by Danny Miller
Frost unfolded the sheet of paper and saw a name and address for one Kevin Wheaton.
This part of south London had a weary uniformity about it, long litter-strewn streets that you could get lost in. Well off his patch, Frost wasn’t even sure he was in London any more. He wasn’t really, he was in Norwood. It was city sprawl, where London just didn’t know where to stop. These weren’t so much proper destinations as names on a map where the tube didn’t reach, and they were dotted with forlorn little train stations that led to better places.
He scoured the streets looking for a blue police box, but failing that, a red public one would do. His bleeper was going like the clappers. It was obviously something DC Clarke didn’t want put over the radio. Across the street he glimpsed a red box. He pulled the Metro up sharp and parked on a double-yellow and put his police-on-business sign on the dash, next to the Skol can he’d forgotten all about, and made the call.
‘Where are you?’ said Clarke.
‘You sound concerned, Susan?’
‘The super wants to know. He started coming out of his office, patrolling the incident room, arms behind his back like he’s inspecting the troops. Everyone’s working the bloody Denton Woods demonstration. I’m not even sure what we’re doing is legal. Taking pictures of people, checking for criminal records, and then putting them on a database, when they haven’t even done anything yet. I feel like we’re living under Stalin.’
Frost agreed. ‘And I thought 1984 was supposed to happen last year.’
‘Waters says if he’s not working a real crime soon he’s going to tell Mullett to stuff his bravery award!’
‘Tell him to hold on, this is the January slump. After Christmas and the sales, everything goes quiet, even crime. It’s like no one can be bothered to kill each other and no one wants to rob anything any more, so we make work for ourselves. But the good news is, I’ve got something for us.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘I’ve just come from Longthorn Secure Hospital …’
Frost loaded nearly all his change into the payphone and filled Clarke in on the plight of Conrad Wilde, including his artistic endeavours at Longthorn.
‘… The style is unmistakable, awful, but unmistakable. Conrad painted the pictures and sent them to Ivan …’ The pips went and Frost slotted in the last of his coppers. ‘… Now we have to work out why Conrad sent them to him, and why one of them was stolen.’
‘You think it was stolen?’
‘Check the records on one Kevin Wheaton, he’s a convicted burglar, and a prison friend of Conrad Wilde.’
‘Will do.’
‘One last thing: can you call DI Anthony Dorking of the Stolen Art and Antiques Squad, and ask him if he’s been able to contact Captain Lionel Cavanagh?’
‘Who’s Captain Cavanagh when he’s at home?’
‘He knew Ivan and Conrad. Ivan was his snout in the ’60s.’
‘Ivan was an informer?’
‘That’s not the half of it.’
Then the pips went again and Frost was out of change.
‘They must have gone on holiday.’
Frost took his thumb off the doorbell and turned around to see a woman in a turquoise raincoat, headscarf and cat’s-eye specs at the gate. It was cold, and the coat she wore didn’t look like it could keep it out. But he reckoned she probably wore the same coat in the summer too, so things evened out.
‘On holiday?’ echoed Frost.
‘The caravan’s not there. Must have gone away. Who are you?’
He came down the steps and showed her his warrant card. ‘Inspector Frost, Denton CID. You know Mr Wheaton?’
‘Kev? I know the little bugger. In trouble again, is he? Doesn’t surprise me. He’s been the bane of his poor mother’s life. Flossy. Lovely woman. She thinks the world of him. Personally, I’d have kicked him out years ago. Still, he’s her only child. I’ve got four of them, I can afford to be a bit more choosy.’
‘So Kevin lives here with his mother?’
‘Course he does, couldn’t look after himself, could he? Probably why he likes prison. You know what they say: two hot and a cot. They get used to it.’
Frost couldn’t help but laugh at the streetwise old bird. He then turned his attention back to the house. It was a pebble-dashed council house on the edges of West Norwood, with a small patch of grass out front marked with what he now assumed were caravan tracks.
‘Where do Kevin and his mum go in the caravan?’
