Night Frost (23 page)

   "I’ll take your word for it, sir, if you don’t mind," said Collier.

   Jordan’s personal radio squawked. He pulled it from his pocket. Sergeant Wells wanted to speak to Inspector Frost urgently.

   Frost took the radio. "Everything’s bloody urgent," he moaned.

   "Fifteen Roman Road, Denton," said Wells tersely. "Mrs. Betty Winters, an old lady living on her own. A neighbour’s phoned. He reckons he saw a man breaking in through the front door. The intruder is still in the house. Sorry about this, but I’ve got no-one else to send."

   "On our way," said Frost, stuffing the radio back in Jordan’s pocket. "Jordan, come with us. Collier, stay here and wait for the police surgeon." At the young PC’s look of dismay at being left alone with the body, he added, "You can handle it, son. If death isn’t due to natural causes, let me know right away."

   With Jordan driving they made it to Roman Road in three minutes, coasting past number 15 and stopping outside the public telephone box where a middle-aged man emerged and hurried over to them. "It was me who phoned," he announced. "I knew he was up to no good the minute I saw him. I thought he was going to pee in the porch. They do that, you know—dirty sods. You put your empty milk bottles out . . ."

   "What did he look like?" cut in Frost as the man drew a breath.

   "A big, ugly-looking sod. I couldn’t get to that phone quick enough. Stinks of urine in that phone box. When they’re not peeing in your porch or your milk bottles they’re peeing in the phone box . . ."

   "Are you sure he’s still inside?" asked Gilmore.

   "Positive."

   "Is there a back way out?"

   "Through the gardens and over the rear wall. But I don’t think he’s got out that way. You’d hear next-door’s bloody dog barking . . . bark, bark, bark, all bleeding night."

   "Go with the gentleman, Jordan," said Frost, anxious to get rid of the verbose neighbour. "Get into the garden over his fence and block the escape route."

   As soon as Jordan radioed through that he was in position, Frost did his letter-box squinting act. Utter blackness. A quick examination of the front door. No sign of a forced entry, so if there was an intruder, how did he get in? Hope fully he looked under the porch mat for a spare key. Nothing.

   "Shall I smash the glass panel?" offered Gilmore.

   "No," grunted Frost, poking his hand through the letter-box and scrabbling about until his fingers touched some thing. A length of string looped at the end. He gave the string a tug. There was a click as the door knob was pulled back. Cautiously he pushed open the door, grabbing it as a sudden gust of wind threatened to send it crashing against the wall of the hall.

   They tiptoed inside and Frost flicked the beam of his torch to show Gilmore how the string ran through staples and was tied round the door catch. "The burglar’s friend, son." If the tenant forgot his key, he just had to pull the string. But so could anyone else who wanted to gain entry.

   They held their breaths and listened. The house stretched and creaked and breathed and sighed. Then an alien sound from upstairs made Frost grab at Gilmore’s sleeve, willing him to silence. A small click like a door closing. Signalling for the sergeant to stay by the front door, blocking that escape route, Frost padded along the passage and began creeping up the stairs.

   Every stair seemed to creak no matter how carefully he placed his feet. At the top his torch picked out a small landing and two doors side by side. He clicked off the torch and slowly turned the handle of the nearest door.

   Pitch black and a feeling of cold and damp. A hollow plop. Water slowly dripping from a tap. And a smell of sweat. Of fear. His thumb was on the button of the torch when he caught the metallic glint of a knife just as something hit him, sending his head smashing against the wall.

   The torch dropped from his grasp as arms locked round him and dragged him down to the ground. Someone was on top of him, punching. There was hardly any room to move. His arm was trapped between his body and the wall, but he strained and wriggled frantically until he managed to free it. He reached up. Cloth. Flesh. Then a clawing hand clutched his face. He grabbed it trying to tear it away while his other hand scrabbled in the blackness over cold, wet lino. "Where was the damned torch?

   He started to yell "Gilmore!" when a fist crashed down on his face. He jerked up a knee, blindly. A scream of pain as his assailant fell back. His groping hand touched something metallic. The torch. Thankfully he grabbed it and swung it upwards like a club. A sharp crack and a groan as his attacker collapsed on top of him. Frost pushed and wriggled and managed to get on top.

   Thudding footsteps up the stairs. "Are you all right, Inspector?"

