by Danny Miller
Once inside, Harry went straight for the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, and filled two glasses to the brim. Jimmy McVale, even though time was of the essence, didn’t argue. They raised their glasses to each other and took some sizeable glugs. It was much needed. The supermarket brandy they’d been swigging in the cabin in the woods couldn’t do what Johnnie Blue did: settle the nerves, sack the tension and give you that warm glow.
The two men sat in silence as they sipped their drinks. Partly because in Harry Baskin’s inner sanctum it was eerily silent. He’d had the windowless room soundproofed. When they were done, Jimmy McVale placed his glass on the desk with an emphatic thud.
‘The money, Harry.’
Harry Baskin got up from his swivel chair and padded over to the concealed safe. He took down the portrait of Margaret Thatcher, which was squeezed in between one of the Queen and a Spitfire majestically making its way over the white cliffs of Dover, and revealed the perfectly flush wall safe. He spun the dial and opened her up with a banker’s ease. He reached in with both hands and pulled out a thick yellow Jiffy envelope that looked stuffed with money. He then spun around and shot Jimmy McVale in the head with the Beretta pistol that was concealed inside the padded envelope.
McVale slumped forward on the desk. Perfectly dead.
Tuesday (3)
‘Simmo? Where are you? Plato?’
Nothing. Not a sound. Not even a bark. Frost cursed Simms. Hadn’t he told him, the last bloody time they were out here, to wait up for his colleagues? But no, the enthusiastic young copper had raced off again.
He knew that every time he called out for Simms, he was potentially alerting the killer that he was alone, and in need of help. The one thing he knew was that he was heading south, towards the ever-closer voices of the protestors, who sounded like they were kicking off royally now. Frost was glad to hear it, happy that the forces from County were unable to quell them. Because right now they were leading him back to civilization.
Frost stopped – he thought he heard a crackling behind him, not heavy enough for a man, surely, but maybe an animal. In his peripheral vision – though all of it seemed that way now, in the dark, uncertain – he thought he saw a low black figure darting between the trees, indistinct, flickering in what little light there was from the sickle of the moon. It seemed to be encircling him. Frost spun around, trying to keep up with it.
He yelled out in pain as the dull cold thud of metal glanced against the side of his head. Frost spun around again and managed to push his fist into his attacker’s face, before he fell to the ground as the force of the blow from the hammer took effect.
On his back, he saw the hammer zooming down on him again – but managed to roll away from it. They were both on the ground now. Frost’s punch had connected with Banes’ nose. Frost had felt it give way under his knuckles. Still he couldn’t see the murderous bastard, still he was in the dark, but he shouted out anyway, hoping Simms would hear him.
‘There’s nowhere to go, Banes! You’re finished! Whatever is wrong with you, you need to get to the hospital! You listening to me?’
Frost couldn’t understand the reply. Banes’ voice was reduced to a raspy and pained low growl – whatever was eating its way through his body was gathering pace and shutting him down.
As the DI’s eyes adjusted to the seemingly ever-changing scene, he could just make out Banes scuttling off, back into the trees. Frost stood up, fists at the ready, sure that Banes’ body was failing him, he’d had his last hurrah. But, again, he’d underestimated his quarry, as he was charged to the ground. He could feel the hammer in the small of his back. He was now face down, with Banes on top of him, straddling him.
There was something unyielding and strong about Banes, even in his depleted state, and Frost knew that if he stayed in this position he was a dead man. He needed a miracle – he got a helicopter. The searchlight beamed down on them and lit up the scene. It flew in low enough to churn up the forest floor, and dirt and leaves and bracken spun around them.
He felt the gloved hand that was pressing down on the back of his neck, as if to hold a piece of wood in place before hammering in a nail, release its grip. And Frost managed to twist himself around to face his attacker. He sniffed the air. It was rancid, like putrefying flesh and … death. Banes was holding his hands to his eyes, eyes that were obviously full of the swirling grit and dirt. The hammer was in one hand, the lead box was stuffed in a deep pocket of his duffel coat.
Then there was a bark, followed by Simms’s voice encouraging Plato, ‘Where, boy? Where are they?’
