R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

She held up her hands in protest. ‘No please. If you could tell me exactly why you want a computer printout of all our pupils.’

‘We have good reason to believe that Debbie was going to meet someone called Millie, or Molly, or something similar the night she was killed. We want to trace that person and eliminate them from our inquiries. It could be a schoolfriend of Debbie’s, we don’t know, but we’ve got to check everyone, even if it means contravening the Data Protection Act.’

The headteacher pressed a key on her intercom. ‘Janet, sorry to interrupt your free period, but do you think you could let me have a computer printout of the school roll?’

Frost tapped her arm. ‘Let’s have the rolls for the past five years as well. It could be someone who has already left school.’

‘And rolls for the past five years,’ added Miss Robins. ‘And it is rather urgent.’ She flipped the key up. ‘A terrible business, Inspector.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Frost. Another thought struck him. ‘Have any of your teachers got a name like Millie or Molly?’

She wrinkled her brow in thought, then shook her head. ‘No – none of them.’

‘What about other workers here – dinner ladies, cleaners and so on?’

Again she shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, but I’m afraid I don’t know all their names – some of them come and go so quickly.’

‘Then let’s have a list of staff as well as teachers,’ said Frost. The number of possibilities was beginning to mount and he wasn’t even sure if the mysterious Millie or Molly was someone from the school. The school was clearly a no-smoking area, a factor which made the craving for a fag greater than ever. Hurry up with these flaming lists, he silently urged.

A tap at the door. At last. A mousy-looking, buck-toothed woman in a brown cardigan with a goofy, jolly-hockey-sticks expression entered with a sheaf of computer printouts.

‘Thank you, Janet,’ said Miss Robins, passing the lists over to Frost. ‘Janet Leigh is our computer expert – she was Debbie’s form mistress.’

Frost nodded a brief greeting as he stuffed the printouts in his pocket. ‘We’re hoping to trace someone called Millie, or Molly, or something very similar who was friendly with Debbie. It’s a slim chance, but it could lead somewhere. Any of your girls with names like that?’

‘Millie… Molly?’ The teacher shook her head. ‘None in my form. Offhand, I can’t think of any girls in the school with those names.’

‘Dinner ladies, cleaners, anyone?’

Again she shook her head, then she waggled a triumphant finger at him. ‘Bridget Malone. The cleaner.’

‘Bridget?’ frowned Frost. ‘Perhaps I’m dim…’

‘The children all called her Molly – Molly Malone. You know, “Cockles and Mussels, alive alive-oh.” ’

This sounded promising. ‘I’d like to talk to her,’ said Frost.

‘She’s not in today,’ said the headteacher. ‘She’s got a stomach bug.’

‘Give me her address,’ said Frost. ‘I might pop round and take her some grapes.’

‘Guv,’ called Morgan excitedly, ‘we’ve struck gold. I’ve run Bridget Malone through the computer. She’s got form!’

Frost grabbed the computer printout, skimmed through it and tossed it to one side. ‘You got me going for a minute there, Taff. Pinching knickers from Marks and Sparks – hardly premium-league stuff.’

‘There’s something else, Guv, that should make your day.’

Frost’s face brightened. ‘You’re going to resign, Taff? That’s terrific news. Put me down for 3p towards your leaving present.’

Morgan grinned. ‘This might be even better news for you, Guv.’ He waved another computer printout. ‘She’s living with Patsy Kelly.’

Frost snatched the printout from him.

‘Flaming hell, Taff. Don’t resign until tomorrow. Patsy Kelly’s a nasty, slimy bastard if ever there was one – he’d make Mullett look like a saint.’ He flipped through the pages. ‘I’ve put that bastard away a few times… GBH… Robbery with Violence… porno videos… obtaining money by menace, drug-dealing. That was his last one – drug-dealing – selling to school kids, by all accounts. I bet that’s what little Bridget was doing when she was supposed to be Ajaxing out the lavatory pans. He’s just the sort of bastard who’d kill a kid for money.’ He was getting excited now.

‘Shall we bring her in, Guv?’

Frost played a drum roll on the desktop with his fingers. ‘We haven’t got enough on her, Taff – just that the kids call her Molly, and Debbie might or might not have said Molly.’ Another brief drum roll. ‘Didn’t you have to go to the school a few weeks back – stuff being pinched from the kids’ lockers?’

Morgan nodded. ‘Yes. Couldn’t pin it on anyone, though.’

‘If you couldn’t crack the case, then no one could,’ said Frost. ‘She’s got form. Wasn’t she one of your suspects?’

‘It could have been anyone in the school, Guv – most likely one of the kids. I didn’t run them through the computer.’

‘The kids call her Molly, and she’s living with scumbag Patsy Kelly. Suspicion, but not a shred of proof. We need to turn their place over, but Kelly would never let us in without a search warrant. Who’s the duty magistrate this week?’ Morgan consulted the list on the pinboard.

‘Alison Miller, Guv.’

Frost’s face fell. ‘Shit!’ he said.

Frost rubbed his hands together to get his circulation going. It was freezing cold in the back room where old mother Miller had parked him while she finished her meal. He took out his pack of cigarettes, but the clinically clean room hissed its frowning disapproval, so he hastily dropped them back in his pocket and fidgeted in the uncomfortable armchair, watching the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece crawl round. At last the door clicked open and Alison Miller, a heavily built, thick-eyebrowed, grim-looking woman in her late fifties came in to glare down at him.

‘You do pick the most inconvenient times, Inspector Frost. I was in the middle of my meal.’

‘Sorry mum,’ mumbled Frost. ‘Murderers have no consideration for others.’

‘Don’t be flippant and don’t call me “mum” – it’s “ma’am’ if you don’t mind. And please sit in the other armchair – that one has just been re-upholstered after someone’s cigarette burnt a hole in it.’

‘Ah – yes. Sorry about that, I couldn’t find an ashtray.’

‘The reason you couldn’t find an ashtray, Inspector Frost, was because I do not permit the filthy habit of smoking in this house. You may inform Superintendent Mullett that the bill for the re-upholstery will be forwarded to him for payment as soon as I receive it. So why are you here?’

Frost pulled the papers from his pocket. ‘If you could just sign this, then you can get back to your nosh.’

She found her glasses in her pocket and studied the papers carefully. ‘A search warrant, Inspector? Another one of your famous search warrants?’

‘Yes,’ said Frost anxiously. ‘If you could just sign where I’ve marked it.’

‘I know perfectly well where to sign search warrants, Inspector. Let me remind you that I do not sign these orders automatically. If I am to give the police powers to do a ham-fisted search of someone’s house, probably dumping lighted cigarettes willy-nilly, then I want justification.’

‘But of course – ’ began Frost.

A bony hand waved him to silence. ‘The last two warrants you prevailed upon me to sign – at two o’clock in the morning, as I recall – were a red-hot, cast-iron tip-off from a 100 percent reliable source and two houses jam-packed to the rafters with stolen goods, if I remember your words correctly. And what did you find?’