Winter Frost (50 page)

   
"No, Inspector," said Harding patiently, "but we did find a used condom so we can do DNA checks to see who used it and on whom. We also found fibres from that fur coat you were on about and traces of a considerable amount of dried blood on the carpeting which we are currently matching against the blood of the victims. Apart from that, little of interest."

   
Frost squeezed the phone hard and stared up at the ceiling. "Say that again."

   
Harding said it again.

   
Frost beamed. "The next time anyone says you're a lot of useless bastards, tell them I don't entirely agree." He put the phone down and spun round. "We've got him," he said.

   
Jackson's scowl had deepened when he was brought back into the interview room. He snatched at the cigarette Frost offered.

   
"So you smoke cigarettes?" Frost commented, clicking his lighter.

   
"What else can you do with cigarettes," snarled the cab driver, "stick them up your arse? It's not a crime, is it?"

   
"Depends where you stub them out," said Frost. He pulled out a wad of photographs of the murdered women and dealt them out, one by one. "Recognize any of these?"

   
Jackson bent over to study them. "I know most of them. They've used my cab quite a few times. They're prostitutes."

   
"Dead prostitutes," Frost told him. "And by a strange coincidence, they all went missing on the nights you were on cab duty."

   
"Hardly surprising, considering I only work nights."

   
Frost flicked across the photograph of Big Bertha taken on the autopsy slab. "Toms who phone for cabs on the nights you are on duty end up looking like that!"

   
Jackson screwed up his face and quickly turned his head away. "That's sick. Just because they ride in my cab, it don't mean I murdered them. If they rode on a bus would you arrest the flaming bus driver?"

   
"If he was in the habit of beating up his passengers, I might, and if I found forensic evidence inside his bus, I damn well would."

   
"Well, you found nothing inside my cab."

   
"I'm afraid we did, Tom." Frost tapped a finger on the photograph of Sarah. "She was wearing a tatty fur coat the night she was murdered. We found fibres from it inside your cab."

   
"I didn't say she'd never been in my cab. I just said I didn't pick her up the night she went missing," smirked Jackson.

   
"At 2.36 last Thursday, this lady," and Frost held up the photograph of Big Bertha, "phoned for a cab to collect her from Downham Street. Max Golding gave the pick-up to you, but you claimed she wasn't there when you arrived, just as you claim Helen Stokes wasn't there when you arrived, and like Helen Stokes, the next time we saw her, she looked like this." He waggled the autopsy photograph.

   
Jackson pushed the photograph away. "If she wasn't there, she wasn't bloody there." He clicked his fingers. "I remember now. Yes, I radioed Max that the customer wasn't there so he gave me another pick-up just round the corner."

   
"Another pick-up? I don't suppose you remember what it was?"

   
"No," snarled Jackson. "When you're murdering prostitutes all the time, you don't remember trifling little details like that. Max booked it, he'll know."

   
Frost nodded for Liz to go and get the details from the minicab firm. "Would you have any objection to giving up samples for DNA testing?"

   
"Why?"

   
"The killer raped the toms, using a condom. found a used one in your cab."

   
Jackson folded his arms and smirked. "Take all the samples you like, Inspector. My bodily fluids are at your disposal."

   
You're too flaming sure of yourself, thought Frost. "So how do you suggest the condom got there?"

   
A pitying look from the cab driver. "Don't you know anything about the late night cab trade, Inspector? If the tom hasn't a place to take the punter to, and the punter hasn't got a motor, how do you think they consummate their passion? They call a cab and have it away on the back seat, that's how. Some mornings, after a busy night, I'm cleaning out used condoms by the shovelful. But if you want to do a DNA test, be my guest."

   
Frost groaned inwardly. His pile of hard evidence was shrinking fast. But there was still the blood to be tested . . . A tap at the door and Liz beckoned him outside.

   
"The call from Big Bertha," she told him, "came in at 2.36. At 2.50 Jackson radioed back to base to say there was no-one there. Luckily, Golding had another customer for him, a man in Felford Road who had cut his hand on a corned beef tin and wanted to be driven to the casualty department at Denton Hospital to have it stitched up. I went through to the hospital and got the man's name and telephone number. I phoned him. He says the minicab arrived about five minutes after he made the call and took him straight to the hospital."

   
"Then there was no way he could have picked Bertha up and parked her somewhere before he took the other pick-up?"

   
"None at all. And there's more bad news. The man said he was bleeding like a stuck pig all over the back seat of the cab."

   
"Shit!" said Frost.

"I can go?" asked Jackson in mock incredulity. "Can't you think of anything else you can charge me with? What about that skeleton you dug up in that garden? Perhaps he rode in my cab."

   
Frost ignored the sarcasm and tried not to show it was hitting home. He had nothing on Jackson and knew that the blood in the cab would turn out to be from the man who had the fight with the corned beef tin. "Don't leave Denton. We may want to talk to you again."

   
Shoulders slumped, he made his way back to the murder incident room but was waylaid by Mullett and led into the old log cabin.

   
"Have you charged him?"

   
"No . . . not enough evidence," mumbled Frost, giving Mullett the details.

   
"This isn't good enough, Frost," barked Mullett. "You're arresting people left, right and centre, trying to make them fit the crime then having to let them go through lack of evidence. This has already led to one tragedy." He shook his head reproachfully. "I want a result, Frost. I want a result, quickly."

   
"You should have said so before," grunted Frost. "I'd have tried harder."

   
Mullett reddened. "Don't give me your smart answers, Frost—" He was cut short by the phone.

   "
I told you to hold all my calls. Oh . . . I see." He held the receiver out to the inspector. "For you. A man on the phone in answer to my television appeal. He says he was with that Sarah woman last night."

