Winter Frost (38 page)

   
Frost winced. He wished she wouldn't keep calling the man that. It was hard to keep the image of Weaver as a child killer and rapist when he was called 'little Charlie'. "We found photographs," he told her. "The little girl was in his house the afternoon she went missing and he lied to us. Until we could eliminate him, he was our prime suspect."

   
She sat on the bed beside him. "He didn't do it, Inspector. Believe me, I know. He was sweet, gentle and kind. As soon as he knew his mother was ill, he had her moved in here. He devoted himself to her. A lovely boy." Her lip trembled and she started to sob again.

   
Frost sucked at his cigarette. He saw Weaver as a murdering bastard, she saw him as a sweet little Charlie. "The little girl who was raped and killed was a lovely girl."

   
She dried her eyes. "I know that boy. I brought him up. His mother wasn't married. It's commonplace now, but it was a dreadful thing then. The father deserted her and she had to go out to work, so I brought him up. Charlie loved children, not in a nasty way, but as a kind, gentle man. He didn't harm that little girl, Inspector, but you made him take the blame, and that was more than poor little Charlie could stand."

   
Frost stood up. "The case is still open," he told her. "If he's innocent, I won't keep it a secret."

   
She looked at him. "Too late for that now. Inspector." She pushed the sodden handkerchief back in her pocket. "It will be a double funeral. If you would like to come . . . ?"

   
It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he nodded his thanks and didn't ask for details. "I'll leave you to it then. Sorry if I gave you a start."

   
At the front door he hesitated, then, on impulse, retraced his steps to the back door, the door through which Weaver had told him Jenny had left the house on the last afternoon of her short life. Unbolting it, he stepped out into the tiny walled garden, squeezed past the dustbin and out through the door which led to a narrow alleyway, hemmed in on both sides by high brick walls. If, as Weaver claimed, Jenny was alive when she left, was the real killer waiting here for her to come out?

   
Doubt after doubt crowded in. Had he been wrong about Weaver all the time? Mullett was right, he was always in too much of a hurry, making up his mind too quickly and then bending the facts to fit. He looked back at the house where the light was shining behind the curtains of the mother's bedroom. Auntie Maisie was tidying up for little Charlie's funeral.

   
The blue car! Weaver claimed the blue car, the car that brought Jenny to the house, was waiting outside all the time. Bernie Green claimed he had dropped the kid off and driven away after some ten minutes. Which of the two lying sods was telling the truth?

   
He hurried to his car and radioed through to Control, telling them he wanted Green brought in again for questioning right away.

A weary, fed-up Morgan was in the office waiting for him. The DC's jaw was swollen and his tongue kept finding the gap where a tooth used to be. "I had the tooth out, guv."

   
"Good." Frost squinted through his in-tray. Nothing of interest. "Bung it under your pillow for the tooth fairy." He tried to remember what he had sent the DC out for. Ah yes, the bristol-flaunting woman with her simple-minded son. "What joy, Taff ?"

   
"None at all, guv. I've walked my feet down to the bone and knocked on every door in that street. I've been to the council, been through electoral rolls going back to the war. No Mrs. Aldridge shown as ever living in Nelson Road."

   
"The girl could have got the name wrong," suggested Frost. "It might be something similar like Shuffle-bottom."

   
"I've checked everyone who ever lived in the street guv . . . married women with kids, single women with kids, the lot."

   
"What about widows with kids? I'd even settle for a man in drag without kids."

   
Morgan rubbed his jaw. "Take it from me, guv, I've checked everything."

   
Frost nodded and yawned. Tiredness was creeping up on him and he didn't want to waste any more time on this. "OK, Taffy, leave it for now. Go off home and get some sleep in your own bed for a change and we'll make an early start tomorrow."

   
Morgan smiled gratefully, but his early night was not to be. A tap on the door. PC Jordan looked in. "We've picked up Bernie Green, Inspector. Where do you want him?"

   
"No. 1 interview room," said Frost, grabbing the files. He jerked his head at Morgan who was trying to sidle out unnoticed. "Come on, Taffy, suspect to interview. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours."

The interview room was cold: the radiator had died and had to be kicked into life. Frost gave a welcoming smile as Green was brought in, a smile that was not returned.

   
"Why have I been dragged here again?" the man demanded. "I've told you everything."

   
"We've got lousy memories," said Frost. "We want to hear it all again." He waited while Morgan started up the tape. "Right, Bernie boy, you're on talk radio, every lie you tell us is being recorded."

   
"You're condemned before you open your bloody mouth in this place," Green protested sullenly.

   
"I know," beamed Frost. "It saves all that sodding about getting evidence." He took Green's earlier statement from the folder. "Right. You say you took the kid to Weaver's place, watched her go in, then after ten minutes, drove away?"

   
"That's right."

   
"But we have a witness, Bernie, who says you didn't drive off . . . you parked outside." He didn't tell Bernie that the witness was the dead suspect.

   
"He's lying, Mr. Frost. I drove straight off again."

   
"Not straight off, Bernie. It must have slipped your mind, so let me remind you. You left the car and waited in that back alley. When the kid came out, you grabbed her, forced her in the car, then raped and strangled her."

   
"As God is my witness, Mr. Frost, she never came out while I was there. All right—I did get out of the car and waited round the back. I waited half an hour, but she didn't come out so I gave up."

   
"You waited half an hour . . . in the freezing cold . . . Why?"

   
Green hung his head and drew little circles on the table top with his finger. "Can this be off the record?"

   
"Anything you tell us," said Frost, with an encouraging smile, "won't go any further than these four walls and the Central Criminal Court." The smile clicked off. "This is a murder investigation, Bernie, everything is on the record. The only time we switch the tape off is when we want to refresh your memory with a few knees in the groin."

