She glared at him. 'Of course I'm all right. Why shouldn't I be?'

'You look a bit peaky.' He was sorry he had started this.

'Just tired… and fed up at having to waste my time on phoney rape charges.' Her eyes shot daggers down the corridor in the direction of the lobby where Sergeant Bill Wells, chin cupped in hand, was reading the evening paper. 'You'd have thought our Station Sergeant would have had the common decency to have told me.' She spun on her heels and went back into the interview room.

Doreen Beatty stared stone-faced at him as he entered the other interview room. He gave her a smile and got a sour grimace in return. 'I want nothing to do with you, Inspector Frost, thank you very much. I'm definitely pressing charges and there is no way you are going to talk me out of it.'

Frost tossed the withdrawal form over to Bill Wells. 'She's dropped the charges.'

Wells gawped at the form. 'How the hell did you get her to do that?'

Frost gave a modest smile. 'I told her he couldn't have raped her as he got his dick shot off in the Gulf War – friendly fire.' 'And she believed you?'

'Not at first, but I offered to show her the bit that was left and she gave me the benefit of the doubt.' He switched off the grin. 'Why didn't you tell Liz Maud the old biddy was in the Guinness Book of Records for multiple virgin rapes?'

Wells sniffed disdainfully. 'Not my place to tell my superior officer what to do.'

Running footsteps from the stairs to the canteen and Frost's temporary assistant, DC 'Taffy' Morgan, burst through die doors into the lobby. Morgan, a stocky, dark, curly-haired little Welshman in his late thirties, had sorrowful eyes and a heart-melting whipped puppy expression he could turn on at the drop of a hat which Frost found irritating, but women seemed to find irresistible. Morgan started when he saw Frost glowering at him. 'Just popped up for a quick cup of tea, guv,' he said in his 'oozing with sincerity', sing-song Welsh voice. 'I've nearly finished those figures.' Morgan was the only officer in the station who called Frost 'guv'. Frost reckoned he'd picked it up from the police series on the telly.