'That's what you'd expect, Jack. He works in a petrol station.'
'He was going out that night with his mates, Arthur. He'd put clean flaming jeans on, not his working clothes.' The cigarette tasted foul, so he mashed it; out and lit up another. As he flicked through the Forensic report he noticed something he had missed. A note stating that the attached envelope contained; items found in the pocket of the jeans. What envelope? He found it in his in-tray and ripped it open, hoping to find something that would help. A couple of cinema tickets, a service till receipt for Ј10 withdrawn from Benningtons Bank in the High Street and a supermarket receipt for two hundred cigarettes. Disappointed, he was stuffing them back in the envelope when a thought hit him. 'He smoked a lot, didn't he?'
'What do you mean?' asked Hanlon.
'The ashtray in his flat, next to the bed. It was piled up with fag ends — about forty or more, I reckon.'
'So?'
'So when did he smoke them?'
Hanlon blinked. He didn't know what Frost was going on about. 'Does it matter?'
'Yes, it does flaming matter. When?'
Hanlon shrugged. 'Before he left for the match?'
'No. He left first. The girlfriend had a few hours to go before she had to leave, so she tidied up the place — he told us.'
'So?'
'She didn't smoke, Arthur,' explained Frost patiently. 'She hated mess. She wouldn't have left an ashtray piled high with fag ends. She'd have emptied it.'
'When he got back then, in the early hours?'
'But he told us he was dead beat and flopped straight into bed. It would have taken about two to three hours to have smoked all those fags even if you stuck them up your nose as well.'
Hanlon looked puzzled. 'I don't see where this is leading us.'
'Try this out for size, Arthur. He kills his girlfriend. When he gets back to the flat his mind's in a bloody turmoil; what the hell has he done? He can't sleep, so he lies on the bed and smokes himself sick. Some of those dog-ends had hardly been touched, a couple of drags and he stubbed them out.'
'Just because you lay in bed smoking, it doesn't mean you've killed your girlfriend.'
'Only if you're trying to be fair and logical, Arthur, which I am not. He did it, I bloody know it.' Frost snapped his fingers. 'Wait a minute!' He pulled the receipt for the cigarettes from the envelope, checked the date on his desk calendar then grinned triumphantly. 'At ten o'clock yesterday morning, Arthur, when he was supposed to be fast asleep in his little bed, he was at the supermarket buying two hundred fags… and he told us he didn't wake up until the afternoon.'
'All right… so he couldn't sleep and wanted a smoke.'
'You're missing the flaming point, Arthur. If he's awake at ten, he knows the bloody girl isn't back from the hospital where she's supposed to be working, and when he went out for the fags, he would have seen his car wasn't there, which means the story he told us was a load of flaming cobblers.'
'He might have thought she was doing the shopping — you don't have to go to bed the minute you get in from work.'
'Whose bloody side are you on, Arthur? I want this case out of the way. It's got nothing to do with the serial killings of the other toms and we're wasting too much time on it. Go and bring Lewis in. Don't arrest him, say I want to see him, but don't tell him what about… let's get him worried. Uncertainty, Arthur, nothing puts the wind up people more than baked beans and uncertainty…' He grinned to himself. It wasn't going to be such a bad day after all.
But the minute he walked into the interview room the nagging doubts began to fester. He had missed something, something right under his nose, but he didn't know what the hell it was. These bloody warning bells of his gave the warning without specifying the damn danger.
He sat in the chair and put the folder with the till receipt in front of him while Morgan fiddled with the cassette recorder. His mind was racing. He didn't have the bare bones of a sustainable case against Lewis. All he had was a gut feeling, and one lousy till receipt for cigarettes. If the case came to court without a confession, there was no way of proving that Lewis had gone out that morning and bought the cigarettes — the till receipt could have been issued to anyone.
What he needed was a confession, without it he was sunk. If Lewis insisted he was wearing his work jeans that night, there was no way of disproving it. And the car keys — why were they missing?
A tap at the door and Sergeant Hanlon came in with Lewis who was not looking the bundle of twitching nerves that Frost was hoping for.
'Have you caught the bastard?' asked Lewis, sitting in the chair opposite Frost.
'Not yet,' said Frost. 'But we know who he is, and with your help we'll nail him.'
'Anything,' said Lewis. 'Anything at all.' He dug in his pockets for his cigarettes, but Frost got in first, offering his packet and taking one himself. 'Thanks.' Lewis struck a match and held it out to light Frost's cigarette. Frost took his time, noting with satisfaction that the hand holding the match was trembling slightly. He steadied it with his own. We're getting to you, you bastard, he thought.
From the file on the table he took the typed copy of Lewis's statement. 'I realize it's upsetting asking you to go over this yet again but I want to make certain we've got our facts straight.' A quick glance at the first page. 'The last time you saw Mary alive was when you left for the match about five?'
Lewis nodded.
'When you got back in the early hours, you had no reason to think anything was wrong?'
'No — everything was as it should be!'
'You'd had an eventful night so you flopped into bed, went out like a light into a deep, untroubled sleep?'
'That's right.'
'You didn't wake up until late afternoon and that was the first time you realized she was missing?'
'Yes.'
Frost nodded, as if satisfied. And he was satisfied.
Things were going to plan. Lewis was digging his own grave with his mouth. 'Good. That checks with everything you've told us.' He smiled. 'People tell us lies, but we always find them out.' Lewis twitched a nervous smile back not certain how to take this. Now's the time to hit the bastard with the till receipt, thought Frost. He slowly opened the folder, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the man's face to watch his reaction when he confronted him with proof of his lying.
Frost never reached the till receipt. He suddenly found himself staring goggle-eyed at the calendar on the wall. The date. The bloody date! That was what the little bell in his head had been warning him about. The wall calendar told him it was the 8th. The calendar in his office had said the 7th. Taffy Morgan had forgotten to change the flaming date which meant that the till receipt was for the morning before the murder, not the morning after and had nothing to do with the case. His one lonely trump card had been shot fairly and squarely right up the fundamental orifice. He now had absolutely sod all.
He kept his face impassive as his mind whirled, trying to think of some way to retrieve the situation. He examined the till receipt and gave an Academy Award-winning satisfied nod as if it was of the greatest importance, then placed it face down on the table. He took some more papers from the file, including the useless Forensic report, and positioned them, also face down, alongside the receipt. Let the sod think I've got a full house, he thought, instead of a busted bloody flush. Lewis's eyes were following every move Frost made. Right, this was going to be one hell of a bluff. He didn't even have one card to play. He took a deep breath.
'This is the position. We've got witnesses, we've got discrepancies in statements, we've got conclusive forensic evidence. We now know who killed your girlfriend, Mr Lewis. There's only one thing we need to know, and that's where you can help us.'
'Anything,' said Lewis, eagerly. 'Anything.'
Frost took a cigarette from his packet and slowly tapped it on the table. This was the moment. This was make or break. He lit up, then smiled his most charming and disingenuous smile. His voice sounded fatherly and full of compassion.
'Why did you do it, son?'
He held his breath and waited. Lewis scowled at him, eyes full of hate, his mouth opening and shutting as if
