“I thought you might,” said Frost. “That’s why I said we should come in your car.” He rubbed his thumb along the scratch mark. “Nothing much to worry about—a complete respray ought to hide most of it. Now come on, hurry up.”
The DC heaved himself up on to the car roof, then stood gingerly, bracing himself against the wind. “Even up here I can’t see anything behind those bushes, Guv.”
Frost rubbed his hands with glee. “We’ve got the sod, Taff, we’ve got him. He couldn’t see Debbie’s body, but he knew it was there, because he planted it there.”
“He could have stood up in his cab, Guv,” offered Morgan. “He might have been able to see it then.”
“Why the bleeding hell should he stand up in his cab? He was cutting bleeding corn, not looking for bodies hidden behind a bush. Right, let’s get back to Denton nick.”
“Thomas Henry Allen,” reported Collier, reading from the computer monitor. “Couple of speeding offences, nothing else. We’ve got him down at an address in Bristol.”
“Bristol?” queried Frost.
“Yes, Inspector. He’s living in temporary rented accommodation in Denton, which is why he never showed up before. He’s working part-time for the farmer, who lets him live in a tied farm cottage.”
Frost nodded. “Right. What else?”
“You’re going to love this, Inspector. He used to work for that modelling agency.”
Frost punched the air in delight. “We’ve got him. We’ve got the sod.”
“A possible suspect, but not enough evidence yet, Jack,” said Hanlon.
“Proof,” snorted Frost. “All you bleeding well think of is proof. In—”
“In the good old days . . .” cued Hanlon with a grin.
“Exactly. We didn’t need proof in the good old days. If we didn’t have proof we faked it.” He leant back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Right. I don’t give a monkey’s what it costs, I want 24/7 surveillance on the sod. There’s a woman involved. They must meet up some time. And I want it doing properly. We mustn’t let him know he’s under suspicion, so leave your bloody helmets at home and let the only thing dangling be your dicks, not your handcuffs—don’t have your police radio blazing away.” He nodded to Hanlon. “Sort out a rota, Arthur.”
“Mullett will have to authorise it,” said Hanlon.
Frost snorted. “Consider it authorised, Arthur. The four-eyed git is going to have to do what he’s told this time.”
“You haven’t got enough to go on,” protested Mullett. “He might have stood up in the cab.”
“To scratch his arse? He was driving the flaming thing. It was moving. You don’t stand up in a moving tractor on the off chance that you might see a body.”
“Couldn’t it wait until Skinner’s replacement arrives?” Someone else to take responsibility for the outlay, Mullett thought, in case it blows up in our faces like so many of Frost’s enterprises.
“He’s a temporary worker. He lives in Bristol. He could move back there any time now the harvesting is finished.”
Mullett sighed. “All right, I agree, but on a strictly limited basis. Two days, no more.”
“Of course,” said Frost, making for the door. He had no intention of packing in the surveillance early.
He was back in his office, waiting for something to happen. A break of some kind . . . a break of any flaming kind. His phone rang. It was Harding from Forensic. “That rape case, Inspector. We’ve got a DNA match on the sperm sample.”
“Please tell me it’s Superintendent Mullett,” said Frost, reaching for a pen. The break he wanted at last.
“An eighteen-year-old boy. He was arrested nicking a battery-charger from Homebase. His DNA matches.”
“Let’s have the details,” said Frost, his enthusiasm taking a nosedive. Somehow he didn’t think an eighteen-year-old was the serial rapist they were after.
“Peter Frinton, 22 Victoria Terrace, Denton. He’s currently out on police bail.”
“Thanks,” grunted Frost, hanging up. He stared at the name he had scribbled on one of Mullett’s memos, then shook his head. It didn’t ring a bell.
Peter Frinton, a sullen-looking, greasy-haired youth, glowered at Frost, who was sitting opposite him in the Interview Room.
“Why have you dragged me in again? I’ve been bailed out. I told that other cop, I walked out of the store without thinking. I intended to pay, but forgot.”
