A Touch Of Frost (43 page)

He jerked himself back to the present and to the cold food congealing on the chipped plate. “Happy birthday, love,” he muttered, dropping the card on top of the bank statement in the rubbish bin. He supposed he ought to put some flowers on her grave, pretending that this time he had remembered. Pushing the plate away, he lit up the last of Mullett’s Three Castles and decided no flowers. It would be hypocritical.

Mullett buzzed through on the internal phone yet again. “Is Inspector Frost in yet?” A routine that was fast becoming a regular feature of his day.

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Sergeant Johnny Johnson. As if there was any doubt! He knew darn well Frost wasn’t in. Hadn’t he been ringing his house continually since five to nine getting only the engaged signal? The inspector must have left his phone off the hook again, but Mullett couldn’t be told that.

“I want to see him the second he gets in . . . the very second,” said Mullett grimly.

“The very second,” echoed Johnson, who seemed to know this script by heart. He banged the phone down and yelled for Webster.

“You went to Mr. Frost’s house, Constable?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” replied Webster. “As I told you, his car wasn’t outside.”

“Did you knock on his door?”

“No point, Sergeant. If his car wasn’t outside, then he wouldn’t be in.”

“You go straight back to that house, Constable, and you knock, kick, and bang at that bloody front door. If you get no answer, then go and find him. And next time I tell you to do something, do it properly!”

“Hear, hear,” said a familiar voice. “Morning all.”

“Where the hell have you been?” Johnson yelled at the inspector. “Mr. Mullett’s been having kittens?”

“Kittens?” frowned Frost. “I thought we’d had him doctored.”

The sergeant could only bury his head in his hands. “It isn’t funny, Jack. Look at the time! It’s gone twelve. You were supposed to see him at nine.”

Frost made a great show of consulting his watch. “I can spare him a few minutes now if he likes.”

Johnson snatched up the internal phone and punched out Mullett’s number. “Mr. Frost is here now, sir. Yes sir. Right away sir.” He turned to the inspector. “The Divisional Commander’s office, Jack. Now!” He replaced the phone, then clicked on a smile to greet a woman who wished to report strange goings-on at the house across the street.

Frost spun on his heels to answer the summons when Collier called him back. “A call for you on your office phone, Mr. Frost. A woman. She wouldn’t give her name.”

“Right,” said Frost, making a sharp right-hand turn toward his office.

Johnson looked up from the complaining woman. “Where’s Mr. Frost gone?”

“His office, I think,” answered Collier.

“His office?” screamed the sergeant. “Mr. Mullett’s waiting for him. Attend to this lady, would you.” He pushed Collier toward the woman.

The internal phone rang. Mullett was getting impatient.

“Leave it!” yelled Johnson, too late. Collier answered it and held the phone out to the sergeant. “The Divisional Commander for you.”

“Run and fetch Mr. Frost,” shrilled Johnson, pushing Collier in that direction.

“What about me?” snapped the woman.

“Be with you in a moment, madam,” replied Johnson, his head spinning. “Yes, sir,” he told the phone. “Yes, sir, I did tell him. I think he had another urgent call, sir. Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He replaced the receiver and wiped a hand wearily across his face.

“They’re always at it, morning, noon, and night,” said the woman. “Here . . . where do you think you’re going . . . ?”

Frost pressed the phone tighter to his ear. “No, we haven’t got your sovereigns back yet, Lil. I know we’re a load of lazy good-for-nothing bastards. Have I ever denied it? When I have some news, I’ll tell you . . . and the same to you, Lil.”

He hung up, looked at his desk and shuddered. It was awash with papers. Where did they all come from? He scooped up an armful and transferred it to Webster’s desk so he could have a frown at it when he came in. He poked a cigarette in his mouth and pressed the top of the gas lighter he had found in the kitchen drawer. A six-inch column of flame seared past his nose and reminded him why he had stopped using it.

The door crashed open. A panting Sergeant Johnson. “For Pete’s sake, Jack!”

“Oh blimey,” said Frost. “Hornrim Harry!” He sprang to his feet for the sprint to the Commander’s office and then saw the other shape behind Johnson. Mullett, his face tight with rage.

“My office, Frost . . . now!” He spun on his heel and stamped out. The ambient temperature seemed to have fallen by thirty degrees.

