dangerous.”
“Let me show you the plan, sir.” Allen left his chair and moved to the large-scale wall map behind the Superintendent’s desk. “We would have men hiding here, and here. Also a couple of radio cars on the surrounding roads. I’d have more men back here, and two more staked out here.” He jabbed at the map. “The woman decoy ‘
“Only one?” Mullett queried.
Allen nodded. “It’s safer that way. We want to keep the operation confined to as tight an area as possible, so we can get to the decoy before he can harm her.”
Mullett studied the map over Allen’s shoulder. “You’re pinning all your hopes on him operating in the same area as last night. Those woods are vast. You could all be over the west side while he’s raping victims to the east.”
“To cover the entire area, sir, would require so many men there wouldn’t be room for the rapist to get in. If the bait’s attractive enough, I’m hoping he will come to us.”
“How many men are you talking about?” asked Mullett.
“About fifteen or twenty.”
“I don’t know,” said Mullett evasively as he returned to his chair. “There’s too much left to chance. And the overall cost would be terrific fifteen or twenty men, all on overtime. I’m under severe pressure from County to cut down on our manpower costs. Let me show you the memo they sent me.” He unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out the memo with “Strictly Confidential’ typed in red capitals across the top.
Allen barely gave it a glance. He didn’t want to see these stupid pieces of paper. “Then you’re saying we do nothing at all, sir? We simply sit back, twiddle our thumbs, and wait for our man to pick his next victim. Is that what you’re saying, sir?”
Mullett could feel the wall pressing hard against his back. “What can I do?” he said weakly, waving the memo like a flag of truce. “We’ve got to cut down on expenditure. I mean I could authorize it, and you could waste night after night, fifteen men all on overtime, expenses soaring and nothing to show for it. County would crucify me.”
“Let’s restrict it to five nights only, then, sir.”
“Three,” countered Mullett, feeling he was scoring a victory.
“Fair enough, sir. Three,” agreed Allen. “And then we can decide whether to extend it or not.”
“But let me see a costing first,” called Mullett as Allen made for the door.
“Of course, sir,” smiled the inspector. “I’ll have it on your desk in half an hour. I’ve already started working it out.”
“This is how we found it, Inspector,” said PC Kenny, leading Frost and Webster into Tommy Croll’s rooms.
The two rooms were a chaotic mess with upholstery slashed, drawers pulled out, cupboards yawning open and their contents strewn all over the floor. The mattress in the bedroom had been dragged from the bed and knifed, its lacerations bleeding horsehair. A heap of clothing tumbled from the wardrobe had a snowy coating of feathers from ripped pillows. In the kitchen the contents of packets of soap powder and corn flakes had been spewed all over the floor where they scrunched noisily underfoot.
“It’s been done over, sir,” said PC Kenny.
“Funny you should say that,” said Frost, “I was thinking the same thing myself.” He kicked at a tin of baked beans which rolled to rest against some broken slices of bread. “No sign of Croll, I suppose?”
“No, sir. His landlady downstairs didn’t even know he was out of hospital.”
“Does she know who did this?”
“No, sir. Says it happened while she was out.”
Frost picked up a battered transistor radio from the floor. “Well, there’s no mystery about who did it a couple of Harry Baskin’s heavies searching for the stolen money and putting in the frighteners at the same time.” He plugged in the radio and clicked it on. An angry crackle followed by a blue flash. He switched it off. “We’ll have to find Tommy before Baskin’s boys get hold of him. We don’t want him ending up like his mattress, with his innards poking out.” He told Kenny to ask Control to put out a priority signal that Croll was to be found and brought in immediately for questioning in connection with the robbery at The Coconut Grove.
Their next stop was at the house of the other security guard, Bert Harris, who lived in one of the newly built houses east of the main Bath Road. Harris, a cropped-haired, thickset man in his late twenties, sported a black eye and a bruised nose, souvenirs of his reprimand from Harry Baskin the previous night. He didn’t seem at all pleased to see the two policemen.
“It’s not really convenient, Mr. Frost,” he protested, but the inspector pushed past him.
“We don’t mind if it’s a bit untidy, Bert.” He opened the lounge door and peeped inside. A carbon copy of Croll’s place with slashed upholstery and emptied cupboards. “Looks like my house on a good day,” commented Frost as he managed to find a dining chair with its seat intact so he could sit down. “I take it some friends of Mr. Baskin’s have paid you a visit.”
“I’ve got no comment to make on that,” said Harris.
Frost lit up a cigarette.” Did they find the money before they left?”
Harris laughed hollowly. “They couldn’t find it because I haven’t got it. I had nothing to do with that robbery.”
“It had to be an inside job, Bert, which has got to mean you and Tommy Croll.”
Harris pulled a tobacco tin from his pocket and began to roll a hand-made. “We’re talking about five thousand lousy quid, Mr. Frost. If me and Tommy split it down the middle, that is two and a half thousand apiece. Do you seriously think I’d risk Harry Baskin’s boys ripping me open for a lousy two and a half thou? Look at this bloody mess!” He indicated the rubble of his lounge. “There’s at least a thousand quid’s worth of damage. If I was going to stitch Harry Baskin up, I’d pick a night when there was at least ten thousand quid in the office, and when I’d nicked it, you wouldn’t see my arse for dust. I wouldn’t hang around so Harry could use me as a punching bag.”
Frost was forced to admit that this made sense. “So who do you reckon took the money… Tommy Croll?”
“It’s not for me to say, is it, Inspector? But he’s stupid enough, and it’s bloody funny he’s done a runner from the hospital.”
The radio was talking to an empty car. “Control to Mr. Frost. Come in, please.”
Frost picked up the handset and in a mock, quavering baritone, sang, “I hear you calling me.”
A pause from the other end, then a reproving voice sniffed, “Please observe the correct radio procedure, Inspector.”
It was Mullett!
“Sorry, Super,” said Frost. “We seem to be on a crossed line.”
County had been on to Mullett about the non arrival of the crime statistics, and Accounts had contacted him wanting to know where the overtime returns were. Frost breezily told Mullett that both returns would go off that day without fail, then signed off quickly.
“Next stop The Coconut Grove, son. I think we should have a little talk with lovable Harry Baskin.”
Like an ageing prostitute who’d had a rough and busy night, The Coconut Grove didn’t look its most seductive in the harsh glare of daylight. Shafts of gritty sunlight grated in through grimed windows, spotlighting every blemish. On asking for Baskin, Frost and Webster were directed through a back door, across a yard piled high with crates of empty beer bottles, and on through to another building from which the sound of a misused piano floated out.
Pushing through a side door marked Staff Only Keep Out, they found themselves in a darkened hall. At the far end of a well-lit stage a long-haired blonde girl, wearing nothing more than a bright-red bra and matching G-string, was twisting and gyrating to the repetitive thump of Ravel’s Bolero, which a pretty, golden-haired man in a floral shirt was bashing out on the stage piano.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” asked Webster.
“Definitely,” replied Frost.
They were halfway down the aisle when the music reached a climax and the girl suddenly twisted around, whipped off the bra with a flourish and stood bare-breasted, nipples quivering, arms triumphantly outstretched, panting with exertion, and smiling into the dark of the auditorium.
“No, no, no,” yelled a man’s voice from the front row.
