A Killing Frost (11 page)

   Frost just stared at him. His mobile phone rang. Still looking at Billy he fumbled for the phone and put it to his ear.

   ‘Frost,’ he grunted.

   As he listened, his heart nosedived even further into the depths of his stomach. Vindictive fate was kneeing him in the privates. ‘Shit! Thanks for telling me.’ He clicked off, shifted his gaze from Billy and stared in disbelief at his phone, then spun the chair round to face Jordan and Morgan. ‘You want the bad news or the bad news? That was the Fortress Building Society. While we’ve been wasting our time with this prat, someone has used the stolen card to with draw four hundred and eighty quid from the Minton Street cashpoint.’

   ‘Four hundred and eighty?’queried Jordan

   ‘That was all the machine would let him have. Apparently twenty quid had been withdrawn earlier.’

   Billy King smirked. ‘That was me. Will you believe me now?’

   Jordan moved to the door. ‘Shall I get over there?’

   Frost shook his head. ‘It’s too flaming late. He’ll be miles away by now.’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘It’s not my bleeding night.’

   ‘It even more of a rotten night for you now, Inspector Frost,’ smirked Billy. ‘I’m having you up for false arrest.’ He stood and scooped up the stuff taken from his pockets, which was on the table between them.

   Frost’s hand shot out to grab King’s wrist.

   ‘Hold on, Billy, it might not be your bleeding night either.’ He hooked a keyring on his index finger and spun it so it flashed in the light. ‘I meant to ask you about this before, but there’s an awful lot of keys here for just one small-time crook’s crappy house.’

   The smile faded from Billy’s face. ‘Oh - they’re old keys, Inspector. I’ve never got around to throwing them away.’ He held out his hand. ‘If I could have them . . .’

   Frost whirled the keys around.

   King stared at them as if hypnotised.

   ‘You used to rob old ladies, didn’t you, Billy? Nick their handbags, pinch their money and then use their door key to sneak into their houses when they were out.’

   ‘That was a long time ago. I don’t do things like that any more.’

   Frost gave him a long, hard stare, remembering how worried the man had seemed when the wallet was first taken away from him. Frost had only done a quick flip through, looking for the money, and Billy had seemed quite relieved when the wallet was put down again. Frost held out his hand. ‘Show me your wallet again, Billy.’

   An even more worried look. ‘What for? You’ve seen it once.’

   ‘I’ve got a looking-inside-wallets fetish,’ said Frost, thrusting his open hand forward. ‘Give it to me.’

   Reluctantly, King pulled the wallet from his pocket and handed it over, watching apprehensively as Frost flipped it open. There were two credit cards inside. One was in Billy’s name, but the other . . .

   Frost smiled. ‘What a coincidence, Billykins. We had an old lady in here earlier complaining some toe-rag had nicked her handbag. Now, her name is exactly the same as the name on this credit card and you’re a toe-rag. Isn’t that a coincidence?’

   ‘I found it in the gutter, Inspector. I was going to hand it in, but what with you trying to stitch me up on a false charge . . .’

   ‘She identified you, Billy,’ continued Frost. ‘We showed her the mugshots and she picked you out. “That’s him - that fat little sod,” she said.’

   ‘You’re lying. Any mugshot of me must be years old.’

   ‘Policemen don’t lie, Billy - unless they want to get a conviction. You know that.’

   ‘I still think you’re lying, Inspector.’

   Frost opened the Interview Room door and yelled down the corridor to Sergeant Wells. ‘Sergeant, was Bill King’s mugshot in those photos we showed the old dear this morning?’

   ‘Yes,’ shouted back Wells.

   ‘And did she pick him out as the bastard who robbed her?’

   ‘You know she did!’ yelled Wells.

   Frost shut the door quickly, in case Wells decided to qualify his statement by adding that she identified every flaming face she saw. He sat down, put on his disarming smile and pushed his packet of cigarettes across the table. ‘It’s late, Billy, we’re all shagged out and we want to go home. Now we can either bang you up for the night, sharing a cell with a frustrated, seventeen-stone raging queer, or you can cough the lot, give us a statement and we’ll let you go home on police bail.’

   ‘You’re a bastard,’ said Billy.

   ‘So people keep telling me,’ said Frost, ‘but I don’t see it myself.’

Frost stood by his office window to watch Billy climb into his car, slam the door angrily and drive off.

   ‘We should have searched his house, Guv,’ said Morgan. ‘I bet we’d have found a whole pile of loot.’

   ‘It’s too flaming late for those larks,’ yawned Frost, passing his cigarettes around. For a while they smoked in silence.