‘What’s he done now? Don’t tell me, been on the rob again. He’s got the good sense not to do it round here, we’d shop him straight away. He took ten bob out me purse once, he was six years old! I said, “Flossy, he’s a wrong ’un.” But he’s her—’
‘Yes, love, her only child, you said. He’s not done anything, we just need to ask him some questions about a friend of his.’
‘Isle of Sheppey, Folkestone, Deal, Romney Marshes, Whitstable, Broadstairs, Margate—’
‘Right, thanks. So Kent. All over Kent.’
‘Kent, yes, always Kent. Flossy likes Kent.’
With some effort he managed to get rid of the neighbour. She was nosy, but not nosy enough. She hadn’t noticed the four pints of milk and the tub of cream on the doorstep. Frost had one more go on the doorbell, then peered through the letterbox to be met with a small dim hallway leading to a kitchen, and a dead cat on the linoleum floor.
He went around the side of the house and found the back door. With his gloved hand, careful not to wipe off any existing prints, he turned the handle and the door opened. He took a big breath, then stepped over the threshold into the kitchen, expecting the worst. First up was the cat. It was a tortoiseshell moggy. There was half-eaten food and curdled milk set out for it. And there was blood where its head had been bludgeoned, matted in the fur, but very little on the floor.
After checking downstairs in the well-kept but cluttered and chintzy house, the detective found her in the bedroom. She was laid out on the bed, looking like she’d fallen asleep on a red pillow. Frost left the curtains closed, but switched on the pink ruffle-shaded bedside light to reveal what he’d suspected; she’d suffered the same fate as her cat, and the blood-soaked pillow had originally been white.
Wednesday (3)
‘Poor Flossy, she’d had a hard life, and for it to end like this doesn’t bear thinking about,’ pondered DI Dave Garside of the West Norwood police.
‘Kevin was known to you, was he?’
‘Ever since he was a kid he was in trouble. Flossy tried, but his dad was a bad example. He died when Kevin was a kid. Fell off the roof.’
Frost noted the complete lack of empathy at the patriarch’s demise. He nodded towards the house. ‘That one?’
‘No, the church roof. He was robbing the lead.’
‘Tell you what I don’t get, Dave. The cat. Why kill it?’
‘You’re in the Big Smoke now, more nut-jobs and sickos per capita than your neck of the woods, I’d imagine.’
‘Sod off, I’m in West Norwood, and in Denton we’ve got more than our fair share.’
Garside laughed, but agreed that the killing of the cat added another sadistic dimension to the already horrific murder of Florence Wheaton.
Garside was a squat bullish man with no discernible neck and a tight crop of grey hair, a few years older than Frost’s. He seemed like a copper after Frost’s own heart: called a shovel a shovel, asked awkward questions, and carried a hip flask to ‘keep out the cold’. It hadn’t taken the two detectives long to break down the formalities of their different jurisdictions and chew the fat like they’d shared an office for the last ten years.
They were standing in the small back garden in the failing light, next to a rusted old swing that they both suspected a young Kevin Wheaton had once played on in more innocent times. The road in front of the house was swarming with rubberneckers from the estate, and more women in raincoats and headscarves. And the inside of the house was now swarming with crime-scene off
icers taking pictures, and Forensics taking a fine-tooth comb to the place for clues and prints. They were into their second JPS, their fourth nip from the hip flask, and Frost had filled in DI Dave Garside on the case thus far.
‘Did you see the state of the back of her skull?’ asked Garside, shaking his head in revulsion.
‘I’m going to have to work hard to forget it.’
The London DI offered him the hip flask. Frost considered it for a second. It seemed like the slippery slope, but the fumes of the Scotch helped cover the stench of blood that still clung to his olfactory senses. People think that blood is odourless, but enough of it like that, soaking into the pillow, into the bedlinen and mattress, has a metallic smell about it. In the cold light of day, Florence Wheaton looked as white as her sheets must have been before the attack.
