DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

straight back home,” read Frost from the statement.
    “That’s right.”
    “Parked your motor outside your house and, in a highly emotional but unfulfilled state, you crept into your little bed and went straight off to sleep?”
    “That’s right.”
    “So, by 11:30 you were indoors and in bed and your motor was parked in the street outside?”
    A slight hesitation, but again the answer was “Yes.”
    “And yet when Mr. Raynor, Wendy’s father, called at your house at midnight, there was no car outside, and although he kicked and banged on the door, there was no answer.”
    “I didn’t know her old man called round my place,” exclaimed Terry.
    “Well, he damn well did,” chipped in Webster. “But you weren’t in, were you? You were down in the woods raping his seventeen-year-old virgin daughter. Don’t try to deny it, Sunshine, the medical examination you just had proves it.”
    Terry sat down heavily in the chair and readjusted the blanket. It was prickly and scratchy and was making him feel itchy all over. “All right, so I didn’t go back home right away. I went back to the disco to see if there was any spare talent knocking about. I didn’t want the night to be a complete washout.”
    “Any witnesses who saw you back in the disco?” asked Webster.
    “No. I never got inside. I met this bird in the car park. She didn’t look very tasty, in fact she looked a bit of bleeding rough, but at least she was available, so we got inside the car and we had it away.”
    “Her name and address?” barked Webster.
    “No idea, squire. I’d never seen her before and I hope I never see her again. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I wouldn’t have touched her with a barge pole.”
    “Didn’t you drive her home afterward?”
    “Home? That’s a joke. She’d been sleeping rough. She asked me to drop her off at the main road so she could thumb a lift up north on a lorry.”
    Webster snapped his notebook shut and walked across to the youth. He grabbed the blanket, screwing it tightly in his fist, and jerked him to his feet. “You must think we’re bloody stupid, Duggan. You tried it on with Wendy. She wouldn’t have it, which was an insult to your virility, so you chased after her, choked her, broke her jaw, and raped her.”
    “I didn’t. If there’s no bleeding co-operation, then I don’t want it,” cried Duggan, trying to pull away, but the detective constable’s grip was vice like
    “Before you leave this room you are going to give us a signed statement admitting everything.”
    “I want a lawyer,” said the youth.
    Webster snatched away the blanket. “When you’ve given us a statement, you bastard.”
    The phone rang. As Webster had taken over the questioning, Frost had to answer it. He listened, thanked the caller, then hung up.
    Webster, his fists clenched, was standing toe to toe with the naked Duggan, his face red and angry. The youth looked terrified.
    Frost stood up and pocketed his cigarettes and matches. “That was Forensic, son,” he said casually, ‘with the results of their tests. The man who raped Wendy has blood group O, and young Terry here is blood group A.” He gave Webster a sweet smile. “I’ll see you back in the office.”
    And he went out, leaving the constable to make his apologies to the suspect.
    When Webster returned to the office he was fuming. He had been made to look a proper fool in front of a suspect, forced to offer grovelling apologies to a sneering young bastard.
    Frost was at his desk shuffling through papers. Webster was all ready to give him a mouthful when Susan Harvey came in.
    “Hello, Sue,” said Frost. “You still here?”
    She looked inquiringly at Webster. “I said I’d drive her home,” he told Frost.
    “Home?” said Frost in surprise. “It’s not time to go home yet, is it?”
    “It’s nearly two o’clock in the morning, Inspector. I’ve been on duty for more than sixteen hours on the trot. I’d fill in an overtime claim if I thought it stood the remotest chance of getting to County accounts.” Immediately he said it he wished he could have bitten his tongue because Frost’s head moved to the Overtime Return file still in the centre of Webster’s desk.
    “Thanks for reminding me, son. I promised Bill Wells they’d go off today.” He scratched his chin. “Tell you what. We won’t bother adding them up. They’ve got dirty great computers at County that can do that for us. We’ll just scribble down the figures