Winter Frost (18 page)

   
A tap at the door and Sergeant Hanlon came in with Lewis who was not looking the bundle of twitching nerves that Frost was hoping for.

   
"Have you caught the bastard?" asked Lewis, sitting in the chair opposite Frost.

   
"Not yet," said Frost. "But we know who he is, and with your help we'll nail him."

   
"Anything," said Lewis. "Anything at all." He dug in his pockets for his cigarettes, but Frost got in first, offering his packet and taking one himself. "Thanks." Lewis struck a match and held it out to light Frost's cigarette. Frost took his time, noting with satisfaction that the hand holding the match was trembling slightly. He steadied it with his own. We're getting to you, you bastard, he thought.

   
From the file on the table he took the typed copy of Lewis's statement. "I realize it's upsetting asking you to go over this yet again but I want to make certain we've got our facts straight." A quick glance at the first page. "The last time you saw Mary alive was when you left for the match about five?"

   
Lewis nodded.

   
"When you got back in the early hours, you had no reason to think anything was wrong?"

   
"No—everything was as it should be!"

   
"You'd had an eventful night so you flopped into bed, went out like a light into a deep, untroubled sleep?"

   
"That's right."

   
"You didn't wake up until late afternoon and that was the first time you realized she was missing?"

   
"Yes."

   
Frost nodded, as if satisfied. And he was satisfied.

   
Things were going to plan. Lewis was digging his own grave with his mouth. "Good. That checks with everything you've told us." He smiled. "People tell us lies, but we always find them out." Lewis twitched a nervous smile back not certain how to take this. Now's the time to hit the bastard with the till receipt, thought Frost. He slowly opened the folder, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the man's face to watch his reaction when he confronted him with proof of his lying.

   
Frost never reached the till receipt. He suddenly found himself staring goggle-eyed at the calendar on the wall. The date. The bloody date! That was what the little bell in his head had been warning him about. The wall calendar told him it was the 8th. The calendar in his office had said the 7th. Taffy Morgan had forgotten to change the flaming date which meant that the till receipt was for the morning before the murder, not the morning after and had nothing to do with the case. His one lonely trump card had been shot fairly and squarely right up the fundamental orifice. He now had absolutely sod all.

   
He kept his face impassive as his mind whirled, trying to think of some way to retrieve the situation. He examined the till receipt and gave an Academy Award-winning satisfied nod as if it was of the greatest importance, then placed it face down on the table. He took some more papers from the file, including the useless Forensic report, and positioned them, also face down, alongside the receipt. Let the sod think I've got a full house, he thought, instead of a busted bloody flush. Lewis's eyes were following every move Frost made. Right, this was going to be one hell of a bluff. He didn't even have one card to play. He took a deep breath.

   
"This is the position. We've got witnesses, we've got discrepancies in statements, we've got conclusive forensic evidence. We now know who killed your girlfriend, Mr. Lewis. There's only one thing we need to know, and that's where you can help us."

   
"Anything," said Lewis, eagerly. "Anything."

   
Frost took a cigarette from his packet and slowly tapped it on the table. This was the moment. This was make or break. He lit up, then smiled his most charming and disingenuous smile. His voice sounded fatherly and full of compassion.

   
"Why did you do it, son?"

   
He held his breath and waited. Lewis scowled at him, eyes full of hate, his mouth opening and shutting as if his anger was too strong to allow him to speak. Frost's heart plummeted. I've blown it, he thought. I've bloody blown it. He stared down at the table, his mind in overdrive. A strange sound. A sound that, at first, he couldn't place. He looked up. Lewis's shoulders were shaking. He was laughing, laughing away to himself as if at some secret joke, perhaps at the absurdity of the accusation. Frost blinked. It wasn't laughter. Lewis was crying, his body shaking as uncontrollable tears gushed down a face screwed up in agony. He covered his eyes with his hands and his sobbing was almost pitiful to hear. The other two detectives were staring, just dumbstruck.