Banes took his gloved hands from his face – a face that looked like a death mask – just long enough for Frost to grab Banes’ ears, pull his head towards him, and deliver a textbook headbutt to his nose. He could feel the bone crack where it had connected with the sweet spot at the top of his forehead, just below the hairline. Banes’ nose, already weakened from the earlier punch, now exploded in a blast of blood.
The killer reeled back, emitting a high-pitched yelp as he did so, like a dog. (Though Frost thought the comparison an insult to the venerable Plato, whose stately barking was getting closer and closer.)
The helicopter must have veered away, because it went dark again. Frost got to his feet, searching around for Banes, clenched fists at the ready.
‘Guv! You all right?’ asked Simms, shining a torch in his face.
Frost grabbed the torch, and raked its light over the ground and trees – Banes was gone. Simms, breathless, excited by the chase, talked away, but Frost ignored him. He was concentrating on his surroudings; for once, he seemed to be getting his bearings. This neck of the woods looked familiar to him.
Plato barked up ahead of them, its powerful little nose naturally on to something. Frost shone the torch at a tree. ‘Recognize that one, Simms?’
‘Oh yeah. It’s the one that—’
‘Come on, son!’
Frost and Simms steamed ahead, following Plato who was again on Banes’ trail. And they were heading in just the direction that the DI wanted them to. Two police helicopters flew over, low and loud. The roar of the protestors intensified. But above the melee, the sudden cry was unmistakable to Frost. He recognized it, because he’d lived it himself. He raced ahead of Simms and Plato, his torch aimed at the ground, then he slowed and held up his arms, and managed to raise one leg, too, to stop Plato and Simms from falling in.
‘Degsy, you bloody wonderful stupid little toffee-nosed twat!’
Lying in the deep hole, the hole that Frost had fallen in only days before, was Clive Banes. The hammer in one hand, the lead box containing the ‘treasure’ beside him. Banes, unmoving, looked up at them, his red-rimmed eyes in his bloodied face were wide open and unblinking. He remained that way until he was lifted out of there by the ambulance crew that arrived thirty minutes later.
Frost wondered whether they shouldn’t have left him there, with his hammer, with his ‘treasure’, and just shovelled the dirt over him. He wasn’t being cruel, far from it. He suspected it would be what the lone, unknown, unknowable and anonymous killer would have wanted.
‘Cheers, Jimmy, God bless, bottoms up and your good health.’
Harry Baskin raised his tumbler of whisky, then took a slug and expelled a lavish ‘Ahhh’ as it burnished the back of his throat and slipped down like satin. He inspected the glass in his hand. Not so much as a tremor. Nerves of steel, brass balls, and a game boy to the last. Harry still had it. And Jimmy McVale got it. Right between the eyes.
‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, Jimmy, but you had it coming, son. You was always heading this way, just a matter of time. You always was a horrible bastard. Not well liked amongst the “chaps”.’ Harry’s face curdled in disgust. ‘Kill a kid? You piece of shit. No, you had it coming. Not only for her, but for Bob. He’s got a wife, a kid. I’m gonna have to tell them. And another thing, you half-baked, two-bob, piece of shi—’
‘Harry?’
Baskin turned towards the
locked door. There was a faint knock. Followed by a series of them and another call of his name, but with added urgency this time. Harry recognized the voice: it was his barman, Dino, hammering on the padded door to be heard.
‘What is it?’
‘You’ve got visitors.’
Harry Baskin knew what that meant. ‘How many of them, and who?’
‘Two. There’s a bird, pretty. And that black fella, always wears great clobber. They’ve just walked in.’
‘OK. If they ask, say you haven’t seen me. The usual, you know nothing, right?’
‘Right, Aitch.’
Harry Baskin downed the Johnnie Walker and put plan B into action. Or was it plan A? He hadn’t quite decided what the plan was to be. All he knew was that he was going to kill Jimmy McVale. He’d decided that long ago. But with Denton’s finest, Waters and Clarke, in his club – his mind needed to focus.
