Manson hestiated so Gilmore yanked him to his feet.
‘Walter Richard Manson,’ droned Frost, ‘alias the Granny Ripper …’
‘Granny Ripper?’ croaked Manson, his astonishment sounding genuine this time.
‘Shut up!’ barked Gilmore.
‘Alias the Granny Ripper,’ continued Frost, ‘I am arresting you on three counts of murder…’ To Gilmore he said, ‘Fill in the details — I forget the names and dates.’ Gilmore nodded, his pencil scribbling furiously. ‘You are not obliged to say anything — etc. etc., but anything you do say, blah, blah, blah. Take it as read, Wally — you know the words better than I do.’
‘I am totally innocent of these preposterous charges,’ said Manson smugly, twisting his head to make sure Gilmore was writing it all down.
Frost put his hand on Gilmore’s notebook to stop him writing. ‘Hold on, Sergeant. I’m sure we can do better than that.’ He scratched his scar thoughtfully. ‘Put… “The prisoner replied I didn’t mean to kill them. I’m terribly sorry for what I did. I deserve to be punished.” ’
The man’s jaw dropped. ‘I never said that.’
Frost lit up another export only. ‘What you actually said doesn’t matter, Wally. It’s what he puts down in his book that gets read out in court.’
Manson shrunk back in his chair. ‘I shall deny saying it. I shall say it’s all lies.’
‘Of course you will, Wally. And it will be the word of a cheap slimy little crook with a record against a detective inspector with a medal. Courts seem to think that people with George Crosses are incapable of telling lies.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Manson, almost in tears.
‘Life’s not fair when some bastard breaks into your house and smashes your skull in,’ snapped Frost.
Wally’s tongue flicked snake-like across dried lips. ‘You wouldn’t perjure yourself, Mr Frost?’ he pleaded, but the expression on the inspector’s face said, ‘Yes, I bloody well would.’
Frost leant his head back and treated the ceiling to a squirt of smoke. ‘Not perjury, Wally — it’s called oiling the wheels of justice. Take him away, Sergeant, and charge him. We’ll have him in court first thing tomorrow.’
Hanlon stepped forward and took the man’s arm, but Wally shook him off. ‘What do I get if I co- operate?’
‘My undying gratitude, Wally — and perhaps a whisper to the judge about how helpful you were.’
Manson hesitated. ‘This old lady in Clarendon Street. You say she identified me?’
‘She described you perfectly, Wally. She said her attacker was an ugly little bastard with bad breath and dandruff. We showed her some photographs and she picked you out right away.’
Manson gnawed at his lower lip. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her, Mr Frost. She came at me like a bloody tiger.’
‘An eighty-one-year-old tiger,’ said Frost. ‘What did she attack you with — her pension book?’
‘A knife, Mr Frost… a flaming great knife.’ He tugged the shirt from his trousers and lifted it to expose his stomach. ‘Look what she did to me!’ A thick pad of dirty red-mottled cotton wool, blood still weeping from the edges, was strapped to his stomach by strips of sticking plaster. ‘She’d have killed me. I had to hit her to defend myself.’ He fumbled at the dressing. ‘Do you want to see what it’s like underneath?’
Frost waved the offer away. ‘No, thanks, Wally. It’s a bit too near your dick and I haven’t had my breakfast yet. I’ll get the doctor to have a look at it.’ He slid from his chair and went to the door, making a small jerk of his head to signal Hanlon to follow.
Outside in the passage, Frost closed the door firmly and lowered his voice. ‘Here’s a turn-up for the bleedin’ book, Arthur. Did you check that knife to see if it matched up with any of the old girl’s cutlery?’
‘No, Jack. There were no prints on it and the damn thing had been honed razor sharp. I just assumed it came from her attacker.’
‘She was terrified of burglars. She probably kept a sharpened knife to protect herself. Check it out now — and find out what blood group Wally is. It should be on his prison file.’ He followed the worried-looking Hanlon down the corridor and asked Sergeant Wells to call the duty police surgeon.