   ‘Not entirely a wasted evening then, Guv,’ offered Taffy.

   Frost shrugged. ‘It could have been a damn sight better. Still, what is it Rhett Butler says in
Gone with the Wind?
’

   ‘Something like “Quite frankly, I don’t give a monkey’s”?’ suggested Jordan.

   ‘No,’ said Frost. ‘Something like “Tomorrow is another bleeding day.” ’

   ‘Scarlett O’Hara says that,’ said Morgan.

   ‘Whatever her bleeding colour, she was flaming right,’ said Frost. ‘So we missed him tonight. There’s other nights. He can only draw out five hundred quid at a time, so he’s got to do it again and again. Even someone as stupid as me won’t be able to continually sod up catching him.’ He stood up and crushed his cigarette underfoot. An unmade bed in a cold house wasn’t much of an attraction, but he was dead on his feet. ‘Right, we try again tomorrow.’

   His mobile rang. He frowned. Who the hell would be calling him at this flaming hour? Late-night - or early-morning - phone calls always spelled trouble.

   ‘Frost . . . What? . . . Bloody what?’ He collapsed back in his chair. ‘Then how the flaming hell . . .?’ He glanced up at the wall clock. ‘Shit! Thanks for telling me.’ He clicked off the phone and rammed it back in his pocket. ‘Tomorrow isn’t another bleeding day. It’s tomorrow already. The bastard’s withdrawn another five hundred quid.’

   ‘I thought he couldn’t withdraw more than five hundred a day,’ said Jordan.

   ‘He can’t. But it’s gone midnight. It’s tomorrow. He’s a cleverer bastard than I thought. Still, he can’t take out anymore until Wednesday, so we’ve tomorrow night off. And now we know what time he usually makes withdrawals, we can concentrate our efforts.’

   ‘Providing he follows the same pattern,’ said Jordan.

   ‘Oh, he must,’ yawned Frost. ‘He knows I’m relying on him.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘Don’t they have CCTV cameras covering those cash- points?’

   ‘On some, Guv, not all.’

   ‘Then let’s hope this is one of them. First thing tomorrow - or today, rather - nip down to the building society and use your slimy Welsh charm to get hold of the tape.’ He tipped the contents of his ashtray into the waste-paper bin. ‘Let’s go home.’

   They didn’t make it. As he reached the door, his phone rang again. It was Lambert from Control.

   ‘Another girl’s gone missing, Inspector. Jan O’Brien, thirteen years old.’

   ‘Shit!’ said Frost.

   ‘May have nothing to do with it, Inspector, but at 23.52 we had a phone call from a man using the public phone box in the town square. He sounded drunk, but insisted he had just heard a girl screaming round the back of the multi-storey car park - where that other girl was raped. He hung up without giving any more. I sent an area car round there, they’re touring the area, but there’s no sign of anything yet.’

   ‘Double shit,’ said Frost.

‘She hasn’t gone missing, you stupid cow,’ yelled the man.

   ‘How can you be so bloody complacent?’ shrieked his wife. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning. She left Kathy’s house at ten o’clock - that’s four hours ago. She should be here by now.’

   ‘She’s been late before.’

   ‘Not this bloody late, she hasn’t.’ Frost, sitting between the couple in their tiny dining room, his head moving from side to side like the audience at a tennis match, raised a weary hand. ‘Shut it, you two. Let’s have a few facts.’

   ‘You give him the bloody facts,’ snarled the man to his wife. ‘You brought the bleeding police in. When she comes waltzing back and saying she’s sorry, we’ll be a bloody laughing stock.’

   ‘I’d rather be a bloody laughing stock than the mother of a raped and murdered girl.’

   ‘Rape? That little madam is more likely to rape the boy. She comes and goes as she damn well pleases and does what she likes. If you want to make a fool of yourself to the police, good luck - count me out!’ With a slam of the door he was gone, only, to reappear almost immediately to shake a finger at his wife. ‘Tell that copper how many other times she’s come in late when I’ve been tramping the flaming streets looking for her. “Sorry, Dad, I should have phoned.” Little cow! And what about the time she didn’t come home until the next afternoon? Tell him that. I’m going to bed.’ The door slammed behind him again, making Taffy Morgan, who was nearly asleep in the chair next to Frost, open his eyes with a start.

   Mrs O’Brien jumped up, opened the door and yelled up the stairs, ‘Good riddance, you bastard!’ The bedroom door slammed.