Harry moved with lethal efficiency now, the same lethal efficiency that had put him in this predicament. He took a pair of leather driving gloves from his desk drawer and pulled them over his meaty hands. He then lifted McVale out of his chair and laid him on the floor. He removed the revolver from the dead man’s waistband and went over to the bottle of Johnnie Walker. He picked it up by the neck and took some mighty swigs. He needed the Dutch, and hopefully it would blunt some of the pain. The plan he was enacting now was definitely plan B.
Plan A was to roll McVale up in the rug on the floor, stick him in the boot of the car, and drive him out to Felixstowe where an associate of his had a commercial fishing boat and could be relied on to take care of such things. Burials at sea where they don’t get washed up, or end up bobbing about on the surface. It was Davy Jones’ locker for Jimmy McVale.
Plan B was a different kettle of fish altogether. Harry gripped McVale’s gun, and fired a shot into his own left arm. Not right in it, not the muscle, the bone, but enough to blow away a big flap of flesh and get it bleeding good and proper; and enough to make him bite down on his bottom lip and draw blood from there too. But he knew he’d survived far worse gunshot wounds. He then put four shots into the wall around the safe. And, regrettably, the Queen caught one in the bonce too.
There was now a banging on the door that grew into a thorough pounding, like they were putting their foot to it.
‘Harry! Open up!’
‘Mr Baskin, it’s the police! Are you OK?’
It was DS Waters and DC Susan Clarke, in that order.
He went over to Jimmy McVale and put the revolver in his hand, pressing his dead fingers around the butt and on the trigger. He took off his gloves and put them back in the drawer, went over to the safe, and slumped down on the floor and called out, ‘Help! Help! He shot me … robbery … he shot me!’
The room was soundproofed, but not to the extent that they hadn’t heard the gunfire, because now the door was flexing and bulging and just about to burst free of its lock, which it duly did, letting in the roar of the crowd and the bellowing voice of the MC: ‘Keith, you know what you need, three in a row, top of the board …’
Waters and Clarke stood in the doorway, taking in the scene.
‘The kid … Ruby … she’s in the boot of McVale’s car … a Beamer, round the back … the keys are on the desk … She’s OK … she’s …’ Harry tried to say something else but his pained voice was drowned out by the ecstatic cheering of the crowd.
‘ONE … HUNDRED … AND … EIGH-TY!’
Keith ‘Keefy’ Keathson had just beaten Jocky Wilson with a maximum finish in the final of the very first Coconut Grove Darts Classic.
Harry Baskin smiled as he thought to himself, life doesn’t get much sweeter than this.
Wednesday (1)
Frost, Simms and Hanlon considered the box on the desk. They were in Frost’s office. The door was closed. It could have been seen as an unnecessary precaution given the incident room was empty. It was 1.30 a.m. Most were in bed, fast asleep after their gruelling forty-eight-hour shifts in the search for Ruby Hanson. The poor sods that weren’t were on duty at Denton Woods.
Frost’s usual paper-strewn and file-heaped desk had been cleared – almost in just one sweeping move – by the DI to accommodate the box.
‘Shall we?’ asked Arthur Hanlon.
Simms said, ‘We’re this close, be madness not to, wouldn’t it?’
Frost considered this statement. It was apt. Because madness was at the very heart of this case. The ‘treasure’ had joined a long and unhappy lineage of inanimate objects that man had put greater store in than life itself.
There was a chisel and a hammer on the table. They were both from the store room, and not part of Clive Banes’ arsenal. Frost picked them up. He gave Arthur Hanlon the nod, and Hanlon’s big hands gripped the box, securing it to the desk so Frost could hammer down on the chisel and break off the padlock … and get to the prize.
‘Don’t miss, Jack.’
‘Don’t worry, Arthur, I was a dab hand at woodwork at school.’
Frost put the business end of the chisel on to the weakest and thinnest part of the padlock. He was pretty sure one swift blow would break it open. He took a deep breath. He raised the hammer and—
‘Don’t you dare, Frost!’
Crammed in the doorway were Superintendent Stanley Mullett, Captain Lionel Cavanagh and some plain-clothes bods who had ‘spook’ written all over them.
