A Touch Of Frost (12 page)

Frost turned to Webster like a stage artist awaiting an ovation, and Webster had the grace to reward him with a silent hand clap. The old fool wasn’t always as stupid as he made out.

“She does a routine in schoolgirl uniform,” continued Baskin. “It gives the dirty old men in the audience a cheap thrill to think they’re watching a juicy young bit of under-aged crumpet peeling off. To be honest, we have to keep the lighting well down so they can’t see how ancient the old cow really is—we don’t want to put the punters off their meat pies.” A sudden thought hit him and he stopped in his tracks. “Here, you’re not suggesting she was involved in this robbery, are you?” He warmed to this theme. “Hold on, though. It makes sense. I should have twigged the minute she didn’t turn up to do her routine. She had inside, knowledge . . . and she could have pretended to be the nurse on the phone.”

“No,” said Frost, “it couldn’t have been her. While you were being robbed, she was out in the woods getting herself booted in the kisser by the famous Denton ‘Hooded Terror’.” Baskin listened, shaking his head in amazement, as the inspector told him what had occurred.

“Who in his right senses would try to rape Paula, Inspector? You could have her any time for the price of a packet of fags, and if you didn’t have the price she’d lend it to you.” He grimaced with irritation as the door crashed open and Allen and Ingram barged in. “What the hell? This is a private office. Get out!”

Allen ignored Baskin and stared past him to the scruffy figure by the desk. “What are you doing here, Frost? I told you this was my case.”

Baskin looked from one inspector to the other. “Blimey, you’re not going to fight over it are you? Just find the joker who robbed me and you can split the money up between you.”

“Robbed you?” cried Allen, his lips quivering as he fought back a smile. “Dear, dear, dear, what a tragedy! How much was taken? A not inconsiderable sum, I trust?” He shook with silent laughter. Ingram, leaning against the wall, obediently joined in.

“I’ve already had this patter from your number-two comic,” snorted Baskin, nodding his head in Frost’s direction. “If you’re not here about the robbery, then what the hell do you want?”

Allen folded his arms and rocked with smug satisfaction on the balls of his feet, biting his lip to stop himself from laughing too soon. How he was going to love telling Frost that the girl he had identified as a fifteen-year-old school kid was an old scrubber. What sort of idiot could make a mistake like that? “Do you know a girl called Paula Grey, Mr Baskin?”

But, annoyingly, before Baskin had a chance to reply, Frost chimed in with, “Paula Grey? That name rings a bell!” He knuckled his forehead in mock concentration, then snapped his fingers triumphantly. “Got her! Paula Grey, the stripping schoolgirl. She works for Harry. She’s the girl who was attacked in Denton Woods tonight. Didn’t you know that, Allen?”

Allen, completely put out, stopped rocking. “Of course I damn well knew that. I’ve just taken a statement from her. But how did you know?”

Frost shrugged modestly. “Intelligent deduction.”

“Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join in?” asked Baskin peevishly.

Allen transferred his attention to the club owner. “Your employee Paula Grey was savagely attacked tonight. She claims you had threatened to sack her if she turned up late for a show.”

“That’s right,” nodded Baskin.

“She overslept,” Allen continued grimly, “so, to save time, she put on her stage clobber in her flat and took a shortcut through the woods, and that’s where it all happened. The bastard jumped her, chucked something over her head, then squeezed her throat until she passed out.”

Baskin took his cigar from his mouth and shook the spit from the end. “If he was after a nice young bit of the other, he must have been broken-hearted when he took the cloth from her face. I think the poor old cow draws her old-age pension next month.”

“You’ve got a heart as big and warm as Golders Green Crematorium,” observed Frost.

“He’s right, though,” said Ingram, moving to the centre of the room. “We think that’s why he beat her up instead of raping her. He only likes young stuff, and Paula was a great big turnoff.”

The malicious glint in Allen’s eye warned Ingram he would pay for having stolen his master’s thunder.

Taking advantage of the situation, Webster thought he’d try a spot of ingratiation in the hope it would improve his chances of being transferred from Frost to Allen. “How’s the search in the woods going, sir?” he asked, politely.

“Search?” shrieked Allen. “Don’t talk to me about the search. It’s a farce! I doubt if half of the search team are sober. I’ve called it off until tomorrow morning.” His head moved from Webster to Frost. “I’m holding a briefing meeting tomorrow, at nine. You were there when the victim was found, so I want you to attend.”

