'Yes, Super. The poor sod was having it away when the son welted him with a cricket bat. He died of a severe case of coitus interruptus.'
Mullett wrinkled his nose. He couldn't take Frost's crude attempts at humour. 'So what's the current position?'
'We've released your prisoners on police bail.'
Mullett's eyebrows soared in surprise. 'Released them?'
'They were stinking the place out,' said Frost. 'The council have been round twice to dig up the drains… We know where they are. We can always pull them in when we want them.'
'But this is murder, Frost. We've got a confession. I want them arrested and charged.'
Frost took another drag on his cigarette. 'The son's given us a statement, but it's all a bit vague and he hasn't got all his marbles. We'd be wasting our time taking him and the old girl to Court.'
'That's for the Crown Prosecution Service to decide, not you. Do we know who the victim was?'
'Not yet. All we've got is his first name and we know the approximate date he had his last leg over, but that doesn't help much.'
'Doesn't help much?' echoed Mullett in mock incredulity. 'It narrows things right down. Do something positive for a change. Go through the old records until you find him.'
'We've been through them Once,' said Frost.
'Then go through them again,' snapped Mullett. He smiled inwardly. He was feeling pleased with himself and was already mentally composing the conversation he would have with the Chief Constable: Yes, I took the case over, sir. Frost was getting nowhere so something had to be done. We've got a confession, we know who the victim is, all 't's crossed and 'i's dotted.
Hanlon and Burton came into Frost's office and sank wearily into chairs. Their clothes were dusty and they looked fed up.
'We went through all the missing persons for the year before and the year after,' said Hanlon. 'Only two Dereks, one a fourteen-year-old kid, the other a married man, both returned home after a couple of days. I didn't expect to find anything. We've already been through them once.'
'Never mind, Arthur,' said Frost. 'If you had found something the second time round I'd have chucked it away. Mullett's bloody smug enough as it is.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'But who the hell was he?'
'He might not have lived in Denton,' suggested Burton. 'We could circulate other Divisions.'
'I can see them wasting their time digging through ancient records for us,' said Frost. 'They'd do what I would have done — not look and say they couldn't find anything.' He squirted a salvo of smoke rings up to the ceiling. 'My gut feeling is that he lived or worked in Denton. He had to be within travelling distance of his bit of nooky. The old girl wasn't a bad looker in those days, but even if you were a nipple buff, you wouldn't travel too many miles for a leg over.'
'He could have come by car,' suggested Hanlon.
'Then it would have been parked outside the house, Arthur, and neither the woman nor the son could drive so they wouldn't have been able to get rid of it.' He opened the file and flicked through the pages, then abruptly slammed it shut. 'Why are we sodding about with this? He's been dead forty years and no-one's missed him and we've got a serial killer to try and catch tonight. You two go home and get some kip. I'll see you back here just before midnight.' He stuffed the file back in his drawer, put his feet up on the desk, leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. He'd have a couple of hours' sleep in the office, then get things ready for the night's decoy operation.
He didn't hear the door open. 'Working your fingers to the bone as usual, Frost?' sneered a sarcastic
Mullett.
Frost opened his eyes and dragged his feet from the desk. Flaming Hornrim Harry had a genius for turning up at the wrong moment. 'You want me, Super?' he grunted.
'I've been expecting you to report back to me with the identity of the skeleton.'
'Oh, sorry, about that,' yawned Frost. 'We had no joy. Couldn't trace him.'
'Rubbish,' snapped Mullett. 'No-one goes missing without it being reported. I want a name and I want it tonight!' He spun on his heel and stamped out.
'I'll give you a name!' spat Frost to the closed door. 'Four-eyed bastard!' He froze as the door opened almost immediately. To his relief it wasn't an angry Mullett coming back, it was Liz Maud.
'Tonight's operation, Inspector. You want women as decoys?'
'That's right,' nodded Frost.
'Put my name down.'
Frost hesitated. He already had enough volunteers, but knew the poor cow was itching for a chance to prove herself before going back to her old rank.
'All right Liz, you're on. Tart yourself up and we'll see you in the incident room at midnight.'
20
The incident room was filled with a fog of eye-stinging cigarette smoke. Frost, on his usual perch at the corner of the desk, was on his second packet of the day. As he smoked, his brain churned over and over again his strategy for the night's operations, testing the seams, looking for the flaws that always seemed to be lurking in anything he was involved in.
A chorus of wolf whistles dragged him from his thoughts… WPC Polly Fletcher in a short tight skirt and an even tighter sweater swaggered into the room. She wiggled and gave Frost a suggestive wink. He winked back at her, his nose twitching at the pungent perfume she had doused herself with. 'Where did you get the scent? It smells like the stuff they use to deodorize cats' litter trays.' She grinned. Inwardly he was a ferment of doubts. God, what if it all goes wrong and we end up finding Polly's mutilated body dumped in a ditch somewhere? Too many people were relying on him, and reliability was not one of his assets.
He was snatched out of his introspective gloom when Liz Maud, a long blond wig concealing her dark hair, made her entrance and the wolf whistles soared. Heavily made up, she had squeezed into figure-hugging red trousers and a clinging black sweater, over which she had draped an artificial leopard skin coat. Swinging a long strapped handbag from side to side, she sauntered over to Frost. 'How do I look?' 'I'm selling my Viagra,' said Frost. 'I don't need it any more.'
'Only two girls?' asked Hanlon.
Frost nodded. 'We keep this tight and simple. We don't want to flood the area with maverick toms, it might get Chummy suspicious. And thanks to Mullett, we've only got two cars per girl which is the absolute minimum if we're going to play it safe.'
At that moment Mullett strode in. Everyone, except Frost, sprang respectfully to their feet. 'Come to inspect the troops, Super?' Frost indicated the two girls. 'You're the expert, what do you reckon?'
Mullett squeezed a sour smile. 'They look very… er, nice,' he said weakly. He turned to the assembly. 'A few words. This is an important and expensive operation. I've had to go on my knees to County to get the expenditure authorized and my head will be on the chopping block if we fail. So let's have a successful, cost-effective and speedy outcome.' To a thin ripple of applause and what sounded suspiciously like a slow hand clap from Frost, he gave a brief nod and marched out.
Frost slid off the desk. 'The fact that Mr Mullett's head is on the chopping block must make it very tempting for you all to want to sod things up, but we've got to deny ourselves that pleasure. There's an even more sadistic bastard out there, torturing and raping, and it's up to us to stop his larks once and for all.' He turned to the large street map of Denton Pinned on the wall behind him. 'This is how we're going to play it. If anyone spots any weaknesses in my foolproof plan, for Gawd's sake shout; sometimes my infallibility goes pear-shaped.' He pointed to six coloured pins. 'There are six public phone boxes in the red light areas and we're going to use them all in turn. We don't want Chummy getting suspicious because all calls come from the same two phones. We've got two pseudo toms.' He nodded to Liz and Polly. 'And four cars, which is all that the cheeseparing budget generously donated by our Divisional Commander runs to. Liz and Polly, you've each got a list of cab firms to phone and