The police surgeon dropped unused bandages into his bag and clicked it shut. ‘I don’t think there’s any danger, but just to be on the safe side, the hospital should check him over.’ He gave Frost his ‘Payment Request’ form to sign and checked it carefully before nodding his goodbye.
An agitated Arthur Hanlon was waiting outside the Interview Room. His shamefaced expression told Frost all.
‘The knife came from her cutlery drawer,’ Hanlon admitted. ‘She’s got a carving fork and a sharpening steel all in the same pattern to match. I’m sorry, Jack, I should have checked.’
‘Never mind, Arthur,’ said Frost. ‘It makes me feel better to know I’m not the only twat in the force.’
‘And Wally’s blood group is 0, the same as the dead woman’s, so the blood on the knife could well have come from him.’
‘Damn. The knife was the only thing that tied him to the other two killings and we haven’t got that now. Never mind, let’s do our best with what little we’ve got — as the bishop said to the actress.’
In the Interview Room, which now reeked of antiseptic, their prisoner was noisily drinking a cup of tea, watched by a sour-faced Gilmore. Frost dropped wearily into his chair. ‘Right, Wally. The doctor says you’re not going to die, but I’ve got over my disappointment. Tell me about the old dear at Clarendon Street — right from the beginning.’ He pushed a cigarette across the table and lit it for the man. ‘And cover up your stomach — it’s wobbling like a bloody blancmange.’
Manson sucked gratefully at the cigarette. ‘Thanks, Mr Frost.’ He tucked his shirt back in and readjusted his belt. ‘This was last Monday night — one of those nights when everything went wrong.’
Frost nodded in sympathy. He had many nights like that.
‘The first house I tried I thought was going to be easy. Up on the dustbin and through the back window. I could hear the old boy talking to his wife downstairs, so I thought the coast was clear. Straight in the bedroom and there’s this weird niff… I flashes my torch around and, bloody hell — there’s a decomposing corpse grinning at me. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I had to nip in the pub for some Dutch courage and who comes walking through the door but you and that bloke there with the fancy aftershave. This just ain’t my bloody night, I thought. But I phoned you. I told you about the body.’
‘I know, Wally,’ nodded Frost. ‘I recognized your voice.’
‘I should have packed it in, but I needed some readies — I owed the bookie a couple of hundred and he was screaming for it. I’d already marked out this house in Clarendon Street. It looked easy and they said this old lady had cash all over the place. It must have been well bloody hidden — I never found it. The bedroom was empty. She was in the other room watching the telly, then, just my flaming luck, I knocks this vase over and the next thing I know she’s charging in with the knife, stashing away. I lashed out in self-defence and she went out like a light.’ He took another drag at his cigarette. ‘It was all her fault, Mr Frost. I could have sued her for what she did to me. You know the law — you’re only supposed to use reasonable force in ejecting a burglar, and gouging chunks out of his gut with a carving knife ain’t reasonable force.’
‘Neither is smashing someone’s skull in,’ barked Gilmore from behind him.
‘A tap, Mr Frost, that’s all I gave her. A tap with me jemmy, just to discourage her. The bloody knife was stuck in my stomach and I had to pull it out. I’d tore my rubber gloves in the struggle, so I wiped the handle clean in case my prints were on it, then grabbed up a few bits of jewellery and got the hell out of there. When I read in the paper next day she was in Intensive Care, it frightened the shit out of me — if you’ll pardon the expression. I never did another job from that night to this. That’s the honest, gospel truth.’
Frost shook another cigarette out of the packet and tapped it on the table. ‘Tell me the honest gospel truth about the other poor cows, Wally. Did they all come at you with knives I and then commit hara-kiri?’ He watched the prisoner closely, but unless Manson was a brilliant actor, he didn’t seem to know what Frost was talking about.
‘Others? What are you trying to pin on me?’
Frost opened the file and spread out colour photographs of the two dead women showing their wounds in vivid close up, his eyes still locked on Manson’s face.
Wally shuddered and turned his head. ‘Bloody hell, Mr Frost. That’s horrible.’ He fumbled for a grubby handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘You ain’t suggesting they’re down to me? I’ve never killed anyone in my life.’