“I tried to warn you, Jack,” hissed Johnny Johnson. “I’ll start a collection for you.”

“You worry too much,” said Frost, marching to the Star Chamber with his chin held high.

Miss Smith, Mullett’s mirror, was at her typewriter, her face simmering with displeasure. His anger was her anger. With a passable impression of the Commander’s glare, she stared icily at Frost as he passed her.

“The Commander said you were to go straight in,” she snapped.

Frost had been caught out like that before. He knocked.

A snarl from the inner sanctum. “Come in!”

Mullett sat stiff and straight behind the satin mahogany desk, Frost’s personal file open in front of him. It was his intention to bring up again all of the inspector’s past misdeeds and to suggest without equivocation that Frost should look elsewhere for employment as he clearly lacked the attitude and discipline necessary to be a police officer. He kept his eyes down, ignoring Frost’s ambling entrance. But before he could pull the pin out of his first grenade, Frost got in first.

“Sorry about this morning, Super, only I suddenly remembered it was my wife’s birthday. I thought I should put some flowers on her grave.”

A brilliant pre-emptive strike which put Mullett completely off his stroke. “My dear chap,” he said, “do sit down.” He made a mental note to ask Miss Smith to check the files to ensure the date was correct, then he paused and bowed his head for a few seconds to show respect for the dead. That down, he steeled himself for the unpleasant task in hand.

“Operation Mousetrap, that unauthorised fiasco of last night. You knew my permission was essential and would only be given if I was assured the plan was viable. Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Sorry about that, Super,” said Frost, his legs crossed, his unpolished shoe waggling. “I tried to see you, but you’d sneaked off somewhere.”

Mullett’s lips tightened. “I was at County HQ. You only had to pick up the phone, but instead you flagrantly disobeyed standing instructions and went ahead regardless, and if that wasn’t bad enough, you gave Sergeant Johnson the impression that I had agreed to it.”

“He must have misunderstood me,” said Frost brazenly. “Still, no harm done.”

Mullett leaned back in chair, wide-eyed with incredulity. “No harm done? A police woman was injured.”

Frost shrugged. “A few bruises and a black eye. I’ve seen brides come back from their honeymoons with worse than that.”

“She could have been killed, Inspector.”

“She could have won fifty thousand pounds on the pools, sir, but she didn’t.”

Burying his face in his hands, Mullett felt like crying. How could you reason with a man like this? He picked up a newly sharpened pencil from his pen tray and twiddled it between his fingers. “I’m taking you off the case, Inspector.”

Frost’s jaw dropped. He looked disbelievingly at Mullett as if the man had taken leave of his senses. “You’re bloody what?”

The pencil snapped in two between Mullett’s fingers as he stiffened with fury. “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again, Frost,” he croaked, anger making his voice barely audible.

“Sorry, Super,” said Frost in the tone of a man pulled up on some minor and obscure breach of etiquette, “but I want to stay with this one. I think I’m close to cracking it.”

“Yes . . . the plastic mac and the door key,” said Mullett, referring to his notes. “Pass them all over to Mr. Allen. It’s his case from now on. By the way, how are you getting on with your murder inquiry that drug addict?”

“Not too well,” said Frost, mentally adding “as well you know, you four-eyed git.”

“Then you’ll have more time to concentrate on it now you’re off the rape case, won’t you?” smiled Mullett, showing the interview was at an end by pulling his in-tray toward him and taking out the letters for signature. “One last thing. The Chief Constable is very concerned at our mounting number of housebreakings. Let that be your number-one priority. That will be all, Frost.” He unscrewed the cap of his fountain pen and began signing his letters only to see his pen jump and splutter ink all over Miss Smith’s pristine typing as Frost left, slamming the door behind him with unnecessary force.

He put the letter to one side for retyping, then buzzed Miss Smith for some aspirins. There had to be some way he could get rid of the man.

The door slamming was repeated as Frost fumed back into his own pigsty of an office, where he further vented his rage by giving his in-tray a right-hander, sending the contents flying all over the floor. He spun around on Webster, who was regarding his tantrum with amused tolerance. “Don’t just sit there plaiting your beard, Constable. Help me pick this lot up.”

Without a word, Webster began gathering up the papers, smirking with inward satisfaction at Frost’s rage. Obviously he had been given a roasting by the Divisional Commander for last night’s debacle. And it served the stupid fool right.

