'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.'
Hill Lane was narrow, rutted and steep, and tested the car's springs to the limit. A bumpy, uncomfortable ride, so it was almost a relief when the lane petered out to a muddied footpath and they had to get out and walk, fighting their way, heads down, against a driving wind. A dank and desolate area with hostile branches and brambles scratching and tearing as they sloshed their way through rain-filled pot-holes. The lane twisted and started getting steeper. 'Are you sure this is right?' asked Frost. It doesn't seem to be leading anywhere.'
'It's definitely up here somewhere, guv,' Morgan told him. 'Not easy to reach, the lady said.'
'Ladies never say that to me,' said Frost. 'Ah . . .' They had reached the summit and were looking down on the untidy sprawl of the smallholding, mud dotted with piles of rubbish and battered corrugated sheeting.
Rusty wire held in a few scrawny chickens who squawked in protest at the invasion of the two detectives. From somewhere behind the chicken shed they could hear a goat bleating. The small house looked neglected with boarded-up windows, peeling paint and sections of guttering hanging limply down like a broken arm.
As they scrunched their way down a swampy cinder path, Morgan screwed up his face in disgust. 'What's that smell, guv?'
Frost indicated a small brick outhouse with a corrugated iron roof. 'That's an earth privy - a wooden seat and a bucket. If she offers us rhubarb and custard, say no.'
There was no knocker or bell push on the cracked front door so he thumped with his fist. They waited. Nothing.
'Perhaps she's out,' suggested Morgan, wishing they'd never started this.
'Perhaps she's filling up the chamber pot,' said Frost, stepping well back. 'You take over the knocking.'
Nervously, Morgan gave the door a tentative rap, then tried to look through the window, but the thick grime barely let him see through to the drawn, dirt-heavy curtains and all he saw was his own blurred reflection. He hammered the door again. 'Police - open up.'
'Clear off!' An old woman's voice. The upstairs window had opened.
Morgan hopped back quickly as a bucketful of something nasty splattered down. 'I don't think she's too keen to see us, guv,' he muttered.
'It's just her way,' said Frost as the window slammed shut again. He gave the door a savage kick. 'Open up, missus, or we'll kick the bloody door in.'
The window again creaked open. 'Go away. I'm sick.' The voice was weak and quavering.
'You'll be a bloody sight sicker if you don't let us in,' bellowed Frost.
They waited as footsteps slowly descended the stairs, then countless bolts were drawn and the front door slowly creaked open.
She was very old, leathery skin, wispy grey hair, wearing a bloodstained sacking apron over a faded floral dress. Her deeply wrinkled face was dirt-grimed and she studied Morgan's warrant card suspiciously with red-rimmed eyes, then jerked her head for them to come in.
Frost peered into the dark depths and sniffed gingerly. The earth privy seemed preferable. He took one last lungful of cold, clear air, then stepped inside. 'Thanks.'
They followed her over the bare boards of a dingy passage, their noses assailed by a mixture of smells, stale fat, ancient food, paraffin, and a lurking, earthy odour of something worse.
She led them into the kitchen, a smelly little room with a tiny window too high to see out of and too dirty to let much light in. A Primus stove stood on a rickety rusted metal stand next to a chipped, brown-stained sink piled high with dirty dishes encrusted with ancient food. Hanging from a nail on the wall, a recently
killed, scrawny chicken dripped blood from its beak on to the gritty stone floor. She sat herself down at a scarred-topped wooden table, picked up a lethal-looking kitchen knife, wiped it on her sacking apron and started hacking away at the corpse of another plucked chicken which lay beside a pile of feathers. 'Sit down, if you like,' she grunted.
Frost glanced around. None of the chairs looked particularly appetizing. 'No thanks. You used to live in Beresford Street?'
'Yes.'
'When was that?'
'A long time ago.'
'When did you move here?'
'A long time ago.'
Frost raised his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. 'Can't you give us some idea of dates?'
'No.' The knife crashed down like a guillotine blade and the severed head of the chicken dropped into a bin half-filled with food debris.
'Where's your son, Mrs Aldridge?'
For the briefest of moments the old woman froze, then the knife began sawing away as she dismembered the bird's legs. 'Haven't got a son.' The yellow, muddy legs joined the neck in the bin. She hacked off blooded chunks of meat and dropped them in a battered saucepan.
'Come on, love,' said Frost, through clenched teeth. 'You had a son when you lived at Beresford Street.'
'My son is dead,' she said bluntly, wiping blood from the knife with her sacking apron then dragging some carrots and onions towards her. The vegetables looked as if another wash under the tap wouldn't do them any harm.
'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Frost, not sounding it. 'When did he die?'
'A long time ago.'
'What, five, ten, twenty years?'
'I don't remember.'
'Let's have a look at his death certificate and we'll be off.'
'Don't know where it is.' She began slicing the vegetables, the knife a blur, barely missing her fingers as she pushed them under the blade.
'Then where is he buried?'
'Don't remember.' A handful of sliced vegetables were tossed on top of the blooded chunks of meat in the saucepan.
Frost was losing patience. 'Come on, missus. You might forget a lot of things, but not where your only son was buried. Was it in Denton?'
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