Frost 2 - A Touch Of Frost

by R D Wingfield

  Webster borrowed the station Underwood from Collier, dumped it on his desk on top of the crime statistics, and started pecking out the statements. Frost, who had found some salted peanuts left over from the previous night, was slouched in his chair, his crossed feet up on his desk, hurling peanuts in the air and trying to catch them in his mouth.

  Mullett swept in without knocking. Frost flung his feet off the desk, managing to knock a file on the floor, splashing papers everywhere. But there were no frowns from the Divisional Commander, who was in a most affable mood. “Well done, Frost. I’ve’just put the phone down after speaking to Sir Charles. He is absolutely delighted to learn that you have been able to clear his son. In fact, he’s coming over to see me right away. Are the statements ready yet?”

  “On the last one now,” said Webster, rubbing out a mistake and blowing away the rubber dust.

  “Excellent,” said Mullett, smiling, “I’ll take them with me.”

  The warning light at the back of Frost’s brain blinked on and off. What was the sly old sod up to now? “Take them with you, Super?”

  Mullett’s insincere smile blinked on and off. “I’d like to show them to Sir Charles. He’s bringing his solicitor with him.”

  He hovered over Webster, completely putting him off, causing him to hit the wrong keys repeatedly. But at last the final page was typed. Mullett snatched it from the machine and bore the statements away.

  It was an hour later that Frost was summonsed into Mullett’s office, an hour spent grappling with the crime statistics that had supposedly already gone off. Webster, frowning and scowling more than ever as he tried to make some sort of sense out of the inspector’s hopeless jumble of figures, decided he had had more than enough. As soon as the door closed behind Frost, he hurled down his pen and stuffed the papers back into their folder.

  He was dead tired, it was past one o’clock in the morning, and there were limits to the number of hours he could work without sleep. If it were something important, he’d have stuck it out, but not for the lousy crime statistics. It was Frost’s incompetence that had caused the trouble, and if he wanted them done tonight, he could damn well do them himself.

  Webster grabbed his overcoat from the hat stand and put it on. Through the grime of the windows the night looked cold, windy, and unfriendly. He turned up the collar of his coat and awaited the inspector’s return. It was time to assert himself.

  Frost tapped at the door of Mullett’s office and went in. As soon as he was inside he started coughing and his eyes stung. The room, blue-fogged with smoke, stank of cigars and an overpowering after-shave, a legacy of the now-departed Sir Charles Miller.

  “Come in,” boomed Mullett, valiantly drawing on a Churchillian cigar. Frost shuffled over to the desk and lit up a cigarene, his nose twitching as he sampled the air. “Smells like a lime house knocking shop in here, Super.”

  “It’s very expensive after-shave,” rebuked Mullett, pushing out the tiniest of smoke rings and coughing until his eyes watered.

  “You’d be surprised what gets shaved these days,” began Frost, but Mullett didn’t let him expand.

  “Thought I’d put you in the picture, Frost. First of all, allow me to pass on Sir Charles’s congratulations. He’s absolutely delighted that we have been able to completely clear his son.”

  “Not completely,” corrected the inspector. “We’ve still got him on conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, making false statements, falsely reporting his car was stolen . . . and that’s just for starters.”

  Mullett took off his glasses and began to polish them, slowly and deliberately, so he wouldn’t have to look at Frost. “I was wondering whether it was absolutely necessary to involve the son? It’s entirely up to you, of course.”

  “I don’t see what you mean,” said Frost, adding his cigarette ash to the corpses of two fat cigars in Mullett’s large ashtray.

  “The girl’s admitted everything. Roger was only trying to help her. Should he be punished for that?”

  “Yes,” said Frost.

  Mullett sighed a mouthful of cigar smoke. The inspector wasn’t being at all understanding. He readjusted his smile and pressed on. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering, of course, but I can’t help feeling that everyone’s interests would be better served if we didn’t make it known that Roger Miller falsely claimed his car was stolen. It can only complicate things.”

  “Oh?” grunted Frost.

