‘Family trouble, perhaps? Girls don’t always get on with their stepfathers.’
‘We got on fine,’ insisted Duffy. ‘She was happy at home . . . doing well at school . . . everything was right for her.’
‘If everything was right,’ said Frost, ‘she’d still be alive.’ He stared at Duffy until the man had to turn his head away. ‘We couldn’t find her suicide note.’
The knuckles of Duffy’s hands whitened as he gripped hard the arms of the chair to try to stop his body from shaking. ‘There wasn’t one.’
‘My colleague here is pretty certain there was.’
‘If there had been a note, I’d have found it.’
‘Of course,’ said Frost, treating Duffy to an enigmatic smile. ‘Of course you would.’ He studied the glowing end of his cigarette, then casually asked, ‘Was she pregnant?’
‘Pregnant? Girls don’t kill themselves these days just because they’re pregnant.’
‘It depends who the father is,’ snapped Gilmore.
Duffy’s head came up slowly, angry patches burning his cheeks. He sprang to his feet, fists balled. ‘What are you suggesting? What filth are you bloody suggesting?’
Frost stepped between them and pushed Duffy back into the chair. ‘We’re suggesting nothing, Mr Duffy. The post-mortem will tell us if she was pregnant, in which case we might want to talk to you again.’
‘I’d like to talk to Susan’s mother,’ said Gilmore.
‘No!’ Duffy leapt from the chair and stood by the door to bar their way.
‘It’s all right, sir,’ said Frost. ‘It won’t be necessary.’ He jerked a thumb at Gilmore. ‘Let’s go, Sergeant.’
Gilmore glared at Frost. Right, you sod. Mullett wants the dirt on you, I’ll find it for him. With a curt nod at Duffy, he followed the inspector out. The sobbing from the kitchen was much softer, weaker. The mother had cried herself to exhaustion.
Outside in the car they watched as a hearse pulled up to collect the body for the post-mortem. Two undertakers in shiny black raincoats slid out the coffin.
‘Well?’ asked Gilmore, impatiently. ‘What do we do about it?’
‘We do nothing,’ said Frost. Before Gilmore could protest, he explained. ‘Look, son, just on a hunch and without any evidence, you expect me to believe that Duffy’s been having it away with his unwilling, fifteen-year-old, schoolgirl stepdaughter.’
‘Yes,’ replied Gilmore, biting off each word, ‘that’s exactly what I expect you to believe.’
Frost took a long drag at his cigarette. ‘If it’s any consolation, son, I agree with you all the way. I reckon he put Suzy up the spout and that’s why she killed herself and that’s why stepdaddy destroyed the suicide note. But we could never prove it. She never made a complaint and now she’s dead.’ He wound down the car window and jettisoned his cigarette end into the gutter. ‘There’s sod all we can do about it.’
‘You want proof?’ said Gilmore, his hand on the car door handle. ‘I’ll get you proof. Let me go and talk to the mother. She must have noticed something.’
‘No!’ Frost grabbed Gilmore’s hand and pulled it away from the handle. ‘You do not breathe a word of this to the mother. Don’t you think the poor cow’s suffered enough? Let it drop, son. That’s the end of it.’
Gilmore stared at the rain. ‘So the bastard gets away with it?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Frost. ‘The bastard gets away with it.’ He started the engine.
The undertakers were sliding the coffin into the back of the hearse.
The light in the upstairs bedroom window went out.
The rain bucketed down.
Monday evening shift
The internal phone grunted and gave its peevish ring. Automatically Wells picked it up and said, ‘No, sir, Inspector Frost hasn’t come in yet . . . Yes, sir, the minute I see him.’ He banged the phone down and stamped his feet to try and restore his circulation. It was freezing cold in the lobby. The central heating had broken down and wouldn’t be repaired until the following day at the earliest. How he envied all those lucky devils who were down with the flu and were tucked up in their nice warm beds and didn’t have to put up with Mullett bleating every five minutes. He consulted the wall clock. Twenty to ten. Only ten lousy minutes of the shift gone. Still, it was only half a shift. Sergeant Johnnie Johnson was to relieve him at two. So only another four freezing hours of this.
A roar of poncey aftershave as the new chap, Detective-newly-promoted-to-bloody-Sergeant Gilmore marched up to the desk. ‘Where’s Inspector Frost?’
‘No idea,’ beamed Wells, delighted to be so unhelpful.