held up the telephone, waving it urgently. “Mr. Beazley’s on the blower. Wants to talk to you urgently—”

  He was talking to a swinging lobby door.

  Miss Robins, the headteacher, a mannish, middle-aged woman in a tailored suit and sensible shoes, surveyed the dishevelled figure hunched up in the chair opposite her with frowning disapproval. “What you are asking is impossible, Inspector. The Data Protection Act—”

  Frost cut her short. “All right. When we find another kid raped and strangled like Debbie Clark you can say, ‘Too bad—but at least I didn’t violate the Data Protection Act.’ ”

  She flushed. “That’s moral blackmail, Inspector.”

  “Yes,” snapped Frost. “I’ll use any means not to see another kid’s body on a slab in the morgue. I’m even prepared to break into your lousy school tonight and steal the bleeding records.” He fumbled in his inside pocket. “Would you like to see a photograph of how Debbie looked when we found her?” He didn’t have the photograph on him, but the bluff worked.

  She held up her hands in protest. “No please. If you could tell me exactly why you want a computer printout of all our pupils.”

  “We have good reason to believe that Debbie was going to meet someone called Millie, or Molly, or something similar the night she was killed. We want to trace that person and eliminate them from our inquiries. It could be a schoolfriend of Debbie’s, we don’t know, but we’ve got to check everyone, even if it means contravening the Data Protection Act.”

  The headteacher pressed a key on her intercom. “Janet, sorry to interrupt your free period, but do you think you could let me have a computer printout of the school roll?”

  Frost tapped her arm. “Let’s have the rolls for the past five years as well. It could be someone who has already left school.”

  “And rolls for the past five years,” added Miss Robins. “And it is rather urgent.” She flipped the key up. “A terrible business, Inspector.”

  “Yes,” agreed Frost. Another thought struck him. “Have any of your teachers got a name like Millie or Molly?”

  She wrinkled her brow in thought, then shook her head. “No—none of them.”

  “What about other workers here—dinner ladies, cleaners and so on?”

  Again she shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I’m afraid I don’t know all their names—some of them come and go so quickly.”

  “Then let’s have a list of staff as well as teachers,” said Frost. The number of possibilities was beginning to mount and he wasn’t even sure if the mysterious Millie or Molly was someone from the school. The school was clearly
a no-smoking area, a factor which made the craving for a fag greater than ever. Hurry up with these flaming lists, he silently urged.

  A tap at the door. At last. A mousy-looking, buck-toothed woman in a brown cardigan with a goofy, jolly-hockey-sticks expression entered with a sheaf of computer printouts.

  “Thank you, Janet,” said Miss Robins, passing the lists over to Frost. “Janet Leigh is our computer expert—she was Debbie’s form mistress.”

  Frost nodded a brief greeting as he stuffed the printouts in his pocket. “We’re hoping to trace someone called Millie, or Molly, or something very similar who was friendly with Debbie. It’s a slim chance, but it could lead somewhere. Any of your girls with names like that?”

  “Millie . . . Molly?” The teacher shook her head. “None in my form. Offhand, I can’t think of any girls in the school with those names.”

  “Dinner ladies, cleaners, anyone?”

  Again she shook her head, then she waggled a triumphant finger at him. “Bridget Malone. The cleaner.”

  “Bridget?” frowned Frost. “Perhaps I’m dim . . .”

  “The children all called her Molly—Molly Malone. You know, ‘Cockles and Mussels, alive alive-oh.’ ”

  This sounded promising. “I’d like to talk to her,” said Frost.

  “She’s not in today,” said the headteacher. “She’s got a stomach bug.”

  “Give me her address,” said Frost. “I might pop round and take her some grapes.”

  “Guv,” called Morgan excitedly, “we’ve struck gold. I’ve run Bridget Malone through the computer. She’s got form!”

  Frost grabbed the computer printout, skimmed through it and tossed it to one side. “You got me going for a minute there, Taff. Pinching knickers from Marks and Sparks—hardly premium-league stuff.”

  “There’s something else, Guv, that should make your day.”

  Frost’s face brightened. “You’re going to resign, Taff? That’s terrific news. Put me down for 3p towards your leaving present.”

  Morgan grinned. “This might be even better news for you, Guv.” He waved another computer printout. “She’s living with Patsy Kelly.”

  Frost snatched the printout from him.

  “Flaming hell, Taff. Don’t resign until tomorrow. Patsy Kelly’s a nasty, slimy bastard if ever there was one—he’d make Mullett look like a saint.” He flipped through the pages. “I’ve put that bastard away a few times . . . GBH . . . Robbery with Violence . . . porno videos . . . obtaining money by menace, drug-dealing. That was his last one—drug-dealing—selling to school kids, by all accounts. I bet that’s what little Bridget was doing when she was supposed to be Ajaxing out the lavatory pans. He’s just the sort of bastard who’d kill a kid for money.” He was getting excited now.

  “Shall we bring her in, Guv?”

  Frost played a drum roll on the desktop with his fingers. “We haven’t got enough on her, Taff—just that the kids call her Molly, and Debbie might or might not have said Molly.” Another brief drum roll. “Didn’t you have to go to the school a few weeks back—stuff being pinched from the kids’ lockers?”

  Morgan nodded. “Yes. Couldn’t pin it on anyone, though.”

  “If you couldn’t crack the case, then no one could,” said Frost. “She’s got form. Wasn’t she one of your suspects?”

  “It could have been anyone in the school, Guv—most likely one of the kids. I didn’t run them through the computer.”

