R. Wingfield - Winter Frost

Her eyes narrowed. She thought for a while. 'What did he say?'

Frost smiled sweetly. 'Never mind what he told us. Let's hear your version.'

The solicitor intervened. 'I think I should have a word in private with my client before she makes any kind of a statement.'

She glared at him with contempt. 'You shut your mouth!' Back to Frost. Lips pursed, looking shrewd, she didn't seem so simple now. 'His father deserted me as soon as he knew I was pregnant. I had to bring him up on my own. You didn't get any help from the government in those days, you were on your own. I had to get money any way I could,'

'And what way was that?' asked Frost.

'I let men stay the night.'

Frost looked at her through the blue haze of cigarette smoke. Wrinkled, scraggly grey hair, dirty and unwashed, it was difficult to imagine that this smelly crone was once able to get men to pay for her services. She read his thoughts. 'I was quite good-looking then.'

'I know,' nodded Frost. 'I saw a photograph.'

'This man — he was one of my regulars…'

Frost pulled out a pen. 'His name?' She looked down at the table. 'I forget.'

'Come on, love,' Frost urged. 'It's difficult to forget the name of someone you buried in your neighbour's garden.

'He said his name was Derek. He didn't tell me his second name.'

'Did Boy know about your men friends?'

'No. He was always asleep when they came. But that night Boy woke up. He'd heard noises and he was frightened, so he crept into my bedroom. He must have thought Derek was hurting me and wanted to protect me. Boy had this cricket bat thing. He hit Derek on the head with it and when Derek yelled, he hit him again and again…' She shuddered, her eyes glazing over as she recalled the horror of that moment. 'I screamed for him to stop, but he wouldn't. There was blood everywhere, on me, all over the bedclothes… I snatched the bat from Boy, but Derek wasn't moving and I knew he was dead.'

'You didn't phone for an ambulance?'

'We didn't have a phone.'

'You could have got help.'

'If I told anyone, they would have told the police. They hang murderers by the neck until they are dead. I didn't want Boy to be hanged.'

'How old was Boy?'

'Eighteen. If you're over sixteen they hang you. We had to get rid of the body. Boy was strong. He carried Derek down the stairs and into the garden. It was dark…no lights, no-one watching. We squeezed through the fence of that empty house and Boy dug a deep hole. We buried him. His clothes were still in the bedroom, so I burnt them… then we cleaned up the blood.'

'Then what?'

'Boy kept talking about it, about how he had hit the man and how we had buried him. I daren't let him out of the house in case he told everyone he met. Then this smallholding came on the market, so I bought it and we moved.'

'Where did you get the money from?'

'From what I'd earned from the men.'

'So all these years you've kept him hidden away, sleeping in a cupboard, no friends… no contact with the outside world. What son of life was that for the poor sod?'

'A much better life than being strung up by his neck.'

'The death penalty was abolished years ago. Don't tell me you didn't know.'

She stared at him, eyes slitted with suspicion, then turned to the solicitor. 'He's lying!'

'No, Mrs Aldridge. The officer is correct. Surely you read about it in the newspapers?'

'I can't read, neither can Boy.'

'The radio then, or television?'

'Ain't got them.'

'You've kept that poor bastard hidden away under the stairs for nothing,' said Frost.

Her shoulders twitched a shrug. 'You can't turn the clock back. Can I go now? I've got chickens to feed…'

Mullett was beaming from ear to ear. 'So, thanks to my insistence, we've got a result. It was a good thing I took this case over from you.'

Frost perched his cigarette on the large glass ashtray Mullett had hastily skidded across the desk top. 'It was a near thing, Super. I might not have solved it then it would still be my case.'

This sounded like insolence to Mullett, but Frost always looked so sincere when he made these dubious remarks, he would have to give him the benefit of the doubt. 'And the son has admitted to killing this man?'

'Yes, Super. The poor sod was having it away when the son welted him with a cricket bat. He died of a severe case of coitus interruptus.'

Mullett wrinkled his nose. He couldn't take Frost's crude attempts at humour. 'So what's the current position?'

'We've released your prisoners on police bail.'

Mullett's eyebrows soared in surprise. 'Released them?'

'They were stinking the place out,' said Frost. 'The council have been round twice to dig up the drains… We know where they are. We can always pull them in when we want them.'

'But this is murder, Frost. We've got a confession. I want them arrested and charged.'

Frost took another drag on his cigarette. 'The son's given us a statement, but it's all a bit vague and he hasn't got all his marbles. We'd be wasting our time taking him and the old girl to Court.'

'That's for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide, not you. Do we know who the victim was?'

'Not yet. All we've got is his first name and we know the approximate date he had his last leg over, but that doesn't help much.'

'Doesn't help much?' echoed Mullett in mock incredulity. 'It narrows things right down. Do something positive for a change. Go through the old records until you find him.'

'We've been through them Once,' said Frost.

'Then go through them again,' snapped Mullett. He smiled inwardly. He was feeling pleased with himself and was already mentally composing the conversation he would have with the Chief Constable: Yes, I took the case over, sir. Frost was getting nowhere so something had to be done. We've got a confession, we know who the victim is, all 't's crossed and 'i's dotted.

Hanlon and Burton came into Frost's office and sank wearily into chairs. Their clothes were dusty and they looked fed up.

'We went through all the missing persons for the year before and the year after,' said Hanlon. 'Only two Dereks, one a fourteen-year-old kid, the other a married man, both returned home after a couple of days. I didn't expect to find anything. We've already been through them once.'

'Never mind, Arthur,' said Frost. 'If you had found something the second time round I'd have chucked it away. Mullett's bloody smug enough as it is.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'But who the hell was he?'

'He might not have lived in Denton,' suggested Burton. 'We could circulate other Divisions.'

'I can see them wasting their time digging through ancient records for us,' said Frost. 'They'd do what I would have done — not look and say they couldn't find anything.' He squirted a salvo of smoke rings up to the ceiling. 'My gut feeling is that he lived or worked in Denton. He had to be within travelling distance of his bit of nooky. The old girl wasn't a bad looker in those days, but even if you were a nipple buff, you wouldn't travel too many miles for a leg over.'

'He could have come by car,' suggested Hanlon.

'Then it would have been parked outside the house, Arthur, and neither the woman nor the son could drive so they wouldn't have been able to get rid of it.' He opened the file and flicked through the pages, then abruptly slammed it shut. 'Why are we sodding about with this? He's been dead forty years and no-one's missed him and we've got a serial killer to try and catch tonight. You two go home and get some kip. I'll see you back here just before midnight.' He stuffed the file back in his drawer, put his feet up on the desk, leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. He'd have a couple of hours' sleep in the office, then get things ready for the night's decoy operation.