“You forgot to bring any money with you, either,” Frost reminded him, flipping through the arrest report. “You didn’t have a brass farthing on you when you were arrested . . . and I see from your form sheet this isn’t the first time.”
The youth glowered at Frost and said nothing.
“Actually, son,” continued Frost, “this is about something a tad more serious than nicking a battery-charger. We’re talking rape.”
Frinton leant back in his chair and stared at Frost, wide-eyed. “Rape? I should be so lucky. You’re bloody joking. Who am I supposed to have raped?”
“A fifteen-year-old girl—Sally Marsden.”
Frinton gave a derisive laugh. “Sally Marsden? You don’t have to rape Sally Marsden, you have to bloody well fight her off.”
Frost frowned. “You know her?”
“Of course I know her . . . she’s one of my girlfriends.”
“Where were you last Thursday night, around ten, eleven o’clock?”
“A Thursday? I would be indoors. I always stay indoors Thursdays.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
“Yes, flaming Sally Marsden—ask her. She was with me. Came about seven, left at a quarter to ten.”
“She told us she was with her girlfriend.”
“She always pretends that’s where she’s going, and the girlfriend always backs her up if mumsy asks. Her mother thinks she’s too young to go with boys . . . she’d go berserk if she found out her darling daughter hasn’t been a virgin for at least a year.”
“She was with you that night—and you had sex?”
“That’s right.”
“Unprotected sex?”
“She’s on the pill.”
Frost chewed away at a hangnail. That bleeding girl. Steering them in the wrong bloody direction. He stood up. “We’re going to put you in a cell for a little while, son, and if your story checks out, you can go.”
He knew it was going to check out. The little butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth mummy’s girl had lied her head off and steered them away from Fielding, because the DNA in the sperm sample didn’t match his. “The bleeding trail’s gone cold now,’ moaned Frost. “If we could have caught him with his dick still steaming, we might have got something—more DNA perhaps from his clothes, but he’s been on remand, mixing with all types of villains, his brief would tear our evidence to shreds.”
The girl was tearful. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m so sorry.” She wiped her eyes and looked pleadingly at Frost. “Please don’t let me mum know. She’ll murder me.”
“If it goes to court, of course she’ll flaming well know,” said Frost. “If I was you, I’d tell her.” He shook his head as Kate Holby took the girl back home.
He spotted Bill Wells in the far corner of the canteen and carried his tray over. “Hope you’re getting your five a day, Bill.”
Wells grinned. “So Fielding could be back in the frame for the first car-park rape?”
“Yes. DNA evidence no longer clears him. He was in the vicinity. He had the opportunity, but that’s all we’ve got on him.” He bit into a Jaffa Cake. “But it’s him, Bill. He’s the bloody rapist and I know it, I just know it. And I’m bloody sure he topped the girl from Manchester too.”
“We ought to get him for the old crime, Jack,” said Wells. “But there’s no way the court would convict him when the only evidence we’ve got is that he was in Manchester when that girl went missing and his car was seen near where Sally Marsden was raped. The fact that she lied won’t help us. You’re going to need
a hell of a lot more than that.”
“The bastard’s out on bail,” said Frost. “I want 24/7 surveillance.”
“Flipping heck, Jack. Mullett will never agree to that—you’re already watching the driver.”
“Right, then I won’t ask Mullett. I’ll do it on my own authority . . . By the time the overtime returns come in I’ll be in Lexton anyway and he won’t be able to touch me.”
“But Jack . . .”
“Just do it, Bill. Just flaming well do it.”
20
The estate agent, his pen hovering over his clipboard, sucked air through his teeth and shook his head despairingly. “It’s rather cramped, Mr. Frost, and it badly needs a woman’s touch.”
“So does my dick,” said Frost, “but it doesn’t get one very often.” He wished the supercilious sod would hurry up. He was itching to get back to the station. Surely someone would have spotted Allen or his car by flow.
The estate agent squeezed a sour smile. “I suppose we could say it would suit a DIY enthusiast. There’s rather a lot that wants doing to it.”
