“Don’t let the bleeders in.” Behind him, advancing out of the dark of the passage, they could see a young woman, not much more than nineteen. She carried a ten-month-old baby, its squalling almost drowning the snarls from the near-apoplectic dog. This was Jenny, Danny Cornish’s common-law wife, once pretty, now hard-faced, her features twisted with hate.
His head snapped around to her. “Shove it, for Christ’s sake. And keep that bloody kid quiet!” His angry tone caused the infant to howl even louder, and this, in turn, spurred the mongrel on to greater efforts. Cornish yanked its collar and dragged the animal down the passage where he slung it out into the back yard. As he slammed the door shut, there was a resounding thud as the dog hurled itself against it, trying to get back in.
“In here.” He took them into more noise a small kitchen where a whistling kettle on a gas ring was spitting steam and screaming for attention in competition with a transistor radio blasting pop music at top volume. Favouring neither, he pulled the kettle from the ring and snapped off the radio.
At the sink a gaunt, straight-backed woman of sixty, hair and eyes jet black, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was methodically dicing vegetables with a lethal-looking knife. She didn’t look up as they entered. “It’s the police, Ma,” said Danny. “About Ben.” She turned, hostile and belligerent, then she seemed to read something in Frost’s face. Carefully, she set the knife down on the draining board, then wiped her hands on her skirt. “Sit down if you want to,” she said.
They sat at the stained kitchen table with its cover of old newspapers. Frost fiddled for his cigarettes. He needed a smoke to bolster his courage.
Webster’s foot was nudging something. A large cardboard box tucked out of sight under the table. He bent and lifted it up. An unpacked VHS video recorder. He looked at the man. “I suppose you’ve got a receipt for this.”
Frost winced. “For Christ’s sake, son, there’s a time and a place …”
But he was too late to stop Danny from snatching an old Oxo tin from the dresser and emptying the contents out on the table in front of the detective constable. “Yes, I have got a receipt.” He scrabbled amongst odd pieces of paper, then, in triumph, stuck a printed form under webster’s nose. “Here it is. You’d better check it in case it’s a forgery.”
Webster took the receipt, read it briefly, then handed it back. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry you haven’t caught us out, you mean?” The receipt was stuffed back in the Oxo tin. “Now say what you’ve got to say and get the hell out of here.”
Stone-faced, Webster stared out through the uncurtained kitchen window into the back yard, which was strewn with parts of a dismantled motorbike. The dog had given up trying to break down the door and was nosing a
It had been days since he’d had any proper sleep.
“The lavatories where Ben was killed,” answered Frost. “We should have gone there first people have been peeing all over the evidence since eight o’clock this morning.”
Webster reminded him that the Divisional Commander was expecting him at the station to see the MP and his son.
Frost gave his forehead a wallop with his palm. “Flaming rectums. Mullett will never forgive me for keeping dear old Sir Charlie-boy waiting. Right, son, this is what we’ll do. I’ll drop you off at the toilets. Turf everyone out whether they’re finished or not, and seal the place off. Then search it from top to bottom for any sign of Ben’s carrier bag, or blood or anything I should have spotted last night. And radio the station for a scene-of-crime officer to help. He can take photographs of the graffiti and dust the toilet seats for fingerprints. I’ll drive on to the station for the hit-and-run interview. Remind me when we meet up that we’ve got that other security guard to interview about the robbery the one Harry Baskin duffed up. Oh, and remind me about seeing Karen Dawson’s mother.”
Webster nodded wearily. He would never get used to Frost’s method of working. Webster liked order and forward planning. Frost seemed to thrive on chaos, lurching from one crisis to the next. He considered reminding the inspector that they still hadn’t started on the overtime returns, let alone finished the crime statistics, but what was the point?
Frost shouldered through the swing doors of the lobby carrying, in a large polythene bag, the filthy, vomit-sodden clothes removed from Ben Cornish.
“Bought yourself a new suit, Jack?” called Johnny
Johnson. “I must say it’s an improvement on the one you’re wearing.”
