A Touch Of Frost (15 page)

But Frost was quick to decline his kind offer. “He could be armed. We don’t want to expose you to any danger.” The keys were zipped into his hand. “Thank you, sir. If you hear any gunfire, dial 999.”

The lift purred up to the fourth floor and deposited them on to a red-and-black-patterned carpet which deadened their footsteps as they walked to a mat black door bearing the number 43. Frost pressed the bell push with one hand and hammered at the door with the other. He waited, then hammered again.

“Listen!” he exclaimed, like a bad actor. “Is that a cry for help?” Before Webster could reply that he couldn’t hear a damn thing, Frost unlocked the door with the pass key and stepped inside.

“Mr. Miller?” Silence. Frost slid his hand down the door frame to locate the switch, and clicked on the light. The flat looked and felt empty. They were in a large lounge, its walls decorated with coloured prints of vintage racing cars; the centrepiece was a framed original poster advertising the 1936 Grand Prix at the old Brooklands racing circuit.

On the doormat were a couple of letters. Frost bent and picked them up. One was a circular, the other a letter from Bennington’s Bank, Denton. “Either he doesn’t bother to pick up his post, or he hasn’t been in tonight,” he said, dropping them back where he found them.

“Anyway, he’s not here,” said Webster. “Let’s go.”

“Patience, son, patience,” said Frost and padded across to a half-open door which led to the bedroom. The bed was made up and didn’t appear to have been slept in. Above the bed was a brushed-aluminium framed print of two naked lovers, facing each other, kneeling, mouths open, kissing, their bodies just achingly touching. Frost gave it his full attention, then starting poking into drawers, riffling through their contents.

Webster was getting fidgety and anxious. They had no right to be there, let alone search through private belongings. If Miller came back and caught them, reported them to Mullett . . . “We ought to leave,” he said edgily. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“We shouldn’t, son,” agreed the inspector, “but Master Roger should. According to his car-theft report, he was just off to bed when he remembered he’d left his briefcase in his motor. He went out to fetch it, and presto, the Jag had vanished. So why isn’t he in bed, crying his eyes out?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Webster, inching toward the door. “Let’s talk about it back at the station Now what are you doing?”

“Just being nosey, son.” He had opened the sliding doors of a huge built-in wardrobe to expose row upon row of expensive suits packed tight on the rails next to hangers sporting tailored silk shirts, all monogrammed RM. “Don’t you hate the bastard for having all these clothes?” he said. On the wardrobe floor, side by side in serried ranks of shoetrees, were dozens of pairs of hand-sewn leather shoes, intricately patterned in brown and cream. Frost measured one against his own foot. “Do you reckon he’d miss a pair, son?”

Webster folded his arms and waited for the inspector to stop playing his silly games, his eyes constantly moving to the door, waiting for Roger Miller to burst in and demand to know what they were up to.

“All right,” said Frost at last, “I’ve seen all I want to.” He looked at his watch. “Sod the returns, son. Let’s go home.”

I should bloody-well think so, thought Webster.

They gave the worried caretaker his keys back. He had been sitting by his phone, his ears straining for the fusillade of gunshots which, together with the two dead policeman, would give the flats some bad publicity. “Seems clear up there,” announced Frost. He then asked where the tenants kept their cars.

“In our basement car park,” replied the caretaker. “Why?”

“We’d better give it the once-over,” said Frost. “He might be after nicking an expensive motor.”

The caretaker took them down to the basement in the service lift. Some forty cars were parked in areas marked off with the tenants’ flat numbers.

“What do you expect to find?” Webster muttered sarcastically. “The Jag dripping with blood? You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to leave it here?”

“You never know your luck,” said Frost, turning to call to the caretaker. “Where is Mr. Miller’s parking space?”

“Over there in the corner that’s his car.”

Frost looked at Webster in triumph. They squeezed through gaps between cars to reach the section marked Flat 43. But the car parked there wasn’t blue and it wasn’t a Jaguar. It was a black Porsche.

“Of course that’s Mr. Miller’s car,” insisted the caretaker. “He goes to his office every day in that.”

“What about his Jag?” queried Frost.

“There’s only room for one car per tenant. He parks his Jaguar round the corner, down a side-turning.”