“Say what you flaming well like,” said Frost. “Just sell it.” He looked around, seeing the house for the first time through a prospective buyer’s eyes. Yes, it did veer on the tatty side. He had let it get run down. Memory clicked back to that day, so many years ago, when his young wife first saw the house. She had fallen in love with it the minute they stepped inside. She didn’t think it was cramped. “Just right for the two of us,” she had said, and they had raced back to the estate agent with the deposit in case some other well-heeled buyer got there first. They’d had some bloody happy times here. And then it had all gone wrong . . . He shook the thoughts from his head. No point getting maudlin and sentimental. Thanks to Skinner and Mullett, he had to sell the flaming place. “So how much?”
The man consulted his clipboard and again shook his head. “If it was in better condition . . .” He spread his hands and shrugged. “But there, it isn’t. We can only go on what we have got.” He tapped his teeth with his pen and did a few mental calculations. “I suggest we offer it at eighty-nine thousand but be prepared to come down to eighty-five, or thereabouts. As I said, if it was in better condition . . .”
“And if it was flaming Buckingham Palace, but it isn’t,” snapped Frost. Eighty-five thousand would just about buy a one-bedroom flat in a not-too-salubrious part of Lexton. But he had no flaming choice. “All right. Put it on the market at that.”
“I see,” said Mullett. “Yes, I see. Thank you for telling me.” He put the phone down. “That was my contact in County,” he told Frost. “A bit of good news for us. They’ve just had the postmortem results on DCI Skinner. It seems he died instantly from the gunshot wound.”
“So he was already dead when Taylor was asking for a hostage?” said Frost.
“Er—yes, it would appear so,” conceded Mullett begrudgingly.
“Which means that if I had sent in Kate Holby as you wanted, we’d have risked her life and got sod all in return?”
“Ah—yes,” mumbled Mullett, wishing Frost wouldn’t keep rubbing his nose in it. “But we weren’t to know that at the time, of course. With hindsight—”
“You don’t get the benefit of hindsight in this job,” snapped Frost. “You have to use your common sense.”
“Yes, quite,” nodded Mullett. “My thoughts exactly.” He quickly changed the subject. “Any news on the tractor driver?”
“Nothing yet. So if that’s all . . .” Frost was out of his chair and away before Mullett could reply. Back in his office, he snatched up the phone.
“No, Inspector,” said Lambert patiently. “Still no news. When there is, I promise you’ll be the first to know.”
“Flaming heck, Jack. Are you still here?”
Sergeant Wells’s voice woke him with a start. He blinked and scrubbed his face. He’d fallen asleep at his desk. “Damn. I must have dropped off.” He yawned and stretched. “What time is it?”
“Half past one in the morning.”
“Has Allen been sighted yet?”
“We’d have told you if he had. Look, Jack, go home and get some proper kip. If he’s spotted we can phone you.”
Frost yawned again and shook his head. He didn’t feel tired any more and he certainly didn’t feel like going back to that empty house. “Do you know how much that smarmy estate agent reckons my house is worth? Eighty-five flaming K. He says it’s a tip.”
“Estate agents always over-price houses they want to sell,” grinned Wells.
“What sort of a place am I going to get in Lexton for that sort of money?”
“An even shittier tip than yours, Jack,” said Wells, ducking as the inspector hurled a file at him.
Frost reached for his cigarettes and rammed one in his mouth. A tip. It hadn’t been a tip when he was first married. His wife had kept it beautifully. He dribbled smoke through his nose. Why was he constantly harping back to those days? It must be that ancient Christmas Day murder and the girl Fielding killed. “I’ll hang on here for a while. Any chance of some tea?”
“We’re not a flaming all-night café, Jack.”
“And I wouldn’t say no to some toast.”
“Bloody hell. What about a four-course dinner? You’d better leave a big tip.”
“Leave my big tip out of this,” said Frost.
He wandered into the Incident Room, where DS Hanlon and Taffy Morgan were on standby. His mobile rang.
“Inspector. PC Williams—Traffic. I’m by the Dedham roundabout on the Denton Road. That car you asked us to look out for—it’s just gone past.”
“You mean Allen’s car?”
“Yes. It drove past here about two minutes ago.”
