“Her name and address?” barked Webster.
“No idea, squire. I’d never seen her before and I hope I never see her again. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I wouldn’t have touched her with a barge pole.”
“Didn’t you drive her home afterward?”
“Home? That’s a joke. She’d been sleeping rough. She asked me to drop her off at the main road so she could thumb a lift up north on a lorry.”
Webster snapped his notebook shut and walked across to the youth. He grabbed the blanket, screwing it tightly in his fist, and jerked him to his feet. “You must think we’re bloody stupid, Duggan. You tried it on with Wendy. She wouldn’t have it, which was an insult to your virility, so you chased after her, choked her, broke her jaw, and raped her.”
“I didn’t. If there’s no bleeding co-operation, then I don’t want it,”
cried Duggan, trying to pull away, but the detective constable’s grip
was vice like
“Before you leave this room you are going to give us a signed statement admitting everything.”
“I want a lawyer,” said the youth.
Webster snatched away the blanket. “When you’ve given us a statement, you bastard.”
The phone rang. As Webster had taken over the questioning, Frost had to answer it. He listened, thanked the caller, then hung up.
Webster, his fists clenched, was standing toe to toe with the naked Duggan, his face red and angry. The youth looked terrified.
Frost stood up and pocketed his cigarettes and matches. “That was Forensic, son,” he said casually, ‘with the results of their tests. The man who raped Wendy has blood group O, and young Terry here is blood group A.” He gave Webster a sweet smile. “I’ll see you back in the office.”
And he went out, leaving the constable to make his apologies to the suspect.
When Webster returned to the office he was fuming. He had been made to look a proper fool in front of a suspect, forced to offer grovelling apologies to a sneering young bastard.
Frost was at his desk shuffling through papers. Webster was all ready to give him a mouthful when Susan Harvey came in.
“Hello, Sue,” said Frost. “You still here?”
She looked inquiringly at Webster. “I said I’d drive her home,” he told Frost.
“Home?” said Frost in surprise. “It’s not time to go home yet, is it?”
“It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning, Inspector. I’ve been on duty for more than sixteen hours on the trot. I’d fill in an overtime claim if I thought it stood the remotest chance of getting to County accounts.” Immediately he said it he wished he could have bitten his tongue because Frost’s head moved to the Overtime Return file still in the centre of Webster’s desk.
“Thanks for reminding me, son. I promised Bill Wells they’d go off today.” He scratched his chin. “Tell you what. We won’t bother adding them up. They’ve got dirty great computers at County that can do that for us. We’ll just scribble down the figures and send them off like that.”
“But it will still take hours,” protested Webster wearily.
“Not if we split it three ways,” said Frost. “You’ll help, won’t you, Sue?” And he dealt out three heaps of returns from the file as if dealing hands of cards.
So they pulled up their chairs and filled in page after page of figures copied from the men’s claim forms, allocating them to various categories of crime. Frost did a lot of groaning and smoking and seemed to be tearing up more forms than he filled in. Time hobbled along. Webster was finding that the figures had a tendency to blur into indistinctness. He staggered out and made some instant coffee, which helped a little. Then he realized he had been staring at the same column of figures for five minutes. He reached for another claim form. There were none. He had finished. Within another couple of minutes Susan, too, had finished her stint.
“Marvellous,” beamed Frost, dealing them out some more from his own pile. But in ten minutes the return, folded in its official envelope marked “Overtime Figures Urgent,” was all ready for transmission to County for inclusion in the next batch of salary cheques.
“We all deserve a pat on the back for that,” said Frost,
looking at the envelope as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Yes,” grunted Webster, slipping on his overcoat, all ready for the off before Frost remembered the crime statistics.
Frost clicked his fingers. “Flaming hell, son ... we forgot something!”
“What’s that?” grunted the constable, taking Susan by the arm and steering her to the door.
“The anonymous telephone caller who phoned about the girl in the woods last night. Dave Shelby said he knew who he was.”
Freedom only half a turn of the door handle away, Webster said, “But Shelby’s dead.”
