Simms shot a questioning glance to Jordan who shrugged, indicating, I'm hungry - let the poor sod go.
Simms chewed it over, then nodded. What the hell. If they drove him back to the station he'd probably be sick all over the back of the area car and by the look of his greenish face there was a lot more to come up before the night was out. 'It's your lucky night, sir - ' he began, but stopped in mid-sentence. Jordan, on his way back to the area car, was beckoning him over urgently. 'What's up?'
Jordan pointed. The front nearside wing of the BMW was dented and the headlamp glass shattered. 'Shit!' hissed Simms. They returned to the man, who was trying to appear unconcerned. 'Spot of damage to the front of your motor, sir. Haven't been in an accident, have you?'
'What, that?' The man attempted a weak laugh. 'Did that this morning - hit the gatepost when I drove out of the garage.'
'And been driving around all night with only one headlamp?' tutted Simms. 'That's a very serious offence.' His voice hardened. 'You didn't do it when you hit the boy, by any chance?'
'Boy? What boy?' Sweat was beading his forehead.
'The boy in intensive care. The boy you hit and sent flying . . . or are you too bloody drunk to remember?'
The man dabbed his face with his handkerchief again. 'I don't know what you're talking about, officer. I haven't hit anyone.'
'I think,' said Simms, taking his arm and steering him into the area car, 'we'd better take a little drive down to the station.'
The interview room was warm, almost too warm, but a welcome change for PC Collier who had been out pounding the beat in the cold. The man was pacing nervously up and down, from time to time mopping sweat from his face with a none-too-clean handkerchief. 'How much longer?' he demanded.
'The inspector should be here soon.'
'You've been saying that for the past half-hour. This is all a mistake. Do you think I could hit someone and not know it? I want a solicitor.'
'Ask the inspector when he comes in,' said Collier.
The door crashed open as an untidy individual backed in carrying a mug of tea on which was balanced a greasy-looking sandwich. He plopped down in a chair and beckoned the man to sit opposite him. 'Frost,' he announced. 'Detective Inspector Frost. Sorry to have kept you waiting.' He looked at the arrest report and took a bite at the sandwich. 'Mr Patrick Morris, is it?'
'Yes . . . and I want to protest. This is all a terrible mistake.'
'I'm sure it is,' agreed Frost, 'but don't worry. I've asked our Forensic boys to see if the blood on your car's headlamp is the same group as your gatepost.'
The man stared at Frost, his face scarlet with rage. 'You bastard!' he spat.
'Sticks and stones,' reproved Frost gently.
Morris fluttered an apologetic hand. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' His head sank down. 'I wasn't even going fast; just pootling along. The kid came straight at me. He didn't give me a chance.'
'He was sober, you were drunk,' said Frost.
Morris pushed himself up to shout at Frost. I was not drunk.'
'And I'm not bloody deaf,' said Frost, wiping his mouth after a swig of tea. 'Please sit down.'
Morris sat. 'I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry.' He leant over to Frost. 'I'm an oil company representative in line for promotion. One drink-driving offence and I lose my job. Do you think I'd risk that? I was not drunk. I was stone cold bloody sober. I had the brandy afterwards.'
'Drunk or sober, you knocked an eleven-year-old kid down and you didn't stop.'
'I couldn't afford to get involved; my job - '
'Sod your bloody job. The kid's in intensive care. You could have done something to help him.'
'The man in the other car came running over. I left it to him.'
Frost's head snapped up. 'What other car?'
'An old banger - a blue Vauxhall Astra. It was parked up on the verge. When I hit the boy the Astra driver dashed over to him. There was nothing I could do to help so I phoned for an ambulance on my mobile.'
'Yes,' snapped Frost, 'a great humanitarian gesture. Remind me to nominate you for the Nobel Prize.' He dropped the crust from his sandwich into the mug of tea and pushed it away. 'Describe the man.'
'Middle-aged - forty-five to fifty. Darkish hair, going bald.'
'Clean-shaven?'
'Yes, I think so. It all - '
'I know - it all happened so fast,' said Frost, finishing the sentence for him. 'Build?'
'Average.'
'Clothes?'
