Wells shook his head. ‘No need, Jack. The hospital say she’s in no state to be questioned until the morning.’
Frost yawned. It was too late to go home. ‘Got an empty cell I can kip in?’
‘Take your pick,’ said Wells.
Frost yawned again. ‘Send the maid to wake me at around seven with a cup of tea in one hand and her knickers in the other. If that kid’s been raped I want to get down to the hospital first thing. We’ve got too much to bleeding do, now that Hornrim Harry’s sucking up to the Chief Constable by lending half our manpower to Hockley Division for a drugs bust. “You can have as many men as you like, sir. Frost has got sod all to do. He can manage.” ’
He collected his cigarettes from his office. Rain was crawling down the window. It was a sod of a night.
Chapter 1
Frost hated hospitals, especially the dawn chorus of patients coughing and groaning, weak voices calling out for nurses who never came, the clinical smells. Sheeted, rubber-wheeled trolleys pushed by grim-faced porters swished past him as he trudged the long curving corridor, looking for Ward F3. Most of all, he hated the ‘NO SMOKING’ signs. What was it about ‘NO SMOKING’ signs that made him lust for a cigarette? He passed the staircase that led up to the room he had visited every day when his wife was dying. He shuddered. What a bloody awful time that had been.
Outside Ward F3, Harding, head of Forensic, was talking to a junior doctor who looked even more tired than Frost felt. Harding hurried across to meet him. ‘Bit of luck for a change, Inspector. We’ve got a semen sample.’
Frost frowned ‘A semen sample? I can’t see it being the same bloke who raped those other girls. He’s always used a condom.’
‘Everything points to it being the same man, Inspector,’ insisted Harding. ‘He probably saw his opportunity, didn’t have a condom on him and raped her anyway.’