From what they could ascertain, the sixty-two-year-old woman had been knocked unconscious downstairs, probably in the kitchen where the cat was, then taken upstairs where the job was finished off. It made sense: the bedroom was more secluded, fewer windows to contend with, easier to muffle the victim’s screams. He took another swig from Garside’s flask.
‘You’re way off your patch, Jack, your super’s gonna love you going out scouting for murder cases. Nothing going on in that teeming metropolis of Denton? Didn’t I see some kind of big protest in your neck of the woods on TV? New motorway.’
‘More than just the neck, the actual woods themselves. New houses, shops and a leisure centre.’
The two detectives glanced over to the house; the crime-scene officers were taking Florence Wheaton’s body out through the back door. The morgue van had pulled up the drive to avoid the gathering crowd out front. It refocused the two coppers’ minds.
‘So, no sign of forced entry, came in the back by the looks of it,’ said Frost, prompting them into action.
‘Kevin’s not here, and neither is the caravan.’
‘Florence has been dead for at least forty-eight hours.’
‘And why kill the cat?’ Garside repeated Frost’s earlier question.
‘It suggests another psychological twist to me. Another way of hurting Florence? Maybe the cat got it first. Then … then Mum. I think you’ve got your prime suspect, Inspector Garside.’
‘Matricide. Makes sense to me. Christ knows, Kevin had given her enough to complain about. And maybe it was just one thing too many.’
Frost nodded in agreement, then glanced down at his Casio. He wondered how long it would take him to drive back to Denton.
Thursday (1)
The hammering was unbearable. Smashing down on his head, squeezing his skull, pulping his brain. Frost hadn’t heard or felt anything like it since … since the last one. But this one was made worse by the unrelenting ringing that came with it. It was a mighty carillon of deafening unpleasantness. He grabbed the pillows and sandwiched his head between them. Still the hammering and the ringing continued. That bloody doorbell will have to go, he thought. And now came the voices, a chorus of urgency that just wasn’t going to go away and demanded an answer.
‘Frost! Get up, we know you’re in there, Jack! Frost!’
By the time he’d got back to Denton from Norwood, it was too late to report back to Eagle Lane and check in with Mullett, who was, according to Clarke, fuming at his going MIA. Frost reckoned he was allowed two, maybe three solid radio-silence MIAs a year. He was sure that by the time he returned to Eagle Lane in the morning, armed with the murder of Florence Wheaton and the connection of her son to Conrad Wilde, he could make the case for a fuller investigation and his absence would be forgiven, if not quite forgotten.
So he’d taken the opportunity to pop into the Prince Albert Hotel, Denton’s pre-eminent, if not only, four-star hotel. He knew that’s where Jimmy McVale was staying, and was hoping to catch him in the bar. Given his new information about Conrad Wilde, maybe he’d find out what McVale knew of him, if anything. But when he arrived, he found that McVale had checked out the previous day. The author had let it be known to the chatty barman that he was heading back to London for some book signings and lectures. Frost finished his brandy and thanked the young barman for the info. Then disaster struck.
They were a team of very attractive double-glazing saleswomen from Southend who were celebrating their success at convincing most of South Denton and all of East Rimmington about the wonders of UPVC. They were insistent that Frost join them for one glass of champagne. Who was he to say no?
‘No … No! … He’s not here!’
‘Get up, Jack!’
He threw the top pillow across the room, flung the duvet off and sat up. He staggered to the door and opened it. There he was met by DC Susan Clarke and PC David Simms: one was laughing, the other was wincing. Frost felt the cold gust from the hallway. He felt it everywhere; it’s particularly strong this morning, he thought. He looked down and realized he was naked.
‘Take that smirk off your face.’
‘Smirk, sir?’
‘You think this is funny?’
‘No. I don’t.’
Frost didn’t think it was funny at all. But in his attempt to stem his anger and block out what Superintendent Stanley Mullett was saying, he found himself thinking about last night. It was on uncorking the fifth bottle of Moët that the girls pulled him down to the floor for an impromptu version of ‘Oops Up Side Your Head’, and on emptying the decanter for his fourth glass of port that, he was pretty sure, he’d signed on the dotted line for a full set of new windows to replace the new windows in his brand-new flat.
