four-page statement. He had read about the classic Lindbergh kidnapping where a man had obtained ransom money by pretending he had the Lindbergh baby.
'So I thought I'd try the same. After all, she's only an old bag. What's two grand to her? She can earn that on her back without even getting out of bed. What's up with the bloke with the wonky nose?'
Frost glared at Clive, who should have known better than to react when a suspect was making a statement.
'The kid?' continued Dapper. 'Of course I haven't got the kid. Kidnapping's not my style, is it? Search my house if you like. If you find any kids, my old woman's been having it off with the milkman.'
They didn't expect to find Tracey at Dapper's house, but an area car investigated, just in case. She wasn't there. She had never been there.
Dapper signed his statement, thanked Frost for the cigarette, and was locked up in the cell next to the man in the sheepskin coat.
'We won't have enough cells if you go on like this,' commented the station sergeant.
To Frost's regret, Mullen had left for home and wasn't there to witness his moment of triumph. 'If it was one of my usual balls-ups, he'd be there sneering from ear to bloody ear,' he reflected ruefully. He went back to his office to shuffle some papers about and found Clive waiting hopefully for permission to go home. Hazel would be at his bedsitter, her uniform folded neatly over a chair, her face scrubbed of makeup…
'It's 11:15, sir,' he announced loudly, looking hard at his watch and yawning.
'What's this?' asked Frost, picking up a scribbled note from his desk. 'Sandy Lane, Denton Echo, phoned. Wants you to phone him, urgent.' Then underneath, in the same hand, 'Phoned again, 10:30-extremely urgent- please call.'
'11:15 did you say, son? We'll ring him now,' and he dialed the newspaper office. A few words with Sandy, then be banged down the phone and sprang from his chair.
'Chuck us my scarf, son. It's definitely my lucky day. Sandy reckons he knows the identity of our skeleton, so come on, you can drive me to his office.'
Clive trailed after the inspector to the car park, scuffling the snow peevishly. It was a cold, miserable, and never-ending night and he thought of his warm, cozy flat, the gas-fire popping, Hazel peeling off microscopic knickers, rubbing her hands sensuously down her thighs. The mental picture forced a groan of frustration as he turned the ignition key.
'What's up?' asked Frost. 'Not sickening for anything, are you?'
Sandy Lane squeezed his visitors into his tiny office, a partitioned corner of an open-plan stockade of tightly packed desks, phones, and typewriters.
Frost had to raise his voice over the hammering of typewriters. 'So, who's our skeleton, Sandy?'
'You'll read all about it in tomorrow's Echo, Jack,' said the reporter, dumping a badly smudged proof copy of the following day's paper in front of the two detectives. The black banner headline screamed out at them:
MISSING BANK CLERK FOUND AFTER 32 YEARS.
A sub-heading read: 'Echo of PS20,000 Bank Robbery', followed by another, 'Spirit Medium Leads Police To Mysterious Woodland Grave'. Then there was a photograph of Frost, cupid-lipped with a bit more hair than now, captioned, 'Detective Inspector Frost, G.C., who is in charge of the case.'
'That picture looks as if I've been dug up after thirty-two years,' said Frost.
The rest of the front page was filled with a greatly enlarged full-face photograph of a sad-looking man with receding hair, aged about thirty-five. The caption said, simply, 'Timothy Fawcus.'
Frost frowned. 'Fawcus?' he asked. The name nagged a memory.
'It's his skeleton,' explained Sandy.
'Then tell him to come and claim it, we don't want it.' He opened the page for more clues, but the inside was blank and unprinted. Then something clicked. Timothy Fawcus! Of course. He spun round to Clive and explained. 'This was 1951, son-before you were born. I'd just joined the Force. Eighteen, I was, sturdy of back and randy as hell-and you had to fight for it in those days, it didn't come crawling round to your flat waiting for you.' The blood rushed to Clive's face. How the hell did Frost know?
'Fawcus was a cashier at Bennington's Bank and the case chained to his wrist held PS20,000. When he went missing, all leave was stopped for the search. We looked everywhere… and he was buried in Dead Man's Hollow all the time.' He tapped his scar. 'I wonder if they'll dig up Tracey's skeleton in thirty-odd years' time.'
Sandy leaned forward. 'You reckon she's dead, then Jack?'
Frost nodded toward the tall window where outside a cutting wind screamed and hurled flurries of snow against the glass. 'What do you reckon?' And then he was back again in the distant past. 'Remember the chap in charge of the Fawcus case, Sandy? Inspector Bottomley, as fat as a pig with an enormous gut; he had to have his trousers specially built.'
'What happened with Fawcus?' asked Clive.
It was a simple story. On the twenty-sixth of July, 1951, Fawcus left Denton in the bank's pool car, driven by a junior clerk, Rupert Garwood-their destination, Bennington's Exley branch, some seven miles away-to deliver PS20,000, locked in a case chained to Fawcus's wrist. The car never arrived at its destination. It was found later that afternoon in a side road well away from the route it should have taken. The junior clerk, Garwood, was slumped across the wheel, unconscious from a savage head injury which left him with no memory of what had happened. Fawcus and the PS20,000 were never seen again.
'I got my first byline on that case,' said Sandy, proudly. 'It made the London dailies.'
'Poor old Fawcus,' said Frost, 'wrongly accused for all those years and all the time he was decently dead and buried. He had a family, didn't he?'
'A wife,' answered the reporter. 'Don't know what happened to her, though. Er… how was he killed?'
'Shot,' Frost tapped his forehead, 'through the brain.'
Sandy's hand streaked to his internal phone and he jabbed the button marked 'Printing Room'. 'Mac-Sandy here. Hold everything. We're going to tear down the front page. The police say Fawcus was shot.' He dropped the phone and fidgeted, obviously anxious to usher them out and get cracking.
'You've given me quite a scoop, Jack.'
'You know me,' said Frost modestly, 'one cheap curry and you've bought my soul. Come on, son.'
'Hold on, Jack. The money-it was gone, I suppose?'
Frost smiled sweetly. 'Dumb as we are, Sandy boy, if we'd found PS20,000 in the case, we might just about have worked out who he was for ourselves.' He went to grab the door handle, but the door retreated as a studious young reporter entered.
'Sorry to butt in, Mr. Lane, but the bank manager refuses to make a statement, and 1 can't get a reply from Garwood's house.'
Frost braked sharply. 'Garwood? You mean Rupert Garwood, the kid who was driving the car?'
'Yes,' replied Sandy. 'He's back at Denton again, didn't you know? He's Assistant Manager at Bennington's Bank.'
TUESDAY-7
Police Sergeant Tom Henderson put down his pen and yawned. He'd never get used to working nights. No matter how much sleep he had during the day, his body still insisted on feeling tired and ready for bed as midnight approached. He wriggled his shoulders in a shiver. It was so cold in the lobby and every time that rotten door opened…
His phone rang.
The leather-jacketed youth slumped dejectedly on a wooden bench under the Colorado Beetle poster jerked up a face tight with apprehension.
Henderson listened, said, 'No, not yet,' and hung up. He looked across to the leather-jacket and shook his head. The youth slouched back and resumed his mindless study of the opposite blank wall.
An icy blast roared across the lobby as Inspector Frost and the new chap with the bent nose came in.
'Hello, Jack.'