  “The kids call her Molly, and she’s living with scumbag Patsy Kelly. Suspicion, but not a shred of proof. We need to turn their place over, but Kelly would never let us in without a search warrant. Who’s the duty magistrate this week?” Morgan consulted the list on the pinboard.

  “Alison Miller, Guv.”

  Frost’s face fell. “Shit!” he said.

  Frost rubbed his hands together to get his circulation going. It was freezing cold in the back room where old mother Miller had parked him while she finished her meal. He took out his pack of cigarettes, but the clinically clean room hissed its frowning disapproval, so he hastily dropped them back in his pocket and fidgeted in the uncomfortable armchair, watching the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece crawl round. At last the door clicked open and Alison Miller, a heavily built, thick-eyebrowed, grim-looking woman in her late fifties came in to glare down at him.

  “You do pick the most inconvenient times, Inspector Frost. I was in the middle of my meal.”

  “Sorry mum,” mumbled Frost. “Murderers have no consideration for others.”

  “Don’t be flippant and don’t call me ‘mum’—it’s ‘ma’am’ if you don’t mind. And please sit in the other armchair—that one has just been re-upholstered after someone’s cigarette burnt a hole in it.”

  “Ah—yes. Sorry about that, I couldn’t find an ashtray.”

  “The reason you couldn’t find an ashtray, Inspector Frost, was because I do not permit the filthy habit of smoking in this house. You may inform Superintendent Mullett that the bill for the re-upholstery will be forwarded to him for payment as soon as I receive it. So why are you here?”

  Frost pulled the papers from his pocket. “If you could just sign this, then you can get back to your nosh.”

  She found her glasses in her pocket and studied the papers carefully. “A search warrant, Inspector? Another one of your famous search warrants?”

  “Yes,” said Frost anxiously. “If you could just sign where I’ve marked it.”

  “I know perfectly well where to sign search warrants, Inspector. Let me remind you that I do not sign these orders automatically. If I am to give the police powers to do a ham-fisted search of someone’s house, probably dumping lighted cigarettes willy-nilly, then I want justification.”

  “But of course—” began Frost.

  A bony hand waved him to silence. “The last two warrants you prevailed upon me to sign—at two o’clock in the morning, as I recall—were a red-hot, cast-iron tip-off from a 100 percent reliable source and two houses jam-packed to the rafters with stolen goods, if I remember your words correctly. And what did you find?”

  “Ah . . .” began Frost before the hand again cut him short.

  “You found nothing, Inspector. Nothing at all. You promised faithfully that you would report back to me with the results of the searches, but you were obviously too ashamed to do so.”

  “We were so busy . . .”

  “A promise is a promise, Inspector. It was on that condition, and that condition only, that I signed the warrants in spite of my misgivings. And then there was that Warrington Road episode.”

  Frost groaned. He knew the old cow would bring that up. Flaming Taffy Morgan getting the address wrong.

  “A warrant, signed by me and made out for the wrong address. A perfectly respectable lady, a lay preacher, a member of the Church Council. And you broke into her house in the early hours looking for evidence that she was running a brothel. And you got me to sign the warrant.”

  “That’s all in the past—” began Frost.

  “The very recent past, Inspector. It is no wonder I treat all your requests for search warrants with the greatest suspicion. Just because this woman is called Molly, you want to search her house in the hope that you can find something that will connect her with the murdered girl?”

  “Yes,” nodded Frost.

  “Just a name that the girl might or might not have said.” She folded up the warrant and handed it back to him. “You might just as put the names of every woman called Molly into a hat, pull one out and then expect me to sign a search warrant. No, Inspector Frost. You give me some solid evidence first.”

  “They could have this other missing girl, Jan O’Brien. I want to get to them first.”

  “Then come up with some proof. I’d like you to leave now, Inspector.”

  Seething inwardly, Frost stomped out to the car, slamming the front door loudly behind him. He flopped into the front passenger seat. “Back to the nick,” he barked to Morgan.

 
“Did she sign it, Guv?”

  “Just shut your bleeding mouth and drive,” snarled Frost.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” grinned Morgan.

  The Incident Room was hazy with cigarette smoke as Frost paced up and down, waiting for the call from PC Jordan, who was in an unmarked car keeping Kelly’s house under observation.

  Bill Wells came in with two mugs of tea. He looked around the room. “Where is everyone?”

  “It’s best you don’t know,” said Frost, taking one of the mugs.

  Wells sat himself down. “So she wouldn’t sign the search warrant?”

  “That fat, lousy, four-eyed cow . . .” began Frost.

  “To be fair . . .” soothed Wells.

  “I don’t want to be bleeding fair,” snapped Frost. “I’m trying to save the life of a missing schoolgirl, assuming the bastards haven’t already done to her what they did to Debbie Clark—but she says there’s not enough flaming evidence. Do we let a kid die just because there’s not enough bleeding evidence?”

  “There’s nothing you can do about it, Jack,” said Wells.

  “Oh yes there flaming is.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t want to know—trust me, you don’t want to know.” Frost plucked the cigarette from his mouth and ground it to death on the floor. “If that cow won’t sign a search warrant, I’ll search the place without one.”

  “Kelly would never agree to that.”

  “I don’t intend doing it while Kelly is there.”

  Wells stared at him. “You’re not going to break into his house, Jack? You’re not that bloody stupid?”

  Frost sipped his tea and said nothing.

  “Jack—Skinner’s back. He phoned from his digs. He could well be coming into the station tonight. If he finds out—never mind kicking you out of Denton, he’d have you booted off the force.”

  “Sod Skinner.”

  “Jack,” pleaded Wells, now getting desperate. “If you’re caught in that house, any evidence you find will be slung out of court. They’ll say you planted it.”