Frost 6 - A Killing Frost

by R D Wingfield

  Frost smiled. ‘What a coincidence, Billykins. We had an old lady in here earlier complaining some toe-rag had nicked her handbag. Now, her name is exactly the same as the name on this credit card and you’re a toe-rag. Isn’t that a coincidence?’

  ‘I found it in the gutter, Inspector. I was going to hand it in, but what with you trying to stitch me up on a false charge . . .’

  ‘She identified you, Billy,’ continued Frost. ‘We showed her the mugshots and she picked you out. “That’s him - that fat little sod,” she said.’

  ‘You’re lying. Any mugshot of me must be years old.’

  ‘Policemen don’t lie, Billy - unless they want to get a conviction. You know that.’

  ‘I still think you’re lying, Inspector.’

  Frost opened the Interview Room door and yelled down the corridor to Sergeant Wells. ‘Sergeant, was Bill King’s mugshot in those photos we showed the old dear this morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted back Wells.

  ‘And did she pick him out as the bastard who robbed her?’

  ‘You know she did!’ yelled Wells.

  Frost shut the door quickly, in case Wells decided to qualify his statement by adding that she identified every flaming face she saw. He sat down, put on his disarming smile and pushed his packet of cigarettes across the table. ‘It’s late, Billy, we’re all shagged out and we want to go home. Now we can either bang you up for the night, sharing a cell with a frustrated, seventeen-stone raging queer, or you can cough the lot, give us a statement and we’ll let you go home on police bail.’

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ said Billy.

  ‘So people keep telling me,’ said Frost, ‘but I don’t see it myself.’

  Frost stood by his office window to watch Billy climb into his car, slam the door angrily and drive off.

  ‘We should have searched his house, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘I bet we’d have found a whole pile of loot.’

  ‘It’s too flaming late for those larks,’ yawned Frost, passing his cigarettes around. For a while they smoked in silence.

  ‘Not entirely a wasted evening then, Guv,’ offered Taffy.

  Frost shrugged. ‘It could have been a damn sight better. Still, what is it Rhett Butler says in Gone with the Wind?’

  ‘Something like “Quite frankly, I don’t give a monkey’s”?’ suggested Jordan.

  ‘No,’ said Frost. ‘Something like “Tomorrow is another bleeding day.” ’

  ‘Scarlett O’Hara says that,’ said Morgan.

  ‘Whatever her bleeding colour, she was flaming right,’ said Frost. ‘So we missed him tonight. There’s other nights. He can only draw out five hundred quid at a time, so he’s got to do it again and again. Even someone as stupid as me won’t be able to continually sod up catching him.’ He stood up and crushed his cigarette underfoot. An unmade bed in a cold house wasn’t much of an attraction, but he was dead on his feet. ‘Right, we try again tomorrow.’

  His mobile rang. He frowned. Who the hell would be calling him at this flaming hour? Late-night - or early-morning - phone calls always spelled trouble.

  ‘Frost . . . What? . . . Bloody what?’ He collapsed back in his chair. ‘Then how the flaming hell . . .?’ He glanced up at the wall clock. ‘Shit! Thanks for telling me.’ He clicked off the phone and rammed it back in his pocket. ‘Tomorrow isn’t another bleeding day. It’s tomorrow already. The bastard’s withdrawn another five hundred quid.’

  ‘I thought he couldn’t withdraw more than five hundred a day,’ said Jordan.

  ‘He can’t. But it’s gone midnight. It’s tomorrow. He’s a cleverer bastard than I thought. Still, he can’t take out anymore until Wednesday, so we’ve tomorrow night off. And now we know what time he usually makes withdrawals, we can concentrate our efforts.’

  ‘Providing he follows the same pattern,’ said Jordan.

  ‘Oh, he must,’ yawned Frost. ‘He knows I’m relying on him.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘Don’t they have CCTV cameras covering those cash- points?’

  ‘On some, Guv, not all.’

  ‘Then let’s hope this is one of them. First thing tomorrow - or today, rather - nip down to the building society and use your slimy Welsh charm to get hold of the tape.’ He tipped the contents of his ashtray into the waste-paper bin. ‘Let’s go home.’

