‘I don’t know,’ replied Frost. ‘It could mean nothing. I just don’t know. We’ve found Debbie’s bike.’ He gave them the details.
‘Why was her bike thrown in the lake?’ shrieked Mrs Clark. ‘Something’s happened to her. I just know it.’
So do I, thought Frost, but he kept his face impassive. ‘There could be all sorts of reasons, Mrs Clark. She could have left the bike somewhere, someone stole it, rode off, then dumped it in the lake. That sort of thing often happens.’
‘She could be drowned in that lake.’
‘That’s the only thing we’re positive about at the moment. We’ve had the frogmen out. She isn’t in the lake, that I promise yow’
‘Then where the bloody hell is she?’ demanded Clark.
‘She could be holed up with the boy somewhere, too frightened to come home.’
‘If she is, I’ll wring that lad’s neck,’ snarled Clark.
Mrs Clark had buried her head in her hands and was sobbing convulsively. ‘She’s dead. I just know it. My little Debbie… she’s dead.’
‘We’ll find her,’ said Frost, hoping he sounded convincing. ‘Try not to worry. We’ll find her.’
Clark showed him out. ‘You’d better bloody find her,’ he snarled. ‘And if your procrastination has caused my daughter any harm, you’ll wish you’d never been born.’
Thank God that’s over, thought Frost as he climbed into his car. If we do find her body, I hope bloody Skinner is the one to break the news. So now for Billy King.
Billy King’s house was a shabby-looking, two storey property, standing all on its own on disused farmland. Parked in front of the house was a dilapidated caravan, its flaking cream and green paint showing large patches of rust, the wheels sunk deep in muddied ruts.
PC Collier watched Frost pound on the front door with the flat of his hand and rattle the letter box. They could hear sounds from inside, but no one came to the door. Frost banged again, emphasising his knocking with a couple of hefty kicks.
At last the door was opened by a squat little double-chinned man in his shirtsleeves.
‘Give us a flaming chance! Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it!’ Then recognition dawned. He poked a podgy finger at the inspector. ‘Detective Sergeant Frost! Cor, haven’t you aged?’
‘Detective Inspector,’ corrected Frost.
‘Inspector?’ gasped King incredulously. ‘They’ve never made you a flaming inspector!’ He turned to PC Collier. ‘Frost was always a scream – a pleasure being arrested by him cos he always made you laugh!’
‘Then this will make you flaming wet yourself,’ Frost told him. ‘I’ve got a warrant to search your premises.’
‘Pull the other one,’ giggled King. ‘You think I don’t know what this is all about? Come on in. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ They followed him through to a small kitchen. ‘Have you caught the sod yet?’
‘What particular sod did you have in mind?’ asked Frost.
‘The burglar. The sod who pinched my stuff.’ Frost blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t you know what is going on in your own flaming station? I was burgled, wasn’t I? Sod broke in while we were away in the caravan on holiday. When I came back, the place had been done over. I’d been burgled.’
‘Who’d burgle this bleeding place?’ said Frost.
‘You’d spend more on petrol driving here than you could nick. You’re saying you had a burglary and you didn’t report it?’
‘Of course I flaming well reported it. A little fat bloke came round.’
‘Detective Sergeant Hanlon?’
‘That’s him. And he was bloody useless. Nosed around, got some bloke to chuck fingerprint powder all over the place, then pissed off. That was the last I heard. I thought you were here to tell me you’d caught him.’
‘You used to do a bit of burglary yourself, Bill. This sounds like an insurance fiddle to me.’
‘Insurance fiddle? Don’t talk to me about insurance companies. They’re quick to take your flaming premium, but when you’re unlucky enough to be robbed, they won’t pay out. They want receipts. Who the hell keeps receipts?’
‘Especially when you nicked the stuff in the first place,’ said Frost, stuffing the search warrant back in his mac pocket. ‘What was taken?’
