Webster raised his eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”
“Because if it’s not him, then it’s got to be someone else, hasn’t it?” muttered Frost, slouching lower into his seat.
They drove in silence until they reached the station, where Frost was dropped off. He had suddenly realized that he hadn’t obtained the Divisional Commander’s authority for the night’s decoy operation.
He trotted into Mullett’s secretary’s office to find the grey-haired Miss Smith crouched over her electronic daisy-wheel typewriter, bashing out a report at high speed.
“Yes, Inspector?” she asked, her eyes not moving from her notebook.
“I’d like to see Hornrim Harry.”
“If you mean the Divisional Commander,” she sniffed, ‘he’s had to go over to County Headquarters. Perhaps I can do something for you?”
“That’s damn generous of you, Ida,” grinned Frost. “Your place or mine?” Still guffawing at his cheap wit, he wandered away, leaving Miss Smith hot-cheeked and fuming.
He ambled over to Sergeant Johnny Johnson at the front desk. “How many men can you spare me for tonight, Johnny?” he asked.
“None,” replied the sergeant, ruling a line to finish an entry. “What did you want them for?”
“Operation Mousetrap. A decoy operation to nab our rapist.”
Johnson nodded. Vaguely he recalled the details, but as far as he knew it hadn’t been officially approved. “Have you spoken to Mr. Mullett about it?”
Frost offered his cigarettes. “I’ve just come from his office,” he said truthfully.
Johnson accepted a light, then consulted the shift rota. “How long would you want them for?”
“As long as it takes, Johnny. Two or three hours, perhaps. If he hasn’t taken the bait by one o’clock, say, I’ll call it off for the night.”
“Tell you what,” said Johnson. “Providing I can call them back if there’s an emergency, I can let you have four men and a patrol car.”
Frost grimaced. This was totally inadequate. Allen’s plan called for a minimum of fifteen men. “Bloody hell, Johnny. It’s Denton Woods I’m trying to cover, not a flaming window box.”
The station sergeant shrugged and returned to the Incident Book. “You can’t have what I haven’t got. Take it or leave it.”
There could be no question about Frost’s answer. No way could the plan possibly succeed with such a pathetically inadequate force. It would be disastrous.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
Webster had just sat himself down in the armchair in his room and closed his eyes for a couple of minutes before shooting off in the Cortina to Sue’s place to spend almost an hour with her before they would have to leave for Operation Mousetrap. But he must have drifted into a deep sleep.
He and Susan, together with Dave Shelby and Mrs. Dawson, were all enjoying a naked, sweaty, lusty foursome in that bed with the padded leather headboard when the door burst open. In the doorway, twitching with fury, was Max Dawson with the shotgun. As Dawson pulled the trigger, Webster suddenly jerked awake and the blast changed into the jangle of the phone.
It was Sue. Angry. Demanding to know where the hell he was. He looked at his watch. Damn and bloody blast! Ten minutes to ten and the briefing meeting at 10.15 sharp.
He splashed cold water over his face and leaped down the stairs to the car. By anticipating a couple of traffic light changes he was outside her flat, honking the horn, at three minutes to ten. She scurried across to the car, not looking at him. She looked marvelous. She had scrubbed her face clean of make-up and her skin glowed. Her hair was pulled back in a simple style, and she wore faded jeans and a white nylon zip-up windbreaker over a red-and-white-striped T-shirt. Look virginal and innocent, Frost had told her. She looked so virginal and innocent, Webster was all ready to drag her straight back to the flat, into the bed, and to hell with Denton, Frost and Operation-bloody-Mousetrap.
She sat tight-lipped beside him in the car, her face set, her eyes smouldering.
“Sorry, Sue,” he said meekly. “I fell asleep in the chair. I was so damn tired.” He clouted the horn with the palm of his hand as some idiot on a pedal bike swerved directly into their path.
Sue fidgeted with the shoulder strap of her handbag. “It doesn’t matter,” she said sniffily, staring straight ahead.
“Look, I said I’m bloody sorry…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she repeated.
He spun the wheel, turning the car into a dimly lit side road, and jammed on the brakes. He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her, forcing her mouth open, finding her tongue. When they parted, they were both gasping for air like stranded fish. He offered her the radio handset. “Call Frost and tell him you’re not coming. You’ve changed your mind. If he’s running the show the whole thing’s going to be a bloody farce anyway.”
She pushed the handset away. “I always keep my promises.”
He started up the car, then rejoined the traffic flow in the main road. “When Operation Mousetrap finishes, can I spend the rest of the night at your place?”
Her lips curved into a well-scrubbed, virginal, simple, roaringly erotic smile. “That’s a promise,” she said.
Webster put his full weight on the accelerator and left the rest of the traffic standing. He wouldn’t be sleeping alone tonight.
Unless, of course, there was another of Frost’s monumental sod-ups.
They were only five minutes late reaching the briefing room. A burst of raucous laughter billowed out as they opened the door. Frost, sitting on the table up on the dais, had just reached the punchline of some crude joke and was chortling away louder than any of his audience. It was a very small audience. Five men, four of them in casual clothes. At first Webster had difficulty recognizing them, they looked so different out of uniform. The one with the drooping moustache and that moon-faced one, both wearing polar neck sweaters, weren’t they Jordan and Simms, the crew of Charlie Alpha? The young kid in the zip-up leather jacket was, of course, Collier, happy to be away from Police Sergeant Bill Wells for a night. Next to Collier, also in a leather jacket was PC Burton, twenty-five, a tough-looking thug with closely cropped hair, and a very good man to have on your side in a fight. The fifth man, PC Kenny, was the only member of the team wearing uniform.
As Susan entered in her rapist-bait outfit, there were yells of delight and a salvo of wolf whistles. Webster glowered his disapproval. This was a serious business, not a pub outing. He snatched a glance at his watch. Twenty-one minutes past ten. So where were all the others? He was expecting between fifteen and twenty at least.
“This is all there is,” Frost told him.
All? Four hundred acres of woods, miles of paths and a total of seven men. It was ludicrous, farcical, irresponsible, dangerous. “Sue’s not going ahead with it,” he told Frost.
Frost’s face fell. “Aren’t you, Sue?”
She slashed a look at Webster. “Of course I am, sir.”
“That’s all right then,” said Frost, looking relieved. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and ripped out an ear-piercing whistle as an appeal for silence. “Round the map,” he called. They crowded around the wall map.
“This mass of green,” began Frost, ‘is Denton Woods. There’s no way we can cover it properly, so we concentrate on the area where he made his two previous assaults and we bank on Sue’s sex appeal being strong enough to make him come to us, hot and panting, with more than just his tongue hanging out. Now, we know he’s a cautious bastard. He sniffs out the area in advance. If he sees cops, he stays away, which is probably why Mr. Allen’s previous decoy operations failed. So we are going to try a double decoy. We’ve got PC Kenny here in uniform. Kenny will be driving his patrol car with his blue light flashing, doing the rounds of the woods, covering the entire outer perimeter. I’m hoping that our rapist will be deceived into thinking that what he sees is all there is and that as long as he keeps out of Kenny’s way, he’s going to be safe. In the meantime, long before Sue begins her little nocturnal walk, the rest of us will insinuate ourselves into our positions in this tight little area here.” He tapped the map. “All right up to now?”