“It’s cleaner, anyway,” said Frost, holding the bag under Johnny’s nose and watching him recoil. “I might do a swap.” As he swung off to his office to make out the forensic examination request, the sergeant, reaching for the phone, called him back.
“Mr. Mullett’s been screaming for you for the past half-hour. He wanted to know the minute you arrived.”
“I can’t think what’s keeping the inspector, Sir Charles,” said Mullett for the sixth time, his lips aching from the effort of maintaining the false smile. His phone rang. He snatched it up. “What? No, don’t send him in. I’ll be right out.” He expanded the smile. “Mr. Frost has just arrived, Sir Charles. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll pop out and brief him.”
As he passed through his outer office he instructed Miss Smith to make some more coffee. Strong this time. He felt he would need it.
Even before he reached the lobby he could hear Frost’s raucous laughter bellowing down the corridor. And there he was, slouched over the counter, exchanging coarse comments with the station sergeant, completely indifferent to keeping his Divisional Commander, and an important V.I. P, waiting.
“Your office, please, Inspector,” ordered Mullett brusquely, marching down the passage. When he reached Frost’s office he was extremely annoyed to find that he was alone and that he had to stand there, fuming, until Frost had finished relating some anecdote to the sergeant.
“We’ve been waiting for you, Inspector. For over half an hour. Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor.
I specifically told you they were coming. I specifically asked you to be present…”
Frost wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. He hated Mullett’s bawlings out. He always had such difficulty keeping a straight face. As Mullett bur bled on, Frost spotted a pencilled note on his desk telling him that Mrs. Clare Dawson wanted to speak to him about her missing daughter. His hand was reaching out for the phone when he realized that Mullett was still in full flow, so he adjusted his face to a contrite expression and tried to form a mental picture of the luscious Clare Dawson, all warm, creamy, and bouncy in a topless bikini, her sensuous lips parted, her tongue flicking over them… A strange silence. He switched his ears back on. Mullett had stopped speaking and was leaning back, ready to receive Frost’s grovelling apologies.
“Sorry, Super, but something more important turned up.”
Mullett’s mouth opened, poised to demand what could possibly be more important than a summons from one’s Divisional Commander, when Frost continued.
“That stiff I found last night
“The tramp?” asked Mullett. “In the public convenience?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust, his expression indicating that he held Frost personally responsible for the fact that the body had been found in such unsavoury surroundings.
Frost nodded. “It now looks as if he was murdered. The autopsy shows he was beaten up and his stomach jumped on while he was on the floor. You should have seen his internal organs. The doc reckons his liver had exploded.”
The mental picture of an exploded liver made Mullett shudder. This case was getting more and more unsavoury by the minute. He gritted his teeth and listened as Frost filled him in on the details, including a graphic, stomach-churning description of the human offal floating in the specimen jars. When, thankfully, Frost had finished, he was forced to admit that, under police rules, a murder inquiry took priority over everything else.
Frost offered a little prayer of thanks to Ben Cornish for getting himself murdered and s
aving him from a grade A bollocking. But Mullett wasn’t going down without a fight.
“What I don’t understand, Inspector, is why none of these facts emerged last night. It’s now more than twelve hours since the body was found, and we have no photographs of the body, no forensic examination of the surroundings, and only now is a search being made for the missing carrier bag. The question I have to ask myself is whether you are competent to be trusted with a murder inquiry, even one as hopeless as this.”
“The body was blocking the urinal drain,” Frost explained patiently, “The place was flooded. When you’re up to your armpits in cold wee you’re inclined not to be as thorough as you might be. To add to the fun, he’d spewed up all over himself.” As proof, he heaved the polythene bag of clothes under Mullett’s nose.
“All right, all right,” pleaded Mullett, queasily waving the white flag. “We’ll talk about it later.”
The internal phone rang. Frost answered it, then handed it to the Commander. “Your secretary.”
Miss Smith reminding him that Sir Charles was getting restless.
