She studied the colour print briefly, shook her head, and handed it back. ‘Sorry. Never seen him before.’
‘Perhaps you don’t recognize him with his clothes on,’ Frost suggested.
Her face tightened and her eyes blazed. ‘You can get out right now.’ She flung open the door dramatically, her breasts heaving, straining the woollen dress to the limits.
Frost heaved himself from the chair. ‘We’re going, love, but you’re coming with us. Get her coat, Sergeant.’
She hesitated. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the station. I want a policewoman to examine you.’
‘Examine me? Why?’
‘If you haven’t got a little strawberry birthmark on your lower stomach, my apologies will bring tears to your eyes.’
She closed the door and turned slowly. ‘How do you know about that?’
‘You should keep your blinds closed when you’re entertaining,’ sneered Gilmore.
‘You had an audience,’ added Frost. ‘An old boy with field-glasses watching from the car-park.’
Her hand covered her mouth. She looked horrified. ‘Watching us?’
‘From start to finish. And then he sent a poison pen letter to your client. It described you in graphic detail.’
Her face crimsoned to match her hair. ‘Let’s get one bloody thing straight. I’m not a tart. Yes, I knew Mark Compton. We were lovers. He came here and we made love and it was wonderful and if some dirty little snivelling shit in a filthy raincoat was watching, then sod him. I’m ashamed of nothing.’
‘Eat your heart out, Mills and Boon,’ said Frost. ‘But you said you knew him. You were lovers. Past tense?’
‘Yes — past tense, because the bastard threw me up last week. Came here, made love, then calmly told me it was all over. Look — what the hell is this all about?’
Gilmore raised his head from his notebook. He was content to let Frost ask the preliminary questions, but he would step in when the time was ripe. So she was a discarded lover. Not an uncommon motive for murder.
But Frost, digging fruitlessly through his pockets in the hope of finding a pinched-out butt, didn’t seem to have realized the significance. ‘Why did he chuck you?’ He watched enviously as she took a cigarette from a black lacquered box on a side table and lit it with a tiny, initialled, blue and gold enamelled lighter.
‘He was afraid his wife might find out.’ She flung her head back and laughed bitterly. ‘His bloody wife! He always told me he was going to divorce her and marry me… and like a fool I bloody believed him. Even when the bastard’s cheques bounced, I believed him.’
‘Cheques?’ queried Frost, tapping his empty Lambert and Butler packet hopefully, but she didn’t take the hint.
‘He was always borrowing money, and when I asked him to pay me back, his cheques bounced.’
‘How much money are we talking about?’
‘Getting on for?500, which I could ill afford.’
Frost scratched his chin. ‘He sounds a right charmer. How long have you known him?’
‘A couple of months. We met in London.’ She dropped down into the other chair and her breasts bounced like Mark Compton’s cheques. Do that again, Frost pleaded silently.
‘Does your husband know of this association?’ asked Gilmore who, unlike Frost whose gaze was directed higher, had noticed the wedding ring on her finger.
She gave a tight smile and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘My husband is a very violent and jealous man. That’s why I left him.’ Her hands travelled over her body and she winced in remembrance. ‘I could show you bruises…’ Yes please, pleaded Frost, again silently. ‘I changed my name so he couldn’t trace me. If he ever found out that Mark had been my lover, he would have killed us both.’
Frost’s head jerked up. ‘Changed your name?’
‘East is my maiden name. My married name is Bradbury. Mrs Jean Bradbury.’
Behind her, Gilmore choked back a gasp and slowly expelled air. He felt a warm glow inside. The equation was almost too good to be true… an unfaithful wife plus a violent husband equals one dead lover. Now was the time for him to take over. ‘Are you aware that your lover, Mark Compton, and his wife have been subjected to verbal and written threats over the past few weeks and that their property has been maliciously damaged?’
She seemed genuinely surprised. ‘No, Sergeant. I was not aware of that.’
‘Are you aware there was a fire at The Old Mill last night? The place was gutted.’
She couldn’t disguise a malicious smile. ‘I didn’t know that either, but serve the bastard right.’
‘The bastard’s dead, Mrs Bradbury,’ said Frost, bluntly. ‘He died in the fire. We think it was murder.’
The cigarette dropped from her fingers and she stared unbelieving at the inspector. ‘No! Oh no!’ Then her eyes widened in horror. ‘And you think my husband killed him…? Oh my God!’ Her hands covered her face.
‘We’ve got to find him,’ said Gilmore.
‘If he’s killed Mark, he’ll kill me,’ she said, scrabbling for the cigarette which had burnt a black mark into the landlord’s carpet.
‘We won’t let that happen,’ Frost assured her. ‘Any idea where he is?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ She studied the end of her cigarette, her full, pursed lips blowing it back to life.
God, thought Frost, squirming in his chair, you can blow me back to life any time you like, love. A muffled voice calling his name slowly caught his attention. His personal radio. He tugged it from his pocket. Johnny Johnson with some news. He moved away so the woman couldn’t hear.
‘We’ve located Simon Bradbury, Inspector.’
‘Then grab him where it hurts and hold him,’ said Frost, signalling for Gilmore to come over.
‘No need, Jack. He’s not going anywhere. He’s at Risley Remand Centre… drunken driving, malicious damage and assaulting a police officer. He’s been in custody for the past two weeks.’
‘Damn!’ Gilmore’s foot lashed out at the waste bin in anger, spilling the contents over the floor. His one and only suspect now had a cast-iron alibi. They were back to square one.
There was no further point in staying. Frost rewound his scarf and began to button up his coat while Gilmore, on his knees, stuffed the spilt papers back into the bin.
‘One last question,’ said Gilmore. ‘Do you own a car, Mrs Bradbury?’ She nodded. ‘And where were you last night?’
‘Here. I did my packing and went to bed early.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ smirked Gilmore. ‘You drove over to Lexing to get your own back on your ex-boyfriend.’
She stared at him as if he were mad. ‘I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’
‘Don’t you? Then I’ll spell it out for you. Mark Compton chucked you up. You weren’t going to let the bastard get away with it, so you made abusive phone calls and sent death threats.’
Her head moved slowly from side to side in disbelief. ‘Death threats? I’d scratch his bleeding eyes out, but I wouldn’t make threats.’
‘You did more than scratch his eyes out,’ continued Gilmore. ‘You burnt his house down. But he caught you in the act, so you smashed his skull in and left him to burn to death.’
She looked in appeal to Frost who stared stoically back, hoping his own mystification didn’t show.
‘The death threat letters were made up of words cut from this month’s Reader’s Digest,’ Gilmore continued. ‘And what have we here?’ With a triumphant flourish he waved under her nose a magazine he had retrieved from the waste bin. The current copy of Reader’s Digest.
Frost slumped on to the arm of his chair. He thought Gilmore might have been on to something, but this was grabbing at straws.
‘I’ve got news for you,’ said the woman. ‘They don’t only print one copy. Lots of people buy it.’
‘Oh, I agree, madam,’ purred Gilmore. ‘Lots of people read it. But how many people cut words out?’ He thrust a scissor-slashed page under her nose, then flipped through and found another, and another.
Frost took the magazine. Gilmore was right. The death threat letters had been from this copy of the magazine. He looked up at the woman. ‘Have you got anything to say?’