  “Yes,” said Mullett, bravely plunging on to deeper and more dangerous waters. “If we remove that element we remove Roger from any official involvement in the hit-and-run. We could say the girl drove the car, had the accident, but didn't tell Roger what had happened as she didn't want to get him involved. That would completely eliminate him from any charges." He clapped his hands together and smiled at Frost, certain he would see the sense of all this.

  Frost laid his cigarette to rest alongside the two cigar corpses. ‘It’s a nice fairy tale, Super, but it’s not the truth and it’s not what they say in their statements.’

  Mullett cleared his throat. ‘Not in their old statements, no.’

  There was an almost audible click as Frost’s head jerked up. ‘What do you mean, old statements?’

  ‘I have had fresh statements taken.’

  At first Frost couldn’t believe what he had heard. He stared at Mullett, who suddenly found a paper knife on his desk that required fiddling with. Frost felt like snatching it from his hand and burying it to the hilt in the desk. He could hardly keep his anger in check.

  ‘Am I hearing you correctly?’ he shouted. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you have gone behind my back and taken fresh statements - different statements?’

  Mullett shrunk back from his onslaught. ‘It’s not quite like that, Inspector. Sir Charles’s solicitor had a word with them both, as a result of which they each decided to change their stories slightly.’

  Frost was now furious. ‘You conniving sod! What bloody business have you got, going behind my back, conspiring with your rich mates to get witnesses to change their statements?’

  Mullett’s fist pounded down on his desk, making the ash tray jump. ‘You will kindly remember whom you are talking to, Inspector.’ The look of contempt on Frost’s face was unsettling. Surely the man could see this was all for the best. He would try to reason with him.

  ‘Listen to me, Inspector. First, Sir Charles is paying the full costs of the girl’s defence.’

  ‘That was her bribe,’ hurled Frost. ‘What was yours?’

  The Superintendent’s mouth opened and closed. Rage made him speechless. His entire body quivered. ‘How dare you,’ he managed at last. ‘You’ve shot your bolt now, Frost. You’ve gone too far this time!’

  But Frost was still on the attack. ‘So what do you intend to do?’ he snarled back, ‘report me to the Chief Constable?’ He snatched the phone up and offered it to Mullett. ‘Here you are - take it. Report me! Shall I dial the number for you?’

  With a half-hearted flutter of his hand, the Divisional Commander waved the phone away. ‘Please listen. Not only is Sir Charles paying for the girl’s defence, he is also ensuring that sufficient funds will be made available to compensate the unfortunate victim’s widow.’ He paused, then added significantly, ‘But, what I am sure will be of great interest to you is that he has also generously agreed to make a donation of five thousand pounds to start a fund for the widow and children of PC Shelby.’ He leaned back, confident that his ace would not be trumped.

  ‘It’s not only his bloody after-shave that stinks,’ said Frost.

  Ignoring this remark, Mullett continued in a voice ringing with belief in the justice of his argument. ‘As I said, this is your case. The decision is yours and yours alone. It’s only a slight bending of the rules. I’m sure Mrs Shelby and her young family would be very grateful for the money, but if you feel we should deprive them of it, well, as I said, the decision is yours.’

  You shit, thought Frost, you utter shit! But
he knew he was beaten. Wearily, he stood up. “All right, sir. Whatever fiddles you’ve arranged with your mate Sir Charles, you go right ahead. I just don’t want to know about it.” The slam of the door as he left rattled everything moveable in the office.

  With only a brief frown at the manner of the inspector’s exit, Mullett sighed, relieved that the unpleasantness was over. He picked up the phone and dialled the ex-directory number Sir Charles had given him.

  “Hello, Sir Charles. Mullett here. That little matter we discussed. I’ve put it in hand, sir . . . Not at all, Sir Charles . . . my pleasure.” He hung up and tapped the receiver lightly with his fingertips. Most satisfactory. Sir Charles wasn’t the sort of man who would forget a favour.

  Fuming and desperate for something to kick, Frost stamped back to his office. The wastepaper bin provoked him by standing in his path, so he booted it across the office floor. It bounced off the desk leg and voided its contents all over the feet of the scowling, I'm-going-home-and-just-you-try-to-stop-me Webster.