“Make some more coffee,” said Mullett. “We’re on our way.” Then he saw Frost’s shoes. Scuffed, unpolished, and water-stained from the previous night’s adventures. If there had been time he would have insisted that Frost repolish them and give his suit a thorough brushing. But there wasn’t time. Sir Charles would have to take him, crumpled suit, unpolished shoes, warts, and all. But he made Frost put the polythene bag down.
The cleaners hadn’t found time to clean up the briefing room because Mullett had commandeered them for his own office, which now sparkled and gleamed and reeked of polish. Added to this was the rich smell of cigar smoke.
Sir Charles Miller, MP, buffed and gleaming from good living, sat in one of the blue moquette armchairs, which were reserved exclusively for important visitors, and glowered at his watch. He seemed singularly unimpressed with the nondescript scruff that the grinning-like-an-idiot Mullett introduced as Detective Inspector Frost. If this piece of rubbish was the best they had to offer…
“Sorry I’m late, Sir Charles,” breezed Frost. “I was held up on a murder inquiry.”
“A murder inquiry?” exclaimed the MP, leaning forward with interest.
“How fascinating!”
Mullett pushed forward a hard chair. “You’d better sit here, Inspector,” he intervened hastily, determined to stop Frost from enlarging on the unpleasant details. Then he pointedly placed a large glass ashtray within easy reach on the corner of his desk. No use telling Frost not to smoke. He’d do it anyway, and if there was nowhere to put his cigarette ends he was quite likely to drop them on the blue Wilton and crush them under his heel.
“It might be better if I explained to the inspector what this is all about,” said the MP, determined that things be run his way. Mullett nodded weakly.
Miller sucked hard on his cigar. “I’ll be brief, Inspector. Through no fault of his own, my son, Roger, has been involved in this nasty hit-and-run business. Roger wasn’t driving; he wasn’t even in the car, but, as you can imagine, my political opponents are sharpening their knives. You can picture the headlines: “Son of Law-and-Order MP Butchers Old-Age Pensioner in Hit and Run.” Now, I’m not asking for special treatment just because I happen to be an MP. All I want is a fair and unbiased investigation.”
“You’d have got that anyway,” said Frost.
“I don’t doubt that for one minute,” went on Miller in his sincere voice. “Your Chief Constable, who happens to be a personal and very good friend of mine, has already assured me of that. My son, of his own free will, has come here to assist you in any way he can. The important thing is to prove his innocence so conclusively that we can scotch rumours before they have a chance to spread.”
There was the rasp of a match as Frost lit his fourteenth cigarette of the day. Mullett edged the ashtray forward to receive the spent match, but was too late. Frost’s foot ground the carpet, and the smell of burning wool joined the other aromas.
The cigarette waggled in Frost’s mouth as he spoke. “If your son’s innocent, I’ll prove it, Sir Charles, but if he’s guilty I’ll prove that as well.”
“That’s all I ask,” said the MP. “Do your duty, Inspector.” A pause, then, slowly and significantly, he added, “Clear my son and you won’t find me lacking in gratitude.” Frost’s eyes narrowed as the implication registered, but Mullett was up, steering him by the arm, and pushing him through the door before he could snap back.
“Roger Miller is in the interview room with his solicitor, Inspector. I want you to see him right away and let me know the outcome.”
Police Sergeant Johnny Johnson stilled his rumbling stomach as the wall clock told him he had another forty-nine minutes to go before he could take his lunch break. A breeze from the lobby doors as Jack Frost clattered through on his way to the interview room. The very man! He flagged him down.
“Mr. Frost!”
Frost ambled over. “I’m very busy, Johnny.”
“Too busy to notice the smell?”
Frost tested the air, then smiled. “You’ve got Wally Peters for me?”
“He’s down in the cells awaiting your pleasure.”
“I’ll see him now,” said Frost forgetting all about Roger Miller. He turned toward the cells.
“Hold it. I’ve got stacks of messages for you.” He scooped up some notes. “First, from Mr. Baskin of The Coconut Grove. Wants to know what’s the latest on his robbery.”
Frost took the note and, without reading it, screwed it into a ball and tossed it in the rubbish bin. “If he phones again, tell him we’re vigorously pursuing our inquiries. Next.”