Webster didn’t bother to hide his smirk at Frost’s deflation. That was exactly where Miller said the Jag was stolen from. It looked as if his story about the theft might prove to be correct.

With slumped shoulders Frost shuffled back to the lift that would take them up to ground level. Then he remembered one last important question. “Did Mr. Miller drive the Porsche to the office today?”

“Yes,” replied the caretaker, “I saw him.”

Webster couldn’t understand why that answer made Frost look a lot more cheerful.

Back across the road to the Cortina. The car radio was buzzing away.

“Control to Mr. Frost. Come in, please,” pleaded Bill Wells for the twentieth time.

“Frost!”

“Thank God I’ve caught you, Jack. I’ve just spoken to Mr. Mullett about this hit-and-run business. He’s going spare. He says on no account repeat no account are you to attempt to contact Roger Miller. He wants this handled with kid gloves and everything done strictly according to the book. So please, Jack, stay away.”

“But of course,” said Frost, sounding hurt. “I wouldn’t dream of seeing Miller without Mr. Mullett’s express permission.”

He passed the handset back to Webster.

“I’ve had enough, son. Let’s go home.”

The briefing room at Denton Police Station was looking very much less than its best. Like most of the assembled police officers, it was suffering from the effects of the previous night’s party. Empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays were everywhere—on chairs, on window ledges, and dotted around the floor. In one corner a waste-paper bin had been knocked over, spilling its contents—screwed-up crisp packets, half-eaten sandwiches, and assorted rubbish—into a sticky, spreading puddle of lager.

There were a dozen or so police officers present, both uniform and plain clothed some looking decidedly fragile. Most were sipping coffee from plastic cups, and the subdued burble of conversation was mainly about hangovers, upset stomachs, and the party.

Detective Inspector Allen stood outside in the corridor watching the second hand of his watch inching its way toward zero hour. Punctuality was his keyword, and he would not enter the briefing room until 9 o’clock on the dot. Thirty seconds to go. He was annoyed to note that Frost hadn’t shown up yet, although that bearded ex-inspector was there, sitting by himself in the corner and trying to look superior to everyone else.

Allen reached for the door handle. The minute hand of the wall clock quivered, then clunked up the hour. He flung open the door and swept in.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please.”

He climbed up on to the raised dais where Detective Sergeant Ingram was in attendance with all the various files and roneoed orders laid out on the table. Behind the table was the wall map, and pinned on the blackboard next to it were photographs of the five previous rape victims, exactly as the inspector had requested .

The room went quiet. Allen paused, surveying the green-tinged faces, then his nose wrinkled. The room reeked of flat beer and stale cigar smoke. The inspector didn’t smoke and wouldn’t tolerate any of his subordinates indulging the habit in his presence. “This room stinks,” he snapped. “Someone open a window.”

Collier scrambled up from his chair and eased open one of the windows a fraction.

“I said open it!” bellowed Allen. “Fresh air won’t kill you.”

Collier flung the window open to its fullest extent, and the cold air came roaring in. The assembly shivered, which made Allen smirk with satisfaction. He had noticed a few barely stifled yawns as he entered. That should keep the bastards alert, he thought. A final scan of the room for the dirty mac and the maroon scarf. “Mr. Frost not graced us with his presence? Then we’ll start without him.”

He rocked gently on the balls of his feet, his eyes travelling from face to face, making certain he had everyone’s full attention. “Those of you who were at Mr. Harrison’s farewell party will know that our old friend, the so-called ‘Hooded Terror’, struck again last night. As we hadn’t heard from him for six months, I’m sure we were all hoping that he’d retired or had some dreadful accident with a carving knife that would put an end to his raping career, but it seems he was just biding his time. Last night he attacked his sixth victim, a woman by the name of Paula Grey who works at The Coconut Grove where she does a striptease act under the billing of Paula the Naughty Schoolgirl.”

Someone sniggered. Allen’s cold eyes searched the room for the offender. “Have I said something funny?” He waited in case someone dared to answer, then went on. “I said her name is Paula Grey, but she is also known as Nellie Drake, Sadie Kendal, and Molly Partick, and under each of these has had the odd conviction for soliciting for—offering gentlemen the use of her body in exchange for a small fee. That, however, is by the way. She was not soliciting last night. She was proceeding in a lawful manner from her home to her place of employment.”