   
Morgan winced. He wished the inspector wouldn't say these sort of things. If the tape was played in court, it might not be taken as a joke.

   
Unperturbed, Frost folded his arms and leant back in the chair. "So come on, Bernie, spit it out. Why did you wait?"

   
"I thought she might like to come for a little ride with me. She looked the sort. I wouldn't have forced her, but you know . . . for a couple of quid . . ." He gave a weak smile. "You know . . . nothing harmful . . ."

   
"Just a spot of homely fun," said Frost grimly. "You dirty bastard."

   
"Well, it never came to it. After half an hour of standing in the freezing cold, I decided the bloke inside was probably getting all the fun, so I called it a day."

   
"You went home and took a cold bath?"

   
"I didn't need a cold bath. My dick was like an icicle."

   
Frost grimaced. "Bloody hell, Bernie, you've put me off frozen sausages for life." He leant forward, his face inches away from Green. "Let's try the truth for a change. You waited. She came out. You offered to take her for a drive in the nice blue motor car, you tried it on, but she screamed and yelled so you had to silence her."

   
"No!" screamed Green. "No!"

   
"You didn't mean to kill her, you just meant to keep her quiet . . . to stop her screaming, screaming, screaming . . ." His voice rose with each repetition of the word. "It got on your nerves. You couldn't take it, so you put your hands round her throat and you squeezed and squeezed."

   
"No . . . No!!" Green was standing and shouting. He suddenly stopped and sank down again in the chair. "If they object, I stop. I don't want to know. It isn't fun if they object. I wouldn't have raped her. I don't do that sort of thing."

   
"You're too good for this world," murmured Frost. He showed him the photograph of Vicky Stuart. "And when did you give her a lift, Bernie?"

   
Green shook his head. "I've already told you, I know nothing about any other girl, Mr. Frost. There's nothing else to tell. I've told you everything."

   
Frost tapped a pencil on his teeth, then slipped the photograph and the statement back in the file. "All right, Bernie. Give my colleague here a fresh statement, and you can go."

   
Morgan followed him out. "What do you reckon guv?"

   
Frost shrugged. "If he's telling the truth and the girl was in there for over half an hour, then what the hell was going on inside that house? Little innocent Charlie-boy said she nipped in, changed her dress, then legged it. That would take minutes. One of them is lying."

   
"She could have nipped out the front way, while Green was waiting round the back."

   
"Weaver said she went out the back way, why should he lie if she was only there a few minutes?" He yawned. "I'm too tired to think. Let's leave it for now. Take his statement and get off home. See you tomorrow."

He slept an untroubled sleep until two in the morning when the insistent ringing of the phone and the hammering at the front door woke him up.

The hot dog and pie and chip van, which catered in the main for the night trade—drunks rolling home from the local pubs, long distance lorry drivers, delivery men and cabbies—was parked in a cul-de-sac alongside the local comprehensive school. At half-past one in the morning it should have been a blaze of light, wafting out the greasy reek of fried onions, but it was now in darkness, and most of the onion smell had been blown away by the cutting wind. A little after midnight a crowd of noisy drunks from a nearby pub had amused themselves by distracting the owner's attention while two of them let down the tires on one side. The van now drooped alarmingly.

   
The headlights of a minicab lit up the van and nosed in behind it as the owner, Ted Turner, a mournful-looking horse-faced man humping a foot-pump, clambered out and paid off the driver who had been chewing his ear-hole throughout the journey with good advice about always keeping a foot-pump handy in case anything like this happened.

   
As Turner went down on his knees to screw in the connection, he saw something underneath the van. A dosser, lying under some sacking, using the parked van as a temporary shelter. Just what he bloody needed!

   
"Oi you—out!" He hammered on the side of the van to wake the swine up, but was ignored. "I haven't got all bleeding day. Out!" Still no response. He got down on his knees again and stretched out a hand to give the man a shake. He froze in horror. His outstretched hand was touching icy cold, hard, dead flesh.

   
"Bloody hell!" He snatched his hand back and wiped it down the front of his coat as he clambered to his feet. He kicked the foot pump under the van in case some bugger nicked it, then hared off to find the nearest phone box to call the police.

The area had already been cordoned off by the time Frost arrived. Arthur Hanlon scuttled across to meet him. "Another dead tom, Jack. She's under the van."

   
Frost rubbed his hands briskly. The biting wind was cutting right through him. "Do we know her?"

   
"We can't get to her face until we can move the van."

   
"Let's take a peep," grunted Frost. "I might recognize the rude bits."

   
Watched by Hanlon and Collier he knelt and flashed his torch which picked out a naked arm, part of the torso, the rest covered by a piece of sacking. He straightened up. "I don't recognize any of the bits I can see. Are we sure she's a tom?"

   
"I managed to squeeze part the way under," Collier told him. "She's naked, and she's been beaten and burnt, just like the others."

   
Frost passed his cigarettes around "This bastard is letting too bloody cocky. He's really taking the piss out of us and he's doing it too bloody often." He accepted a light from Hanlon. "This is what—number four or five, I'm losing count—and we're no nearer to catching him than we were with the first. Who found her?"

   
"The bloke who runs the stall," said Hanlon. "Some jokers let his tires down and he had to go back home to fetch a foot-pump."

   
"What time?"

   
"Just after half-past twelve. He checked the tires then and she wasn't there."

   
"And he got back when?"

   
"Half-past oneish. She was dumped between those times."

   
"We've never been so close to the sod," said Frost. "He was here . . . less than an hour ago, he was right here."

   
"I reckon he was a regular at the stall," said Hanlon. "Came for some grub, saw the place was deserted so decided to use it to dump the body."