Gilmore raised his head from his notebook. He was content to let Frost ask the preliminary questions, but he would step in when the time was ripe. So she was a discarded lover. Not an uncommon motive for murder.
But Frost, digging fruitlessly through his pockets in the hope of finding a pinched-out butt, didn’t seem to have realized the significance. ‘Why did he chuck you?’ He watched enviously as she took a cigarette from a black lacquered box on a side table and lit it with a tiny, initialled, blue and gold enamelled lighter.
‘He was afraid his wife might find out.’ She flung her head back and laughed bitterly. ‘His bloody wife! He always told me he was going to divorce her and marry me… and like a fool I bloody believed him. Even when the bastard’s cheques bounced, I believed him.’
‘Cheques?’ queried Frost, tapping his empty Lambert and Butler packet hopefully, but she didn’t take the hint.
‘He was always borrowing money, and when I asked him to pay me back, his cheques bounced.’
‘How much money are we talking about?’
‘Getting on for?500, which I could ill afford.’
Frost scratched his chin. ‘He sounds a right charmer. How long have you known him?’
‘A couple of months. We met in London.’ She dropped down into the other chair and her breasts bounced like Mark Compton’s cheques. Do that again, Frost pleaded silently.
‘Does your husband know of this association?’ asked Gilmore who, unlike Frost whose gaze was directed higher, had noticed the wedding ring on her finger.
She gave a tight smile and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘My husband is a very violent and jealous man. That’s why I left him.’ Her hands travelled over her body and she winced in remembrance. ‘I could show you bruises…’ Yes please, pleaded Frost, again silently. ‘I changed my name so he couldn’t trace me. If he ever found out that Mark had been my lover, he would have killed us both.’
Frost’s head jerked up. ‘Changed your name?’
‘East is my maiden name. My married name is Bradbury. Mrs Jean Bradbury.’
Behind her, Gilmore choked back a gasp and slowly expelled air. He felt a warm glow inside. The equation was almost too good to be true… an unfaithful wife plus a violent husband equals one dead lover. Now was the time for him to take over. ‘Are you aware that your lover, Mark Compton, and his wife have been subjected to verbal and written threats over the past few weeks and that their property has been maliciously damaged?’
She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘No, Sergeant. I was not aware of that.’
‘Are you aware there was a fire at The Old Mill last night? The place was gutted.’
She couldn’t disguise a malicious smile. ‘I didn’t know that either, but serve the bastard right.’
‘The bastard’s dead, Mrs Bradbury,’ said Frost, bluntly. ‘He died in the fire. We think it was murder.’
The cigarette dropped from her fingers and she stared unbelieving at the inspector. ‘No! Oh no!’ Then her eyes widened in horror. ‘And you think my husband killed him…? Oh my God!’ Her hands covered her face.
‘We’ve got to find him,’ said Gilmore.
‘If he’s killed Mark, he’ll kill me,’ she said, scrabbling for the cigarette which had burnt a black mark into the landlord’s carpet.
‘We won’t let that happen,’ Frost assured her. ‘Any idea where he is?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ She studied the end of her cigarette, her full, pursed lips blowing it back to life.
God, thought Frost, squirming in his chair, you can blow me back to life any time you like, love. A muffled voice calling his name slowly caught his attention. His personal radio. He tugged it from his pocket. Johnny Johnson with some news. He moved away so the woman couldn’t hear.
‘We’ve located Simon Bradbury, Inspector.’
‘Then grab him where it hurts and hold him,’ said Frost, signalling for Gilmore to come over.
‘No need, Jack. He’s not going anywhere. He’s at Risley Remand Centre… drunken driving, malicious damage and assaulting a police officer. He’s been in custody for the past two weeks.’
‘Damn!’ Gilmore’s foot lashed out at the waste bin in anger, spilling the contents over the floor. His one and only suspect now had a cast-iron alibi. They were back to square one.