“Like Mr. Frost, it would seem that punctuality is not her strongest point. On several previous occasions she had been late for her spot, and her boss, nature’s own gentleman, Harry Baskin, had warned her that if she was late one more time she would be for the chop. Last night she overslept, waking up at 10.35. She was due to go on at The Coconut Grove at 11.15. In order to save time, she slapped on her stage make-up, put on her stage clothes, which were those of a schoolgirl, and took the shortcut through Denton Woods. As I have so often pointed out to you, ladies and gentlemen, the shortest way is not always the quickest.”

He took a pointer from the table and turned to the wall map. “She departed from her flat in Forest View at approximately 10.50. She went down this road, turned into the woods, then took this path.” The pointer scraped the map as it traced her route.

“She left the main path here and cut down this little side route, which should have brought her back to the main road. But she never made it.”

From the back of the room the rasp of a match being struck. Allen froze. Without turning around, he said, “I hope no-one intends smoking during my briefing.” The sound of a match hastily blown out. He relaxed and continued. “She had reached this point here, where the path curves, and that was where the bastard was waiting for her. Exactly the same tactics as he employed with all the rest. The cloth chucked over her head, the hands around her throat to semi-strangle her into unconsciousness. Her attacker then dragged her from the path, behind some bushes, about here”—the pointer jabbed the map—“where he stripped her down to her stockings. But at this point, to everyone’s surprise, including his victim’s, he deviated from his usual pattern. He didn’t rape her. Instead, he viciously kicked and punched her, breaking her nose, her jaw, and some ribs.”

“At five minutes to one this morning, Sergeant Wells received a telephone message from an anonymous male caller reporting the body of a girl in the woods. We don’t know who this man was, but we want to trace him. This call was followed up by Constables Simms and Jordan in Charlie Alpha. They were later joined by Mr. Frost and Inspector . . . I do beg his pardon . . .
Constable
Webster, our refugee from Braybridge District.” He smirked as Webster smouldered, and waited for the laughter to subside so he could continue.

As he turned back to the map he heard the door to the briefing room open and close. Obviously Frost trying to sneak in unseen. “So kind of you to grace us with your presence,” he began sarcastically, but he was horrified to hear the scraping of chairs as everyone rose and sprang to attention. “So sorry, Superintendent,” he said hastily. “I thought it was Mr. Frost.”

Mullett, in a mint-condition uniform straight from the tailor’s, graciously nodded his acceptance of the apology, then smiled and waved a hand for everyone to sit. He then sat in one of the chairs in the back row, folded his arms, and assumed an expression of intense concentration. “Please carry on, Inspector.”

“I spoke to the victim in the hospital,” Allen wen’t on. “As in the case of all the previous victims, she could tell me absolutely nothing about her attacker. I’m hoping to question her further today when the surgeons have patched her up, but the current position is that six women have been attacked and we do not have even the vaguest description of the rapist. All we know from semen samples is that his blood group is type O, a group shared by more than forty-four percent of the male population.”

The briefing room door was flung back on its hinges and a late comer lurched in, managing to kick over an empty lager tin which rolled down the aisle and bounced up on to the dais, only halting when it touched Allen’s shoe. Delicately, the inspector pushed it to one side with his toe. He didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. There was no doubt this time who the newcomer was. “Good morning, Mr. Frost. I’m afraid we had to start without you.”

“That’s all right,” said Frost grandly. “I completely forgot about this bloody meeting. It won’t take long, will it? I’ve got a postmortem at ten.” He shivered. “It’s a bit nippy in here.” He slammed shut the open window, flopped into a chair in the back row, and lit up a cigarette.

Allen’s eyes glinted. A chance to cut Frost down to size in front of the Superintendent. “I don’t like people smoking during my briefing sessions, Mr. Frost.”

“That’s all right,” beamed Frost, the cigarette waggling in his mouth. “I don’t like people jabbering away while I’m smoking, but I put up with it.” The burst of laughter that followed was withered to silence by the ice of Allen’s expression. Grinning broadly, Frost puffed away at his cigarette, making as much smoke as possible. He turned to share the joke with the person sitting next to him, and to his horror it was Mullett, all immaculate uniform, gleaming buttons, and wintry disapproval. “A word with you afterward, Inspector,” he hissed.