The baby in the cot, so still and small, looked like a child's doll. Her arms, covered by the sleeves of a pink nightdress, lay on top of the bedclothes.
'Linda, aged eleven months,' said Hanlon.
Very gently, Frost touched the pale cheeks. They were ice cold. He felt he couldn't take much more and found something interesting to study out in the street, his eyes misting. Why the hell did he become a copper? 'Poor little bastards!' he muttered. It was all he could think of to say.
Angry voices from the hall. He frowned and went to look. Cassidy was snarling away at young PC Packer.
'He was supposed to be guarding the front door,' called Cassidy. 'Any Tom, Dick or Harry could have walked in.'
'Then we'd tell the bastards to walk out again,' replied Frost. 'I asked him to get statements from the neighbours.'
'Well, I've told him to come back on the door.'
Frost exchanged a sympathetic glance with Packer, but said nothing. He wasn't going to row over trivialities with three dead children in the house. He could have done without flaming laughing boy tonight. If he had known Cassidy would want to come he would cheerfully have let him handle the case.
Cassidy was out of sorts, annoyed that Frost had managed to get here before him. He went with Hanlon into the children's room, then emerged, tight-lipped, and they all went into the parents' bedroom with its large double bed and scarlet duvet. The bed, neatly made, its matching scarlet pillows plumped with nightdress and pyjamas folded on top, hadn't been slept in.
Frost wandered across to the window and parted the velour curtains to look out on to the rear garden which was lit up from the lights streaming from the bungalow. Beyond it there seemed to be fields and woodlands stretching to the horizon. At first he couldn't orientate himself as to where they were, then he realized he was looking at the golf course and on the far side was the bungalow of Mullett's golfing friend where the little girl was stabbed. 'Get someone to search the golf course. The mother might have wandered out there.'
'Doing it now,' said Hanlon, pointing to little pinpricks of bobbing lights from distant torches.
They went back through the hall to the dining-room where the father was sitting by the table, staring straight ahead. He was quieter now that the sedative had started to work, but from time to time he shook convulsively and seemed to have no control over his hand which was drumming a tattoo on the table top. His zip-up suede jacket was grease marked and scruffy. There was the tiniest smear of blood across the front.
'From when he carried the body of his son out to the street,' whispered Hanlon.
'Someone make some tea,' said Frost, drawing up a chair to sit opposite the man. 'Mr. Grover. My name is Frost. I'm a police officer.'
Grover stared straight through him, his lips moving, but saying nothing.
'Mr. Grover…'
Grover's head came up slowly, his face wet with tears. 'My kids. She killed them.'
Someone must have given him whisky. Frost could smell it on his breath. 'Who killed them, Mr. Grover?'
'That bitch… that lousy bitch…' His fingers flexed and clawed as if squeezing someone's throat.
'Do you mean your wife?'
Grover suddenly stared at Frost as if seeing him for the first time. 'Who are you?' He slumped forward, buried his head in his hands and started to sob.
Frost wriggled uncomfortably and fished out a cigarette stub. Grover wasn't going to be of any use to anyone. Where was that flaming ambulance?
More commotion from outside then a tap at the door. PC Packer looked in and said, 'Ambulance is here, inspector. And there's a bloke outside who says he's able to help us. His name is Phil Collard. He was working with Mr. Grover tonight. He drove him back here this morning.'
Frost took an instant dislike to Collard the minute the man waddled in. Balding and in his late thirties, Collard was running to fat, had a beer gut and an air of oily concern. 'Mark! It's not bloody true, is it? God tell me it's not true!'
Grover looked up at him and gave a chilling, mirthless smile. 'They're dead,' he said simply. 'They're all dead.' Then he saw the ambulance man and stood up. 'I've got to go to the hospital.' Without another glance at any of them, he walked out of the room with the ambulance man. The passage crackled with blue flashes as the waiting pressmen took their photographs of the bereaved.
Frost waved Collard into the chair vacated by Grover. 'How do you fit into this, Mr. Collard?'
'Mark's my best mate. We went to school together and now we work together.'
'Carpet fitting?'
'Yes.'
'So what can you tell us about tonight?'
'Not much. We usually go to the pub, but just after seven we had this phone call from Denton Shopfitters asking if we could help out with a rush job.'
'What rush job?'
'Fitting a new carpet in the restaurant at Bonley's department store. It's been completely refurbished. Tomorrow is the grand opening David Jason cutting the ribbon but the special carpeting got held up by Customs at the docks. It wouldn't reach the store until well after ten. They wanted us to work all night and lay it. Two hundred quid each, no tax so we jumped at it.'
A tap at the door and a rattle of cups. Packer with the tea. He handed it out in the mugs he had found in the kitchen and put a bag of sugar on the table. 'Thanks,' grunted Frost, nodding for Collard to continue.
'I called round with the van just after eight to pick him up. Nancy had the hump. Sat there sulking, not saying a word… the kids screaming and shouting.'
'Why did she have the hump?'
'She said she was frightened she didn't like being left on her own all night. She was always moaning about being left on her own, even if we only went to the pub for a couple of hours. Anyway, we got to Bonley's about a quarter past eight and fitted all the grippers and underlay. At five past ten the delivery van turns up with the special new carpeting. We worked like the clappers to get the job done and finished about ten to two. I drove Mark back, dropped him off outside here, then went off home. Later I hear all the police sirens so I goes out to take a look and someone tells me Nancy's done the kids in. I couldn't believe it.'
'Did she ever threaten anything like this?'
'She threatened to do herself in we had all the bleeding dramatics but never the kids.'
Frost showed him the red coat from the hall. 'Is this the coat she usually wore?'
Collard nodded. 'Mark bought it for her last Christmas.'
'Any idea where we might find her?'
He pursed his lips and shook his head. 'I heard she'd legged it, but she's got nowhere to go.'
'Friends… relatives…?'
'She didn't make friends. She was a funny cow, very moody. Relatives?' He shrugged. 'Not as far as I know. When she was fourteen her mother's boyfriend started getting fruity so she ran away from home and never went back.'
Frost took a sip at his tea. 'Just for the record, Mr. Collard, is there anyone at Bonley's who can confirm you were there all night?'
'The night security guard he's on duty until six.' Then he realized the implication. 'You're not suggesting…?'
'Just for the record, Mr. Collard,' smiled Frost. 'We have to check everything and everybody, innocent or guilty.' He thanked him and let him go, then lit another cigarette. 'I'm beginning to feel a lot of sympathy for the poor cow,' he told Hanlon. 'Three kids, no friends, a husband who's either round the pub or out all night.'
'I can't feel sorry for her,' said Hanlon. 'They had all their lives in front of them, and she killed them.' 'Something must have snapped, Arthur.' He lifted the mug of tea to his lips when he saw it was a child's mug. It bore the name Dennis. He put it down and pushed it away. He didn't feel like tea any more.
Frost got PC Collier to phone Bonley's and listened to PC Jordan who had been knocking on doors and talking to the neighbours. 'The mother didn't mix with anyone, inspector. She and her husband were always rowing — someone heard them quarrelling tonight just after seven. Another witness thought she heard raised voices just