   "No, I am bloody not!" panted Frost. "I’m fighting for my bleeding life in here."

   Gilmore pushed in and fumbled for the light switch. They were in a small white-tiled bathroom. Frost, astride the intruder, was wedged between the wall and the bath. His tongue took a trip round his mouth, prodding at teeth, tasting salt.

   He stood up to get a better look at the unconscious man on the floor. His attacker was around twenty, fresh complexion, his hair black and cut short, dressed in grey slacks, a grey polo-neck sweater and a windcheater. Gilmore searched his pockets. No wallet, no identification. No sign of a weapon but over the sweater a heavy silver crucifix on a chain glinted like the blade of a knife.

   The man on the floor groaned and stirred slightly.

   "Hadn’t we better get him to a doctor?" asked Gilmore.

   Frost shook his head. "He’s only stunned." Then he remembered the old lady who should have heard all the noise and be screaming blue murder. "Let’s find the old girl."

   She was in the bedroom. In the bed, eyes staring upwards, mouth wide open and dribbling red. The bedclothes had been dragged back, exposing a nightdress drenched in blood from the multiple stab wounds in her stomach. On the pillow, by her head, was a browning smear where her killer had wiped the blade clean before leaving.

While the little house swarmed with more people than it had held in its lifetime, Frost and Gilmore closeted themselves in the bathroom with their prisoner, now securely handcuffed. He lay still, apparently unconscious. A dig from Frost’s foot resulted only in a slight moan. On the bath rack was an enormous sponge which Frost held under the cold tap until it was sodden and dripping, then he held it high over the man’s face and squeezed.

   The head jerked, and twisted, the eyes fluttered, then opened wide. He blinked and tried to focus on the piece of white plastic bearing a coloured photograph.

   "Police," announced Frost.

   A sigh of relief as the man struggled up to a sitting position. "In the bedroom—she’s dead . . ." He winced and tried to touch his head and then saw the handcuffs. "What’s this? What’s going on?"

   "Suppose you tell us," snapped Frost. "What’s your name?"

   "Purley. Frederick Purley."

   "Address?"

   "The Rectory, All Saints Church."

   "Are you trying to be funny?" snarled Gilmore.

   Purley raised his dripping face to the sergeant. "I’m the curate at All Saints Church. Please remove these handcuffs." He tried to rise to his feet, but Gilmore pushed him down.

   "Since when do curates break into people’s houses in the middle of the night?" asked Frost.

   "I only wanted to see if Mrs. Winters was all right. I never dreamed . . ." His head drooped.

   "Why did you think she wasn’t all right?" asked Frost, dropping his cigarette end into the toilet pan and flushing it away.

   "I’d been sitting with one of my parishioners—an old man, terminally ill—giving his daughter a break from looking after him. As I walked back I saw Mrs. Winters’ milk was still on the step. After that dreadful business with poor Mrs. Haynes, I had to make sure she was all right."

   Gilmore’s head jerked up. "You knew Mrs. Haynes?"

   "Yes, Sergeant. I was with her on Sunday. Her husband’s grave was vandalized. She was so upset."

   "It wasn’t the poor cow’s day," said Frost. Then his eyes narrowed. "There was no milk on the step when we arrived."

   "I brought it in with me. I put it in her fridge."

   Frost yelled down the stairs for the SOC man to check if there was an unopened bottle of milk in the fridge and if so, to go over it for prints. Back to Purley. "How did you get in?"

   "There’s a string connected to the front door catch. I’ve used it before . . . Mrs. Winters is a cripple—she’s under the hospital, chronic arthritis. She can’t always get to the door."

   "Right," nodded Frost. "So what did you do next?"

   "The hall was in darkness. I couldn’t find the light switch, but I made my way upstairs. I tapped on her bedroom door. No answer. I went in and switched on the light and . . ." He shuddered and covered his face with his hands, "and I saw her. And then I heard the door click downstairs. I thought it was the killer coming back. I switched off the light and hid in the bathroom. You know the rest."

   A brisk tap at the door. The SOC man came in holding a full pint bottle of red-top milk, shrouded in a polythene bag.

   "This was in the fridge, Inspector. Two different dabs on the neck—neither of them the dead woman’s."