  They didn’t make it. As he reached the door, his phone rang again. It was Lambert from Control.

  ‘Another girl’s gone missing, Inspector. Jan O’Brien, thirteen years old.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Frost.

  ‘May have nothing to do with it, Inspector, but at 23.52 we had a phone call from a man using the public phone box in the town square. He sounded drunk, but insisted he had just heard a girl screaming round the back of the multi-storey car park - where that other girl was raped. He hung up without giving any more. I sent an area car round there, they’re touring the area, but there’s no sign of anything yet.’

  ‘Double shit,’ said Frost.

  ‘She hasn’t gone missing, you stupid cow,’ yelled the man.

  ‘How can you be so bloody complacent?’ shrieked his wife. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning. She left Kathy’s house at ten o’clock - that’s four hours ago. She should be here by now.’

  ‘She’s been late before.’

  ‘Not this bloody late, she hasn’t.’ Frost, sitting between the couple in their tiny dining room, his head moving from side to side like the audience at a tennis match, raised a weary hand. ‘Shut it, you two. Let’s have a few facts.’

  ‘You give him the bloody facts,’ snarled the man to his wife. ‘You brought the bleeding police in. When she comes waltzing back and saying she’s sorry, we’ll be a bloody laughing stock.’

  ‘I’d rather be a bloody laughing stock than the mother of a raped and murdered girl.’

  ‘Rape? That little madam is more likely to rape the boy. She comes and goes as she damn well pleases and does what she likes. If you want to make a fool of yourself to the police, good luck - count me out!’ With a slam of the door he was gone, only, to reappear almost immediately to shake a finger at his wife. ‘Tell that copper how many other times she’s come in late when I’ve been tramping the flaming streets looking for her. “Sorry, Dad, I should have phoned.” Little cow! And what about the time she didn’t come home until the next afternoon? Tell him that. I’m going to bed.’ The door slammed behind him again, making Taffy Morgan, who was nearly asleep in the chair next to Frost, open his eyes with a start.

  Mrs O’Brien jumped up, opened the door and yelled up the stairs, ‘Good riddance, you bastard!’ The bedroom door slammed.

  Frost, whose head had started to throb, winced at each door slam and lit up another cigarette. ‘Perhaps ‘we could have a few details, Mrs O’Brien. You’ve checked with her friends?’

  ‘Yes. She left Kathy’s house at ten o’clock. No one has seen her since.’

  ‘Your husband suggested this isn’t the first time Jan has been out very late?’

  ‘That was last year. She hasn’t done it since. I had a talk with her and she promised she would always let me know if she was going to be delayed.’ She wiped her eyes and sniffed. ‘Something’s happened to her, I know it has.’

  ‘And the time she stayed out all night?’ Frost asked.

  ‘An all-night party at her friend’s house. She said she’d be back by eleven, without fail. We gave her the money for a cab. The next morning her bed hadn’t been slept in. Sid raised the flaming roof. She was still round at her friend’s. She said she phoned for a cab, but it never came, so she thought it was safer to stay the night.’

  Frost sucked down a lungful of smoke as he absorbed this. ‘Your husband suggested she was sexually precocious.’

  ‘She’s physically developed for her age. But that’s not her fault, is it? And she puts on make-up when she goes out with her friends and wears tight T-shirts, but all kids do that. Sid says she’s a tart, but she’s not. She’s a little innocent. Don’t you think I know my
own daughter?’

  Frost nodded, as if in agreement, and studied the photograph of the ponytailed Jan given to him by her mother. The kid looked like a right little goer to him. ‘Has she got a mobile phone?’

  ‘We’ve tried it. It’s switched off. She always leaves it on.’

  ‘Have you checked her room to see if she’s left a note, or taken any clothes or anything?’

  She jumped up. ‘No. I’ll do it now.’

  ‘We’ll come with you,’ said Frost, nudging Taffy Morgan awake and following her up the stairs.

  A typical young girl’s bedroom. Pop posters, a hi-fl with twin speakers and a fourteen-inch TV. A single bed, unmade, pyjamas and school clothes on the floor, and a chest of drawers with two of the drawers pulled out. ‘She’s so untidy,’ said Mrs O’Brien, picking the pyjamas up, folding them and laying them on the bed. She opened the wardrobe and riffled through the clothes swinging on their hangers. ‘All her things seem to be here.’ She looked around the room. ‘And no sign of a note.’