Mullett and Cavanagh parted to let the dark-suited men enter the office. The four of them moved to take the hammer and chisel from Frost’s hand and the box off the desk with such a close-drilled precision that by the time Frost managed to ask what the hell was going on … they were gone.
Simms and Hanlon were just as quickly dispatched by Mullett.
‘How are you, Jack?’ asked a concerned Captain Cavanagh as he tilted his head to inspect the lump on the detective’s temple. ‘Looks like you caught one for the cause.’
‘It’s nothing.’
On hearing this, Captain Cavanagh beamed a big smile. ‘Good man, good man. My utmost congratulations. Absolutely marvellous work. Bravo. Shall be making the highest commendations about your impeccable conduct throughout this case. You really are an outstanding detective, a credit to Denton and the force.’
Frost knew when he was having smoke blown up his arse, and didn’t greet the praise with the requisite obsequiousness. ‘You’re not retired at all, are you, Captain Cavanagh?’
‘One never really retires in this game, Jack. When duty calls, when England expects.’
‘And you’re not really with the Stolen Art and Antiques Squad, are you?’
‘Frost, you’ve been told by the captain—’
Cavanagh turned to Mullett and with barely a gesture cut him off.
‘Jack has every right to ask. Let’s just say, I’m a serving officer without portfolio. My remit is wide and rewarding, I like to think.’
‘A spook?’
‘I’m in the service of Her Majesty. Just like you.’
Mullett muttered a ‘Hear, hear’ to this.
‘And I take it you’re not going to tell me what’s in the box?’
‘But I did tell you. A fabulous jewelled Fabergé egg.’
‘Yes, you did tell me. But why don’t I believe you?’
The smile vanished from the captain’s face. He took a breath and released it on the back of a sigh that was tinged with genuine sadness. Sad that he’d underestimated Frost and been caught out? Or maybe sad because it was the age-old question, and one that he could never answer. ‘My dear Inspector Jack Frost, may I ask you a question?’
‘You may.’
‘What do you want there to be in the box?’
Frost considered this. Then smiled, then shrugged. Cavanagh returned both gestures with the slightest of winks. They understood each other. Cavanagh touched the brim of his green Harris tweed cap and turned to leave.
Mullett opened the door for him. ‘I have a rather good sherry in my office, if you have time for a …’
Cavanagh didn’t answer Mullett, just repositioned that beaming, slightly buffoonish smile on his face, which Frost now realized was as much play-acting as anything else in a well-rounded spook’s repertory. The good captain stalked out of the incident room with the gait of a man half his age.
Mullett, maybe to cover his embarrassment, adopted Cavanagh’s demeanour, and beamed broadly at the DI. ‘Yes, Jack. Good work. Both the little girls are back home safely with their parents. This box, or whatever it is, has been found. The Wheatons’ murders solved. As for Jimmy McVale, Harry Baskin is claiming McVale tried to rob him.’
‘That sounds about right to me.’
‘Said when he opened the safe McVale shot him. So he shot him back. Of course, I will suggest further investigation into Baskin. What’s he doing with a gun in his safe in the first place? This is Denton, not Dodge City.’
‘Stopping people from killing him? Sounds like self-defence to me.’
Mullett looked unconvinced. But happy enough. ‘Anyway, despite Baskin, the one blemish on the case, that’s all of them closed.’
‘Almost, sir. Almost.’
Wednesday (2)
‘How is it?’
‘No brain damage,’ said Frost, making his way across Denton General’s car park to where Susan Clarke was leaning against the yellow Metro. There was a decent-sized plaster spread across his forehead.
‘Could have told you that. It would take the Burundi drummers two days beating out a tune on your bonce before they located your brain.’
‘You’ve been rehearsing that one.’
She winked and nodded towards the report he was holding. ‘What’s that?’
He held it up to stress its importance. ‘This? This is serious trouble for someone. It’s Dr Death’s path report on Clive Banes. He died of massive organ failure brought on by encephalitis.’
‘What’s that and who’s in trouble?’
‘Encephalitis is potentially deadly brain inflammation. Often caused by animal bites, like dog bites.’