'A suit. A dark suit, I think.'
'A suit!' exclaimed Frost. 'Well, that saves us looking for a man in a dress.'
'If I could tell you more, I would,' snarled Morris. 'It's in my own interest that you find him. He'll confirm I wasn't speeding and the kid didn't give me a chance.'
'Then you'd better hope we do find him,' said Frost, 'because at the moment I don't rate your chances at all.' His cigarette end joined the sandwich crust in the mug of cold tea. He stood up and nodded at Collier. 'The constable will take your statement.'
Bill Wells was hovering outside the interview room, waiting for him. 'Initial report from Forensic, Jack. Glass from the headlamp definitely matches up with the glass found at the scene.'
'They always confirm what you know already,' grunted Frost. 'He's admitted knocking the kid down.'
'And Traffic reckon the skid marks where he braked indicate he wasn't doing more than thirty mph at the most.'
'Knickers!' said Frost. 'I was hoping to throw the book at the bastard.'
His phone was ringing when he got back to the office. WPC June Purdy from the hospital. 'The boy died ten minutes ago, Inspector.'
He threw his head back and swore at the ceiling. 'Shit! Do the parents know?'
'They were with him when he died.'
He felt ashamed that his relief that he would not have to break the news to the parents almost outweighed his sadness at an eleven-year-old boy's death. 'Are they still there?'
'Yes.'
'I know it's difficult, love, but ask them if they know anyone who drives a blue Vauxhall Astra; a man in his late forties, going bald - someone who might give their son a lift. Phone me back right away.'
'Was he the hit and run driver?'
'No. He's a possible witness. We've got the hit and run man but it doesn't appear as if the kid gave him much of a chance. Baldy might be the bloke who drove the boy to the woods and I've got a nasty feeling about the bastard. You don't take an eleven-year-old to Denton Woods in the middle of the night to pick mushrooms.'
She phoned back in five minutes. The parents knew no-one of that description.
'Too much to hope it would be that easy,' sighed Frost. 'Get back here, love, and bring the boy's clothes so Forensic can tell us sod all about them.'
He sat at a desk in the murder incident room, moodily smoking as he replaced the boy's bloodstained clothing in the evidence bag. A smaller bag held items taken from the boy's pockets. He shook them out on the desk: a comb, eight pence in copper coins, a handkerchief and the torn half of a cinema ticket. Open in front of him was the file on the first missing girl, eight-year-old Vicky Stuart. Looking through its many pages of typescript he had spotted that a couple of witnesses reported seeing a blue car cruising past the school on the afternoon Vicky went missing, but the car hadn't been traced. He drummed his fingers on the desk top. There were millions of flaming blue cars and the fact that the Vauxhall Astra was blue probably didn't mean a damn thing, but he had one of his feelings . . .
He checked his watch. Ten minutes past midnight. Mullett had only authorized overtime for the search parties until midnight so they should be returning soon. The mist was pressing a greasy kiss against the window. He hoped it would clear by the morning when the search would be resumed.
A tramping of tired feet announced the return of the first of the search parties as they headed up the stairs to the canteen. He gave them a few moments to get settled, then followed them up. They all looked tired and dejected. No need to ask if they had found
the girl. He made his way over to a table where Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon sat with five off-duty police officers, all cold and miserable, gratefully warming frozen hands round mugs of scalding tea. 'Where's Taffy Morgan?' Frost asked, dragging a chair over to join them.
'He's where I'm soon going to be,' replied Hanlon, 'fast asleep in a nice warm bed.'
Frost gave a knowing smile. 'You do tell fibs, Arthur. You're not going to bed for hours yet. I've got another job for all of you.' A mass groan. He grinned and pushed his cigarettes around. 'I know - I'm a rotten bastard and I could be wasting everybody's time, but there's the slimmest of chances this might lead us to the girl.' He turned his head as Jordan and Simms, finishing their meal break, walked past. 'The boy died,' he told them.
Jordan shook his head sadly. 'Poor little sod.' He buttoned up his greatcoat. Another cold six hours before their shift ended.
'Is that the hit and run?' asked Hanlon.
