at Burton. ‘I thought I told you to go through the senior citizen files.’
‘He’s helping me,’ said Frost. He held up the shoes. ‘Why was she wearing shoes and sod all else?’
‘She tried to get away,’ offered Gilmore, not very interested. Mullet had told them to forget the Paula Bartlett case. ‘She put on her shoes so she could make a run for it, but he came back and caught her.’
‘She’d been raped,’ said Frost. ‘She was terrified. If she wanted to run, she’d bloody well run barefoot. She wouldn’t waste time putting on shoes and tying them both with a double bow.’
‘Then I don’t know,’ grunted Gilmore, moving away and busying himself with the senior citizen files, making it clear that he knew where his priorities were, even if others didn’t.
The brown shoes refused to yield up their secrets, so Frost put them to one side and took out the last item in the box, a large plastic envelope which held the two undelivered newspapers, the Sun and the Daily Telegraph, each folded in two so they would fit the canvas bag.
Frost slipped them from the envelope. The same stagnant smell as the bag, both papers yellowed and tinged with green from their immersion. With great care he unfolded the Sun which the soaking in the ditch had made slightly brittle. Scrawled above the masthead in the newsagent’s writing was the customer’s address, Brook Ctg. He turned to page three and studied the nude dispassionately. She too was stained green. ‘There’s a green-tinged pair of nipples to the north of Kathmandu,’ he intoned, closing the paper, careful to ensure it settled along its original folds.
He nearly missed it. It caught the light as he was returning it to the envelope. A quarter of the way down the back page, running across the width of the paper. A roughened, corrugated tongue-shaped tear an eighth of an inch wide and barely a quarter of an inch long. He pulled out the schoolmaster’s Telegraph and scrutinized the back and front pages. Nothing on that, so back to the Sun. It was telling him something, but he didn’t know what. ‘What do you make of this, Burton?’
Burton made nothing of it.
‘Come and look at this, Gilmore,’ called Frost.
Making clear his resentment at being dragged away from more important work, Gilmore took the newspaper, gave it a cursory glance and handed it back. ‘A bit of damage in the handling,’ he said.
No, thought Frost. Not damage in the handling. It was more than that. A faint bell began to tinkle right at the back of his brain. The drunken fat woman earlier that day. Her paper was jammed tight in the letter-box. He’d had to pull it out and he’d torn it. A very similar tear to that on the back page of the undelivered Sun. Or was it undelivered? Hands trembling, he took up the newspaper and gave it a second, loose fold. The rough corrugated tongue ran exactly down the line of the new fold.
Frost felt his excitement rising. ‘Did Mr Allen notice this?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Why, is it important?’
‘It could be bloody important, son. The papers are folded once so the girl can fit them in the canvas bag. But they have to be folded again so they can be poked through the letter-box.’ Frost pointed to the tear. ‘I’d stake my virginity that this paper has been pushed through a letter-box and then pulled out again.’
The DC took the paper and twisted it in the light to examine the abrasion. It was possible. Just about possible. ‘But we know it wasn’t delivered,’ he said.
‘Who lives at Brook Cottage?’
Burton pulled the details from the folder and read them aloud. ‘Harold Edward Greenway, aged 47. Self-employed van driver. Lives on his own. His wife walked out on him a couple of years ago.’
This was getting better and better. Frost rubbed his hands with delight. ‘Has he got an alibi for the day the girl went missing?’
Burton turned a page. ‘According to his statement he had no jobs lined up, so he stayed in bed until gone eleven, then pottered about the cottage for the rest of the day. He never saw the girl and he didn’t get a paper.’
‘And we believed him?’
‘We had no reason to doubt him, especially when we found her bike and the papers in the ditch.’
Frost sat on the corner of the desk and shook out three cigarettes. ‘OK. Try this out for a scenario. Harry boy