DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

wall, his eyes half closed, ignoring all her questions. She was all ready to explode when in came Scarface, as scruffy as ever, a long scarf sweeping the floor as it trailed behind him.
    “Why am I here?” she demanded. “No-one’s said a damn word. What is this, the bloody Gestapo?”
    “A few questions, fraulein,” said Frost, settling himself down at the table and arranging his cigarettes and matches within easy reach.
    She consulted her jewelled wristwatch. “I’m due at the club in thirty-five minutes.”
    Frost flicked a match into life with his thumbnail and lit up. “I don’t think you’re going to make it, Miss King. We’ve found out you’ve been telling us fibs.”
    She dug into her handbag for a nail file and began rasping away a couple of inches of orange nail. “Everything in my statement was true. Roger was with me all the time.”
    A theatrical sigh from Frost. “You’d better tell her, Constable. I don’t like breaking bad news to girls with moles on their behinds.”
    Webster dragged a chair over and sat beside her. “You were driving the Jag, miss, not Roger Miller.”
    She studied her nails and decided some minor adjustments were necessary. She filed carefully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “You were seen driving the Jaguar.”
    “Was I?” She blew away a puff of orange dust.
    “Yes,” said Webster.
    She gave him a sweet, pitying smile. “You must think I’m bleeding stupid. No-one saw me getting in the car for the simple reason I wasn’t in it.” She dropped the file in her handbag and snapped it shut. “I’m not obliged to stay here, and you have no right to keep me.” She stood up. “I’ll find my own way out.”
    Frost stuck out a leg, barring her way. “We haven’t got time to sod about, miss,” he snapped. “You were seen by your next-door neighbour, Paula Grey. She yelled out, hoping for a lift. But you couldn’t have heard, because you roared straight off. I’m not bluffing. She’s given us a signed statement.” To prove it, he waved a piece of paper at her. It was only a typed request from County for the crime statistics, but it looked important.
    Slowly, she sank back in her chair. Her mind seemed to be racing. “That’s right,” she said at last, “I remember now. I went out for some cigarettes. I bought some and came straight back.”
    Frost was doing a trick with his chair, rocking it and making it balance on its two back legs. He beamed her a paternal smile of complete understanding. “I knew there would be a perfectly logical explanation. Where did you go for the cigarettes?”
    She hesitated. “A pub. The Black Swan.”
    “A twenty-minute round trip,” said Frost. “Ten minutes there, ten minutes back . . . plus the time it took for you to get served.”
    “So?” she said warily.
    “I’d have thought it was bloody obvious,” said Frost. During those twenty minutes, the hit-and-run took place. It was you who knocked Hickman down. It was you who killed him.”
    She shivered and rubbed her arms, then pulled the fur coat over her shoulders. “It’s cold in here.”
    “It’s colder in the morgue,” said Frost. He dribbled smoke through his nose. “Why prolong the agony, love? There’s no way you can wriggle out of this. Get it off your lovely chest. Tell us the truth.”
    He settled back in his chair while Webster took it all down in his notebook.
    “I had never driven a Jag before. I asked Roger if I could take it for a thrash down the Bath Road. He said yes and gave me the keys. At about ten minutes to eleven I left. Roger stayed behind in the flat.
    “I might have been going a bit fast round the old people’s flats, but I’m sure I was within the speed limit. It was dark, and as I turned a corner I felt a bump. I never saw anything and didn’t know I had hit anyone."
    “When I got back to the flat Roger started moaning because the headlamp was broken. Then we saw the blood on the wing. I got frightened. Roger said he would report the car as stolen, so we hid it down a side street and then went back to the flat, where Roger phoned the police. I never knew at the time I had hit anyone, otherwise I would have stopped. And I hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t have a drink all night.”
    When she had finished, she looked to Frost for his reaction. He showed none.
    “Is that it?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    “Right, we’ll get it typed, then you can sign it. In the meantime, I’m afraid you’ll have