Winter Frost (49 page)

   
"Sorry, guv. It looks as if she's still alive and living in Denton."

   
"If a lady wasn't present," said Frost, nodding at Liz, "I'd say, 'Shit!' All right, follow it through. The rest of you, chat up toms."

Max Golding, the fat and balding proprietor of Denton Minicabs, barely gave them a glance as they came in. He wore a dirty grey cardigan over a red and black lumberjack shirt and was chewing savagely on a soggy, unlit cheroot as he took orders from customers through his headset phone and relayed them over the radio system by means of a large, 1930s-looking chromium-plated microphone. "A pickup outside Marks and Sparks to the railway station. Who can take . . . Right." He gave Frost and Liz a half-hearted enquiring glance before returning to the phone to take another call. Frost poked his warrant card under the man's nose, but he seemed unimpressed and began to take yet another call, yelling with annoyance as Frost dragged the headset from his ears. "Hey!"

   
"Get someone else to take over," snapped Frost. "This is a murder inquiry."

   
"And this is market day. We're too flaming busy for murder inquiries. Come back later—"

   
"Just do it," hissed Frost.

   
Golding twisted round in his chair and yelled "Mavis!"

   
A fat, pudding-faced woman, a cigarette in mouth, stuck her head through a hatch. "I'm making the tea."

   
"Leave it and take over. The fuzz are here."

   
She waddled in and took over the headset from him. Golding jerked a thumb at the two detectives and led them through a door which had a piece of cardboard pinned to it with the word "Office".

   
Inside was almost a clone of Frost's office. An untidy desk spilling papers everywhere, a half-eaten cheese roll in the filing tray and squashed, soggy cheroot stubs in unwashed tea mugs.

   
Golding swept junk from two chairs and invited them to sit as he plonked down behind the desk, leaving the door wide open so he could keep an eye on the fat woman. "So what's this about?" he asked, striking a match on the desk top and puffing away at his cheroot.

   
"We're interested in one of your pick-ups early Saturday morning."

   
Golding burrowed through the mess on his desk and pulled out a wad of papers held by a bulldog clip. "What do you want to know?"

   
"A pick-up around one in the morning outside the Samaritans' office in Marlow Street."

   
A stubby nicotined finger travelled down the page. "Got it." He looked up. "So?"

   
"You remember the call?"

   
"Yes." He leant back in his chair. "A woman, said her car had broken down and asked for a cab with a woman driver."

   
"You sent a woman driver?"

   "No. We've got women drivers, but they won't work after ten o'clock at night, it's too flaming dangerous. I told her I'd send one of our most reliable men." His voice tailed off as he tried to hear what the fat woman was saying on the phone in the other room.

   
"And . . . ?" prompted Frost.

   
"I passed on the . . ." He suddenly leapt from his chair and dashed out to the woman. "Don't send Jacko to Mrs. Silverman, you silly cow. He's the one who ran over her pet dog when he collected it from the vet's after its expensive operation. She threatened to tear his balls out if she ever saw him again." He stamped back to his desk. "Pardon my French, love" he apologized to Liz. He lowered his voice. "I have to watch her all the time. She left her husband two months ago . . . for another woman!"

   
"I wish I had his luck," said Frost, stretching out a foot to kick the door shut. "Let's concentrate on the topic in hand, shall we—unless you'd like to finish this down at the station."

   
Golding spread his hands in resignation. "All right, all right, sod up my business. Why should I care?"

   
"Who did you give the job to?"

   
"Tommy Jackson . . . one of my most trusted drivers. I told the lady he'd be there in five minutes."

   
"That was quick," said Liz.

   
"It was going to be nearer a quarter of an hour, but I always say five minutes. If you tell them the truth they go somewhere else."

   
A little bell tinkled at the back of Frost's brain. "Jackson. Don't I know that name?"

   
Golding pursed his lips. "Possibly. He's a good driver."

   
Frost snapped his fingers and turned to Liz—"Jackson! He was the bloke you arrested when that old dear reckoned he'd raped her." Back to Golding. "Do you know he's got form? Broke a woman passenger's jaw?"

   
A shrug. "That was ages ago."

   
"She wanted someone safe, you sent a bleeding jaw-breaker."

   
"Beggars can't be choosers at one o'clock in the morning. It was Jacko or nothing."

   
"Nothing might have been better," said Frost grimly—

  
Jackson was off duty, so Golding dug out his home address. As he followed them out he suddenly darted across to Mavis and jerked the plug from the switchboard "I've told you before. We don't take bookings from that old girl. She thinks she can pay for cabs with her flaming bus pass . . ."

Frost and Liz Maud breezed into the interview room where a sullen, unshaven and bleary-eyed Tom Jackson greeted them with a scowl.

   
"Good of you to come in to help us, Mr. Jackson," said Frost, flopping down into the all too familiar chair.

   
"Don't give me that crap. I'm dragged out of bed with no word of explanation. It's not flaming right."

   
"It's inexcusable," agreed Frost. "But while you're here, perhaps you could answer a couple of questions?"

   
"Questions?" frowned Jackson. He spotted Liz Maud who was ramming a cassette tape into the recorder. "Not her again! Who am I supposed to have raped this time—Lily Savage?"

   
"Since you've asked," said Frost, sliding across a photograph of Helen Stokes. "Recognize her?"

   
"I never look at their faces when I rape them," grunted Jackson. He squinted at the photograph, then pushed it back. "I'm never that hard up."

   
"She was one of your passengers," prompted Frost.

   
"I don't doubt it. I have hundreds of passengers."

   
"Just after one o'clock, Saturday morning, outside the Samaritans."

   
Jackson picked up the photograph for another look. "I don't remember picking her up and I don't remember raping her. Can I go home now?"

