A Killing Frost (50 page)

   ‘Exactly, Guv. What I’m saying is, if it was locked and there was no phone when I unlocked it, then Bridget Malone never got the phone from there.’

   ‘Then she’s lying,’ said Frost. ‘The cow’s lying. Bring her in.’

‘This is harassment,’ she screamed. ‘Sheer harassment.’

   ‘Shut up, Bridget,’ sighed Frost. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’ He slid Debbie’s mobile in its polythene bag across the table. ‘I want the truth about this phone.’

   She glared at him. ‘So I nicked a flaming phone. What am I going to get - life?’

   ‘You don’t know how right you are,’ said Frost. ‘Only the charge won’t be nicking, it will be conspiracy to murder.’

   ‘Murder? You must be hard up for suspects. I told you, I pinched it from her locker.’

   ‘There was a fiver in an envelope. Why didn’t you take that as well?’

   ‘So I’m guilty of not taking a fiver now? This is all rubbish.’

   ‘No. Your story is rubbish, Bridget. There is no way you could have got into her locker. Debbie’s locker was locked. The only way you could have got hold of that phone was by taking it from Debbie the night she was murdered.’

   ‘Then it must have been in someone else’s locker. I don’t bother with locked ones, and I certainly wouldn’t have missed a fiver. Can I go now?’ She stood up.

   Frost flapped a hand. ‘Sit down, Bridget.’ He squeezed his chin in thought. Somebody else’s locker. Bloody hell. He should have thought of that. Bridget was a tea-leaf, but in no way a killer. He raised his head and looked thoughtfully at the woman. ‘Prove your story to me, Bridget. Think hard. Which locker did you get the phone from?’

   She shook her head. ‘As sure as there’s a God in heaven, I don’t know. I just went round quickly in case anyone caught me. I tried locker doors. If they opened I saw what was worth pinching and I took it. It came from one of the lockers, that’s all I can tell you.’

   Frost nodded wearily in despair. ‘All right, Bridget. I believe you. But if you can remember . . .’

   She shrugged. ‘If I remember, I’ll tell you, but I don’t think I will. There were lots of lockers and it was all done in a rush.’

‘I’m clutching at flaming straws!’ moaned Frost. ‘Her and Kelly are not the type to do this sort of thing. I know that, so why did I suddenly decide they were guilty?’ He rammed a cigarette in his mouth. ‘Snuff movies. Bloody snuff movies, and the kick of seeing yourself doing these things to a kid.’

   ‘It’s lucky that bloke spotted the bodies,’ said Morgan. ‘They were so well concealed, they could have remained there like the other one.’

   Frost stopped dead in his tracks, the match for his cigarette still in his hand. ‘I’m a prat, Taffy, a flaming prat. That’s what’s been nagging away at me all the time and I’ve not been listening. Get your car. We’re going round to where the bodies were.’

They were in the field with its burnt stubble where the corn had been harvested. Frost had made Morgan bump his car into the heart of the field. ‘Stop here, Taff. This is about it.’

   Morgan stopped the car and switched off the engine. ‘Why here, Guv?’

   ‘Because my little Welsh wonder, this is where the tractor driver was when he spotted the bodies.’ Taffy followed as Frost headed out into the field.

   Frost pointed. ‘They were behind that bush up there.’ The blue marquee had been removed.

   ‘I know, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘I was here, remember?’

   ‘Don’t get snarky with me, you Welsh git. Debbie was wedged behind that bush, Taff. Now there’s no way you could have seen her body from here.’

   ‘The driver wasn’t on the ground, Guv. He was higher up, in the cab of his tractor.’

   ‘Right. Get on the roof of your car . . . come on.’

   Morgan looked doubtful, then clambered on to the bonnet. His foot slipped and his shoes scraped across the paintwork. ‘I’ve scratched the car, Guv,’ he said plaintively.

   ‘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.’

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.’