'Yes,' nodded Frost. 'Only the driver didn't run very far - we've got him. He reckons the kid came flying out of a parked blue Vauxhall Astra straight into his path. He's a nasty, slimy bastard, but I'm ashamed to say I believe him, which is why you've got to do a bit more work.'
They looked at each other, wondering where this was leading. He expelled a mouthful of smoke and watched it whirl lazily up to the ceiling. 'We've got a kid, in a blue Astra, with a strange man in the middle of the bloody woods at night. Why? And why did the kid come flying out of the car like a bat out of hell?'
'You're suggesting the bloke was a child molester?' asked Hanlon.
'This is how I see it, Arthur. The bloke offers to drive the kid home, but instead takes him to the woods. Just as he starts his stuff, the kid manages to scramble out, but runs straight into the other car.'
'What has this got to do with the girl?' asked Howe, one of the off-duty PCs.
'Probably sod all,' conceded Frost, 'but the day Vicky Stuart went missing, two of the witnesses mentioned a blue car cruising past the school as the kids came out. The Astra was blue.'
'And you think it's the same man?' exclaimed Hanlon. 'Just because it's a blue car? It's a bloody long shot, Jack.'
'Maybe, Arthur, but it's all we've got . . . before this we had sod all.' He produced the cinema ticket. 'This was in the kid's jacket pocket - a ticket for tonight's performance of the Disney. It's an adult's ticket. Does I that suggest anything?'
A sea of blank looks.
'The boy would have got in at the child's rate, so this isn't his ticket. Try this out for size. He's hanging about outside the cinema when some nice kind balding gentleman says, "Going to see the film, sonny?" "I haven't got any money, kind balding gent," replies the boy, so the man offers to pay for him. In they go. The bloke buys one adult ticket and one child's ticket. Comes the interval. The kid hadn't been home for his tea, so he's hungry. "Go and buy a hot dog," says the nice man in the dirty mac. The hot dogs are in the foyer and you've got to have your ticket to get back in again, so the man gives him a ticket . . . the wrong one as it happens, but that doesn't matter.'
They looked at each other and grudgingly nodded. 'It fits, Jack,' said Hanlon, 'but you're making a lot of assumptions.'
Frost pulled a wad of photographs of the dead boy from his pocket and handed them around. 'Then see if we can get some hard evidence. One of you go to the cinema - they're doing an all-night horror programme, so they'll still be open. Does anyone remember this kid coming in with a man in his forties, balding dark hair, dark suit. The programme finished at 8.25, but they didn't get to the woods until around ten. My guess is that the nice man took the kid out for a meal. So some of you surf the fast food joints. I want another couple of you to sift through computer; records of middle-aged child molesters, baldies preferred, but many of them might not have started going bald when we arrested them. Drag them out of bed, find out where they were tonight and see what car they own. Lastly, I want someone to go through the computer for blue Astras, at least five years old, owned by people in the Denton area.'
'How do we know he's local?' protested Evans.
'He's got to be,' said Frost. 'He hangs about the local school, he goes to the local cinema and he knows where to park in Denton Woods. When you get the list of Astra owners, check it against our child molesters. If you can say "Snap" we throw the book at the sod whether he's guilty or not.'
'And this is all on official overtime?' asked Evans, remembering Mullett's strictures that he didn't object to people doing overtime so long as they didn't always expect to be paid for it.
'Money's your bloody God!' said Frost. 'Yes . . . all on official overtime, but don't drag it out.'
He left them to get themselves organized, then went down to the lobby to tell Bill Wells what he had arranged. 'Book them all in for extended overtime, Bill.'
'You know Mullett's got to authorize it,' Wells reminded him. 'He went berserk last time you sent our overtime expenses sky high.'
'He'll be in bed,' said Frost, doubtfully. 'He might even be having it away.' He dialled the number. 'Still, if it's with his wife he'll be glad of the interruption.'
Mullett wasn't glad of the interruption. The phone had woken him from a deep sleep. 'Authorize overtime? On the flimsiest of evidence? You don't even know for certain that the boy was ever in the blue car, just that there was one in the vicinity.'
'Which didn't wait for the ambulance,' Frost reminded him.