   Frost, whose head had started to throb, winced at each door slam and lit up another cigarette. ‘Perhaps ‘we could have a few details, Mrs O’Brien. You’ve checked with her friends?’

   ‘Yes. She left Kathy’s house at ten o’clock. No one has seen her since.’

   ‘Your husband suggested this isn’t the first time Jan has been out very late?’

   ‘That was last year. She hasn’t done it since. I had a talk with her and she promised she would always let me know if she was going to be delayed.’ She wiped her eyes and sniffed. ‘Something’s happened to her, I know it has.’

   ‘And the time she stayed out all night?’ Frost asked.

   ‘An all-night party at her friend’s house. She said she’d be back by eleven, without fail. We gave her the money for a cab. The next morning her bed hadn’t been slept in. Sid raised the flaming roof. She was still round at her friend’s. She said she phoned for a cab, but it never came, so she thought it was safer to stay the night.’

   Frost sucked down a lungful of smoke as he absorbed this. ‘Your husband suggested she was sexually precocious.’

   ‘She’s physically developed for her age. But that’s not her fault, is it? And she puts on make-up when she goes out with her friends and wears tight T-shirts, but all kids do that. Sid says she’s a tart, but she’s not. She’s a little innocent. Don’t you think I know my own daughter?’

   Frost nodded, as if in agreement, and studied the photograph of the ponytailed Jan given to him by her mother. The kid looked like a right little goer to him. ‘Has she got a mobile phone?’

   ‘We’ve tried it. It’s switched off. She always leaves it on.’

   ‘Have you checked her room to see if she’s left a note, or taken any clothes or anything?’

   She jumped up. ‘No. I’ll do it now.’

   ‘We’ll come with you,’ said Frost, nudging Taffy Morgan awake and following her up the stairs.

   A typical young girl’s bedroom. Pop posters, a hi-fl with twin speakers and a fourteen-inch TV. A single bed, unmade, pyjamas and school clothes on the floor, and a chest of drawers with two of the drawers pulled out. ‘She’s so untidy,’ said Mrs O’Brien, picking the pyjamas up, folding them and laying them on the bed. She opened the wardrobe and riffled through the clothes swinging on their hangers. ‘All her things seem to be here.’ She looked around the room. ‘And no sign of a note.’

   ‘Does she have a bank book?’

   Mrs O’Brien opened a drawer, rummaged around and pulled out the bank book.

   Frost nodded gloomily. It was too much to expect that this would be a nice, simple run-away-from-home, with missing clothes and a note on the mantelpiece. ‘She’s probably with a friend,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘I’ll get our patrol cars to keep a look-out for her, and if she hasn’t come home by tomorrow, we’ll start a full-scale search. But my bet is she’ll be back full of apologies.’ Some flaming bet! he told himself. ‘Try not to worry.’ Empty bleeding words. ‘You said she had gone round her friend Kathy’s house. Where does Kathy live?’

   ‘Moorland Avenue.’

   Shit
, thought Frost.
Jan would have had to go round the back of the multi-storey car park, where we got that report of a girl screaming. But what credence could you put on it? A bloody drunk phoning! Let’s hope and pray the kid’s home by morning.
He looked round for Taffy Morgan, who was studying a photo of the girl in a skimpy swimsuit. He took it from him and jerked his head. ‘We’re going . . . and you’re dribbling.’ He turned to the mother. ‘If your daughter comes back, phone the station - but I’ll be sending someone round tomorrow anyway.’

   She saw them out and stood at the open door watching until the car drove away and disappeared round the corner.

   ‘What do you reckon, Guv?’ asked Taffy.

   ‘I reckon you ask too many stupid bleeding questions,’ said Frost. Another thirteen-year-old girl was missing. Anything or nothing could have happened to her. But he was worried. Bloody worried. There was a rapist on the loose. The kid was sexually precocious, the sort of girl who’d attract the wrong sort of dirty bastard and Denton was full of dirty bastards. Yes, he was I worried.

   The trip back to the station to collect Morgan’s car took them past Denton Woods and along the road past the house of the other missing girl, Debbie Clark. The lights were still on. The poor mother was probably sitting by the phone, willing it to ring with good news. A black Mercedes Estate roared past them and turned into the drive

   ‘Hello, that’s Debbie’s father,’ said Frost.

   ‘What the hell is he doing out at this time of night?’ He looked at his watch. Half past three. The wee small hours of the flaming morning.

Back at the station car park, Frost slid into the driving seat vacated by Morgan and yawned.

   ‘What time tomorrow, Guv?’ asked Taffy hopefully.