A Touch Of Frost (32 page)

Frost said nothing. What the hell was there to say?

The ambulance lurched forward and sped on its way to Denton Hospital, its siren screaming for the road to be kept clear.

They turned their heads at approaching voices. Along the path came two police constables, Simms and Jordan. Between them was a youth of about nineteen. He had dark hair, tightly curled, and wore a gray jacket with black trousers. There was a swagger about him that reminded Frost of Dave Shelby. As the group came nearer he could see that there was a raw scratch running down his right cheek to below his chin.

Simms pushed the youth forward. “This is Terry Duggan, Inspector. The girl’s boyfriend. He found her.”

“Hello, Terry,” said Frost, his eyes noting that in addition to the scratch on his face, there were nail rakes on the back of his wrists.

“The girl’s name is Wendy Raynor, she’s seventeen, and she works part time in a shop. They’d been to a disco . . .” began Simms.

“Let Terry tell me,” said Frost.

“We left the disco at about half ten,” said the youth. “We had to leave early because her parents wouldn’t let her stay out late. On the way back we had this row, so she jumps out of the car and stomps off home on her own.”

“Slow down, son,” interrupted Frost. “I’m not at my brightest at this time of night. What was the row about?”

The youth gave a sheepish grin, blushed, and moved his hand vaguely. “You know, just trivial stuff—a difference of opinion.”

“And she made you stop the car?” asked Webster.

Terry shifted his gaze to the bearded bloke. “No, we’d already stopped. We were parked.”

“Where?” This from the down-at-heel one.

“Over there.” Terry pointed into the dark. “Round the back of that big tree.”

“Why?” demanded the bearded one, another miser with words.

“Why?” repeated Terry in a tone that suggested the answer should be obvious. “Why does anyone bring a bird to the woods at night?”

“I see,” said Frost, motioning for him to carry on.

“Anyway, we’re steaming away through the preliminaries in the back seat, and I’m trying to get her tights off her, when she suddenly goes all stiff and calls me a dirty sod. Then she starts struggling and scratching and pushing me off. I don’t reckon she’d ever done it before. Still, I wasn’t going to let the money I’d lobbed out on those disco tickets go to waste, so I tried again. This time she panics, jumps out the car screaming blue murder, and goes dashing down that path, pulling up her tights.”

“Did you run after her?” asked Webster.

“No bleeding fear!”

“Seventeen years old,” said Webster, getting angry, “never done it before, gone eleven o’clock at night, and you let her run off in those woods on her own?”

“She was already screaming I was trying to rape her,” said Terry. “If I’d chased off after her, I reckon she’d have thought I was trying to finish the job.”

The wind stirred, shaking the trees until the branches creaked. Frost shivered and wound his scarf tighter. “What did you do then?”

“I drove home and got my head down. About half past midnight, my phone starts ringing. I staggered out of bed to answer it, and it’s Wendy’s old man screaming and shouting because she isn’t home yet. I told him we’d had a bit of a barney and she’d legged it off on her own, but he sounded so worked up I said I’d go and look for her. I drove back here, then followed the path around.”

“Show us,” said Frost.

He took them along a narrow path which narrowed even more as it plunged deeper into the woods. A wall of thick bushes on each side brushed their shoulders as they pushed through. After some forty feet, Terry stopped.

“When I reached here I heard this moaning noise. At first I thought it was a couple having it away, then I realized it was Wendy. I forced my way through those bush things there.” He indicated a gap between the bushes where branches had been bent back and broken. “It wasn’t like that when I first saw it—the ambulance men smashed it down getting their stretcher through. Anyway, that’s where I found her, stark naked, her face beaten up, her clothes all over the place. The poor bitch was moaning and whimpering. I piled her clothes all over her to keep her warm, and legged it back to the car. Then I drove round until I found a phone box and called the law.”

Frost pushed through the gap and shone a torch around. A small glade, the grass flattened and trampled, but probably all from the ambulance men, the youth, and Jordan and Simms. A pair of laddered tights, screwed into a ball, was caught in a patch of stinging nettles which hugged the base of a beech tree. There seemed little point in picking them up, so he left them there. He switched off his torch and rejoined the others.

“I suppose I’d better go and tell her father what’s happened,” said the youth.