“Sure,” said Frost, wondering how he could fit in some sleep. “I’ll have to be away pretty sharp, though. I’ve got to go to a postmortem.”

Telling Baskin he’d be back in the morning after he’d taken statements from the two security men, Frost signalled to Webster, busily engaged in a silent scowling match with Ingram, that it was time to leave. They were almost through the door when Allen fired his parting salvo.

“You will have the overtime returns done by the morning, won’t you? You know it’s the last day if we’re to catch the computer.”

“Sure,” said Frost automatically while his brain shrieked at him in horror. The bloody overtime returns! Was it time for them already? In the worry of trying to get the crime statistics off, he’d completely forgotten the damn things. Quickly he closed the door behind them before Allen could think of any more horrors he should have done.

As they crossed the car park, heads down against the slanting rain, he told Webster to remind him about doing the overtime figures the minute they got back to the office.

“Sure,” said Webster. It seemed to be the ‘in’ word.

They didn’t make it to the station. Control diverted them to Denton Hospital to follow up a complaint about a man prowling around the nurses’ sleeping quarters.

Ridley was most apologetic. “Sorry to dump this one on you, Inspector, but there’s no-one else available.”

“I hope you realize, Constable,” replied Frost sternly, trying to keep the delight from his voice, “that you’re stopping me from doing the overtime returns.”

“It was horrible,” said the little nurse. “He had these awful red, staring eyes . . . and his mouth was all dribbling.”

I’d be all dribbling if I caught a sight of you in the buff, thought Frost.

The little nurse in her shortie nightdress was all excited now she was the centre of attraction, and she was reliving her ordeal for the benefit of three other young nurses, none older than twenty and all in various stages of undress.

“I’d taken everything off . . . everything . . . when I realized I hadn’t drawn the curtains. I went to the window to do it, and there he was.”

The lucky bastard! thought Frost.

A thrill of excitement ran through her audience. “I screamed,” she went on. “I thought he was trying to get in, and all the time I kept thinking about that nurse who was raped. I was terrified.”

Frost leaned forward and patted her warm, quivering young arm. “Don’t worry, love. We’ll get him.”

A pointed cough of disapproval from Sister Plummer, the eunuch in charge of the harem, made Frost snatch his hand away hurriedly. Sister Plummer was the supervisor of the Nurses’ Home, a gaunt, miserable-looking woman in her late fifties, with a hatchet face, and beady, suspicious eyes. “She looks just like the nurse who shaved me for my appendix operation,” Frost later confided to Webster. “She used to think a man’s dick was just a handle to lift him up by.”

Webster returned from searching the grounds. “No signs of anyone,” he announced, wishing it had been him who stayed with the half-dressed nurses and Frost who floundered about in the dark and the cold.

The nurse’s shortie nightie was starting to slip down, and inch by inch, her beautiful, firm, young, creamy breasts were emerging like mountains through clouds. Frost was pondering ways to make his questions last until the crucial moment, when the eunuch said, “Nurse! Cover yourself!” and the treat was terminated.

“From the direction he was running,” said the little nurse, “I think he went into the main hospital building.” Now she tells me, thought Webster.

“Hadn’t you better start searching the hospital, Inspector?” rasped Sister Plummer. “It’s time the nurses were in bed. They’ve all got busy days tomorrow.” The nurses all looked too wide awake and excited for sleep, but Frost was forced to take the hint.

“We’ll go through the place with a fine-tooth comb,” he assured them.

“If he’s still there, we’ll find him.”

Frost and Webster returned to the main building.

“How do you intend to carry out this search?” Webster asked.

Frost grinned. “You didn’t think I was serious, did you, son? That was just to keep that little nurse happy. This bloke isn’t going to hang about in the hospital. He’ll be miles away by now.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“True, son,” agreed the inspector, “but this place is a bloody rabbit warren. Even if he were here, we’d never find him, so we won’t bother looking.”

“He could be the rapist,” insisted Webster, determined that things should be done properly. “He’s already had one nurse.”

Frost laughed scoffingly. “The rapist, son? Do you think a man who strips off juicy young birds and has his wicked way with them is going to be satisfied with peeping through a window? This was just a Peeping Tom, getting a cheap thrill from a flash of snowy-white thigh, and don’t I envy the bastard. That little nurse was a goer if ever I saw one.”