‘He turned the place over – made a right bleeding mess of it. Flaming amateur, if you ask me. All he took was an old wallet with a couple of quid in it.’
‘And the wallet was all you claimed for on your insurance policy?’
Billy spread his hands and shrugged. ‘All right, Inspector Frost, I’ll come clean as it’s you. I might have exaggerated about the brand-new telly and DVD player and the wife’s designer clothes, but all he took was the wallet with a couple of quid in it.’
‘Was there anything else in the wallet apart from money?’
‘Condoms, you mean? No, the wife has her own method of birth control. She bolts the bedroom door.’ He wheezed heartily at his own joke.
‘What about a cashpoint card for the Fortress Building Society?’
King screwed up his face in thought. ‘Might have been. I haven’t dealt with them for ages. I’m with the Woolwich now.’ He frowned. ‘Are you telling me the bastard took that as well?’ He reached for the phone. ‘I’m closing my account. There wasn’t much left in it, but that bastard isn’t going to have it.’
Frost knocked Billy’s hand away from the phone. ‘No, don’t do anything. If he tries to use it, Billy, we can get him.’ He pushed himself up from the chair. He’d check with Hanlon, but King’s story had the ring of truth about it, and for all his faults, Billy wasn’t the kind of bloke who would go around poisoning baby food. He paused as a thought struck him. The pin number. The blackmailer would be unable to withdraw money without the pin number. ‘Was your pin number in the wallet?’
‘Of course it was. Safest place for it. I wrote it on the back of the card.’
Frost smiled. ‘What would crooks do without prats like you, Billy?’ He waved away the offer of a cup of tea and remembered his long-delayed wee. ‘Do you think I could use your toilet?’
‘But I haven’t got a report of a flaming burglary;’ said Frost, riffling once more through his over flowing in-tray. ‘I felt a bigger prat than usual, going in there with a search warrant to find a card that had already been nicked.’
‘I definitely sent you a copy, Jack,’ insisted Hanlon. ‘I gave it to that Welsh bloke.’
‘Gave it to the Welsh bloke?’ exploded Frost, pushing his in-tray away. ‘You might just as well have flushed it down the flaming karzy.’ He opened his office door and bellowed down the corridor. ‘Lloyd flaming George. Come here!’
DC Morgan came trotting in, not knowing his offence, but wearing his hang-dog look of contrition, just in case. ‘You wanted me, Guv?’
‘No,’ snapped Frost. ‘I don’t flaming want you, but I’m stuck with you. The crime report Hanlon gave you?’
Morgan looked blank for a moment, then brightened. ‘All filed away, Guv.’ He pulled open the drawer of the filing cabinet.
‘You didn’t think I should see it first – just in case I wanted to know what was going on?’ He held his hand out for the report and skimmed through it. ‘Smashed a back window to get in and cut his hand doing so. That rings a bell. Did we take a sample for DNA?’
‘Not worth the expense, Jack,’ Hanlon told him. ‘All he’d taken was a wallet with a few quid in it. SOCO found the odd print, but couldn’t match them with anyone on record.’
‘No, they wouldn’t,’ said Frost. ‘This bloke is a rank amateur, like flaming Taffy here. Plenty of stuff he could have pinched, but he didn’t touch it because he wouldn’t know where to sell it. All he could handle was money and he was flaming lucky to find the wallet.’
‘And you reckon this is the same bloke who’s blackmailing the supermarket?’
‘Yes. Now he’s got the account details, he can have the hush money paid in.’
‘But for all he knew, when Billy King realised it was pinched he’d have stopped it with the building society.’
‘I doubt he thought that far ahead, Arthur. He probably tried the card out, found it worked and reckoned he was on to a winner. A flaming amateur trying for the big time. Shouldn’t be hard to nab the sod. We’ll pay Beazley’s cheque in, then we’ll watch all the cashpoints and when our blackmailer tries to make a withdrawal, we’ve got him.’