The second note was passed over. “A Mr. Max Dawson asking if we’d found his daughter. He wants to see you.”
This note Frost put in his pocket. “I’ll fit it in as soon as Webster gets back. Any more?”
“Yes. Message from the hospital. Tommy Croll discharged himself this morning.”
Frost whistled softly.” Did he leave a forwarding address Las Vegas or the Bahamas?”
Johnny lowered his voice. “You reckon Tommy nicked that money, then?”
“I sincerely hope he did,” replied Frost, scratching the back of his head. “He’s the only suspect I’ve got. Send a car round to his house and bring him in. Is that the lot?”
Hopefully, he turned to go, but the sergeant had one last bullet to fire.
“Mr. Gordon of County buzzed through. It seems that the absence of Denton Division’s crime statistics is holding up the computer return for the entire county.”
Hell, thought Frost. When am I ever going to get the chance to do them? He went down the stairs to the cells.
The cell area had its own peculiar smell. From the drunk cell the stink of stale beer, urine, and vomit; from others the heady aroma of unwashed bodies too-long-worn socks, and carbolic. But all of these well-established odours were fighting a losing battle with the unwashed Wally Peters. Frost paused outside the cell door, lit a cigarette, took his last lungful of nontoxic air, then marched in.
“Blimey, Wally,” he spluttered, ‘you stink to high heaven!”
“I don’t make personal remarks about you, Mr. Frost,” retorted Wally huffily. He was seated on the edge of his bunk bed, huddled over an enamel mug from which he noisily sucked tea with much working of his Adam’s apple. “What am I here for?”
Frost rested his back against the painted brick wall. “It’s about Ben Cornish, Wally,” he said gravely. “About what you did to him.”
Wally didn’t even blink. He took the mug from his mouth and belched.
“I enjoyed that, Mr. Frost.”
“I thought so from the sound effects, but what about Ben, Wally? You’d better tell me.”
Wally sniffed hard and looked up at the detective. “You told me he choked to death, Inspector.”
“I was wrong, Wally. He was murdered. Beaten up and jumped on until he died.”
The tra
mp’s lower jaw sagged and tea dribbled down the dirty grey stubble of his chin. “Murdered?”
“That’s right, Wally, and all his belongings pinched. What have you done with them?”
“I wouldn’t hurt a fly, Mr. Frost, you know that. And I wouldn’t hurt Ben we was mates. Murdered? God, I’m never going to sleep down them lavatories again.”
Frost flicked cigarette ash on the stone floor. “You were hanging about there last night. Did you see anything?”
“Only that copper sniffing around.”
“When did you last see Ben?”
“Yesterday afternoon, about four o’clock down by the railway embankment. He was twitching and sweating and he kept clawing and scratching himself. He said he was going to meet some blokes down the toilets that evening who were going to sell him some drugs.”
“What blokes?”
“A couple of new blokes. He said they hadn’t been in Denton very long.”
“And how was he going to pay for the stuff?”
“He said he thought he knew where he could get some money. He wouldn’t tell me where, though. That was the last time I saw him, Mr. Frost, on my dead mother’s eyesight, I swear it.”
Frost shook a couple of cigarettes from his packet and gave them to the tramp. “Thanks, Wally. You can go now if you like.”
“They’re getting me a dinner, Mr. Frost,” explained Wally. “I’ll go when I’ve had it. Thanks for the fags.”
“All part of the service,” said Frost, banging on the cell door to be let out. “Tell your friends.”
Webster was waiting for him in the office. A search of the convenience and the surrounding area revealed no trace of anything like a plastic bag, full of Ben Cornish’s odds and ends, or empty. The scene-of-the-crime officer had crawled over the premises and had probably found the fingerprints of everybody who had used the toilets since Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, but none likely to be of any help.
Frost filled Webster in on Wally Peters and the claim that Ben Cornish intended to buy drugs from two new pushers. “Get on to Drug Squad, son. I want to know about two new suppliers who are supposed to have come into the district recently. And ask them to check up on all known users with a history of violence where they were between nine and eleven last night when Cornish was being killed.”
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