   
Frost got in quickly. "You killed her, son, didn't you?" His voice was gentle.

   
"An accident." The words were barely audible.

   
"Tell us about it. Get it off your chest—you'll feel better afterwards." Frost sounded like a member of the Spanish Inquisition begging a heretic to confess so the torture could stop and he could be burnt at the stake. But Lewis was now only too willing and the words poured out almost as fast as the tears.

   
"Things were getting dodgy between us for some time. I thought she was seeing someone else. There were these mysterious phone calls, stuff locked away in her drawer which I wasn't allowed to see. Coming back from the match that night, some of the boys had a go at the bloke in the off-licence and the cops hauled us into the nick. On the way there we diverted through King Street where all the tarts hang out and everyone in the coach started to yell and whistle and make obscene remarks at this prostitute, all slit skirt and big tits, picking up a drunk. I couldn't believe it. It was her . . . Mary . . . my bleeding girlfriend . . . the so-called bloody nurse . . ."

   
He scrubbed his face with his hands as if trying to wipe out the recollection.

   
"Go on, son," prompted Frost.

   
"It was now all making sense. A couple of weeks ago I went to get some change from her purse and there was this key tagged '10 Clayton Street'. When I asked her about it she said she'd found it in the street and hadn't got round to returning it. I told her that was where all the whores hung out, and she was all wide-eyed and innocent. 'I never knew that,' she said, all bleeding butter won't melt stuff. The cow. Going with all sorts of trash, and I was sleeping with her!"He raised his head. "You wouldn't have a cigarette?"

   
Frost pushed the packet over and waited as Lewis took deep drags.

   
"I couldn't wait to get my hands on her. Your lot had us all in the nick, but there were too many of us. Suddenly the fuzz all sloped off because there was a fight or something, so I nipped down a corridor when no-one was looking and ended up in the car-park. I legged it round to Clayton Street and the first thing I see is my car, my Toyota, smashed to buggery. That was the last straw. I did my nut. I charged up the stairs and crashed into the flat, yelling and screaming at her. She grabbed for a knife to keep me off. We struggled. I got the knife away from her and kicked it under the bed. I don't remember exactly what happened then, but I must have had my hands round her neck as I banged her head against the wall. Suddenly she went all bloody limp and slithered to the ground and I sobered up fast. I thought God, what have I done? I carried her to the bed and tried the mirror trick, but she wasn't breathing. Then the bloody phone rang and I panicked. I snatched the car keys, hoping I could drive away and get home before anyone saw me, but the windscreen was shattered—it was undrivable. I wandered down back streets and I bumped into some of the blokes from the coach, staggering from pub to pub. I tagged on with them and they assumed I'd been with them all the time—they were too drunk to know otherwise. I got a lift home. You know the rest."

   
Frost nodded. "The clothes you gave us for testing? They weren't the ones you were wearing, were they?"

   
"No. I bagged them up and put them out with the rubbish. It was collected this morning."

   
"We'll find it," Frost told him. "Searching through rubbish bags at the council tip is what my Welsh colleague was born for. He certainly wasn't born for altering the bleeding calendar . . ."

"Well done," said Mullett grudgingly. "A case tied up quickly with the minimum of manpower. It can be done, you see, if you put your mind to it." Frost jerked a two-fingered gesture of acknowledgement under the desk, unseen by Mullett who was hurrying back to his office, anxious to let County know that Denton Division, under his leadership, had done it again.

   
Frost yawned. Too many nights with insufficient sleep were catching up on him. There was nothing that couldn't wait a couple of hours so he'd nip back home and get his head down before the next crisis.

   
But the next crisis was waiting for him in the lobby.

Bill Wells, filling in his overtime claim form on the front desk, grunted with annoyance at the interruption as a woman in her mid-thirties, uncombed straw-blond hair, a cigarette dangling from her lips, barged through the swing doors and dumped a plastic carrier bag on the floor in front of the desk.

