Night Frost (25 page)

   "Fifteen kids," reminded Johnson, anxious to get the story over so Frost could report to Mullett.

   "Right. Funeral. Woman who’d had fifteen kids being buried. As the coffin’s being lowered down into the grave, the vicar turns to the husband and says, 'Together at last!' The husband says, 'What do you mean, together at last? I’m still alive.' 'I wasn’t referring to you,' says the vicar. 'I meant her legs.' "

   Gilmore sat stone-faced as Frost’s raucous roar of mirth almost drowned the others. Old women butchered and the fool was cracking jokes! Frost raised the phone, poking his finger in his ear to shut out the laughter. "Hello. Frost here. Sorry, I can’t hear you. I think the Divisional Commander’s throwing a party." He flapped a hand for silence. "That’s better, I’ve shut the door. You were saying?" He listened. "That’s bloody marvellous. Check it out and let me know." He hung up and beamed happily at Gilmore and Burton. "Those newspapers we sent to Forensic. Nothing on the
Daily Telegraph
, but when they shoved the
Sun
under the microscope, not only were the Page Three girl’s tits enormous, but they spotted tiny flakes of black paint and rust on the outside page."

   "Black paint and rust?" frowned Burton.

   "If our luck’s in, it’s from Greenway’s letter-box," explained Frost. "It could have rubbed off as the paper went in and out. Forensic are sneaking someone round to his house to check. If the paint matches, we’ve got the bastard." He rubbed his hands with delight and passed his cigarettes round.

   Johnson was getting fidgety. "Mr. Mullett wants to see you, Jack."

   "I’m not ready for him yet." He peeled off some blank petrol receipts. "Fill these in for me, Johnny. Disguise your writing. Six gallons, eight gallons and four gallons."

   The sergeant’s pen flew over the receipts. "What crime am I committing?"

   "Forgery," said Frost, giving three blanks to Burton. "Disguise your handwriting, son. Two lots of eight gallons and one of six." He pushed two more blanks across to Arthur Hanlon. "Five gallons and seven gallons, Arthur—and blow your nose, it’s starting to drip."

   "Just tell me what I’ve done," said Johnson, handing the completed receipts back.

   Frost collected the balance from Gilmore and Burton and riffled through them. "I lost all my receipts last month so I had to forge my car expenses. Some silly sod in County with nothing better to do spotted it. Mullett said I could get off the hook if I came up with the genuine ones." He waved the receipts. "These are them."

   "But they’re still fakes," insisted Johnson.

   "But better fakes than the first lot. Besides, I didn’t have time to go round all the flaming petrol stations asking for copies." He turned to Hanlon. "What’s the latest on the house-to-house, Arthur?"

   Hanlon handed over his two receipts. "We’ve almost finished. The first of the results are going through the computer now."

   "Anything significant?" asked Gilmore.

   Hanlon shrugged. "One person thought they saw a blue van cruising down Roman Road late on the night of the murder, another saw a strange red car. I’ll check them out."

   After Hanlon squeezed out of the office, Frost remembered that Burton was still patiently waiting. "Sorry, son, I forgot about you. What was it?"

   "I’ve been checking all the florists about that wreath, sir. I traced the shop and found out who ordered it."

   Frost had to readjust his thoughts back to the Compton business. "Who?" But before Burton could answer, Gilmore had leapt from his chair and was glowering angrily at the detective constable.

   "This is my case, Burton," he hissed. "You report to me, not to the inspector." He was in a lousy mood. Liz had been insufferably rude to the Divisional Commander when he’d phoned last night. Mullett was furious and it was pretty clear that his promotional chances were fast gurgling down the drain. How the hell could he report Frost’s misdemeanours when the inspector involved him in them all . . . eating in Mullett’s office, forging petrol vouchers. And now this cretin of a detective constable was going over his head.

   Burton, taken aback by Gilmore’s outburst, looked from the sergeant to the inspector.

   "My fault," said Frost. "The sergeant is quite right. It is his case."

   "So who ordered the damn thing?" asked Gilmore, returning to his chair,.

   Burton flipped open his notebook. "Mr. Wilfred Blagden, 116 Merchants Barton, Denton."

   Gilmore smiled sarcastically. "I suppose if I wait long enough you’ll tell me who he is?"

   The constable hesitated before deciding that the pleasure of smashing Gilmore’s face in was marginally outweighed by the need to retain his job.

