Then he noticed the bulge in the door pocket on the passenger side. He hadn’t thought of looking there. His hand dived down to meet something cold and hard. He pulled it out. A bottle. Lots of bottles, the spoils from the party of two nights ago… the night they had found Ben Cornish’s dead body. The retirement party! Mullett kept dropping unsubtle little hints about Frost’s own retirement. Well, he’d be dropping even bigger ones when he learned about tonight’s monumental foul-up.
He tore the metal cap from the vodka bottle and took a swig. The spirit tiptoed over his tongue with the velvet delicacy of a cat’s paw, but as it reached his stomach the scratching claws came out. He shuddered. Neat vodka wasn’t his favourite drink. He found a miniature whisky. With his head thrown right back, he poured it down to flush away the vodka taste. A little furnace roared in his stomach. He felt good. The next bottle made him feel better. In fact he felt like taking a drive round to Mullett’s house, heaving a brick through his window, and yelling, “Come on, you bastard, sack me!” The more he thought about this, the more the idea appealed to him.
“Control to Mr. Frost. Come in please.”
What the hell was that? His eyes focused on the radio. He decided to answer the call first, then drive round to Mullett’s house. He fumbled for the handset and pressed the transmit button. “Frost here. Over.”
Bill Wells sounded excited. “Jack, can you get over to the station right away? Burton and Collier are bringing in the rapist.”
Frost’s heart skipped a beat. He was now stone-cold sober. “Are you sure it’s the right man? I’ve already had one disappointment.”
“Positive, Jack. They nabbed him in the woods about ten minutes ago.
He was carrying a black plastic mac. It was stained with blood.”
Burton was waiting for him in the lobby, grinning all over his face.
Over his arm was a cheap black plastic mac.
The desk phone rang. Wells answered it, his face changing as he listened. “It’s for you, Jack,” he called, holding the receiver at arm’s length as if it might explode. “Mr. Mullett.”
Mullett had heard about the decoy fiasco. His message was icily terse. “My office, nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” A click and then the dial tone. Pretending the Commander was still on the line, Frost said loudly into the phone, “Why don’t you get stuffed, you miserable old bastard?” He hung up. “That’s put the po-faced bleeder in his place,” he told the others, who were looking horrified. He beckoned to Burton. “Let’s go and see what Superdick looks like.”
The man in the interview room was hunched at the table, his back to the door, watched over by PC Collier. As Frost and Burton entered, the man turned around. Frost’s euphoria burst and his heart took a sickening nose-dive down to his bowels. The alleged rapist, spluttering with indignation, was Desmond Thorley from the converted railway carriage. “I demand an explanation, Mr. Frost. This is an outrage.”
“I’m as outraged as you are, Desmond,” said Frost, sinking wearily into a chair. “We’ve both been dragged here on false pretences.” He searched his pockets for a cigarette, then remembered he was out. Behind him, Burton and Collier were exchanging puzzled glances, wondering where they had gone wrong. “You pillocks,” he told them, feeling dead tired. “The Demon rapist rapes women. Desmond wouldn’t know what to do with a bloody woman if she came into his bedroom stark naked.”
Desmond shuddered. “What a repulsive thought.”
“But he was carrying the mac,” insisted Burton. “There’s blood on it.”
He opened it out to display the stains.
Jack Frost took the garment and examined it.” It’s blood all right,” he agreed. He folded it carefuly and placed it on the table. “So what’s the answer, Desmond? Are you our rapist? Are you AC/DC? Does your plug fit all sockets?”
Thorley’s faced flushed at the insult. “The very idea!”
Again Frost searched his pockets for a cigarette. Infuriatingly Desmond had none and neither Burton nor Collier smoked. A mental picture of the silver box in Mullett’s office swam before him like the mirage of an oasis to a thirst-crazed man in the desert. He excused himself, sneaked into the Commander’s office, found a key on his bunch that would unlock the desk drawer, and liberally helped himself from the Divisional Commander’s special stock.
He returned to the interview room, puffing happily. “Right,” he said, diffusing expensive Three Castles smoke, ‘let’s get down to business.” He pointed to the mac. “Where did you get this, Desmond?”
“The man dropped it. If that thug of a policeman had asked, I’d have told him. But no, he hurls himself at me, frog-marches me to a dirty old van, and when I try to protest, he yells at me to shut up.”
“He’s a courtesy cop,” explained Frost, letting the smoke trickle slowly from his lungs. “Who dropped it?”
“I don’t know. He bashed into me nearly knocked me over.”
“Start from the beginning,” said Frost.
“Might I have a cigarette?”
Frost puffed across a steam of smoke so Desmond could savour its quality second-hand. “These are really too good for you, Desmond, but tell me about tonight, and if you don’t leave anything out, you might get one.”
“Well,” said Desmond, clasping his hands together,
“I was out on my little nocturnal expedition, looking for courting couples, when I noticed this great big car parked very suspiciously. It was bouncing up and down on its springs and the most peculiar noises were coming from inside. I tiptoed over and peeped through the back window, and what do you think I saw?”
“A disgustingly naked lady underneath a plump little man in red socks?” offered Frost.
Desmond’s eyebrows soared in admiration. “Who’s a clever boy then? Anyway, while I was peeping, the man looks up from his endeavours and shakes his fist at me.”
“You sure it was his fist he shook?” murmured Frost.
“Anyway, I beat a hasty retreat. Good job I did, because a short while later there’s crashing and yelling and police whistles. I thought they might be after me, so I took one of my little shortcuts. Then this man suddenly looms up out of nowhere, carrying something bundled under his arm. He barges into me and sends me flying. When I pick myself up, there’s no sign of him, but the mac is lying on the ground. I picked it up, intending to hand it in at the police station …”
“I bet you were,” scoffed Frost.
“When,” continued Desmond, ‘this oaf of a policeman hurls himself at me. That is every word the gospel truth.”
Frost chucked him a Three Castles and lit it for him, then prodded the mac. “Nothing in the pockets, I suppose?” he asked Burton.
Burton looked embarrassed. “I don’t know, sir. I didn’t look.”
“Well, look now,” said Frost.
Picking up the mac, Burton went through the pockets. The left-hand pocket was empty, but in the other, something he first thought was the bottom of a pocket turned out to be a crumpled plastic bag. He pulled it out and, as he did so, he felt something else. Something the bag had wedged tight in the depths. A key. An old, worn Yale-type key. Not an original, but a copy, with no identification number.
Collier was sent for some fingerprint powder just in case the rapist had forgotten to wipe it clean. He hadn’t!
The screwed-up plastic bag was straightened out. Two holes had been cut from it. The inspector pulled it over Collier’s head. The holes matched his eyes. They had found the “Hooded Terror’s’ famous mask. Originally a waste-bin liner, it didn’t look at all impressive.
Frost turned his attention to the key. He placed it in the centre of the table and stared at it.
“It could be the key to the rapist’s house,” suggested Collier.
“Yes,” agreed Frost. “All we’ve got to do is try it in every front door in the county. If it fits, we’ve got him.”
“Rather like Cinderella’s slipper,” said Desmond.
“Trust you to think of fairy stories,” said Frost, dropping the key into his pocket. “I’ll try it in Mullett’s front door tomorrow. You never know your luck.” He rose from the chair, all the tiredness and depression coming back.