“Didn’t you go after him?”
“Inspector, I’m at the scene of a traffic accident . . . a car and a motorbike. Two teenagers killed and the car driver badly injured. I’ve got enough on my flaming plate.”
“Sorry, sorry. Which direction was he heading?”
“Away from Denton—going north. Man driving. Woman next to him.”
“A woman?” Frost was now excited. “Did you get a good look at her?”
“Yes. They had to slow down. It’s single-lane traffic here at the moment.”
“What did she look like?”
“Dark hair, buck teeth—in her forties, I’d say.” Frost was squeezing the phone so hard his hand hurt.
“Bloody hell,” he said. “Bloody, bloody, hell! Thanks, Williams. I owe you one.” He hung up, then looked round the room, rubbing his hands together with glee. “You,” he announced, “are looking at the biggest prat in Denton.”
They stared open-mouthed at him.
“Well look bleeding surprised. Don’t look as if you knew that all the time.”
They grinned.
“Why are you a prat, Guv?” Morgan asked.
“Millie . . . Molly . . . Maisie . . . Misty . . . It was none of those bleeding names. That wasn’t what the poor kid was saying. And it was under my flaming nose all the bleeding time and I never flaming twigged. The bitch who was videoing her was her form teacher, that toothy cow Janet Leigh. Miss Leigh. Miss bleeding Leigh!”
Hanlon’s eyes widened. “Miss Leigh? Debbie was saying Miss Leigh?”
Frost nodded. “Someone the poor kid trusted . . . her form teacher—Miss bleeding Leigh. When Bridget went on her nicking spree, she went down the staff lockers as well and I bloody missed it. That’s where she found the phone—in Janet Leigh’s locker.”
DS Hanlon stood up. “Shall I run her through the computer, see if she’s got form?”
Frost shook his head. “She won’t have form. Everyone dealing with kids has to be thoroughly vetted. If she had form she’d never be allowed to teach.” He clicked his fingers. “The fingerprints on the wrapping paper that came with the video tape. I bet a pound to a pinch of poo they are hers.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Taffy—get on to Control. I want a message putting out. Allen�
�s car has been spotted on the Denton Road. I want all patrols to be on the look-out. If they see the car, they should stop it and arrest the occupants on suspicion of murder.” He turned to PC Collier. “Get the Electoral Roll up on the computer. I want that tart’s address.” He beckoned DS Hanlon over. “Arthur. Bit late for a social call, but we’re going to do her place over. She could have Jan O’Brien locked away there.”
“We’ll need a search warrant,” said Hanlon. Frost looked at the sergeant sternly and waggled a finger. “Wash your mouth out with soap, Arthur. I don’t want to hear that sort of filthy talk from you again.”
Morgan and Collier were sent to cover the back way while Frost, DC Hanlon at his side, hammered the door knocker. The sound echoed inside the house. Frost frowned. “I don’t think there’s anyone in, Arthur.” He knocked again.
Frost bent and examined the lock. “Do you know, Arthur, I think this is the sort of lock you can open with a credit card.”
Hanlon looked alarmed. “Now watch it, Jack. You’ve already pushed your luck with the Kelly house.”
Frost found his wallet and extracted his Mastercard. “I’ve got my Crime Prevention Officer’s hat on. I just want to check to see if I can open it with a credit card, then I’ll advise the good lady bitch to get a more secure lock.” He slid the card in the side of the door and wiggled it. “Come on, you stubborn bastard,” he hissed. A satisfying click. “There. What did I say? If I was up to no good, I could walk straight into this place and search it from top to bloody bottom.” He pushed the front door. It creaked open. “Look at this. An open invitation for no-good coppers to exceed their authority.”
Hanlon, looking very worried now, stepped back. “Shut it, Jack, for Pete’s sake.”
Frost ignored him. He pushed the door open wider and called, “Anyone at home?”
Dead silence.
“Noise from upstairs,” hissed Frost. “Must be a burglar. We’d better check, Arthur.” He dragged Hanlon inside and shut the front door behind them.
A Killing Frost Page 40