‘I have the report from the super at Norwood. You were a long way from home, Frost. It makes interesting reading.’
Frost was in Mullett’s office, and he hadn’t been invited to sit down. The superintendent sat at his desk, imperiously peering through his tortoiseshell glasses at the statement that Frost had made for DI Garside.
‘Time, money and resources investigating a crime—’
‘A murder.’
‘Ivan Fielding died of a heart attack. That’s clearly stated in the reports from both Dr Maltby and Chief Pathologist Gerald Drysdale.’ Frost went to say something, but Hornrim Harry raised his hand. ‘I know you have theories as to what brought it on, but you have no proof. As for his ill health, his liver apparently looked like and had the consistency of a tinned tomato.’
‘A what?’
‘Gerald Drysdale’s words, not mine. I’ve never knowingly eaten a tinned tomato in my life. Whilst his morbid sense of humour is questionable, his expertise is not.’
‘Florence Wheaton was bludgeoned to death with a ball-peen hammer. That’s murder in my book.’
Mullett’s voice rose to a barely controlled bellow. ‘Yes, and the prime suspect is now her son, Kevin Wheaton. Apparently they had a volatile relationship, and he’s a repeat offender. The Met are on the case and it has nothing to do with you or Denton CID—’
‘Wheaton was a prison buddy of Conrad Wilde. And I’ve found a connection between the Ivan Fielding case and Conrad Wilde, who I believe—’
Mullett again raised a hand in front of Frost’s face, like a big fat ‘Stop’ sign being wielded by a ferocious-looking lollypop lady.
‘This case is closed, Inspector. Ivan Fielding died of a heart attack in his home after drinking half a distillery. And from what I hear, this Conrad Wilde died of cancer. All very sad, but no crimes committed. As for this Wheaton murder, let the Met handle it. It’s not your job to go out scouting for crimes, prospecting for cases, we have quite enough on our hands in Denton.’
‘I spoke to a very reliable source, one Inspector Anthony Dorking of the Stolen Art and Antiques Squad, and he said that—’
‘There are no files or records connecting Ivan Fielding to Conrad Wilde. It is all hearsay. I have it on good authority that Dorking regrets talking to you about it. And I have arranged for the items that you found at Ivan Fielding’s to be collected by Dorking’s team. And as far as I and Denton CID are concerned, that’s the end of the
case.’
‘The painting Conrad Wilde sent to Ivan, and which subsequently went missing from the house, is proof that they knew each other. And I can prove Ivan Fielding was an informant. His contact was a Captain Cavanagh, retired now. I’ll call Dorking to—’
Mullett slapped his hand down on the edge of his desk. It was loud and looked like it hurt. His face reddened. ‘No, no, you won’t. If you contact anyone about this again, you will answer directly to the ACC, not me. And you will be suspended from duty immediately. It’s not just your career that’s on the line, it’s your very job. Your pension. Starting from today. I repeat, any further involvement in this case and you will be immediately suspended from duty. Do I make myself clear?’
He did. For now Frost was sure there were forces working behind the scenes to bury the case. Just as they had buried Conrad Wilde. Just as they had put a D-Notice on Wilde’s and Fielding’s case files.
Nonetheless, thought Frost, looking at the still-fuming Mullett who was now sat at his desk going through some paperwork in an effort to restore some of his authority and equanimity, in for a penny, in for a pound.
‘Talking of suspensions, sir, would this be a bad time to bring up Desk Sergeant Johnny Johnson? I think his suspension, although not official yet, is a bit harsh and—’
‘Get out!’
‘I can’t believe it. I mean, it’s just unbelievable,’ said John Waters, backing up what he’d just said with a slow shake of the head.
‘It’s true,’ said Frost, ‘the whole thing. It was all laid out in front of Mullett. The connections with Kevin Wheaton, Conrad, the paintings, and Ivan, certainly enough to warrant further investigation. And all he could do was threaten me with suspension if I carried on.’