   "He’s an old man, eighty-one years old. His wife, Audrey, died last week."

   Gilmore still appeared mystified, but the penny dropped for Frost. "The wreath was stolen from her grave?"

   "Yes, Inspector. The old boy’s very upset—wants to know what the police are doing about it."

   The police are sitting on their arses cracking dirty jokes, thought Gilmore. He waved Burton away with an irritated flap of the hand then skimmed through a report from Forensic reporting that the death threats to the Comptons had been cut from copies of
Reader’s Digest
.

   The office door crashed open and a flustered-looking Johnny Johnson burst in. "Mr. Mullett is screaming for you, Jack."

   Frost quickly checked through the newly forged car expenses, then stood up, moving the knot of his tie to some where near the centre of his collar. "I’m ready for him now. Do I look innocent and contrite?"

   "You never look innocent and contrite." Johnson replied.

As he breezed through the lobby on his way to the old log cabin, he passed an old man sitting hunched on the hard wooden bench by the front desk. The man looked familiar, but Frost couldn’t place him. He sidled over to Collier who was standing in for Johnny Johnson and jerked a thumb in query.

   Collier leant forward, "His name’s Maskell."

   Frost clicked his fingers. "Jubilee Terrace—Tutankhamun’s tomb—mummified body?"

   Collier nodded. "He refuses to accept that his wife is dead. He keeps coming in to report her missing."

   Sensing their attention, the old man looked up. "Her name’s Mary. I left her in bed, but she’s not there any more." He cupped a hand to his ear so he wouldn’t miss a word of their reply.

   "She’s dead, Mr. Maskell," said Collier.

   But the old man refused to hear what he didn’t want to hear. "Her name’s Mary Maskell—76 Jubilee Terrace, Denton."

   Frost moved on hurriedly, leaving Collier to deal with him. He was half-way up the passage to Mullett’s office when . . .
76 Jubilee Terrace . . . Upstairs bedroom. The old girl’s dead
. . . The tiny tape recorder at the back of his mind had been triggered into replaying, over and over, that mysterious phone call in the pub. How had the caller known about the old girl? Maskell wouldn’t have let him in. She was upstairs and the bedroom windows were heavily curtained. The only way in would have been through the same window Frost had used. Upstairs bedroom.
The old girl’s dead
. The voice. He knew that damned voice. He screwed up his face trying to squeeze his memory into action. Then it clicked. Wally Manson . . . Wally bloody Manson! He spun round and raced back to his office.

   Johnny Johnson, gazing out of the window, saw Frost with the new bloke tagging behind, dashing across the car-park. The interview with Mr. Mullett must have been a brief one, he thought. His internal phone rang. "Yes, Mr. Mullett?" His face froze. "You’re still waiting for him?" Through the window the Cortina belched smoke as it roared towards the exit. "I think he’s just gone out, sir."

The grey Vauxhall Cavalier bumped up a side lane, stopping well short of the cottage. Tony Harding, a junior technician with the Forensic Laboratory, climbed out of the car and walked purposefully up the garden path of the isolated building, a clipboard in his hand. He hammered loudly at the door and took a pen from his pocket as if ready to conduct a market survey. The knocking rumbled through an empty house and awakened a dog in the back garden and started it yapping. Harding waited, then, to play safe, knocked again and called, "Anyone in?"

   With one last look around to make certain he was unobserved he knelt by the letter-box. The paint was black. Parts of it were flaking. With a pocket knife he gently scraped off a tiny portion into an envelope.

   In half an hour he was back in the lab where the spectroscope was already set up.

"Who’s Wally Manson?" asked Gilmore, swerving to avoid a road-crossing dog.

   "Small-time villain who’s been in and out of the nick most of his life. Stealing cars, shop breaking, receiving stolen goods, assault with a dangerous weapon. Wally’s never turned his hand to burglary before, that’s why I never reckoned him for those senior citizen larks. But it was definitely him who phoned me at the pub."

   Gilmore slowed down at the traffic lights. "So what does that prove?"

   "How did Wally know there was a date-expired corpse on the bed? Even the bloody neighbours didn’t know. The only way he could have found out would be by doing what I did—climbing through the back window and sneaking into the bedroom."

   At last Gilmore twigged. "He was going to rob the place?"

   "That’s what I reckon, son . . . and I bet he ruined a perfectly good pair of underpants when he saw the sleeping bloody beauty. Round the corner, here."