There was no further point in staying. Frost rewound his scarf and began to button up his coat while Gilmore, on his knees, stuffed the spilt papers back into the bin.
‘One last question,’ said Gilmore. ‘Do you own a car, Mrs Bradbury?’ She nodded. ‘And where were you last night?’
‘Here. I did my packing and went to bed early.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ smirked Gilmore. ‘You drove over to Lexing to get your own back on your ex-boyfriend.’
She stared at him as if he were mad. ‘I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’
‘Don’t you? Then I’ll spell it out for you. Mark Compton chucked you up. You weren’t going to let the bastard get away with it, so you made abusive phone calls and sent death threats.’
Her head moved slowly from side to side in disbelief. ‘Death threats? I’d scratch his bleeding eyes out, but I wouldn’t make threats.’
‘You did more than scratch his eyes out,’ continued Gilmore. ‘You burnt his house down. But he caught you in the act, so you smashed his skull in and left him to burn to death.’
She looked in appeal to Frost who stared stoically back, hoping his own mystification didn’t show.
‘The death threat letters were made up of words cut from this month’s Reader’s Digest,’ Gilmore continued. ‘And what have we here?’ With a triumphant flourish he waved under her nose a magazine he had retrieved from the waste bin. The current copy of Reader’s Digest.
Frost slumped on to the arm of his chair. He thought Gilmore might have been on to something, but this was grabbing at straws.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ said the woman. ‘They don’t only print one copy. Lots of people buy it.’
‘Oh, I agree, madam,’ purred Gilmore. ‘Lots of people read it. But how many people cut words out?’ He thrust a scissor-slashed page under her nose, then flipped through and found another, and another.
Frost took the magazine. Gilmore was right. The death threat letters had been from this copy of the magazine. He looked up at the woman. ‘Have you got anything to say?’
She stared at him, then at Gilmore, her face white. ‘You’re framing me, you bastards! I want a solicitor.’
‘You can phone from the station,’ said Gilmore. At the door holding her tightly by the arm, he called to Frost, ‘You’d better bring her suitcases down. Forensic will want to examine her clothes.’ He waited while she put on her coat before leading her out to the lift.
With a distinct feeling of being upstaged, Frost gathered up the cases. At the side table he paused and hopefully looked inside the black lacquered cigarette box. It was disappointingly empty. Not his lucky day. Shoulders drooped in resignation, he picked up the cases, kicked the door shut behind him, and left the flat.
The lift taking him down now smelt fleetingly of plump, jolly, hennaed-haired murderess, Jean Bradbury. Frost was vaguely worried. He had his own theories on the Compton killing and the woman didn’t figure in them. But downstairs, with the woman locked safely in the car and glaring poisoned darts at them a smirking Gilmore called to him from one of the residents’ garages.
‘This is her garage,’ said Gilmore as he squeezed past a beige-coloured Mini Cooper and pointed to patches of damp on the concrete floor. The pervading smell was petrol. ‘This must be where she stored the petrol cans.’
Frost nodded gloomily. ‘Well done, son.’ He was forced to admit it. Gilmore was right and he was wrong.
‘I’d better get my prisoner back to the station,’ said Gilmore, leaving his inspector to close the garage doors.
The significance of ‘my prisoner’ instead of ‘our prisoner’ was not lost on Frost.
Police Superintendent Mullett sat to attention in his chair. He was on the phone to the Chief Constable. Opposite the satin mahogany desk stood a self-satisfied Detective Sergeant Gilmore, and a pale-looking Police Sergeant Wells who clutched a sodden handkerchief and kept interrupting the phone call by coughing and spluttering and noisily blowing his nose. If Wells thought he could wheedle his way on to the sick list, when they needed every man they could lay their hands on, he could think again.
‘We’re very much below strength,’ he told the Chief Constable, staring at Wells as he said it, ‘but I think you can rely on the Denton team to turn up trumps on Friday night.’
