Morning Frost by Henry James Page B

of anyone coming and going?’
    ‘No, sir, I was just hacking away at the cubicle wall, and then I heard a sort of muffled whining which then stopped, so I thought I’d better leave and so I came out and heard this big bang … which was one of them big frosted windows, like, so I went to have a look and there was Miss, all … all, undressed, and she burst into tears, like.’
    ‘OK, sonny, that’ll do. Just a word with you, sir, if we may?’
    The boy looked to the head for permission to go, which was granted with a curt nod. Clarke looked at Frost, trying to read his mind. He hadn’t seemed concerned when they’d arrived about Marie Roberts being off the premises, having already gone home with a WPC in an area car.
    ‘I do apologize for the lad,’ Bickerton began. ‘It makes you wonder how these children are brought up. Disgraceful. You have my full assurance he’ll be caned to within an inch of his—’
    Frost raised a hand and shook his head. ‘Not on our account. Nothing wrong with a healthy interest in the older woman. No, what I’m more concerned about is the fact that it’s now, what?’ He looked at his wristwatch. ‘Nearly eleven. The incident took place at nine, was discovered at nine fifteen, but was reported only at half ten – why the delay in calling the police?’
    Clarke realized that the time lag hadn’t even occurred to her. Was she becoming so preoccupied with her ‘condition’ that she couldn’t even analyse the facts of a simple case? She definitely didn’t feel quite with it. She pinched herself surreptitiously.
    ‘Good question,’ Bickerton responded, banging a pipe aggressively on the edge of the desk. ‘Miss Roberts did not, at first, wish to call the police.’
    ‘Why on earth not?’ Clarke asked.
    ‘I couldn’t say, Detective,’ Bickerton replied casually. ‘She was upset? Humiliated, perhaps?’
    Clarke tried to imagine herself in Marie Roberts’s position – what would she do? To be attacked in such a degrading, intimate way, and then to be discovered by an adolescent boy – the humiliation of having to relive it for the police would be powerfully off-putting. Nevertheless, she could never let a man who’d raped her get away with it.
    ‘Perhaps,’ she replied, ‘but she’d want the attacker caught, surely.’
    ‘And so she does, Detective. Please have the good grace to appreciate that she was in shock. I called the police after comforting Miss Roberts for an hour or so, until she had calmed down.’
    ‘I understand,’ Clarke said, quietly.
    ‘How’s that leg of yours?’ the head asked suddenly, smiling and catching her unawares. Clarke blushed at the reference.
    ‘Forgive me for appearing unsympathetic’ – Frost torched the tip of a Rothmans – ‘but if you had comforted Miss Roberts a bit sharper, we might have stood a better chance of catching whoever did this. Another woman, also a schoolteacher, was raped on Monday in the Denton area, and it would have been of some comfort to them, I imagine, if you were quicker off the mark. Now, if you’d be good enough to show us the cubicle where the attack took place.’
    Frost turned the key in the ignition.
    ‘He’ll go far,’ he said, puffing on another cigarette.
    ‘Who will?’ Clarke asked, winding down the window.
    ‘That lad; remarkable initiative. Wish I’d thought to do that at school.’
    ‘Jack, for heaven’s sake, a woman’s been raped!’
    ‘I know. Took her time reporting it, though. Odd.’
    ‘Well, if there was the slightest chance you could understand women, you might see it from her point of view; the humiliation …’
    The head was an odd fish too, he thought, ignoring Clarke. His mind turned to Waters, who had been watching a call box on the Southern Housing Estate for the best part of a week; Joanne Daniels had been receiving dozens of crank calls from that phone box, and had then been raped outside the Bricklayer’s Arms. As yet they didn’t even know if the calls