   This was part of the newer section of Denton, modern two-storey houses with front lawns in a street lined with sapling trees. "Last but one on the right," said Frost. Then he leant back and almost purred with satisfaction.

   Parked outside the house was a battered van. It was a dark blue colour.

Belle Manson, Wally’s wife, was a plump, bleached-haired woman of around forty with heavy ear-rings hanging, like tarnished brass curtain rings, from ear-lobes which looked as if they had been pierced with a 6-inch nail. She was on her knees, scrubbing the front doorstep, her over-sized breasts swinging in sympathy with the gyrations of her scrubbing brush. Without pausing in her labours, she scrutinized the two pairs of shoes plonked in front of her, one pair scruffy, unpolished, cracked and down at heel, the other so highly burnished she could see her fat face in them.

   She didn’t need to look up to see who it was. She’d seen those broken-down shoes many times before. The scrubbing brush worked vigorously at a stubborn spot in the corner. "He’s out. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know when he’ll be back. I haven’t seen him for days."

   "Thanks very much, Belle," said Frost, stepping over the wet patch into the hallway. "We’d love to come in." She snorted annoyance and straightened up, flinging the scrubbing brush into the bucket and splashing Gilmore’s trousers with dirty water in the process.

   "You got a warrant?" she screamed.

   "Would I come in without one?" asked Frost in a hurt voice, patting the forged car expenses in his inside pocket as he marched up the passage and into the kitchen.

   "Yes, you bloody would," she yelled, charging after him.

   Frost drew a chair up to the formica-topped table and plonked himself down. He jerked his head for Gilmore to have a quick look round for a lurking Wally.

   "Where the hell do you think you’re going?" she yelled as Gilmore clattered up the stairs.

   "He wants to use the toilet," Frost explained. "He had curry for breakfast and it’s given him the runs."

   Ear-rings and breasts quivering, Belle glowered. She flopped down in the chair opposite him. Frost gave her a friendly smile. "You’re looking well, Belle."

   "You’re not," she snapped. "You’re looking old and scruffy." She waved away the offered cigarette. "I don’t smoke." Then her face softened. "Sorry to hear about your wife."

   "Thanks," muttered Frost. An awkward silence. She’d thrown him off balance. He lit up and waited for Gilmore’s return.

   A kettle on the gas-ring rattled its lid and whistled. Belle heaved herself up and turned off the gas.

   "Two sugars in mine," said Frost.

   "You’ve got the cheek of the bloody devil," she snapped, banging three mugs on the table and hurling a tea-bag in each. Gilmore came in, shaking his head. Wally wasn’t in the house. "What did I tell you? I haven’t seen him for days." smirked Belle, filling the mugs from the kettle and slopping in milk "Help yourselves to sugar." She slid the mugs over.

   "So where is he, Belle?" said Frost, spooning out the dripping tea-bag and depositing it on the table.

   "I’ve told you, I don’t know." She leant back to reach an opened box of Marks and Spencer’s Continental chocolates from the dresser and wrenched off the lid. A chocolate truffle disappeared into her mouth and was washed down by a swig of tea.

   "When did you last see him?" persisted Frost.

   Her face contorted as she gave her impression of thinking deeply. "Last Friday. He goes away a lot on business. I hardly ever see him. He only comes back for you know what and that only lasts five minutes on a good day."

   Frost nodded sympathetically. "We’ve got him down in our files as a quick in and out merchant, Belle." His finger worried away at his scar. "He doesn’t take his van when he goes away, then?"

   "His van?"

   "The blue one outside."

   "Oh that," sniffed Belle. "No. It’s broken down." As she spoke, the front door slammed. Her head jerked round. She looked worried. Quick footsteps along the passage. At a sign from Frost, Gilmore was up out of his chair, standing by the door, ready to grab the newcomer.

   "Mum, have you . . . Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were with clients." It was a young girl.

   Belle forced a smile. "It’s the police, Diedree . . . I was just telling them we hadn’t seen your dad since Friday."

   Deidree Manson, fifteen years old, in a leather jacket and a short skirt, was a scaled-down replica of her plump mother, even down to small, curtain-ring ear pendants, but with sandy-coloured hair which had not yet made the acquaintance of the bleach bottle. She stared blankly at her mother. "Dad? Oh yes . . . of course. We haven’t seen him for days."