‘Excellent,’ said Mullett, giving them barely a glance as he signed them with a flourish of his Parker and tossed them into his out-tray. ‘Things are really moving our way at last. How’s the inventory going?’
‘Almost finished it, Super,’ said Frost, trying to remember where he had hidden the damn thing.
‘Good,’ beamed Mullett. ‘I want this man Greenway picked up and brought in right now. How many men will you need?’
‘The fewer the better, Super. He lives out in the wilds. If he spots half the Denton police force converging on his cottage, he might do a runner.’
‘Very well, but don’t let there be any foul-ups.’ He was itching for Frost to go so he could pick up the phone and casually let drop to the Chief Constable that, despite the appalling manpower shortage, Denton Division had once again come up trumps. Then his euphoria crash-dived as he remembered what he had originally wanted to see Frost about. He snatched up the Denton Echo and jabbed at the headlines. ‘Have you seen this? “Granny Ripper! Town of Terror!” ‘What are we doing about it? The press are screaming for our blood and County are breathing down our necks.’
‘I might be able to give you a quick result,’ Frost said, filling him in on Wally Manson. ‘We’ve sent the jeans over to Forensic.’
Mullett could hardly contain himself. Wait until the Chief Constable heard about this. ‘I want Manson picked up and brought in,’ said Mullett, scooping up the telephone and dialling.
‘I’ll make a note of it,’ said Frost solemnly.
‘Chief Constable, please,’ said Mullett. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘That will be all, Inspector.’ As the door closed behind Frost, he straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair. ‘Oh, hello, sir.’ He put on his weary voice. ‘Sorry if I don’t sound all that brilliant… lack of sleep, you know…’ He gave a modest laugh. ‘Someone’s got to keep an eye on things, sir… Some double good news on the Paula Bartlett case and the senior citizen killings that I thought you should have right away…’
Wednesday afternoon shift
Harry Greenway dropped a tea-bag into a mug and drowned it with boiling water from the kettle. He felt uneasy. He didn’t know why. On top of the fridge the portable radio was tuned into the local station where The Beatles were singing ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Greenway pulled a face and switched it off. A miserable, lonely song about death. He wasn’t in the mood for it. He was raising the mug to his mouth when his ears picked up the soft gentle click of a car door being carefully closed. Instantly, his hand shot out to the light switch. From the darkened kitchen he twitched back the curtains.
Two men were walking up the path, one middle-aged and scruff the other in his late twenties with the look of a thug. Greenway cupped his hand to the window pane to see better. The older man, a maroon scarf hanging unevenly round his neck had a scar of some kind on his cheek. He didn’t recognize either of them, but they spelled trouble.
A half-hearted knock at the front door which sounded almost too deliberately reassuring. The dog at his feet, a nine-month-old Dobermann, sprang up and started to growl, then to bark. He grabbed its collar and shut it in the lounge where it barked even louder. Another knock, a little stronger this time. Greenway reached for the heavy walking stick he kept on the hall table as he cautiously opened up. The scruffy man was smiling apologetically.
‘Mr Greenway? Sorry to bother you so late, sir. We called earlier, but you were out.’ He held something up. Greenway’s heart faltered and skipped a beat. It was a police warrant card.
‘Police?’ he stammered. God, how had they found out?
‘Routine enquiry,’ purred the man who he noted from the warrant card was Detective Inspector Frost. ‘All right if we come in?’ And without waiting to be asked, they were in the hall.
Routine enquiry? They don’t send detective inspectors on routine enquiries, not even rag-bags like this one. He felt his hands trembling. He forced a smile of unconcern. ‘I was just going to cook my dinner.’
‘This won’t take long, sir,’ said Frost.
Hearing strange voices, the dog was barking and frantically scratching at the lounge door.
Greenway smiled. ‘I’d better put Spike outside. He can get quite nasty with strangers.’ They stood well back as he opened the lounge door and grabbed the Dobermann’s collar as it leapt out. ‘Find yourselves seats,’ he called, dragging the snarling dog past them and into the kitchen.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Frost, giving the dog a wide berth and following Gilmore into the lounge, a grotty room with a well-worn and sagging three-piece suite and old newspapers heaped on every chair. The settee had been dragged in front of the television set, at the side of which a waste bin over flowed with empty lager cans. Frost strode around, prodding, poking.
‘Look at this!’ Gilmore was holding up a girlie magazine with a picture of a busty blonde dressed in school uniform on the front cover.
But Frost was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘He’s taking a bloody long time putting that dog out… Shit!’ He spat out the expletive at the growl of an engine starting up out side. Twice in the same flaming day ‘The bastard’s done a runner!’
They dashed to the back door where a snarling Dobermann barred their way. Back along the passage and out the front door, just in time to see the rear lights of a delivery van disappearing into the dark.
Back in the car, bumping and jolting in hot pursuit, Frost fumed and castigated himself for letting the sod walk out so easily. Why hadn’t he taken more men and posted someone at the back? If Greenway got away, he’d never hear the last of it from Mullett. ‘Faster, son,’ he urged Gilmore as the red rear-lights ahead shrunk to pinpricks.
‘This car’s not in the best of condition,’ Gilmore retorted as the Cortina shook and shuddered in protest at the unaccustomed increased speed. A warning light on the oil gauge kept flashing and there was a hot metal burning smell. ‘Hadn’t you better radio Control for some back-up?’
Frost hesitated. Of course they needed back-up, but he was hoping they could get by without the station knowing what a twat he had made of himself. A teeth-setting grinding noise from the engine made up his mind. He radioed for help.
‘Do you mean to say,’ howled Mullett, snatching the microphone from Sergeant Wells, ‘that you just let him drive off?’ He had been hovering in Control, awaiting confirmation of a successful arrest.
‘Just get me back-up — over and out,’ muttered Frost, banging down the handset, aware that he had only delayed a Grade A bollocking from his superintendent. ‘Where’s the bugger gone?’ The red lights had vanished. ‘Look out,’ he screamed as a dark shape loomed up in front of the wind screen.
Gilmore jammed on the brakes. The tires screeched and the car slewed to a halt, throwing Frost heavily against Gilmore who almost lost control of the wheel. They had pulled up within inches of Greenway’s delivery van.
‘What’s the silly bugger playing at?’ asked Frost, all fingers and thumbs as he tried to release his seat belt. He was answered by Greenway blurring into vision at the side of the Cortina, swinging what they later realized was a long-handled sledge-hammer. A clanging thud which shook the car and nearly deafened them, then a splintering and shattering as the windscreen crazed into an opaque honeycombed sheet. When Frost finally managed to release the seat belt and leap from the car he was just in time to see the rear lights of the van dwindling into the distance.
‘Shit!’ yelled Frost yet again, after they had knocked out enough of the shivered windscreen to see where they were going. They limped off after Greenway, eyes streaming, faces stinging from the ice-hard punch of cold gritty air. Control had advised them that area car Hotel Tango was on its way to afford them assistance.