'Right.' Frost scribbled this down on the back of a supermarket till receipt, then suddenly seemed to think of something else. 'This may sound silly. You took 5 out. What did you want the money for?'
'I was going to the disco at Goya's. It's a big night.'
'The disco was in the evening. Why did you draw the money out in the morning?'
'Why not?' she said defiantly. 'It was as good a time as any.'
'I suppose so,' said Frost, grudgingly. He worried away for a while at his scar. 'After you drew it out, you waited a few minutes, then paid it back. Why was that?'
'I suddenly realized I had a standing order coming up and if I withdrew the money it couldn't be met.'
'So you had to give the disco a miss?'
'No. Ian lent me the money.'
'Good old Ian. Did you go straight to the bank from your house?'
'Yes.'
'Your mother seemed surprised when we told her you were at the bank. She thought you would have been at school.'
'I don't tell her everything.'
An understanding smile. 'I bet you don't. Did you go straight from your house to the bank?'
'Yes.'
'Right.' He started to scribble this down, then paused. 'Wait a minute. Your mother said you left the house at your usual time for school and you were wearing your school uniform.'
'Yes well, I wanted her to think I was going to school, didn't I?'
'And you went straight to the bank.'
'That's right.' She wasn't so quick with her answers now.
'We've got a witness.. He shuffled through some pieces of paper and pretended to read from one. 'Ah yes… an old dear. Not very reliable, I'm afraid… half blind and didn't have her glasses with her. She says she could have sworn you were wearing jeans and a dirty old duffel coat… not your nice smart uniform.'
'Then she was mistaken.'
'So you were in school uniform the one you are wearing now?'
'Yes.'
Frost turned to Liz Maud as he scratched out what he had just written down. 'You see, sergeant that silly old dear got it all wrong.' He patted the papers together and stuffed them in his pocket, then swung the chair round to face the girl and smiled with a nod as if that was all he wanted her for. As she got up to go he suddenly snapped his fingers. 'I'm a stupid git — I'm getting all confused. It wasn't the old lady who said you were in casual clothes, it was the bank security video… black duffel coat with the hood up and light trousers.' He beamed at her. 'So either you or the bank video camera are telling me porkies.'
She stared at him, her lips moving silently as she tried out alternative answers. At last she said, 'I took different clothes with me and changed in the public toilets.'
'So what did you do with your school clothes flush them down the pan? They weren't with you while you were in the bank.'
'All right, all right!' She was almost shouting. 'Ian met me round the corner from my house in his van. My mother doesn't like me going out with him. I changed in the back of his van while he drove me to the bank. He waited for me, then took me to his place. Satisfied?'
'Perfectly,' said Frost, standing up. 'I just wanted to get the incongruities straightened out. Thanks for your time.' He gave the girl a brisk nod, then he and Liz left the school.
In the car, Liz said, 'She was lying.'
'Of course she was,' said Frost. 'So let's nip round and see Ian what's-his-name and find out what sort of lies he's going to tell us.'
There was a van parked outside the house, a battered, rust-riddled light brown Ford with the name of the previous trader crudely erased with black paint.
'Your witness said the van he saw was light brown,' said Frost.
'I thought you didn't believe him,' sniffed Liz.
'I can be flexible when it suits me,' smirked Frost. 'Sometimes I'm flexible when it doesn't suit me.' He pressed the door bell.
Ian Grafton was eighteen, tall and wiry, wearing his black greasy hair in a thick pigtail. He took them to his upstairs flat.
'I expect Tracey's phoned you about us, Ian,' said Frost, noting the pay-phone on the landing. 'Just wanted to confirm a couple of things.'
Grafton occupied a bed-sit. He was unemployed. Social Security paid the rent. His last job was doing deliveries for a local furniture shop, but the job collapsed when the firm went bust some twelve months ago. He hadn't worked since. They sat on the bed in his small room with its pop posters and the midi hi-fi unit and went through the motions of scribbling down his confirmation of Tracey's story. He agreed every word of it and Frost was sure he too was lying.
'You waited outside the bank for her?' asked Frost. 'Now, thinking back on it, did you notice anything suspicious… any weirdos hanging about?'
'The only weirdo was a fat tart of a traffic warden who gave me a flaming ticket for parking on a double yellow line.' He snatched it from a shelf and waved it at Frost who squinted at the date and time. It tallied.
'Thank you, Ian. We might want to speak to you again.'
He took another look at the van as they left. The same colour as the one the witness saw, but if it received a parking ticket at 9.35, then it couldn't have been the van the naked Carol Stanfield was held in. He worried away at this, but the pieces refused to fit.
He didn't have time to brood for long. As soon as Liz opened the car door, there was a radio message. Would Frost get over to the mortuary right away. The mother hadn't committed suicide. She had been murdered.
'Murdered?' said Frost.
The hospital pathologist, who had thought he was going to carry out a routine autopsy, nodded. 'Come and see.'
The body was on the autopsy table and much of the blood had now been washed off. Her clothes had been removed and the head had been put in place, ready to be sutured back on to the torso to make her presentable for relatives. The junior technician who had been summoned to perform this task was hovering in the background.
Frost and Liz looked down at the body. With the clothes removed, the pathologist had no need to explain. There were stab marks all over the abdomen and the area of the heart. The lower incisions were encrusted with dried blood. Frost did a quick count. She had been stabbed eleven times.
'Shit!' This was a complication he could have done without.
'The incision through the heart would have been enough to kill her,' said the pathologist. 'She was dead before she went over that railway bridge.'
Frost gave a deep sigh. 'Any chance the wounds were self-inflicted, doc?' He knew it was a stupid question, but he wanted to cling to his suicide theory.
The pathologist shook his head. 'Look at her hands.'
Frost knew he should have checked before he asked. The backs of the hands showed slashes and stab wounds. They were inflicted as she tried to defend herself.
'This is right outside my league,' said the pathologist. 'You'll have to get Mr. Drysdale to do the autopsy.'
'All right,' said Frost. 'Put her back in the fridge until he gets here.'
The junior technician helped the mortuary assistant to slide the torso on to a trolley then, with a look of distaste, carefully picked up the head and dropped it into a large polythene bag which he also placed on the trolley.
They met Cassidy as they were walking back to the car. 'Stabbed,' said Frost tersely. 'About eleven times. Dead before she was chucked in front of the train.'
Cassidy barely concealed a smirk. 'I knew this case wasn't as straightforward as you tried to make out.'
'Nothing I touch turns out to be bloody straightforward,' said Frost ruefully.
'Have they done the autopsy?'