“My memory’s not that flaming bad,” retorted the inspector. “Shelby said he’d seen the bloke. In which case he would have made an entry about it in his notebook.” He moved Webster’s hand, opened the door, and yelled, “Sergeant Wells!”
Wells approached and gave a mocking bow. “You rang, my lord?”
“Don’t ponce about when addressed by a senior officer,” rebuked Frost sternly. “Where’s Dave Shelby’s notebook?”
“I thought you knew,” said Wells. “It’s missing.”
Thank God for that, thought Webster. Now we can all go home.
Frost frowned. “Missing?”
“It wasn’t on the body, Jack, and it wasn’t in the car. Mr. Allen’s made a search, but no trace of it. He reckons it might have fallen from Shelby’s pocket when he was in the getaway car.”
“So what news on the getaway car? Someone should have spotted the Vauxhall by now.”
“Stan Eustace was always good at finding places to dump his stolen motors, Jack.”
“About the only thing he is good at.” He took the brown envelope from his desk and handed it to Wells. “I’m off home. Here’s your lousy overtime returns. Stick them in the post bag.”
Wells looked at the envelope, his eyebrows arched. “It’s gone three o’clock in the morning, Jack. The County collection was ages ago. If this doesn’t reach them first thing today it’ll miss the salary cheques and we’ll have a bloody mutiny on our hands.”
Frost waved an airy hand. “Don’t get excited. Webster can drop them in the County letter box.”
Webster’s beard bristled. “I can do what? It’s an hour’s drive each way.”
Another airy wave from Frost. “Fifty minutes at the outside a lot less if you’re not too fussy about obeying traffic lights. Use my car. You can take Sue with you and drop her off on the way back.”
As he crawled into the car, Webster realized that he wasn3t going to be able to do it. He was too tired. He’d fall asleep at the wheel. Susan got out and moved around to the driving seat. “Slide over,” she said. “I’ll drive. You’d better spend what’s left of the night at my place you’re in no fit state to drive back.”
Webster did a mental inventory of Susan’s tiny flat -no sofa and only one bed. He felt his tiredness slipping away but didn’t make it obvious. He stuffed the envelope into the dash compartment. “I didn’t bring my pyjamas,” he said.
“And I haven’t got a nightdress,” murmured Sue, turning the ignition. Webster leaned back in his seat and purred. The night wasn’t going to be a total disaster after all.
On the way back from County Headquarters he could fight sleep no longer. When he opened his eyes the sky was dawn-streaked. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Nearly there,” she told him. “I’m taking a shortcut.”
The shortcut was a narrow lane joining two side roads. A short, bumpy ride.
“Look out!” cried Webster. Something loomed up in front of them.
The headlights had picked out a car. A car parked bang in the middle of the lane, no lights showing. They could have run straight into it.
Carefully, Sue manoeuvred the Cortina to squeeze past. Webs
ter twisted his head to look back. The lunatic who parked it so dangerously deserved to be booked. Then his heart sank.
The car was a red Vauxhall Cavalier.
The registration number was CBZ2303.
“Oh no!” croaked Webster in disbelief.
“What’s up?” asked Sue.
“Every bloody thing is up,” he said despairingly as he reached for the handset. He called Denton Control to report he had found Stan Eustace’s getaway car.
Thursday day shift
Webster sat in the car with Sue and waited. Within twenty-five minutes Detective Inspector Allen had arrived on the scene. He must have been asleep in bed when the call came through, but in those twenty-five minutes he had managed to shower, shave, and put on a freshly pressed suit. He looked immaculate. By contrast, Detective Sergeant Ingram, sour and crumpled at his side, looked as if he hadn’t slept properly for a week, which tended to underline the whispered rumours of his marital troubles. He looked even more sour when Allen doled out a few begrudging crumbs of praise to Webster.
“Well done, Constable. Good piece of observation.”