   
"You did pick her up," insisted Frost. "Where did you drop her off?"

   
"If I picked her up then I dropped her off wherever she asked to flaming well go, and she would have left my cab with her handbag and her knickers intact." He leant across the table. "What the hell is this all about?"

   
Frost turned the cover of his file. "Just looking at your form sheet, Tommy. You can be quite violent with your fares when you like, can't you?"

   
Jackson leant back and folded his arms. "We having this again? Three o'clock in the morning, peeing with rain and on my way home when these two toms flag me down. Out of the kindness of my heart I agreed to take them to the railway station. When we get there, they've just missed the last train so they want me to take them to Lexton. 'Don't worry about the fare, cabbie,' they say. 'Whatever it is, we'll pay it.' We gets there, I hold out my hand for the money and they now tell me they've had a lousy night and they're skint. One of them lifts up her skirt and says, 'Take your fare out of this, cabbie.' "

   
"And you said, 'Haven't you got anything smaller?' " said Frost.

   
"Spare me the ancient jokes," sighed Jackson, "I've heard them all. Neither of them was worth the tip, let alone the fare, so I lock them in and tell them I'm driving them to the nearest cop shop. They then started attacking me and I had to defend myself."

   
"You did more than defend yourself, Tommy—you broke her jaw."

   
"I didn't break it, only cracked it. Anyway, what's all this got to do with her?" He nodded at the photograph.

   
"She got a bit more than a cracked jaw, Tommy. She was murdered."

   
Jackson stared at Frost. "Murdered?"

   
"She was seen getting into your cab, Tommy. The next time she was seen, the poor cow was dead."

   
The man scooped up the photograph yet again. He studied it carefully, only to toss it back to Frost. "I've never seen her before in my life." His eyes narrowed and he jabbed a finger. "Wait a minute! Saturday morning! Samaritans! Now I remember. The cow wasn't there. She orders a cab, I flog my guts out to get there in ten minutes, but when I arrive there's no sign of her."

   
"Come off it, Tommy—you were seen picking her up."

   
"Whoever saw me wants their eyes tested. I tooted my horn a couple of times, but no-one turned up, so I drove off. Lucky for me a bloke flagged me round the corner, and I took him instead."

   
Frost lit up a cigarette. "Then how come your boss has you logged in for doing this shout?"

   
"Because I was flagged in the street and it's against the law for an unlicensed cab to pick up passengers who haven't booked in advance. I didn't tell Max. He'd have screamed blue murder if he knew I was putting his business at risk."

   
"Fair enough, Tommy. Give us your passenger's address and we'll check out your story."

   
"I don't know his flaming address. I took him to the multi-storey car-park where I assume he'd parked his motor."

   
"There's a pity," said Frost, shaking his head in mock sadness. "We could have checked it and cleared you." His expression hardened. "Gone one o'clock in the morning, vulnerable woman, car broken down. Why wasn't she there waiting?"

   
"How the hell do I know? Perhaps a licensed cab drove by and she hired that."

   
Frost dismissed this with a snort. "It's a cul-de-sac, Tommy. Why should a licensed cab be cruising down there?"

   
"Perhaps he was dropping a passenger off," suggested Jackson.

   
Frost grimaced ruefully. He hadn't thought of that. "Where's your cab?"

   
"Why?"

   
"We'd like our Forensic boys to give it a sniff. If we find her blood all over the seat, it might refresh your memory."

   
"You'll have to ask Max Golding where my cab is."

   
"Why?"

   
"The cab doesn't stand idle just because I'm not driving it. When I get out, another driver gets in. The seat's red hot sometimes."

   
Great! thought Frost. Bloody great!

He took one last swig from the mug of canteen tea, then committed his cigarette end to a sizzling death in the dregs. He was back in the murder incident room with the rest of his team. "As you know, we've got yet another prime suspect. Tommy Jackson, minicab driver with form for violence. He was due to pick Helen Stokes up Saturday morning but claims she wasn't there when he arrived. He reckons another cabbie dropped off a passenger and picked her up. DC Burton has been checking all the cab firms to see if they had anyone in the vicinity at that time of the morning." He raised an enquiring eyebrow at Burton who stood up.

   
"I've checked all the local minicab and licensed cab firms. None of them had cars in that immediate vicinity Saturday morning and none of them had drops anywhere near the Samaritans."

   
"Right," added Frost. "I've been back to the Samaritans. Jackson said he tooted his horn when he arrived but there was no-one there waiting. Melvyn, the bloke in charge, thinks he might have heard a horn from the street, but he was on the phone and can't be certain of the time."

   
"Which isn't much help to Jackson, or to us," said Arthur Hanlon.

   
Frost grunted his agreement. "Forensic are giving his cab the once-over, but I'm not optimistic. Other people have driven it as well as Jackson. However, Inspector Maud has been proving she's not just a pretty face." He nodded for Liz to make her report.

   
She stood up. "I checked the duty rotas at Denton Minicabs. Jackson was on duty every night the murder victims went missing."

   
A buzz of excited conversation.

   
"Secondly," continued Liz, "I checked the pick-up records for the nights the victims were last seen. The firms don't always record destinations, only the pickup points, but the night Big Bertha went missing, Denton Minicabs had a call from Downham Street, which is in the red light area, to Fenton Street, which is where Bertha shared a flat. Jackson was the driver, but, surprise, surprise, he told his firm there was no one there when he arrived."

   
"We've got enough to charge him," said Sergeant Hanlon.

   
"But not enough to get a conviction, Arthur." The phone rang. Burton answered it. "Forensic, Inspector. About the cab."

   
Frost took the phone without much enthusiasm. Forensic hadn't been much help in the past. "Right, give me the good news. You've found matching bloodstains, a pair of knee-length knickers and a signed confession?"