   
Another time-waster, thought Frost. These media appeals brought all the cranks and weirdo's crawling out of the woodwork. He shouldered the phone to his ear as he poked a cigarette in his mouth. Mullett quickly skidded the heavy glass ashtray over before the carpet was smothered in ash.

   
The call came from a public phone box. Frost could hear traffic roaring past in the background. "Are you the detective handling that prostitute killing?"

   
"Yes," said Frost, trying to sound interested.

   
"I think I'm the man you want to talk to. I was with her last night."

   
"Oh yes?" said Frost, stifling a yawn.

   
"I picked her up in Fenton Street about half-past two." Exactly what we said in the telecast, thought Frost.

   
We give these sods too many clues. "I went to a tall tart first, but she was too dear." Frost sat bolt upright and signalled frantically to Mullett. He clapped a hand over the mouthpiece. "Trace this call and get someone over there to pick him up . . . he's our man."

   
Back to the phone as Mullett dialled. "Sorry about that," Frost apologized, "I was looking for my pen. So you picked her up? Then what?"

   
"We drove down a cul-de-sac and we had it away. I don't like speaking ill of the dead, but she was rubbish. Then she had the flaming cheek to ask me to drive her home to Castle Street."

   
"And did you?"

   
"No, I bloody didn't. I live near there and I didn't want anyone to see me with her in the car . . . she was hardly quality. I told her I wasn't going that way, so she asked me to drop her off at a phone box so she could call a cab."

   
"What phone box?"

   
"The one by the railway arch in Vicarage Street." Frost looked hopefully across to Mullett who had the phone clamped to his ear. Mullett shook his head. 'Still trying to trace it,' he mouthed.

   
"Do you know what cab firm she was going to Phone?" Frost asked.

   
"I didn't hold a conversation with her. I just wanted her out of my car."

   
"Had you been with her before?"

   
"If I'd been with her before, I'd never have gone with her last night. She wasn't bloody worth it."

   
"So you said," murmured Frost, again raising enquiring eyes to Mullett who signalled back, winding his hand for Frost to keep the conversation going. "Look, sir, I promise you'll be kept out of it, but it would be helpful if we could have your name."

   
"No way." A click and the purr of the dialling tone.

   
Frost slammed the phone down. As he did so, Mullett raised a finger. "The public call box outside the main post office. Charlie Alpha is on the way."

   
"I hope he'll have the decency to wait for them," grunted Frost, heaving himself out of the chair. "The bollocking will have to be put on hold, Super. I've got to follow this up . . ."

The phone in the murder incident room rang. Burton answered it. "Charlie Alpha," he announced. "No-one in the phone box when they arrived."

   Frost gave a resigned shrug. "I don't think there's any more he could have told us." He was more concerned with getting a reply from British Telecom to tell him the number dialled from the call box in Vicarage Street. "Come on, come on," he moaned at the phone. "I haven't got all flaming day." He snatched it up on the first ring. British Telecom had the number, and it wasn't Denton Minicabs. Frost dialled it.

   
"Speedy Radiocabs," announced a woman's voice.

   
"This is Denton police. You received a call around 2.30 yesterday morning to pick up a woman in Vicarage Street. Can you tell me which of your drivers handled it, please?"

   
A pause and the rustling of paper. "Got it. Woman wanted to go to Castle Street. Our cab got there in ten minutes, but she wasn't there. We've had quite a few of these abortive calls lately."

   
Frost put the phone down and spun round. "She called for a cab. When it arrived she wasn't there. Jackson said the same thing happened for him with Helen Stokes and Big Bertha. This changes everything. We're not looking for someone pretending to be a punter. We're looking for someone posing as a minicab driver." He got off the chair and paced up and down excitedly, teasing out his thoughts. "A couple of years ago we had this pirate cabbie listening in to the other firms' calls on his radio so he could get to their pick-up before they did. I bet my flaming pension this is what our bloke is doing. He lurks about late at night, hears a call from a tart wanting a cab and gets there first. By the time the poor cow realizes he's not taking her where she wants to go, it's too late."

   
"Possible," acknowledged Hanlon.

   
"It's more than possible, Arthur. I've got one of my infallible feelings. Right, drop everything else. I want every minicab and licensed cab firm in Denton called on. Find out if they had calls the nights any toms went missing and if there was no show when they arrived. And I also want someone to check out the bloke with the pirate cab and see if he's up to his old tricks. The slightest suspicion, like a dead tom in the back of his motor, bring him in." This was better. This was what he liked. Action.

   
The door crashed open and Taffy Morgan burst in. "I've tracked her down, guv . . . Nelly Aldridge, the lady with the nipples."

   
"Damn," said Frost. "I'd forgotten about her. What cemetery is she buried in?"

   
"She's alive and well, guv. Lives in a smallholding at Hill Lane on the outskirts of Denton. No sign of a son."

   
"She must be pushing eighty. I bet her nipples aren't worth looking at now."

   
"She's a tough old bird by all accounts, won't let anyone go near the place. The Social Services lady tried to call and got the chamber pot emptied all over her for her trouble."

   
"We'll have to send Mr. Mullett round in his best uniform. How long has she been there?"

   
"Over forty years. The previous owner died and the council had the place down in their records as empty and derelict. They only recently realized someone was living there."

   
"How did they find out?"

   
"The old girl fell and broke her wrist. She got herself to Denton Hospital and they wanted to keep her in, but she refused. That's why they sent the Social Services lady round there."

   
Frost checked his watch. If they could get this one tied up and out of the way they could concentrate on more important things. "Right, Taffy. You and me will pay her a visit and see if she remembers burying her son in a neighbour's garden."