The obligatory acknowledgement over, Allen and Ingram approached the Vauxhall and sniffed gingerly around, looking but not touching. Webster had hoped he and Sue would now be allowed to drive off and get to bed but Allen didn’t seem ready to dismiss them yet.
Allen was standing on tiptoe to see over the hedge that bordered the lane. Behind it was a field of tall grass, heavy with early-morning dew. He dragged back his cuff to consult his watch. If he could do it in twenty-five minutes, what was holding up the forensic team?
Then the brittle early-morning quiet was shattered as carloads of hastily summonsed off-duty men and the team from Forensic arrived. Soon the area swarmed with men crawling over every inch of the Vauxhall and its surroundings. The car was dusted for prints inside and out, the interior was given microscopic scrutiny for traces of blood and tissue, and then the seat covers and carpets were removed and vacuumed to retrieve clinging hairs and fibres.
Other men were on their hands and knees, noses almost grazing the road surface as they looked for anything the murderer might have dropped. It was still dark, but the area was floodlit. The first success was the finding of a small patch of oil a few yards up the lane, indicating that another car had recently been parked on that spot for some time. More than likely this car was the backup that Stan Eustace transferred into after he had dumped the Cavalier. Judging from the amount of oil leakage, the other car must have been an old banger.
One team was given the task of knocking on the door of every house in the vicinity to ask if anyone had seen a car parked in the lane during the previous day, or if they had seen the Vauxhall drive up.
“I know it’s early and most of the householders are going to be tucked up in bed,” said Allen, addressing the team, ‘but that is their hard luck. Today they are all going to see the dawn break for a change. How you wake them, I don’t particularly care. Just do it. And if anyone complains that their beauty sleep is more important than finding the murderer of a police officer, let them write to the Chief Constable. Most important, I want you to make sure you speak to everybody in the house, not just the poor sod who staggers downstairs to open the door. Now off you go.”
Another two men went with Ingram to search the section of the field near the hedge. It wasn’t expected to yield anything but Allen, unlike Detective Inspector Jack Frost, always did things thoroughly.
Webster tried to catch the inspector’s eye to ask permission to leave, but Allen had marched straight past and was at the Vauxhall to talk to the two men dusting it for prints. “Anything yet?”
One of them looked up from his work and shook his head. “Not a damn thing so far, Inspector. It’s been wiped clean.”
As Allen turned away, Webster moved forward to let the inspector know he was going to make a move.
“Good morning, son. The whole bloody place stinks of coppers, doesn’t it?”
Webster visibly cringed at the familiar breezy voice. Where the hell had he come from? It was far too early in the morning to stomach a fresh dose of Jack Frost.
With a grin and a nod to his assistant, Frost, looking as if he had slept in his clothes in a ditch, shuffled over to the immaculate Allen.
“Hello, Frost,” said Allen without the slightest hint of enthusiasm. Events were going quite well and he didn’t want Frost’s jarring presence messing everything up. “Bit early for you, isn’t it?”
“Bit late, actually,” yawned Frost, rubbing an unshaven chin. “I haven’t been home all night. I fell asleep in the office.” With his head on one side he gave the Vauxhall the once-over, his hands scratching an itch on his stomach through his mac pockets. “So this is where Useless Eustace switched motors?”
“Yes,” acknowledged Allen curtly. “Your assistant spotted it.” He was now beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t be better served with Webster than with Ingram, who had been getting quite slapdash of late.
“It’s the way I train them,” Frost said, moving forward for a look inside the car. The two men from Forensic shifted out of his way as he poked his head inside the driving door. “I can’t see much blood.”
“We haven’t found any yet,” Forensic admitted, ‘but we’re still searching.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to look very hard for it,” said Frost. “Shelby’s head was half blown off. The inside of the car ought to be swimming with blood, brains, and bits of ear hole.”
Allen pulled a face. Frost’s crudeness was hard to take at the best of times, but at this tender hour of the morning .. . ! “Eustace could have wrapped the body in waterproof sheeting. A sheet was missing from the boot of Shelby’s patrol car when we went through it yesterday.”