  ‘Does she have a bank book?’

  Mrs O’Brien opened a drawer, rummaged around and pulled out the bank book.

  Frost nodded gloomily. It was too much to expect that this would be a nice, simple run-away-from-home, with missing clothes and a note on the mantelpiece. ‘She’s probably with a friend,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll get our patrol cars to keep a look-out for her, and if she hasn’t come home by tomorrow, we’ll start a full-scale search. But my bet is she’ll be back full of apologies.’ Some flaming bet! he told himself. ‘Try not to worry.’ Empty bleeding words. ‘You said she had gone round her friend Kathy’s house. Where does Kathy live?’

  ‘Moorland Avenue.’

  Shit, thought Frost. Jan would have had to go round the back of the multi-storey car park, where we got that report of a girl screaming. But what credence could you put on it? A bloody drunk phoning! Let’s hope and pray the kid’s home by morning. He looked round for Taffy Morgan, who was studying a photo of the girl in a skimpy swimsuit. He took it from him and jerked his head. ‘We’re going . . . and you’re dribbling.’ He turned to the mother. ‘If your daughter comes back, phone the station - but I’ll be sending someone round tomorrow anyway.’

  She saw them out and stood at the open door watching until the car drove away and disappeared round the corner.

  ‘What do you reckon, Guv?’ asked Taffy.

  ‘I reckon you ask too many stupid bleeding questions,’ said Frost. Another thirteen-year-old girl was missing. Anything or nothing could have happened to her. But he was worried. Bloody worried. There was a rapist on the loose. The kid was sexually precocious, the sort of girl who’d attract the wrong sort of dirty bastard and Denton was full of dirty bastards. Yes, he was I worried.

  The trip back to the station to collect Morgan’s car took them past Denton Woods and along the road past the house of the other missing girl, Debbie Clark. The lights were still on. The poor mother was probably sitting by the phone, willing it to ring with good news. A black Mercedes Estate roared past them and turned into the drive

  ‘Hello, that’s Debbie’s father,’ said Frost.

  ‘What the hell is he doing out at this time of night?’ He looked at his watch. Half past three. The wee small hours of the flaming morning.

  Back at the station car park, Frost slid into the driving seat vacated by Morgan and yawned.

  ‘What time tomorrow, Guv?’ asked Taffy hopefully.

  ‘You can have a lie-in, Taff,’ said Frost. ‘As long as you’re here, excreting Welsh charm, by nine on the dot. I want you to go straight to Fortress and collect their CCTV tapes.’ He looked again at the photo of ponytailed Jan O’Brien. ‘And if Jan hasn’t phoned her mum to say she’s safe and sexually satisfied, we’re going to have to make an early start with that one.’ He screwed up his face and slowly shook his head from side to side. ‘But somehow, Taff, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I’ve got one of my nasty feelings . . . the same sort of feeling I had when they dumped you on us. “This Welsh git’s going to be a real right prat,” I said, and I was right.’

  Morgan grinned. ‘You know you really love me, Guv.’

  ‘Only because it’s great to have someone who’s a bigger prat than me,’ said Frost. ‘I didn’t think it possible. Anyway, pleasant dreams.’

  ‘Pleasant dreams, Guv,’ echoed Taff, walking over to his car.

  As Frost turned the key in the ignition, his mobile rang. It was Lambert from Control again.

  ‘That call from the drunk - I sent Evans and Howe out in the area car to check. They’ve found Jan O’Brien’s mobile phone.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Frost.

  ‘In the gutter, just outside the car park – where the drunk said he heard someone screaming.’

  ‘Excrement!’ Frost drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and shook his head vigorously to wake himself up. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning. A bit flaming late to do much. If the parents hadn’t reported the girl’s return first thing in the morning, he’d make media appeals for the drunk to contact Denton police. At the moment they had sod all to go on. And it was too late to check her girlfriend to find out what time Jan actually left. If the drunk heard her around midnight she either left her friend’s house much later than stated, or she went somewhere else first . . .

  ‘Are you still there, Inspector?’ asked Lambert.