   Frost squinted at the bottle. "One should be the milkman, the other ought to be the padre here. Take his dabs and see if they match." He ordered Gilmore to remove the cuffs.

   Another tap at the door. "The pathologist has finished," yelled Forensic.

   "Coming," called Frost.

   It was cold in the tiny ice-box of a bedroom with its unfriendly brown lino and the windows rattling where the wind found all the gaps. Drysdale buttoned his overcoat and rubbed his hands briskly. "I estimate the time of death as approximately eleven o’clock last night, give or take half an hour or so either way." He pointed to bruising on each side of the dead woman’s mouth. "He clamped his hand over her face so she couldn’t utter a sound, then he jerked back the bedclothes and stabbed her repeatedly—three times in the stomach and lastly in the heart. The wounds are quite deep. To inflict them he would have raised the knife above his head and brought it down with considerable force." Drysdale gave a demonstration with his clenched fist. "As he raised his hand, some of the blood on the knife splashed on to the wall." He indicated red splatters staining the pale cream wall paper.

   "Would he have got any of that on himself?"

   "Without a doubt," said Drysdale, pulling on his gloves. "Considerable quantities of blood spurting from the wounds would have hit his right arm and blood from the blade would have spattered him as he raised his arm to deliver the next blow."

   "No traces of blood in the bathroom waste-trap," offered the man from Forensic, who was measuring and marking blood splashes on the wall, "so he didn’t wash it off before he left."

   "Dirty bastard!" said Frost. "What can you tell us about the knife, doc?"

   "Extremely sharp, single-edged, rigid blade approximately six inches long and about an inch and a quarter wide, honed to a sharp point."

   "The same knife that killed the other old girl—Mary Haynes?"

   "It’s possible," admitted Drysdale, grudgingly. "I’ll be more positive after the post-mortem—which will be at 10.30 tomorrow morning. You’ll be there?"

   "Wouldn’t miss it for the world," replied Frost.

Gilmore was waiting for him at the head of the stairs. The vicar of All Saints had been contacted and had confirmed that his curate, Frederick Purley, had gone out to visit a terminally ill parishioner, and the SOC officer had confirmed that one of the thumb prints on the milk bottle be longed to the man in the bathroom.

   Frost groaned his disappointment. "The old lady died yesterday. So unless Purley killed her last night, then came back today just to put the milk in the fridge, we’ve lost our best hope for a suspect."

   He waited in the kitchen while Gilmore brought down the verified curate, who was vigorously rubbing his freed wrists, and who declined the offer of a doctor to look at his head on which a lump had formed nicely.

   They sat round the kitchen table where the plates were already laid for the breakfast the old lady hadn’t lived to enjoy. Frost utilized the egg cup as an ashtray. A rap at the door as PC Jordan entered.

   "We’ve been all over the house, Inspector. No sign of forced entry anywhere. The back door’s locked and bolted and all windows are secure. He came in through the front door."

   Frost nodded, then turned to Purley. "Who else knew about instant entry with the old dear’s piece of string?"

   "Very few people, I should imagine. She wasn’t a very friendly or communicative woman."

   "So how did you know her?"

   "She used to be a member of our church senior citizens’ club until her legs got too bad. I like to keep in touch."

   "Anything about her that would make her attractive to a burglar, padre? Was she supposed to have money, or valuables in the house?"

   Purley shook his head. "Not as far as I know."

   Frost scratched his chin. "Was Mrs. Haynes a member of your church club?"

   "Yes, but an infrequent attender. She hasn’t been for months."

   "What about a Mrs. Alice Ryder?"

   "Ryder?" His brow furrowed, then he shook his head. "No. I don’t recall the name."

   "We believe the same bastard killed them all," said Frost. "There’s got to be a link."

   Purley gave a sad, apologetic smile. "Then I’m afraid I don’t know it."

   On the way back to the station they detoured to drop off the curate at the vicarage. As the car passed the churchyard Frost was reminded of the wreath dumped in the Comptons’ lounge. He couldn’t remember picking it up and was relieved when Gilmore jerked a thumb to the back seat where the wreath lay between a pair of mud-caked wellington boots.

   "You might as well take the Compton case over, son. I’m not going to have much time for it."

   "Right," said Gilmore, trying to keep the delight from his voice. A case of his own. He’d show these yokels how to get a result.