  “Sorry, son,” muttered Frost, crashing down in his chair, ‘but there are some rotten shits in this station, and they’re all called Mullett. You’ll never believe what’s happened. Shut the door.”

  He told the detective constable of the scene in the Divisional Commander’s office. Forgetting for the moment about going home, Webster sank into his own chair and listened with growing incredulity.

  “You mean he destroyed the statements we took?”

  “Yes, son. I think it’s called perverting the course of justice, but if you’re an MP with five thousand quid to spare, then it’s called a slight bending of the rules for a good cause. Sod the crime statistics, sod the overtime returns, and sod our beloved Divisional Commander. I’m going home.”

  That was when the internal phone rang.

  Control reporting another rape in Denton Woods.

  A seventeen-year-old girl.

  Bodies aching, feeling tired, dirty and gritty, Frost and Webster headed back to the car, which seemed to have been their home for most of the long, long day. As usual, Webster was driving too fast, but the dark streets were deserted and they passed no other traffic.

  They reached the woods to find the ambulance had beaten them to it, its flashing beacon homing them into a lay-by alongside Charlie Alpha. The rear doors of the ambulance were open, and already the victim was being loaded into the back.

  The wind whined and shook the trees, sending a confetti shower of dead leaves on Frost and Webster as they hurried across to the victim. The girl’s eyes were closed and one side of her face was swollen and bruise-blackened where she had been hit. All the time she shivered and moaned. Very carefully, Frost tugged down the blanket to expose her neck. And there they were, the familiar deep, biting indentations of the rapist’s fingers.

  “Isn’t it about time you had a go at catching the bastard?” asked one of the ambulance men, who had a young daughter.

  Frost said nothing. What the hell was there to say?

  The ambulance lurched forward and sped on its way to Denton Hospital, its siren screaming for the road to be kept clear.

  They turned their heads at approaching voices. Along the path came two police constables, Simms and Jordan. Between them was a youth of about nineteen. He had dark hair, tightly curled, and wore a gray jacket with black trousers. There was a swagger about him that reminded Frost of Dave Shelby. As the group came nearer he could see that there was a raw scratch running down his right cheek to below his chin.

  Simms pushed the youth forward. “This is Terry Duggan, Inspector. The girl’s boyfriend. He found her.”

  “Hello, Terry,” said Frost, his eyes noting that in addition to the scratch on his face, there were nail rakes on the back of his wrists.

  “The girl’s name is Wendy Raynor, she’s seventeen, and she works part time in a shop. They’d been to a disco . . .” began Simms.

  “Let Terry tell me,” said Frost.

  “We left the disco at about half ten,” said the youth. “We had to leave early because her parents wouldn’t let her stay out late. On the way back we had this row, so she jumps out of the car and stomps off home on her own.”

  “Slow down, son,” interrupted Frost. “I’m not at my brightest at this time of night. What was the row about?”

  The youth gave a sheepish grin, blushed, and moved his hand vaguely. “You know, just trivial stuff - a difference of opinion.”

  “And she made you stop the car?” asked Webster.

  Terry shifted his gaze to the bearded bloke. “No, we’d already stopped. We were parked.”

  “Where?” This from the down-at-heel one.

  “Over there.” Terry pointed into the dark. “Round the back of that big tree.”

  “Why?” demanded the bearded one, another miser with words.

  “Why?” repeated Terry in a tone that suggested the answer should be obvious. “Why does anyone bring a bird to the woods at night?”

  “I see,” said Frost, motioning for him to carry on.

  “Anyway, we’re steaming away through the preliminaries in the back seat, and I’m trying to get her tights off her, when she suddenly goes all stiff and calls me a dirty sod. Then she starts struggling and scratching and pushing me off. I don’t reckon she’d ever done it before. Still, I wasn’t going to let the money I’d lobbed out on those disco tickets go to waste, so I tried again. This time she panics, jumps out the car screaming blue murder, and goes dashing down that path, pulling up her tights.”

  “Did you run after her?” asked Webster.

  “No bleeding fear!”