Frost was down on his knees after a couple of burglary reports that had found their way under his desk just out of reach. He poked at them with a ruler and managed to fish one out. “By the way, son. As of today I’m off the rape case.”

Webster grunted noncommittally.

“How’s your girlfriend this morning?” said Frost, reading through the form.

“She’s come to work,” the constable told him, “wearing dark glasses to hide the black eye, but otherwise OK.” And no thanks to you, he added under his breath.

Frost flung himself into his chair and read the burglary report again. “Do you know anything about this attempted breakin at Beech Crescent?”

“Just the bare details,” said Webster. “PC Kenny was called to it last night as he was dropping Sue and me off at her flat.”

According to the report, a Mrs. Shadbolt at number 32 saw a man climbing over the fence into her back garden, so she dialled 999. Kenny did a search of the area and found that the back door of a house a couple of gardens away had been forced open. Kenny woke up the householder and they went over the premises from top to bottom, but nothing had been taken.

“Hmm,” muttered Frost, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He swivelled around to the wall map to locate Beech Crescent. Most of the streets adjoining the woods were named after trees, and he found Beech Crescent not too far from the spot where Sue was attacked. He had a feeling that this might be worth following up. “Get the car, son. We’re going out.”

They had just started out when Control radioed. Sammy Glickman, the pawnbroker, had phoned. The man with the sovereigns for sale was back in his shop with another batch.

“We can be there in five minutes,” said Webster, looking out for a turnoff.

“No,” said Frost firmly. “We’re following up the burglary.” He told Control to send an area car to the pawnbroker’s immediately to pick the man up. He would interview him on their return. Webster couldn’t see why this attempted breakin was so important all of a sudden, but Frost was the boss.

Mrs. Shadbolt, her grey hair dyed lavender, wore bright orange beads over a fluffy mauve cardigan. Under her arm she carried a tiny overweight Pekinese, which she called “Mummy’s darling.” It was a sour-faced animal with a protruding tongue, continually snuffling and panting as if its oxygen supply was running out. The woman had another dog, a French poodle, its hysterical bark hitting the eardrums at a frequency bordering on the threshold of pain. To its Gallic fury, it hadn’t been allowed to bite the two detectives, but had been dragged by the collar to the kitchen and shut in. Its incessant high-pitched yap threatened to shatter all the glasses in Mrs. Shadbolt’s display cabinet.

“The poor dear gets so excited when we have company,” explained Mrs. Shadbolt.

“Tell us about last night,” shouted Frost over the noise.

“Well, I was upstairs in bed . . .”

Frost heaved himself out of the chintz-covered sofa. “Let’s re-enact the crime,” he suggested. Anything to get away from that bloody castrato barking.

Up the stairs, past pictures of kittens romping with balls of wool on the walls, and into the little bedroom overlooking the garden. A nightdress holder in the shape of a fox terrier sprawled across the twin pillows of the double bed.

“My bed,” Mrs. Shadbolt explained.

“Make a note of that, Constable,” Frost muttered to Webster.

“I retire every night at ten on the dot, Inspector. I’m a creature of habit, regular as clockwork. Bed at ten, up at six forty-five.”

“Is there a Mr. Shadbolt?” asked Frost, eying the twin pillows.

She dabbed an eye with a tiny handkerchief. The Pekinese snuffled in sympathy. “He passed over six years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that, madam. So you were in bed . . . ?”

“Fast asleep. I go off the instant my head touches the pillow. Then Fifi started to bark. I woke up instantly.”

“Yes, I imagine you would,” said Frost. “Where was Fifi?”

“Up here with me. Fifi sleeps on the floor; Mummy’s darling sleeps on the bed with Diddums.”

“Diddums?” queried Frost.

She simpered and patted the fox terrier nightdress case. “We call him Diddums. Fifi was leaping up at the window, barking incessantly. I got out of bed and opened the window.”

They all moved over to the window in question. Frost opened it and looked out on to the garden below. A tiny garden, a wooden fence on each side, a brick wall at the rear. Beyond the brick wall were the back gardens of the houses in the street running parallel to Beech Crescent. Mrs. Shadbolt’s lawn was infested with green and red plaster gnomes, some peeking through bushes, some sitting cross-legged on plaster toadstools, others fishing down a plastic magic wishing well.