  ‘Yes . . . sorry . . . I was thinking. The mobile phone - it’s probably been mauled about enough already, but don’t let anyone else touch it without gloves. I want it checked for prints. If she was attacked, she might have tried to use the phone and the bloke snatched it from her and chucked it. If our luck’s in for a change, it could have his dabs.’

  ‘Right, Inspector. Anything else?’

  There was something else, but what the hell was it? He lit up a cigarette he didn’t want to help him think. ‘Yes. Check with the mobile phone company. I want to know all the calls she made on it tonight.’

  ‘The parents?’

  ‘We tell the parents sod all at this stage. If the kid hasn’t turned up by morning, then I’ll speak to them.’

  ‘Right. Is that all, Inspector?’

  Frost yawned. ‘That’s all I can think of.’ He snatched the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it out of the car window. ‘I don’t want anymore calls. Not unless it’s a regicide or something funny like Mullett topping himself.’

  ‘OK, Inspector. Good night.’

  ‘Good night,’ said Frost. He fired the engine and headed for home.

  Chapter 5

  The ringing woke him, slowly dragging him by the scruff of his neck out of a deep sleep and shaking him back to semi-consciousness.

  Frost opened his eyes. It was still pitch dark and the ringing was boring into his ears. What bleeding time was it? He fumbled for the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet and succeeded in sending it crashing to the floor. The ringing went on.

  Cursing, he climbed out of bed and snatched up the sodding alarm, bringing it up close to his sleep-fuddled eyes, trying to make out the time. Six flaming past seven on a dark and freezing- cold morning. He’d had barely two hours’ sleep. And why was the flaming thing ringing? He was sure he hadn’t set it before flopping into the unmade bed last night. He tried to switch it off, but the ringing didn’t stop - it was the downstairs phone in the hall. Shit! Phone calls at this hour of the morning were always bad news.

  He padded in his bare feet across the cold lino and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. He shivered as he headed downstairs. The central heating hadn’t fired up yet and he was still in his pyjamas and a draught roared under the front door. He picked up the phone and basked for a few seconds in the resulting non-ringing silence.

  ‘Frost,’ he growled.

  ‘Jack,’ said Sergeant Wells. ‘The mother’s been on the blower. Her daughter hasn’t returned home.’

  What mother? What daughter? His sleep wasn’t functioning
properly. Then he remembered, and suddenly he was fully awake. Jan O’Brien. The teenager who hadn’t come home. The teenager whose mobile phone was found near the spot where the drunk claimed he heard a girl screaming. He knew this was going to be a bad one. He just knew it. ‘Shit!’ he hissed.

  ‘Sorry?’ asked Wells, not hearing.

  ‘I said I’ll be right over.’

  In fifteen minutes he had washed, dressed and shaved and was on his second cigarette of the day. His hand was turning the front-door latch when he paused, suddenly dreading having to face Mrs O’Brien, telling her about the reported screams the finding of the phone. But sod this bleeding-pity This was one of the joys of the bloody job, just one step down from the joy of having to tell a mother they’d found her child body: a task he’d performed time without number since he joined the force. And it got worse, not easier.

  It was as bad as he feared. The mother was hysterical and screaming, the father angry and belligerent, wanting to know why they hadn’t been told all this last night, as if it would have eased their pain one iota.

  ‘You will find her, won’t you?’ pleaded Mrs O’Brien.

  'We’ll find her,’ Frost assured her, the same hollow words he always used. ‘Don’t worry love. We’ll find her.’

  Back in the car, he tuned in to Denton FM, the local radio, as he drove back to the station.

  Denton Police are anxious to contact the person who phoned them last night reporting hearing screams in the vicinity of the multi-storey car park . . .

  He hoped the sod hadn’t been too flaming drunk to remember what he had heard.

  Jordan was waiting for him as he pushed open the door of his office. ‘We’ve been round to that girl Kathy, Inspector.’

  Frost frowned. ‘Who the hell is Kathy?’

  ‘Jan O’Brien’s friend - the girl she was with last night. She lied to Jan’s mother - didn’t want to get Jan into trouble. Jan was still there when the mother phoned and didn’t leave to go home until nearly midnight.’