  “Seventeen years old,” said Webster, getting angry, ‘never done it before, gone eleven o’clock at night, and you let her run off in those woods on her own?”

  “She was already screaming I was trying to rape her,” said Terry. “If I’d chased off after her, I reckon she’d have thought I was trying to finish the job.”

  The wind stirred, shaking the trees until the branches creaked. Frost shivered and wound his scarf tighter. “What did you do then?”

  “I drove home and got my head down. About half past midnight, my phone starts ringing. I staggered out of bed to answer it, and it’s Wendy’s old man screaming and shouting because she isn’t home yet. I told him we’d had a bit of a barney and she’d legged it off on her own, but he sounded so worked up I said I’d go and look for her. I drove back here, then followed the path around.”

  “Show us,” said Frost.

  He took them along a narrow path which narrowed even more as it plunged deeper into the woods. A wall of thick bushes on each side brushed their shoulders as they pushed through. After some forty feet, Terry stopped.

  “When I reached here I heard this moaning noise. At first I thought it was a couple having it away, then I realized it was Wendy. I forced my way through those bush things there.” He indicated a gap between the bushes where branches had been bent back and broken. “It wasn’t like that when I first saw it - the ambulance men smashed it down getting their stretcher through. Anyway, that’s where I found her, stark naked, her face beaten up, her clothes all over the place. The poor bitch was moaning and whimpering. I piled her clothes all over her to keep her warm, and legged it back to the car. Then I drove round until I found a phone box and called the law.”

  Frost pushed through the gap and shone a torch around. A small glade, the grass flattened and trampled, but probably all from the ambulance men, the youth, and Jordan and Simms. A pair of laddered tights, screwed into a ball, was caught in a patch of stinging nettles which hugged the base of a beech tree. There seemed little point in picking them up, so he left them there. He switched off his torch and rejoined the others.

  “I suppose I’d better go and tell her father what’s happened,” said the youth.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Frost. “If I was her father I’d half bleeding kill you.”

  Jordan had moved some way down the path and was speaking quietly into his personal radio. He
caught Frost’s eye and beckoned him down. “Charlie Bravo has been round the girl’s parents’ house and taken them to the hospital, sir. It seems there’s a bit of a discrepancy. The lad do here says he was home in bed around eleven. The girl’s father says he kept phoning him, didn’t get a reply, so he took a cab round there. He was at Terry’s place just after midnight. Terry’s car wasn’t outside. The father nearly kicked the door in, but got no reply so went back home. When he phoned at half past twelve, Terry answered the phone on the second ring and didn’t sound as if he’d been woken up from a deep sleep.”

  “I can well do without complications like this,” muttered Frost gloomily. “What do you reckon, then?”

  “My guess is Terry raped her, sir. He got all worked up in the car, then, when she ran off, he followed, looking for her. I reckon he found her and jumped her. Then he drove home and pretended he’d been in bed since eleven.”

  Frost sniffed and thought this over. “I doubt it, young Jordan, but far be it from me to dampen the enthusiasm of young coppers. Take Duggan back to the station - say it’s for a statement - and then get the clothes off him and send them over to Forensic for examination. And tell the police surgeon to give him a going over. I want to know if he’s had sex recently.”

  They walked back to the others. Frost tried to light a cigarette but the wind kept blowing out his matches, so he gave up in disgust. “I want you to go down the station with these officers to make a statement, Terry. We’ll get the doctor to have a look at those scratches while you’re there - they might turn septic’

  He waited until they were out of earshot, then he filled Webster in. Webster listened intently. “So Jordan reckons Terry raped her?”

  “That’s the suggestion, son,” said Frost, crouching to windward of a large oak and managing this time to light up. “It’s possible, but I’m not really sold on the idea. I can’t see Terry going to the trouble of stripping her off. I see him as a tights down, skirt up, unzip the old Levis and crash, bang, wallop sort of man. I could be wrong, though. He might be the romantic type and like to strangle and strip them first.” He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and frowned at it. The wind was making it burn unevenly down one side, charring the paper. It tasted terrible. “My money’s still on the old Denton rapist.”