'I hope you left your cell nice and clean because you'll be back again tomorrow,' said Frost. 'I'm charging you with assaulting a police officer.'
Morgan looked dismayed. He tugged at Frost's sleeve. 'No, guv. He was drunk. He didn't mean it.'
'You bet I bloody meant it,' shouted Leyton. He turned to Frost with a provocative grin. 'Come on, copper, charge me. I want to be charged. Let the court know why I want to beat his bleeding brains out.'
Frost's eyes swivelled from one to the other, Leyton furious, Morgan looking embarrassed and guilty. He jabbed a finger at Collier. 'Stay with Leyton. I'll be back in a minute.' Grabbing Morgan's arm, he pushed him into an empty office and slammed the door. 'Right, Taffy. What the flaming hell is going on?'
Morgan hung his head and mumbled to the pattern on the threadbare carpet. 'Nothing, guv. It's trivial. I don't want to press charges.'
'Trivial?' echoed Frost in disbelief. 'A convicted criminal bashing the living daylights out of a police officer? If you don't charge him, then I will.' He moved to the door, but Morgan called him back.
'Wait, guv…' The DC slumped down in a chair and put on his hangdog, little boy caught stealing the jam expression, the expression that made weak-kneed women take him to their hearts before taking him to their beds. 'It's a bit embarrassing, guv…'
'Then embarrass me,' said Frost, folding his arms and leaning against the wall.
'I met this woman, see. She seemed a nice type… I didn't know she was married. Honest, guv, I wouldn't have touched her with a barge pole if I thought she was married.'
'Barge pole!' exclaimed Frost, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 'I bet you touched her with something bigger than a bleeding barge pole.' Then the penny dropped. 'You're not trying to tell me she was Leyton's wife?'
Morgan gave a shamefaced nod.
'A known criminal?' croaked Frost. 'And while he was doing time, you was doing his old lady?'
'I never knew she was his wife, guv — cross my heart.'
'Where did you meet her?'
'The Raven's Arms. I went there for a quiet drink.'
Frost snorted. 'No-one goes to the Raven's Arms for a quiet drink. OK, let's hear the rest of this Mills and Boon love story. Did she take you to her place or was it the first shop doorway you came to?'
'We went to her place, guv.'
'Double bed or single?'
'Double, guv.'
'And you didn't think to ask who usually occupied the other half?'
'You know how it is, guv, the minute their knickers come off the last thing on your mind is asking personal questions.'
Frost sighed and poked a cigarette in his mouth. 'You're a bloody fool, Taffy. Knocking off the wife of a known criminal… If Mullett gets to hear of it you can kiss your job goodbye… and Leyton wants to cause trouble.'
'I know, guv. Sorry, guv.' Morgan gave Frost his soulful, wide-eyed expression.
'You're not sorry you did it, you're sorry the bastard found you out,' sniffed Frost. He pinched out the cigarette and dropped it in his pocket. 'All right — you nip back to the office and finish off those flaming crime figures. I'll see if I can get you off the hook with Leyton. And then I'm having a word with the canteen — I don't think they're putting enough bromide in your tea.'
Morgan grinned sheepishly and slunk out.
Leyton looked up belligerently as Frost entered the interview room, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been removed. 'I'm going to get that randy sod kicked out of the force,' he snarled.
Frost sat at the table then tugged a folded computer print-out from his pocket. 'Bit of advice, sonny. Don't mess about with the police. We can play dirtier than you and there's more of us.'
'He knocked off my wife.'
'He was the only man in Denton who hadn't up to then. It was his turn.'
'She's still my bloody wife.'
Frost unfolded the print-out. 'I've been looking at that electronics warehouse job we pulled you in for — the one where the old night-watchman got beaten up.'
Leyton leant back, arms folded, and smirked. 'You couldn't touch me… I had an alibi.'
'That's right,' agreed Frost. 'You said you were in bed with your wife and she backed you up. But what if my randy police officer suddenly remembers he was in bed with her at the time and although his mind was on other things, he was pretty certain you weren't in the bed as well? That would kick your alibi right up the arse. And then I could get a search warrant and make sure some of the stolen loot was found in your house. I could probably splash a bit of the night-watchman's blood on it just to make sure.'
'You bastard… You'd plant evidence?'
'Well — we both know you did it… I'd just be giving the wheels of justice a squirt of oil.'
Leyton leant across the table. 'All right. So what's the deal?'
'You made a mistake. You thought it was DC Morgan, but it wasn't. You apologize for hitting him and he graciously accepts your apology.'
'You bastard!' said Leyton.
'Apology accepted,' said Frost.
Morgan, suitably shamefaced, sat, lips moving silently, as he transferred figures from a stack of files to the large return that County sent out monthly to waste everyone's time. Opposite him, Frost sat staring again at his car expense claim. Mileage up on last month, but purchase of petrol down by almost half. He must have made a silly mistake on last month's claim but no one in County had spotted it. Tapping the pencil against his teeth, he stared across to the facing wall for inspiration. Pinned up behind Morgan's desk was a poster displaying an enlarged photograph of eight-year-old Vicky Stuart smiling her trusting, gap-toothed smile. MISSING FROM HOME. It had been up nearly nine weeks and in spite of extensive searches and appeals over radio, TV and press, they were no further on in finding her than the day she went missing. The kid was now just another statistic for Taffy's unsolved crime return, the poster a permanent reminder of yet another of his failures. He tore his gaze away and found the bundle of blank petrol receipt forms he had accumulated from various petrol stations in the Division. He passed one over to Morgan. 'Make this out for seventeen gallons.'
Morgan squinted at it. 'Your car doesn't hold seventeen gallons, guv.'
'So I spilt some. Just do it.' Useless in many ways, nobody forged a better petrol receipt than Morgan who scribbled off the receipt, then dragged a tall, unsteady stack of files over towards him. Frost closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable to happen… A splatter of files falling all over the floor and the muttered 'Damn!' from Morgan.
'Mind you don't drop them,' murmured Frost, carefully changing a 7 to a 9.
Morgan scooped up the files. A photograph from one of them fluttered to the floor. He retrieved it, tut-tutting and shaking his head in disgust as he looked at it. 'The things some of these swine's do to women never fails to shock me, guv.'
Frost took a look. 'Nasty! That's one of Inspector Alien's old cases…' The photograph was of a naked woman, on her back in long grass, mouth distorted by a tight gag, eyes open and bulging. Red indentations round the wrists and ankles showed where she had been tied down before being beaten, burnt with a cigarette, raped, then suffocated. 'Linda Roberts,' said Frost, 'a part-time prostitute — twenty-six years old. Allen reckons she picked up a punter who liked a spot of the old sado-masochism but it went too far.'
Morgan shuddered and stuffed the photograph back in the folder. 'Did we get the bloke who did it?'
Frost shook his head. 'Not a sniff. We were afraid he might have developed a taste for this sort of thing, but so far, poor old Linda is the one and only.'
The office door opened, letting in a solid blast of noise from the lobby and a perspiring Sergeant Wells. 'Where's Wonder Woman? I've got an armed robbery for her.'
Frost looked up. 'Haven't seen her for some time… Armed robbery?'
'As if we didn't have enough on our bleeding plates. A bloke with a shotgun holds up the all-night filling station and mini-mart near the Eastern Roundabout. This old age pensioner, armed with a shopping bag, decides to do a Clint Eastwood but gets shot in the legs for his trouble…' He frowned. 'What's this?' He was looking at the petrol receipt Frost had slapped in his hand.
'Alter that 5 into an 8.'
