Risley Remand Centre . . . drunken driving, malicious damage and assaulting a police officer. He’s been in custody for the past two weeks.’
‘Damn!’ Gilmore’s foot lashed out at the waste bin in anger, spilling the contents over the floor. His one and only suspect now had a cast-iron alibi. They were back to square one.
There was no further point in staying. Frost rewound his scarf and began to button up his coat while Gilmore, on his knees, stuffed the spilt papers back into the bin.
‘One last question,’ said Gilmore. ‘Do you own a car, Mrs Bradbury?’ She nodded. ‘And where were you last night?’
‘Here. I did my packing and went to bed early.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ smirked Gilmore. ‘You drove over to Lexing to get your own back on your ex-boyfriend.’
She stared at him as if he were mad. ‘I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’
‘Don’t you? Then I’ll spell it out for you. Mark Compton chucked you up. You weren’t going to let the bastard get away with it, so you made abusive phone calls and sent death threats.’
Her head moved slowly from side to side in disbelief. ‘Death threats? I’d scratch his bleeding eyes out, but I wouldn’t make threats.’
‘You did more than scratch his eyes out,’ continued Gilmore. ‘You burnt his house down. But he caught you in the act, so you smashed his skull in and left him to burn to death.’
She looked in appeal to Frost who stared stoically back, hoping his own mystification didn’t show.
‘The death threat letters were made up of words cut from this month’s Reader’s Digest,’ Gilmore continued. ‘And what have we here?’ With a triumphant flourish he waved under her nose a magazine he had retrieved from the waste bin. The current copy of Reader’s Digest.
Frost slumped on to the arm of his chair. He thought Gilmore might have been on to something, but this was grabbing at straws.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ said the woman. ‘They don’t only print one copy. Lots of people buy it.’
‘Oh, I agree, madam,’ purred Gilmore. ‘Lots of people read it. But how many people cut words out?’ He thrust a scissor-slashed page under her nose, then flipped through and found another, and another. . .
Frost took the magazine. Gilmore was right. The death threat letters had been from this copy of the magazine. He looked up at the woman. ‘Have you got anything to say?’
She stared at him, then at Gilmore, her face white. ‘You’re framing me, you bastards! I want a solicitor.’
‘You can phone from the station,’ said Gilmore. At the door holding her tightly by the arm, he called to Frost, ‘You’d better bring her suitcases down. Forensic will want to examine her clothes.’ He waited while she put on her coat before leading her out to the lift.
With a distinct feeling of being upstaged, Frost gathered up the cases. At the side table he paused and hopefully looked inside the black lacquered cigarette box. It was disappointingly empty. Not his lucky day. Shoulders drooped in resignation, he picked up the cases, kicked the door shut behind him, and left the flat.
The lift taking him down now smelt fleetingly of plump, jolly, hennaed-haired murderess, Jean Bradbury. Frost was vaguely worried. He had his own theories on the Compton killing and the woman didn’t figure in them. But downstairs, with the woman locked safely in the car and glaring poisoned darts at them a smirking Gilmore called to him from one of the residents’ garages.
‘This is her garage,’ said Gilmore as he squeezed past a beige-coloured Mini Cooper and pointed to patches of damp on the concrete floor. The pervading smell was petrol. ‘This must be where she stored the petrol cans.’
Frost nodded gloomily. ‘Well done, son.’ He was forced to admit it. Gilmore was right and he was wrong.
‘I’d better get my prisoner back to the station,’ said Gilmore, leaving his inspector to close the garage doors.
The significance of ‘my prisoner’ instead of ‘our prisoner’ was not lost on Frost.
Police Superintendent Mullett sat to attention in his chair. He was on the phone to the Chief Constable. Opposite the satin mahogany desk stood a self-satisfied Detective Sergeant Gilmore, and a pale-looking Police Sergeant Wells who clutched a sodden handkerchief and kept interrupting the phone call by coughing and spluttering and noisily blowing his nose. If Wells thought he could wheedle his way on to the sick list, when they needed every man they could lay their hands on,