“I wouldn’t,” said Frost. “If I was her father I’d half bleeding kill you.”

Jordan had moved some way down the path and was speaking quietly into his personal radio. He caught Frost’s eye and beckoned him down. “Charlie Bravo has been round the girl’s parents’ house and taken them to the hospital, sir. It seems there’s a bit of a discrepancy. The lad do here says he was home in bed around eleven. The girl’s father says he kept phoning him, didn’t get a reply, so he took a cab round there. He was at Terry’s place just after midnight. Terry’s car wasn’t outside. The father nearly kicked the door in, but got no reply so went back home. When he phoned at half past twelve, Terry answered the phone on the second ring and didn’t sound as if he’d been woken up from a deep sleep.”

“I can well do without complications like this,” muttered Frost gloomily. “What do you reckon, then?”

“My guess is Terry raped her, sir. He got all worked up in the car, then, when she ran off, he followed, looking for her. I reckon he found her and jumped her. Then he drove home and pretended he’d been in bed since eleven.”

Frost sniffed and thought this over. “I doubt it, young Jordan, but far be it from me to dampen the enthusiasm of young coppers. Take Duggan back to the station—say it’s for a statement—and then get the clothes off him and send them over to Forensic for examination. And tell the police surgeon to give him a going over. I want to know if he’s had sex recently.”

They walked back to the others. Frost tried to light a cigarette but the wind kept blowing out his matches, so he gave up in disgust. “I want you to go down the station with these officers to make a statement, Terry. We’ll get the doctor to have a look at those scratches while you’re there—they might turn septic.”

He waited until they were out of earshot, then he filled Webster in. Webster listened intently. “So Jordan reckons Terry raped her?”

“That’s the suggestion, son,” said Frost, crouching to windward of a large oak and managing this time to light up. “It’s possible, but I’m not really sold on the idea. I can’t see Terry going to the trouble of stripping her off. I see him as a tights down, skirt up, unzip the old Levis and crash, bang, wallop sort of man. I could be wrong, though. He might be the romantic type and like to strangle and strip them first.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and frowned at it. The wind was making it burn unevenly down one side, charring the paper. It tasted terrible. “My money’s still on the old Denton rapist.”

“Then hadn’t we better make a search of the area?” suggested Webster.

“A search,” said Frost. “No thanks, son. It’s too bloody cold. We’ll let Forensic have a sniff round if they want to, but I’m for going back to the station and getting warm.”

“If I were in charge of the case,” said Webster stiffly, “I wouldn’t hesitate to organize a search, just as Mr. Allen did last night.”

“And a fat lot of good it did him,” Frost pointed out. “But if you feel like organizing one, be my guest, so long as you don’t expect me to take part.”

Someone’s call and the wave of a torch let them know that the experts from Forensic had arrived. Two of them. A miserable man and a little fat jolly man. Frost took them to the clearing where the jolly little one surveyed the scene with delight.

“Plenty of footprints here,” he said.

“Yes,” replied Frost. “Two ambulance men, two policemen, my detective constable, a suspect, me, and the girl. If you find anything else, let me know.”

Webster’s mood showed itself in his driving. He was furious at Frost’s refusal to arrange a search. Frost was always looking for shortcuts but there were cases that didn’t lend themselves to the inspector’s slipshod methods. This was one of them.

“So how exactly do you intend to proceed?” he asked, savagely twisting the wheel as they turned into Market Square.

“We’ll get Terry out of the way first, then we’ll think about it,” answered Frost. He looked up, startled, as the car bumped the kerb after too wide a turn. “Careful, son, you’re driving like I do.”

The station lobby looked as tired as they did. “Susan Harvey is waiting for you in your office, Jack,” called Wells. Suddenly Webster felt a lot less tired.

Susan was in Webster’s chair, hugging a mug of instant coffee. She had returned from the hospital, where she had managed to talk to seventeen-year-old Wendy Raynor.

“Fractured jaw and a few bruises,” she told them. “And she’s in a state of severe shock. She’s been sexually assaulted. Before the assault she was a virgin.”

Frost sat in his chair and began to swivel from side to side. “And who does she say raped her?”

Susan put the mug down on the desk. “Terry Duggan. He tried it on in the car. She ran off, but he followed and raped her.”

