‘We could use the hi-fi equipment in the rest room,’ suggested Burton.
They crowded into the rest room. Gilmore slotted in the cassette and turned the amplifier up almost to its maximum. He pressed Play and the hiss of raw tape crackled from the twin speakers.
The bleep screamed out like an alarm signal. Tape hiss. Hello, son. It’s mother, shouted the old lady, the sound almost hurting their ears.
‘Leave it,’ ordered Frost as Gilmore’s hand moved to turn down the volume. You needn’t worry any more about . . . Through the mush, a buzzing vibrating sound. Then another.
‘The door bell,’ muttered Frost. At ordinary volume level it was inaudible.
Just a moment, there’s someone at the door . . . A rustling, then an echoing bang as if someone had hit a microphone. She had put the phone down. Fading footsteps as she padded up the hall to the front door, eager to let in her murderer. Now the tape background roar was paramount. Frost pressed his ear to the speaker. ‘Nothing. I imagine she’s giving him the eyeball through the peep-hole. Ah . . .’ He moved back. Just about audible, the sound of bolts being drawn and the chink of the chain being removed. The lock clicked. The door opened. The woman said something, but it was so faint and the background so loud, they couldn’t distinguish a word. Then a screaming bleep as the automatic cut-off operated.
‘Let me have a go,’ said Burton, elbowing Gilmore away and adjusting various controls on the hi-fi’s graphic equalizer which could cut and boost individual frequencies. ‘Now try it.’
By now, they almost knew every squeak, rustle and click off by heart. When the woman spoke after opening the door it was clearer, but tantalizingly not clear enough for them to make out a single word. ‘Again,’ ordered Frost. But Mrs Watson might have been talking in a foreign language for all the sense it made. God, thought Frost. She could be naming her killer – ‘Come in, Mr Ripper of 19 High Street, Denton’ – yet they couldn’t understand what she was saying.
‘Try the earphones,’ said Burton.
The earphones were better, but still not good enough.
‘Let me have a go,’ said Jill Knight, adjusting the earphones over her tightly curled hair. She listened and frowned. ‘Again,’ she said. The frown was deeper, but this time her lips were moving as if she was repeating what she heard. She took off the earphones. ‘She’s saying, “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t expect you so soon.”’
They played it again through the speaker. The WPC was right. Oh, it’s you. I didn’t expect you so soon. Frost’s head bowed. He had been hoping for so much and this was nothing.
‘She knew him,’ said Burton.
‘And he came sooner than expected,’ muttered Frost. ‘I think that’s called premature ejaculation.’ The resulting laughter lifted his depression. ‘Let’s hear it again.’ He waved aside the moans that they knew it off by heart. ‘Indulge an old man’s whim. We might have missed something.’
Again they listened, but only half-heartedly. The tape had told them everything it could. There was nothing they had missed. Oh, it’s you. I didn’t expect you so soon. The thud of the door closing behind him, then the hiss and clanking as raw tape scraped past the replay heads when the automatic cut-out operated. A bleep . . .
Frost was sitting bolt upright in his chair, an unlit cigarette drooping in his mouth. ‘Again – just the end bit – and the volume as high as you bloody well like.’ Gilmore spun the volume control to its maximum. At first they didn’t spot it. ‘You must be stone bleeding deaf,’ roared Frost. ‘Again . . . and listen this time . . . There!’ And this time they heard it. A fraction of a second before the message switched off. The closing of the front door. The hiss, roar and crackle as the tape bumped past the heads then . . . a boxy, metallic chink.
Burton scratched his head. ‘Could be anything, Inspector. He could have bumped against the table as he came in.’
‘Even if he did,’ said Frost, ‘there was nothing on the hall table that would chink. That is definitely a metallic sound.’
‘There could have been something on the table – something valuable – but he took it away with him,’ suggested Gilmore, who was feeling left out of things.
‘I thought I heard something chinking as he came through the door,’ said the