'Well, Maggie?'
She looked worried. 'I've done nothing wrong. He's my toy boy.'
'I know,' said Frost. 'I saw you toying with his dick.' He parked himself in the armchair and loosened his scarf. 'I didn't come about him. It's about Lemmy.'
'Oh?' She tried to sound unconcerned, but her nervousness showed. She wouldn't look at Frost as she dug down in the dressing-gown pocket and found a cigarette then crossed to the mantelpiece for her lighter, keeping her back to him.
Frost was watching her every movement. He wished he could see her face. 'Lemmy's dead, Maggie.'
Her back stiffened. For a brief second the lighter paused an inch from her cigarette then, hand shaking, she lit up and turned slowly to face him. 'Dead?'
He nodded. 'He's been dead for three months.'
She sat in the other chair, facing him, and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. 'How did it happen?'
'Someone smashed his skull in.'
She gave the tiniest twitch of a shrug. 'Oh dear.'
'I must say, you're bearing up bravely to your sad loss, Maggie.'
She snorted a sarcastic laugh. 'If you're waiting for me to break down and cry, don't hold your bloody breath. Lemmy was a bastard, a vicious, sadistic bastard and if he's dead, I'm glad… I'm over the moon.'
'When did you see him last?'
Her brow furrowed in thought. 'Beginning of August. We had a row and he walked out.' She flicked cigarette ash towards the fireplace and seemed unconcerned when it fell short on to the carpet. A woman after my own heart, thought Frost.
'Lemmy walked out… just like that? Leaving his house… his car?'
'Yes.'
'I find that very hard to believe, Maggie. What was this row about theological matters?'
'He'd been seeing another woman.'
'What's her name?'
'I don't know her name Lily, I think.'
Behind Frost the door opened and closed as Cassidy came back in.
'Where does Lily live?'
'I don't know her address. Someone said he'd been knocking about with another woman. I questioned him about it, we had a row and he walked out.'
'I've got a better suggestion,' said Cassidy, walking across the room and standing over her. 'Lemmy couldn't satisfy you so you started paying young kids to have it away. Lemmy came home early one day and caught you at it. There was a fight and you killed him.'
Maggie was up on her feet, shouting at him. 'That's a bloody lie!'
'Is it?' smirked Cassidy. 'I've been talking to your toy boy in the other room. All the kids round here know about you and your depraved habits. You pay them ten quid a time, don't you? It's been going on for months — even when Lemmy was still alive.'
She glared at him. 'If- and I'm not admitting anything if I had it off with kids, they were all over age.'
'Did they come with their dick in one hand and their birth certificate in the other?' asked Frost.
Cassidy scowled. This was a serious murder enquiry and he could do without Frost's infantile jokes. 'He caught you at it once, didn't he, Maggie? The kid only just got out of the house in time. Lemmy beat the living daylights out of you.'
'Ah right so he caught me at it. So bloody what?'
'He finds you with a kid and he beats you up, but when you tell Lemmy you've heard he's having it off with another woman, he meekly legs it away, not even bothering to take his motor.'
'Yes.' She thrust her chin out defiantly at Cassidy. 'That's exactly what happened.'
'Get some drawers on, Maggie,' said Frost. 'We'll continue this down at the nick.' When she went upstairs to dress, he asked Cassidy about the boy. 'Is he under age?'
'He says he's sixteen.'
'We'll check him out when we get to the station.'
'I'll do the questioning,' said Cassidy. It was a statement, not a request.
'This is Arthur Hanlon's case,' said Frost.
'Hanlon is only a sergeant.'
Frost shrugged. What the hell… Arthur would be only too pleased to get shot of it. 'Sure… take the case over.'
Cassidy smiled his satisfaction. Maggie's story was so weak, he was sure he could get a confession out of her without any trouble. Nice to be able to go in to Mullett and say, with the right touch of diffidence, 'I've cleared this one up, sir.'
'We'd better get a team over to search the house,' said Frost. 'If she killed Lemmy there might be the odd drop of blood or bits of finger knocking about she forgot to wipe up.'
He had just finished radioing instructions through to Control when Bill Wells took over the microphone. 'Jack you're just round the corner from the old Rook Street housing estate?'
'Is that so?' grunted Frost. 'I was wondering where I was.'
'That missing girl Judy Gleeson. Just had a phone call. Bloke wouldn't give his name, but reckons he saw a man dragging a young girl into one of those derelict houses in Rock Street.'
'Which house? The street's full of them.'
'That's all he told us, then he hung up.'
'Bless his bleeding heart,' said Frost. 'It won't take us more than four or five hours to search through the lot. I'll need help.'
'Wonder Woman and Burton are on the way.' 'I'll meet them on the corner,' said Frost.
The Rook Street estate had been built in the early fifties using a new French method of construction which involved preformed concrete slabs and metal binding rods. It was cheap and quick. The finished estate looked like a prison block, but people desperate for housing were pleased to have anything. Over the years serious faults began to develop.
It transpired that the wrong mix of cement had been used in the construction. The concrete slabs started disintegrating and the metal binding rods corroded and crumbled, making the structures highly dangerous. Experts said there was no economical cure, so the properties were condemned and the tenants re housed
The street was now a double row of decaying properties with damp-blackened concrete and the doors and windows boarded up with 18mm block board held in place by six-inch nails. An empty, miserable street, exuding the damp musty aroma of desolation.
Slowly, Burton drove down the road with Frost and Liz flashing torches on the houses as they passed them, looking for signs of forced entry. Nothing. All doors and windows appeared firmly sealed. 'I suppose we checked this place when we were looking for the boy?' Frost asked.
'One of the first places we looked,' said Burton. 'But I think they only checked that the doors and windows were still boarded up.'
'Better do it thoroughly tomorrow,' said Frost. 'Let's take a look round the back that's where I'd break in.'
As they climbed out of the car, the wind kicked ancient sheets of newspapers across the road in front of them and dribbled an empty tin can along the kerb.
A high wooden fence protected the rear area. Frost clambered over it, hissing with annoyance as his mac no caught on a nail and tore. He leant over to help Liz, but she ignored him, insisting on climbing over on her own and then offering her hand to Burton who was making heavy weather of it. They thudded down into a junk-littered jungle that once was a garden. The harsh moonlight shone on a row of boarded up windows and doors, all looking secure and untouched. Scrambling over dividing fences, they checked each house carefully.
They found the point of entry in the third house they examined, where the boarding had been newly wrenched away from a downstairs window. Frost signalled for Burton to go round to the front in case anyone attempted to get out that way, then swung over the sill and dropped inside. Liz followed. The intense darkness of the boarded-up house seemed to swallow up the light from Liz's torch as they padded across bare floorboards. A