Frost tapped his first cigarette of the day on the packet and lit up. Then he had his first cough of the day. “I don’t care what you say,” he spluttered, “I just can’t see Useless Eustace as a police killer.”
Allen started to reply, but his attention was diverted by a shout.
“Mr. Allen!”
He looked up. An arm was being waved from behind the hedge. Ingram had found something. “Excuse me,” he muttered, hurrying over to see what it was.
Frost took a stroll across to the Cortina, where Webster, slumped in the front seat next to Sue, was fighting hard to keep his eyes open. Sue was talking to him, but he just didn’t seem able to take in what she was saying. Wasn’t it just his rotten luck spotting that car! If he’d kept his eyes closed, he would now be lying in the snug warmth of Sue’s little single bed, his arms locked around her un-night dressed body, caressing her gorgeous but why torment himself? He yawned. The thought of yet another long, dreary day muddling through with Frost seemed an unbearable prospect.
Frost spotted the yawn and, of course, with his one-track mind, misinterpreted it. “Tired, my son? Heavy night with Sue, was it? You should have tried getting some sleep instead.”
Webster was so tired he couldn’t even raise a scowl in protest.
“One thing about a beard,” bur bled Frost, rasping his chin again, ‘you don’t suffer from five o’clock shadow.” He turned his head. “Hello, what’s Old Clever Balls looking so happy about?”
Allen was striding over, Ingram trotting at his heels. “Thought you might be interested to see this, Frost, especially as you can’t see Eustace as a police killer.” He held up something in a polythene bag. “We’ve found Shelby’s notebook.”
Frost took the bag from Allen and turned it over and over in his hands.
“Where was it?”
Ingram pointed. “I found it in that field, close to the hedge, near where the Cavalier was parked.”
Frost looked puzzled. “And how the hell did it get there?”
Allen sucked in air, then sighed. How dense could you be? “I’d have thought that obvious, Inspector. Eustace found it in the car after he dumped the body. It must have fallen from Shelby’s pocket. It was incriminati
ng evidence and he had to get rid of it in a hurry.”
“Oh, I see,” exclaimed Frost as if this now explained everything. “He wipes the car clean of prints, doesn’t leave a speck of blood behind, but he gets rid of vital evidence by just chucking it over the nearest hedge.”
“What did you expect him to do with it?” snapped Allen in exasperation. “Eat it? Stick it up his arse? He daren’t keep it on him, it linked him with the killing. What else could he do but chuck it?”
A uniformed man approached and gave Allen a smart salute. “Lady in the cottage down the lane, sir. Says she saw a black Morris Minor parked down here for most of yesterday afternoon.”
Allen’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Good work. I’ll be with you in a couple of seconds to talk to her.” He took the polythene bag from Frost and handed it back to Ingram. “I want the notebook checked for fingerprints. Odds are it’s been wiped clean, but you never know your luck.” He noticed Frost still hovering. “I’m sure you’re very busy, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up.”
“Actually, I want to take a look in the notebook. Dave Shelby was supposed to have interviewed our anonymous phone caller. I’m hoping he kept his mind on the job long enough to write down the name and address.”
Ingram held open the bag so Frost could carefully extract the notebook, holding it by its corners with his handkerchief. An elastic band looped around the unused pages allowed Frost to go directly to the entry, the very last entry Shelby had made before he died. It read Desmond Thorley, Dove Cottage. Interviewed re rape case phone call.
“Bingo!” cried Frost, snapping the notebook shut and dropping it into the polythene bag. He trotted across to the Cortina. Neither Webster nor Sue seemed willing to yield their front seats, so he climbed into the back.
“It’s all happening, son. I’ve got the name and address of the bloke who made the anonymous phone call. Drop Sue off, then we’ll go and pay him a nice early visit.”
Webster’s spirits plummet ted to a new low. “It’s barely four o’clock in the morning,” he complained. “He’ll be fast asleep in bed .. .” He yawned conspicuously and added pointedly, “The lucky bastard!”
A Touch of Frost Page 26