   
"Can I help you, madam?"

   
"You'd bloody better. My little girl's gone missing."

   
Wells kept his expression fixed. Here was one of those 'I pay my rates so you'd better bloody jump to it' brigade. He pulled the cap from his pen. "If you could let me have some details."

   
"Details? Sod the bloody details. I want you out there looking for her."

   
Wells sighed. Just his luck to get this loud-mouthed bitch. Collier, who should have been here, was out with DC Morgan scavenging the local rubbish tip on a job for Jack Frost. "Let's try and keep it calm, shall we, madam?"

   
"Calm?" she shrieked. "Calm? Some bleeding pervert's got my kid and you want me to keep calm."

   
"The quicker I get the details down, the quicker we can start looking for her. Your name please, madam . . . ?" Ever since Vicky Stuart went missing nine weeks ago they had had a stream of agitated mothers panicking because their kids were late back from school. Wells looked up at the wall clock. Ten past five . . . school had been out less than two hours. The mothers were always insistent their kids had never been home late before, but when the kid eventually turned up, they'd been round a friend's house and had done it time and time again ". . . and your address, please."

   
"Mary Brewer, 2 Rosebank Road, Denton."

   
"And the little girl—how old is she?"

   
"Jenny. She's only seven."

   
"Is there a Mr. Brewer?"

   
"No, there flaming well isn't. It's going to be pitch dark soon and you're asking these stupid questions."

   
"And when did you see Jenny last?"

   
"When she came home from school for her dinner. I haven't seen her since."

   
"What school?"

   
"Denton Junior."

   
Wells stiffened. Denton Junior. The same school Vicky Stuart attended. "Have you checked with her friends? She might be round one of their houses."

   
"What—all bleeding night? Don't be stupid. She went missing yesterday."

   
Wells blinked in astonishment. "Yesterday? Your daughter's been missing since yesterday and you've only just got around to reporting it?"

   
The woman glowered back at him. "Don't adopt that attitude to me. I couldn't report it any flaming earlier. I thought she was staying with her Nan, but she wasn't."

   
Frost bustled through the door on the way to his car. He gave a brisk nod to Wells.

   
"Inspector!" Wells wasn't going to be stuck with this woman.

   
"It will have to wait, Sergeant. I'm off home." He pushed open the swing door.

   
"Missing seven-year-old . . . Denton Junior School . . ." barked Wells.

   
Frost froze. The door swung back. He slowly turned round and walked back to the desk. "How long has she been missing?"

   
It was the woman who answered. "All bloody night. Don't tell me I've got to go over it all again." The cigarette in her mouth quivered with annoyance.

   
Frost's shoulders slumped. God, he could have done without this. "You'd better come with me," he told her, unbuttoning his mac. "Send us in a couple of cups of tea," he called over his shoulder as he pushed through the door to No. 1 interview room and nodded her into the chair so recently vacated by Lewis. This was like seeing the same film over and over again. Lewis's cigarette butts were still piled in the ashtray.

   
Mrs. Brewer drummed nicotined fingers impatiently on the table, watching Frost settle himself down, arranging his cigarettes and matches in front of him. Who was this scruff they had foisted off on her? They said he was an inspector, but he certainly didn't look like one.

   
"Right, Mrs. Brewer," said Frost, ready at last. "Let's have the details."

   
"How many more flaming times? I've already given them to that silly sod out there."

   
"And now you're going to give them to this silly sod in here so he can tell the other silly sods who'll be out half the night looking for your daughter." She was getting on his nerves. "The last time you saw Jenny was yesterday around midday when she came home from school for her dinner?"

   
"Yes." She added her cigarette end to the pile in the ashtray, then rummaged in her handbag for another. Frost didn't feel disposed to offer her one of his so waited until she lit up before opening his own packet.