‘There’s more,’ said Burton, tugging open a second drawer.
Frost winced and kneed them both shut. ‘Say what you like about Mr Allen, but he’s an industrious bastard. I take it he cleared them all?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then that’s good enough for me.’ He struck a match down the side of the filing cabinet and lit up another cigarette. “Where’s the bike?’
Burton led him to the freezing cold evidence shed in the car-park and unlocked the door.
The bike, swathed in dimpled polythene, was leaning against the wall. Burton pulled off the covering and stood back. A neat little foldable bike in light grey stove-enamel with dark grey handle-grips and pedals. Frost stared at it, but it told him nothing. He waited while Burton replaced the dimpled polythene, then followed him back to the Incident Room.
‘Let’s see the physical evidence.’
Unlocking a metal cupboard Burton took out a large cardboard box that had once held a gross of toilet rolls and dumped it on the desk. Then he pulled a bulging box-file down from the shelf and handed it to the inspector. ‘The main file.’
Frost opened it. From the top of a heap of papers a serious-looking Paula Bartlett regarded him solemnly through dark-rimmed glasses. The school photograph provided by the parents when she first went missing, which was used for the ‘Have You Seen This Girl?’ poster. There were many more photographs, including those taken at the crypt and at the post-mortem. Frost shuddered and dug deeper, pausing to examine the flashlight enlargements showing the handlebar of the bike poking through the green scum of the ditch. ‘Any prints on the bike?’
‘You’ve already asked me, sir. Just the girl’s and the schoolmaster’s.’
Frost paused. Why did little buzzes of intuition whisper in his ear every time the schoolmaster was mentioned?
The rest of the file consisted of negative forensic reports on the bike and the canvas newspaper bag, plus statements from Paula’s school friends — no, she had never talked of running away; no, she wasn’t worried or unhappy about any thing no, she had no boyfriends. In the early days of the investigations, as no body was found, it was hoped that she had dumped her bike and, like so many kids of her age, run away from home. There were reports from various police forces who had followed up sightings of Paula look-alikes, teenage girls on the game or sleeping rough. A few missing teenage girls were restored to their families, but the Bartletts just waited, and hoped, and kept her room ready exactly as she left it.
He closed the file and handed it back to Burton, then pulled the cardboard box towards him. Inside it, loosely folded in a large transparent resealable bag, was the black, mould-speckled plastic rubbish sack, Paula’s shroud, ripped where the knife had cut through to reveal her face.
‘A rubbish sack,’ commented Burton. ‘Millions of them made. No clue there.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ gloomed Frost, taking the next item from the box. A canvas bag which had held the newspapers. The stagnant smell of the scummy ditch in which it had been immersed wafted up as he examined it. He slipped his arm through the shoulder strap. The bag was too high and uncomfortable. Paula was much smaller than he was. What the hell does that prove? he thought. He shrugged off the strap and put the bag on top of the rubbish sack. Next were the brown, fiat-heeled shoes, the stained laces still tied in a neat double bow.
‘Naked, raped and murdered, but still wearing shoes,’ muttered Frost. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘What’s going on?’ Gilmore was staring pointedly at Burton. ‘I thought I told you to go through the senior citizen files.’
‘He’s helping me,’ said Frost. He held up the shoes. ‘Why was she wearing shoes and sod all else?’
‘She tried to get away,’ offered Gilmore, not very interested. Mullett had told them to forget the Paula Bartlett case. ‘She put on her shoes so she could make a run for it, but he came back and caught her.’
‘She’d been raped,’ said Frost. ‘She was terrified. If she wanted to run, she’d bloody well run barefoot. She wouldn’t waste time putting on shoes and tying them both with a double bow.’
‘Then I don’t know,’ grunted Gilmore, moving away and busying himself with the senior citizen files, making it clear that he knew where his priorities were, even if others didn’t.
The brown shoes refused to yield up their secrets, so Frost put them to one side and took out the last item in the box, a large plastic envelope which held the two undelivered newspapers, the Sun and the Daily Telegraph, each folded in two so they would fit the canvas bag.
Frost slipped them from the envelope. The same stagnant smell as the bag, both papers yellowed and tinged with green from their immersion. With great care he unfolded the Sun which the soaking in the ditch had made slightly brittle. Scrawled above the masthead in the newsagent’s writing was the customer’s address, Brook Ctg. He turned to page three and studied the nude dispassionately. She too was stained green. ‘There’s a green-tinged pair of nipples to the north of Kathmandu,’ he intoned, closing the paper, careful to ensure it settled along its original folds.
He nearly missed it. It caught the light as he was returning it to the envelope. A quarter of the way down the back page, running across the width of the paper. A roughened, corrugated tongue-shaped tear an eighth of an inch wide and barely a quarter of an inch long. He pulled out the school master’s Telegraph and scrutinized the back and front pages. Nothing on that, so back to the Sun. It was telling him something, but he didn’t know what. ‘What do you make of this, Burton?’
Burton made nothing of it.
‘Come and look at this, Gilmore,’ called Frost.
Making clear his resentment at being dragged away from more important work, Gilmore took the newspaper, gave it a cursory glance and handed it back. ‘A bit of damage in the handling,’ he said.
No, thought Frost. Not damage in the handling. It was more than that. A faint bell began to tinkle right at the back of his brain. The drunken fat woman earlier that day. Her paper was jammed tight in the letter-box. He’d had to pull it out and he’d torn it. A very similar tear to that on the back page of the undelivered Sun. Or was it undelivered? Hands trembling, he took up the newspaper and gave it a second, loose fold. The rough corrugated tongue ran exactly down the line of the new fold.
Frost felt his excitement rising. ‘Did Mr Allen notice this?’
‘I don’t know, sir. ‘Why, is it important?’
‘It could be bloody important, son. The papers are folded once so the girl can fit them in the canvas bag. But they have to be folded again so they can be poked through the letter- box.’ Frost pointed to the tear. ‘I’d stake my virginity that this paper has been pushed through a letter-box and then pulled out again.’
The DC took the paper and twisted it in the light to examine the abrasion. It was possible. Just about possible. ‘But we know it wasn’t delivered,’ he said.
'Who lives at Brook Cottage?’
Burton pulled the details from the folder and read them aloud. ‘Harold Edward Greenway, aged 47. Self-employed van driver. Lives on his own. His wife walked out on him a couple of years ago.’
This was getting better and better. Frost rubbed his hands with delight. ‘Has he got an alibi for the day the girl went missing?’
Burton turned a page. ‘According to his statement he had no jobs lined up, so he stayed in bed until gone eleven, then pottered about the cottage for the rest of the day. He never saw the girl and he didn’t get a paper.’
‘And we believed him?’
‘We had no reason to doubt him, especially when we found her bike and the papers in the ditch.’
Frost sat on the corner of the desk and shook out three cigarettes. ‘OK. Try this out for a scenario. Harry boy lives all on his own. Wife’s been gone for two years and his dick’s getting rusty through lack of use. One morning, what should come cycling up his path but a nice, fresh, unopened packet of 15-year-old nooky with his copy of the Sun. She rolls it up and pokes it through the door. The sexual symbolism of this act hits him smack in the groin. He invites her in, or drags her in, or whatever. She can scream if she wants to, there’s no-one for miles to hear. Afterwards, when all passion’s spent and she’s screaming rape, he panics, and strangles her.’