'There could be all sorts of reasons for that,' replied Mullett, who couldn't think of any. 'I'm sorry, Frost, I'm not authorizing overtime.'
'Fair enough, Super,' said Frost. 'But if it is the same blue car, this bastard could be holding the missing girl. I know the budget has to take precedence over a human life - '
'Ten hours,' cut in Mullett hastily, 'and not a second over.'
'Per man?' asked Frost hopefully.
'In total, Frost, in total, and you'd better come up with something to justify it.'
'Well?' asked Bill Wells as Frost put the phone down.
'He said we could have all the men we wanted for as long as we liked,' Frost replied.
He sat in his office, fighting tiredness, answering the phone as the negative reports came in. 'Sorry, Inspector,' reported Evans, the last on the list. 'No-one remembers anything.'
'Call it a day,' yawned Frost.
He took a stroll to the computer room, where Howe and Collier were wading their way through armfuls of computer print-outs. 'No joy yet, Inspector.'
'Keep trying,' he grunted. Flaming heck, Mullett would have kittens when he saw the overtime bill especially for a nil result.
Back to his office with the nagging feeling that even if they found the man he would have nothing to do with the missing girl. A quick flip through his in-tray. More news to add to the gloom. The beaten-up torn had decided not to press charges. She'd been paid off and Mickey Harris would walk scot-free. This was not going to be a night to remember.
A quick squint through grime-encrusted windows out to the car-park. The swirling mist was thickening. Cars were murky outlines and the sodium lamps reduced to dirty orange smears. It looked cold and miserable which was just how he felt . . .
Another yawn. Sod it, he was so tired he could hardly think straight. Nothing more he could do here. He dragged his scarf from the peg and wound it round his neck. At the doorway he paused, waiting, hoping the phone might ring and he'd be told they had found the driver and the girl. Silence. He clicked off the light, shut the door behind him, and made for his car.
The car heater was playing its usual tricks and kept blasting cold air. He was frozen by the time he reached his house where the central heating had switched itself off at midnight so the place was as icy and unwelcoming as the morgue. Shivering, he scooped up the post from the door mat; two bills and three circulars, one marked in red "This is not a circular'. He chucked them on the hall table and dumped his mac on top. He could go a cup of something hot, but was too dead beat to make it.
He thudded up the stairs a
nd clicked on the electric blanket. The phone rang the second his head touched the pillow.
The phone was downstairs, in the hall. He'd wanted one by the bed but when his wife was alive she wouldn't hear of it; said the ringing would wake her up and she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep again. He kept promising himself he'd get an extension, but hadn't got round to it. What was it this time? Another bloody killing? Another dead tom? He threw aside the bedclothes, gritted his teeth against the shock of the cold lino to his bare feet and went down to the phone. He didn't recognize the voice and at first couldn't make out what the man was saying. 'Who is this?'
'PC Bearsley of Traffic. Sorry to phone you at home, Inspector, but we have a problem.'
'Traffic? Why the hell are you calling me for a traffic problem?' His teeth began to chatter. It was freezing in the hall.
'I can't talk about it over the phone, Inspector. Please get here quickly - corner of Saxby Street and Avon Drive.'
'It had better be bloody urgent.'
'It is, Inspector,' Bearsley assured him, 'it is.'
Frost was still shivering as he drove but kept the window down so the cold air would stop him falling asleep at the wheel. Why was he doing this? Dragged out of bed at five past four in the morning just because some damn traffic cop thinks it's urgent.
As he turned the car into Saxby Street he passed a metallic green Nissan, its paint scraped and a wing crumpled. A yellow and red striped traffic car was waiting, its lights out. Two worried-looking traffic policemen came over to meet him. Bearsley introduced himself. 'Glad you got here so quickly, Inspector.' And then Frost saw the crashed Ford Sierra which had driven straight into a wall at the end of the cul-de-sac. 'The driver must have put his foot down, not realizing it was a blind alley,' said Bearsley, headlight glass scrunching underfoot as they approached the vehicle. 'It's a miracle he wasn't killed.'
'Have you called an ambulance?' asked Frost, wondering why he was being involved.
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