lit up another cigarette. When the whining from the ear-piece stopped, he picked up the receiver and made a few sympathetic sounds with the result that Wells now grudgingly admitted that perhaps he could spare one man and one car to keep a spasmodic watch on The Old Mill, but he couldn’t guarantee one hundred per cent coverage.
‘You’re a prince, Bill,’ said Frost. ‘Your generosity is exceeded only by the size of your dick.’ He hung up quickly before Wells could change his mind then twisted his chair round to tell his sergeant the good news, but if he expected thanks, he was disappointed.
‘What a bloody way to run a station,’ snarled Gilmore, stamping out of the room.
The office was too cold to stay in for long so Frost sauntered along to the Murder Incident Room where the temperature wasn’t much better. Two WPCs and one uniformed man, all well wrapped up against the cold, were beavering through the senior citizen burglary files and answering the spasmodic phone calls that were still coming in following the TV broadcast. Another WPC was slowly working through the vast computer print-out of light vans and estate cars, either blue or of a colour which could be mistaken for blue under street lamps. ‘Mr Mullett’s orders,’ she explained.
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ sniffed Frost. ‘Anything stupid and useless, it’s always Mr Mullett’s orders.’ Even if a blue van was involved, it could well have been repainted but still be registered under its original colour.
He dipped into the filing tray and read a couple of the messages. Paula was still being sighted. A woman had spotted her in France, and a man was positive that Paula was the same girl who had delivered his paper that very morning.
At a corner desk, DC Burton, a sandwich in his hand, was reading the Sun. He stuffed it away hastily as Frost approached and busied himself with the senior citizen files. ‘On my refreshment break, sir,’ he explained. He accepted a cigarette. ‘Hoskins and the girl have been charged. We’re holding them in the cells overnight pending the result of the forensic examination.’
Frost nodded and plonked himself down on a chair. ‘I want to get filled in on the Paula Bartlett case, but I’m too bleeding lazy to read through the file. Start right from the beginning.’
‘September 14th,’ said Burton. ‘She was on her paper round. Left the shop at 7.05.’
‘Hold it,’ interrupted Frost. ‘Five past seven? Her parents said she usually started her round at half-past seven.’
‘That was when her teacher gave her the lift. She would have had to cycle to school that day, so she gave herself more time.’
Frost blew an enormous smoke ring and watched it wriggle lazily around the room. ‘I’m still listening.’
‘At five o’clock her parents are expecting her home from school. By half-past five they’re phoning around and are told she hadn’t been to school at all that day. At ten past six they phone us.’
‘And two months later, we found her,’ commented Frost, wryly.
Burton grinned patiently. ‘Anyway, we sent an area car. They got details of her delivery route from the paper shop and followed it through with the customers. As you know, she never made the last two houses.’ He heaved himself from his chair and crossed to the large-scale wall map. ‘Her last delivery was here at around 8.15.’ His finger jabbed the map. ‘Her next delivery should have been Brook Cottage . . . here. She never made it.’
Frost joined him at the map which was studded with yellow thumb tacks marking Paula’s progress. ‘She was doing her round half an hour earlier than usual?’
Burton nodded.
‘Then unless the bloke who abducted her knew that, it must have happened by chance – he saw her, acted on impulse and grabbed her.’
Burton destroyed that theory. ‘She’d been doing it half an hour earlier for the previous four days, sir. Mr Bell stayed away from school when his wife died, so Paula didn’t get her lift in.’
‘Whoever it was, he must have had a car. He either bundled her in and dumped the bike, or it was someone she knew and trusted. Someone, perhaps, with a wispy beard who offered her a lift. The bike went in the boot and he dumped it later.’
A tolerant smile from Burton. Inspector Allen had reasoned all this out months ago. ‘If she was picked up in a car, sir, it couldn’t have been by Mr Bell. He never left the house before