At four o’clock in the morning the hospital was a desolate and cheerless place. Frost told Webster that more patients died at this hour than at any other time of day. “If you hear a trolley, odds are it’s got a body on it . . .”

They trekked the labyrinth of corridors, past wards illuminated only by the night sister’s desk lamp, past a group of anxious relatives talking to the little Asian doctor, who was shaking his head sadly “Another body on its way,” said Frost past abandoned oxygen cylinders and trollies piled high with red hospital blankets.

It was as they approached the turnoff that would lead them to the exit that the nurse screamed.

They ran, Frost panting, out of breath, well behind the constable.

“There!” yelled Webster.

Ahead, a nurse, white-faced, stumbled toward them in blind panic. She looked up, mouth open, ready to scream again when she saw the two strange men hurtling toward her. Webster was the first to reach her. He waved his warrant card. “It’s all right, Nurse, we’re police officers. What happened?”

Too terrified to speak, she looked from Webster to Frost, her mouth working, then, still trembling she pointed back to the open door of a storeroom. At last she was able to speak. “A man in there. I went to get some clean sheets. He was horrible . . .”

“Let’s take a look,” said Webster, moving cautiously into the dark of the storeroom and groping for the light switch. The fluorescent tubes seemed to resent being woken up at such an unearthly hour, but finally, with a half-hearted crackle, they flashed and flooded out cold, blue light.

Inside the large room were racks of wooden shelving, all neatly stacked with folded blankets, bed linen, rubber sheets, and pillows. No sign of a lecherous intruder. Webster walked around inside. “Can’t see anyone,” he said to the nurse, who was hovering anxiously by the door.

Braver now that she had company, she joined him, her head turning from side to side, looking, wanting to prove that she hadn’t imagined it. “There was someone here,” she insisted.

Frost wandered in after them, his nose twitching. “There’s a hell of a stink in here . . .” He sniffed again, his eyes slowly scanning the racks, missing nothing. “I spy with my little eye . . . someone on the top rack . . . there!”

Webster followed his finger but couldn’t see anything. He grasped the wooden supports and shook the racks as if he were shaking apples from a tree. “Come on, you bugger. Down you get or I’ll drag you down.”

A heap of blankets on the top shelf heaved, then slithered to the floor. A dirty brown overcoat struggled out, then two red-rimmed eyes peered down at them. Webster turned his head away in disgust as the smell wafted down to hit him in the face.

“I wasn’t doing no harm,” whined the man.

“No harm?” cried Frost, “You’re stinking the place out.”

“What are you after drugs?” demanded Webster as the old man, a tramp in his mid-sixties, climbed stiffly down.

Short and stooped, he had tiny, red-rimmed, deepset eyes; his face was greasy and black and grey with stubble. His nose, large and route-mapped with tiny red veins, cried out for the urgent attention of a handkerchief. Matted hair flopped over the dirt-stiffened collar of the brown overcoat, which had been made many years ago for someone much bigger. His hands, the nails chipped and black, reached up to the top shelf for a bulging brown carrier bag which he clutched protectively to his chest.

Frost identified him from the very first sniff. “Blimey, Wally, hasn’t the hospital got enough germs of its own without you bringing yours in as well?”

“I’m an old man, Mr. Frost. Just looking for a place to rest my poor head for the night.” A dewdrop shimmered at the end of his nose. He gave a juicy sniff, which temporarily delayed its further descent.

“So you rested your poor head against the window of the nurses’ bedroom?”

“I didn’t know there was anyone in there . . . honest. I just happened to look in as she happened to look out our eyes sort of met.”

“Sounds like something out of
True Romance
,” said Frost. “So if you weren’t after an eyeful of naked nurse, what were you after? And what have you got in that bag?”

He reached out for it, but Wally shrank back, clutching the bag as tightly as he could. With difficulty, Frost managed to prise it from the tramp’s greasy grasp and looked inside. Scraps of clothes, bits of food and a three-quarters-full wine bottle. “I hope you haven’t stolen someone’s specimen,” said Frost, pulling out the cork and cautiously sniffing the contents. “It’s either meths or the stuff they pickle human organs in. Is this what you’ve sneaked in to pinch?”