DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

alibi was his alibi.”
    Webster shifted uneasily in his chair. He hoped Frost wasn’t going to make some wild accusation without a shred of evidence.
    Completely unabashed, Frost carried on. “A new man took over when Bateman got the sack, so you couldn’t work your fiddle any more. Which is probably why there were no more rapings for nearly four months.”
    No-one could have looked more stunned than Price. “This is some kind of nightmare! My house is broken into and the investigating officer is almost accusing me of multiple rape.”
    “Almost?” cried Frost. “I didn’t mean to be as vague as that.”
    Price stood up and, as forcefully as he could, said, “I must ask you to leave. This is most upsetting.”
    Frost didn’t budge. “Does your wife visit her mother very often?”
    “Two or three times a year.”
    “Leaving you all alone in the house. I wouldn’t be at all surprised that if we started comparing dates, we’d find you were either at work on your own or all alone in the house when the rapes took place.”
    “I really can’t believe what I’m hearing,” exclaimed Price, his eyes blinking rapidly.
    “Let’s take last night,” said Frost, lighting up a second cigarette. “There was an attempted rape in the woods, just across the road there a policewoman, a very tasty bit of stuff, young, big boobs the sort you like. You had a go at her, but she fought back. The cops came running, so you had to scoot off.”
    Price just shook his head at every word as if unable to believe anyone could be so stupid or so cruel.
    Webster kept his face impassive and stared out the window in case the inspector wanted to involve him in this flight of fancy.
    Frost carried on doggedly. “You wore a track suit, jogging trousers with no pocket, and a sweatshirt with no pocket. Under your arm you carried a plastic mac - the mac you used to chuck over their heads before you half strangled them. You ran off like mad, but in the dark you bumped into someone, which made you drop the mac."
    Price’s Adam’s apple was travelling up and down like an express lift. “This is nonsense!”
    “Trouble was,” continued the inspector, ‘when you lost your mac, you also lost this.” From his pocket he produced a tagged Yale key which he held out for Price to see. “Your front-door key. Which presented you with a problem. How do you get back inside your house? You can’t knock up your wife; she’s away in Darlington.”
    Price turned in appeal to Webster. “I didn’t leave the house all night. You’ve got to believe me.”
    “Can you prove that?” Webster asked.
    “How can I prove it?” Price said hopelessly. “I was here on my own. It’s like a nightmare.”
    “It was a nightmare for those poor girls, sir,” said Frost. “Anyway, back to our poor old rapist, who you say isn’t you. It’s not his night. His dick’s been disappointed, he’s lost a perfectly good mac, and he hasn’t got his front-door key. So how is he going to get back inside his house? Too noisy to smash windows, and the front door is too exposed and too solid. Which leaves the back door. This means climbing over garden fences. Unluckily for him, old Mother Shadbolt’s yapping dog wakes her up and she screams blue murder and rings for the law.”
    “Whoever Mrs. Shadbolt saw,” insisted Price, ‘it wasn’t me. It was the burglar.”
    “A bloody weird burglar, sir. He’s spotted by a screaming woman. Instead of doing what any self-respecting house breaker would do - get the hell out of there as fast as he could - he calmly hops over another couple of fences and starts to jemmy open your back door with a pair of rusty shears he finds in the pitch dark in your back garden. He enters your house, hides the shears behind your freezer, then nips off unseen without taking anything. That was no burglar, Mr. Price. That was you, breaking back into your own house because you’d lost your key in Denton Woods.”
    Price stared first at Frost, then at Webster. He put a sheet of newspaper over a dining chair and sat on it. “What can I say?” he mumbled, almost on the verge of tears. “I’m innocent. It wasn’t me. What can I say?”
    Frost shook his head in unstinted admiration. “You’re a bloody good actor, sir, I’ll give you that. But let’s put it to the test, shall we?” He tossed the tagged key over to Webster. “Go and see if this fits the gentleman’s front door, would you, son?”
    Webster left the room. Frost sat