Webster’s eyes flashed. “The bastard!”

“He looks lovely when he’s angry, doesn’t he, Sue?” murmured Frost. He thought for a while, tapping his cigarette on his thumb. “My money wasn’t on the boyfriend.”

“Then you were wrong, weren’t you?” said Webster with an ill-concealed sneer.

“I’m always wrong,” admitted Frost. He studied his cigarette, decided he had tapped it enough, and popped it in his mouth. “She’s positive it was Terry?”

“She’s confused, but she swears it was him. I don’t think she actually saw him. He jumped, threw something over her face, and started to strangle her. When she came to, there was Terry staring down at her.”

“But that could have been when Terry came back to look for her,” said Frost thoughtfully. “And if it was Terry, then he’s infringed the ‘Hooded Terror’s’ copyright, the cloth over the face, the strangling . . .”

“A copycat crime,” said Webster, determined that Frost should be wrong, “He read about it in the papers and copied it.”

The phone rang. Webster answered it. The hospital. Swabs taken from Wendy Raynor were on their way to Forensic.

Frost opened the door and yelled to Bill Wells, “Has the doctor seen Terry Duggan yet?”

“He’s with him now,” the sergeant yelled back.

“We’ll soon know,” said Frost, once again swivelling from side to side. “The thing is, she never actually saw him.” Then he grinned. “Did I ever tell you that old wartime joke about the girl munitions worker who was raped in the blackout?”

Jokes! thought Webster. A seventeen-year-old’s been raped and he makes jokes.

“The police asked the girl who did it, and she said she couldn’t say because it happened in the blackout.”

“But I can tell you this,” she said, “the rapist was definitely one of our foremen.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked the fuzz.

She said, “Because he kept his bowler hat on all the time and I had to do all of the work.” He guffawed with laughter as he reached the punchline.

Webster maintained a stony silence, but Susan was convulsed and almost choked over her coffee.

A tap on the door, and the duty doctor, a plump little Welshman, came in.

“You’ve just missed a good joke,” said Frost, wiping his eyes. “The girl who was raped in the blackout—”

“And the foreman did it,” said the doctor, dumping his bag on Frost’s desk. “You tell me that every time there’s a rape.” He knocked some papers off a chair and sat down. “I’ve examined this young man, Duggan. There are fingernail scratches down his face and wrists, which I’m sure you’ve already noticed. I’ve taken a blood sample, which is on its way to your forensic laboratory, together with his clothes. And he has had sex within the last couple of hours.”

“Which is more than I’ve had,” said Frost. He pinched his nose. “Well, young Webster, it’s beginning to look as if you might be right. I suppose we’d better see what he’s got to say for himself.”

Terry Duggan, wearing only a police-issue red-and-grey blanket and a loaned pair of gym shoes some four sizes too big, leaped up angrily as Frost and Webster entered the interview room.

“What’s the bloody game?” he demanded. “I’ve been stripped, my clothes have been taken away, I haven’t been allowed to leave, and no-one will answer my questions.” He paused for breath. “And another thing, that bleeding doctor did more than examine my scratches. He got bloody intimate.”

“He gets carried away,” said Frost. He opened a folder and drew out a typed sheet. “Is this the statement you have just made to the police officer?”

Terry squinted at it. “Yes.”

“And you’re sticking by it?”

The youth jutted out his chin defiantly. “Of course I am.”

“Then I must ask you to sign it.” Frost borrowed a ball-point pen from Webster and passed it to Duggan, who scrawled his name at the foot of the document. Frost and Webster added their signatures as witnesses.

Frost tucked the statement back in the folder, then shook his head reproachfully. “You’re a silly sod, you know?”

“Why?” asked the youth, staring him out.

“You’re in serious trouble, my son, and you make it worse by telling us a pack of lies.”

Terry clutched the blanket closer to his body. “What do you mean, about me being in serious trouble?”

Frost motioned for Webster to break the news.

“Wendy tells us it was you who raped her. Sonny Jim.”

Duggan looked first at Webster, then at Frost. They both stared back coldly. He tried to laugh, but it wasn’t very convincing. “Rape? Me? Do me a favour. I’ve never had to fight for it in my life. If they don’t give it willingly, then I don’t bloody want it.”