R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

With his handkerchief he carefully lifted the handset and studied it under the beam of his torch. ‘Wiped clean. If I had a suspicious mind I’d reckon she didn’t want us to find her finger prints.’ He replaced the phone, then thought for a while, staring at the coin box. ‘You know, son, I reckon hardly anyone uses this call box It’s stuck out on the arsehole of Denton on a road leading to nowhere, and the way it smells you’d be better off making your phone calls down a sewer.’

‘What are you getting at, Inspector?’ Collier asked.

‘I bet there’s hardly any coins in that coin box and they’ll all have fingerprints on them, and one will have the dabs of our lady caller.’ He pulled his penknife from his pocket and began to saw away at the flex on the handset.

Collier looked on, horrified, turning his head from side to side in case anyone could see what Frost was up to.

Frost examined the flex. His knife had made hardly any impression. ‘I don’t know how these bleeding vandals do it,’ he said. ‘There’s a pair of wire-cutters in the glove compartment of my car. Fetch them for me, son.’

The cutters sliced through the flex in one go. ‘Give us the tools and we’ll finish the job,’ said Frost in his Churchill voice.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked Collier.

‘Because I don’t want anyone else using this phone until we’ve got all the coins out of the box for testing. When we get back to the station, phone British Telecom. I want one of their engineers to liaise with someone from SOCO at the crack of dawn. I want the coins removed and fingerprinted.’

‘But she could have been wearing gloves,’ said Collier.

‘If she was wearing gloves, my son, she wouldn’t have had to wipe the handset clean after using it. Oh, and you can tell BT that some vandalising bastard has hacked the handset off – give them Skinner’s description if you like.’

Skinner charged out of the Interview Room and yelled down the corridor to Wells, ‘That bleeding woman’s thrown up all over me. Get her to Denton General. Look at my suit – it stinks of puke.’ His jacket was splattered with vomit.

‘Dear, dear,’ tutted Wells, trying not to laugh.

‘Get me a tea towel or something to wipe this off. Where’s Frost?’

‘Gone home, I think,’ Wells told him.

‘The bastard’s never here when you want him. What about the rest of the team?’

‘I believe Inspector Frost sent them home. He said you’d instructed him to do so.’

‘He picks and chooses what flaming orders he wants to obey,’ snorted Skinner. ‘Sod it. I haven’t got time to waste on a drug-possession and petty-thieving case. Bang Kelly up and I’ll finish questioning him in the morning.’

‘What about the dead girl’s phone, sir?’ asked Wells.

‘That Malone woman probably nicked it. She threw up when I asked her. She claims she nicked the other stuff from lockers at the school. She also says there’s about half a ton of bog rolls she knifed in their garage. If Frost had done a proper search he would have found them. I can’t see anyone who nicks bog rolls being a killer, somehow. Bloody Frost. The sooner he’s out of Denton the bloody better…’

The hands on the wall clock in the Incident Room crawled round to five fifty-eight. Frost yawned and rubbed his stubbled chin. His team had returned with the registration numbers of the few vehicles that had been spotted, but none had had woman drivers or passengers, so they didn’t look at all promising. He yawned again. ‘We’ll check the CCTV footage later. Might find some thing we missed on there.’ He stretched his aching back. ‘The important question of the moment is this: do we go home and grab a couple of hours’ kip before reporting to Skinner for a bollocking, or do we go down to the all-night cafe and have a fry-up?’

'I’m starving,’ said Lambert.

‘Then you speak for all of us,’ said Frost, reaching for his scarf. ‘Let’s go.’

He turned his head as Morgan, looking well satisfied with himself, sauntered in. ‘Sorry it took so long, Guv. Something came up.’

‘Something went up, you mean,’ said Frost. ‘You were supposed to take that tom to the hotel and come straight back. Skinner will have your guts for garters if he finds out he’s not a first-footer.’

‘She didn’t want to go to the hotel, Guv. She wanted to go home. She was shagged out.’

‘And we all know by whom,’ grinned Frost. ‘Care for some brekker?’

He slept for a couple of hours at his desk and was woken by the clanging of the cleaners’ buckets as they mopped up the corridor outside. He clicked on his desk lamp and looked at the wall clock. Eight forty-five. He’d had barely two hours’ sleep and felt shagged out and dirty. He rubbed his eyes, reached for his cigarettes then pushed the packet away. He’d smoked himself sick last night and his mouth tasted like the contents of a week-old ashtray. The fried food from Nick’s cafe was churning away in his stomach and making him feel queasy. Coffee, that’s what he wanted. He detoured to the washroom on his way to the lobby, to splash cold water on his face. He looked at the weary drawn, grey face staring back at him from the mirror. ‘You poor old sod,’ he muttered, dabbing himself dry.

The coffee helped a little. Johnny Johnson grinned as Frost came down the stairs.

‘Had a rough night, Jack?’

‘Bleeding rough,’ nodded Frost. ‘Has Skinner charged Kelly and the cockle-seller yet?’

‘He’s charged Kelly with the drugs, but the woman was taken violently ill and is in Denton General.’

‘Ill?’

‘Food poisoning, I think. She threw up all over Skinner’s best suit.’

‘I’m beginning to take to her,’ said Frost. ‘I think I’ll nip over to Denton General and have a few words with her. What did she say about the phone?’

‘He couldn’t get much sense out of her.’

‘And she’s in Denton General? I’ll just nip over and try and jog her memory.’

‘Skinner won’t like it,’ said Johnson.

‘Which adds to the pleasure,’ smirked Frost.

The cleaners were mopping and polishing the seemingly endless corridor that crawled round the hospital to Nightingale Ward, where Bridget Malone was a patient. The staff nurse in charge had just come on duty and had to refer to the admission doctor’s notes.

‘Nothing too serious. Food poisoning. She can go home today.’

‘I’ll just pop over and cheer her up,’ said Frost. Bridget Malone’s complexion was still tinged with green. A plate of cold, congealed porridge lurked sullenly on a tray beside her. She was sipping a bright-yellow mug of hospital tea with obvious distaste.

‘We left a urine sample in a yellow mug on a tray near here,’ said Frost, dragging a chair to the side of the bed. ‘You haven’t seen it by any chance?’

‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked, then she remembered. ‘You’re the copper who was at the house last night.’

‘Once seen, never forgotten, love,’ said Frost. ‘I want to talk about that mobile phone.’

‘What mobile phone?’

Frost sighed deeply. ‘Don’t sod me about, Bridget. You know damn well what phone. The mobile we found in your airing cupboard. The murdered girl’s phone.’

The woman’s jaw dropped. She stared wide-eyed at Frost. ‘Dear Sweet Mother of God. Not little Debbie – not that poor girl?’

‘Yes, that poor girl.’

‘Dear Mother of God. I never knew…’ She crossed herself. ‘May I die in the bed I’m lying in, Inspector – I never knew. I’d never have taken it had I known.’

‘Taken it? From where?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t bleeding know? Don’t sod me about!’ roared Frost.