inside pocket for something to jot a reminder down on and felt an unfamiliar wad of papers. His car expenses. Something else he had forgotten about. How the hell was he going to find the time to get the proper copies made that bloody County were demanding? He stuffed them back in his pocket and forgot about them again.
‘What are we doing here?’ asked Gilmore.
‘I don’t know,’ said Frost wearily. ‘I just wanted to have a think away from all the bloody crying.’ He looked around the room. Everything plain and simple, just like the dead girl. No posters, no pop records. On the bedside cabinet was a framed photograph of her mother and father. A small bookcase held some children’s books, her school textbooks, a Collins Concise Encyclopedia and a Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Inside the bedside cabinet, standing on its end, was a black and green Adidas nylon holdall. He unzipped it and looked inside. Some gym clothes, a track suit and a couple of exercise books. He stuffed it back again. On the floor by the cabinet was a wastepaper bin. The bin contained a crumpled Milky Way wrapper and a small cardboard carton that had once held a lipstick.
‘You’re right, son,’ he said. ‘We’re wasting our bloody time here.’
He opened the door and they went downstairs.
The crying went on and on.
They let themselves out.
Monday night shift (2)
Sergeant Wells stared glumly at the cold scummy tea left in the cup, palmed two aspirins into his mouth and flushed them down in a shuddering swallow. It was just a headache. He envied those lucky devils who had gone down with the flu virus and were tucked up in their nice warm beds, leaving mugs like him to do the extra duties they were being paid for. He had been on duty since half-past nine, no-one to help him, the heating on the blink, no canteen and Mullett demanding cups of tea or coffee every five minutes.
‘Two teas and a fairy cake, please, Sergeant.’
Wells jerked two fingers up at Jack Frost who came bouncing in with that aftershaved ponce, Gilmore.
Frost ambled over and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Bleeding cold in here, Bill. It was warmer down the crypt.’
‘Only the people who matter get heat. It’s like St Tropez in Mullett’s office. And he wants to see you.’
‘He can’t get enough of me,’ said Frost, trotting off to the inner sanctum.
‘Gilmore!’ Wells called as the detective sergeant headed for the office. ‘Your wife phoned about two hours ago. Wanted to know when you were coming home.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gilmore. ‘If she phones again . . .’
‘If she phones again,’ cut in Wells, ‘you talk to her. I’m off in fifteen minutes.’ In any case, he wasn’t acting as messenger boy for a lousy jumped-up ex-detective constable.
It wasn’t cold in Mullett’s office. The 3-kilowatt heater purred happily, and Frost had to fight to keep awake in the hot room as he gave the Divisional Commander a brief update, sparing none of the details.
‘Burnt with a blow-lamp?’ gasped the shocked Mullett. ‘That’s depraved . . . You kept it from the parents?’
‘Yes,’ said Frost. ‘And I want it kept from the press – that and the fact she was wearing shoes.’ There’d be the usual spate of nutters coming up with false confessions based on details they’d read in the papers.
‘And the pathologist is quite certain the body wasn’t placed in that crypt tonight?’ asked Mullett, reluctant to let the inspector off the hook.
‘The poor little cow was dumped weeks ago . . . that’s why she’s stinking to high heaven now.’
Mullet winced and moved his chair back slightly. Frost’s description of the advanced state of decomposition had been so graphic, he was sure he could smell it. Or perhaps the stench was clinging to that dirty old mac Frost insisted on wearing. Frost took a cigarette end from behind his ear and pushed it into his mouth. He struck a match on his fingernail. Mullett sighed deeply. This case would get extensive press and TV coverage. He daren’t risk exposing this slovenly, foul-mouthed lout to the media as typical of the Denton constabulary.
He cleared his throat. ‘I have decided to take full executive control of this case, Inspector.’
The lighted match paused an inch from the end of the cigarette. ‘Executive control?’
‘Yes. You will be responsible for the day-to-day routine, but under my direct control. Do you understand?’
I do all the work and get the bollockings when things go wrong, and you take all