in mock surprise. He turned to the little blonde WPC standing guard by the door. ‘How long have I got to waste my time here, darling?’
WPC Ridley stared through him and didn’t answer.
‘Natter, natter, natter,’ said Greenway. The door swung open and Frost breezed in, a bulging green case file under his arm. He chucked the file on the table, together with his matches and his cigarettes.
‘Where’s the doctor?’ asked Greenway.
‘He’s putting someone’s cat down at the moment,’ said Frost, dropping into the vacant chair. ‘He’ll be along as soon as he can.’ He poked a cigarette in his mouth and dragged a match along the table top. He lit up, then pushed the packet towards the prisoner.
‘What’s this?’ asked Greenway with a sneer. ‘The good guy and the bad guy routine?’
‘No,’ said Frost, grinning sweetly. ‘We’re both the bad guys. We both hate your guts.’ He lit Greenway’s cigarette. ‘Make us hate you some more. Tell us all about it, blow by blow, thrust by thrust.’
Greenway spread his palms in mock bewilderment. ‘Tell you about what? I haven’t the faintest idea what this is all about.’
Frost puffed out a smoke ring and watched it drift up and curl around the green-shaded light bulb. ‘If you don’t know what it’s about, why did you do a runner?’
‘I panicked. I’m not used to the police barging into my house at night.’ He stood up. ‘If you’re going to charge me, charge me. If not, I’m walking out of here.’
Gilmore pushed him back in the chair. ‘The charge, as you bloody well know, is murder.’
A scornful laugh from Greenway. ‘Murder?’ His eyes flicked from Gilmore to Frost. ‘Who am I supposed to have murdered?’
A damn good act, thought Frost, grudgingly. If I didn’t have the forensic evidence I might start having doubts. He flipped open the folder and took out the photograph of Paula Bartlett, then steered it with his finger across to Greenway. ‘Only fifteen. Must have been easy meat for a great hulking bastard like you.’
Greenway stared at the colour photograph with an expression of utter disbelief. ‘The school kid? This is getting bloody farcical. I gave a statement to that other bloke . . . the miserable-faced git, Inspector Allen. She never even reached my place. I never got a paper that day.’
Gilmore moved his face forward close to Greenway’s. ‘Yes, you bloody did. She delivered the paper. On your own admission you were home that morning. You dragged her in . . . a fifteen-year-old kid, a virgin . . .’
‘A fifteen-year-old virgin? There’s no such thing!’ smirked Greenway.
The detective sergeant’s control snapped. He grabbed the man by the lapels, lifted him and slammed him against the wall. ‘Don’t come the funnies with me, you sod. I saw her body. I saw what you did to her.’
WPC Ridley coughed pointedly, reminding Gilmore that she was there to make notes of everything that happened between the detectives and the prisoner. Gilmore pushed Greenway away and wiped his hands down his jacket as if they were contaminated.
Greenway smouldered. ‘I’m not answering any more questions.’
‘Yes, you are,’ said Frost, ‘otherwise I might accidentally tread on your bad hand again.’ He leant back, balancing the chair on its rear legs, and shot a column of smoke at the yellow ceiling. ‘Let’s talk about mitigating circumstances. Perhaps you didn’t mean to kill her. What did she do – lead you on? Waggle it under your nose, then snatch it away?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ yawned Greenway, feigning boredom. ‘Whoever poked and killed that kid, it wasn’t me. I like them older with big knockers – like that little policewoman there – not flat-chested schoolgirls.’
Frost’s chair crashed down, the sudden noise almost making Greenway leap from his seat. ‘Flat-chested, was she? When you stripped her off you saw she was flatchested.’ He jabbed a finger at Gilmore who was busy with his notebook. ‘Underline that, Sergeant.’
‘You don’t have to strip anyone off to see if they’re flat-chested or not,’ sneered Greenway. ‘That kid used to deliver here in the summer wearing only a T-shirt. You could see she had nothing.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Frost agreed. ‘She didn’t have much to show when I saw her stretched out on the slab in the morgue. It didn’t stop you raping her, though, did it?’
‘Rape?’ He snorted a hollow laugh. ‘You must be bloody hard up for suspects.’
Frost pulled a sheet of typescript from the folder. ‘This is the statement you gave to my colleague, Inspector