A Lethal Frost

by Danny Miller

  ‘He’ll soon be up and about.’

  She lifted her eyes from the plight of her husband and focused them on Jimmy. ‘I’m surprised to find you here. I called your house and your wife said you were visiting George. I thought it was another George, what with you saying you’d never visit him in hospital.’

  ‘You know my wife’s name, it’s Maureen, always has been ever since you’ve known her, but you never call her it.’ Jimmy went to get up. ‘I’ll leave you and your husband to it.’

  ‘Don’t go, Jimmy, it’s you I’ve come to see.’

  There was another chair for Melody to sit in, but she chose not to. She stood on the other side of the bed, her hands buried in the fur-coat pockets. Unsmiling, in fact, with a practised expression of withering contempt on her face. It was somehow fitting that they were on opposite sides, with George in the middle. Jimmy had felt this way for some time, ever since he’d found out what Melody was really up to.

  ‘Traitor!’

  ‘What are you bloody talking about?’

  ‘You were spotted,’ said Melody. ‘Talking to the police.’

  ‘Saturday?’

  She nodded bleakly.

  ‘The same one you were talking to earlier – Inspector Frost. Nice fella, terrible luck with the horses. I gave him some tips.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll thank you for it. Someone coshed him over the head in the car park and stole all his winnings.’

  Jimmy Drake glanced towards George Price, and wondered for a moment if he could hear this conversation. He’d been talking to him earlier, convinced that he could.

  ‘Going to the races is turning into a dangerous business, Melody.’

  ‘Maybe you should retire, find quieter pursuits.’

  Drake returned the cold smile, with interest on top.

  ‘What did Frost ask you, Jimmy, and what did you say?’

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

  Melody bristled at this. ‘I’m George’s wife and a partner in the business. Your boss.’

  Jimmy let out a contemptuous crack of laughter at that one.

  Her eyes blazed. ‘If you said anything to the police, I need to know.’

  He offered up an insouciant shrug, and pulled another grape from the stem, a stem that was now looking as depleted as a late-autumn oak.

  ‘Did Frost mention a notebook?’

  ‘A little black book? Might have.’ Jimmy watched her closely. He knew when a thoroughbred filly was spooked, and Melody was all those things. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘I’m a concerned wife, who just wants to know—’

  ‘Oh, is that what you are—’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. I’m running the show now, and you’d do well to remember that.’

  Jimmy took out his box of Hamlet cigars and peeled the cellophane off one.

  ‘You can’t smoke in here.’

  ‘I’m not staying,’ said Drake. ‘I know what’s got your knickers in a twist. You’re worried in case I mentioned something to Inspector Frost about horse fixing.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He laughed again incredulously, but it quickly subsided, leaving nothing but rancour in his voice. ‘Don’t take me for a mug, Melody. I’ve been in the game too long. I know when the fix is on. I’m the one who writes down the numbers, remember. I know when a horse goes from short to long for no good reason other than it’s been fixed. I hear things. And I know that’s what you’ve been up to with your … friends.’

  ‘You’re slandering me, and you’re slandering George. How dare you!’

  ‘I’ve known George longer than anyone, apart from Harry Baskin maybe, and I know that whatever George is and George isn’t, he’s not a cheat. Not when it comes to horse racing. There’s no way that George would have anything to do with fixed races. Because he loves the game, and if he gets caught he’s finished, it’s over, they’ll ban him from every racecourse in the country – for life. And that’s why he’s been so unhappy this last month or so, with that hanging over his head.’

  ‘You’re fired! I’m retiring you.’

  ‘Too late, love. That’s why I’ve come here today, to tell George I’m handing in my notice, as they say. I quit. The George Price I know wouldn’t have got involved with horse fixing, because he knows that we can beat the punters fair and square, so we don’t have to rob them!’

  Jimmy stood up so fast that he felt light-headed, and it took a moment for the blood to catch up and fill his cheeks again.

  ‘No, now I’m even more worried, Jimmy, and not about what you’ve already told Frost, but about what you’re going to tell him. But it will be my word against yours. And the way I see it, it’s just a vicious rumour spread by a bitter ex-employee. Jack will believe me, not you.’

  Drake gave her a breezy couldn’t-care-less smile. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him anything, and I wouldn’t. Because I know that when George wakes up, he’ll come to his senses and he’ll have nothing to with it, or your pals.’

  The dapper clerk stuck the cigar in his mouth and lit up; his rosy cheeks ventilated the stogie as efficiently as the machine George Price was on, until he had a mouthful of smoke that he was able to expertly dispatch in the direction of the patient. The pungent cloud seemed to hang in the air and settle under George’s nose. Jimmy swore he could see his old friend’s nostrils twitch and an imperceptible smile flicker across his lips. George loved his cigars, even the cheap ones that Jimmy favoured.

  Jimmy took up his green snapbrim fedora, fixed it to his head and said defiantly, ‘Top of the morning to you.’

  Melody Price got the message, and matched his defiant look. Out in the corridor, Jimmy gave a nod to Harry Baskin’s man watching over George. Bad Manners Bob now had a bandage around his bald head, but the burly bouncer still looked more than capable of protecting his charge.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Cathy … I’m so sorry.’

  On seeing DS John Waters, Cathy Bartlett collapsed in his arms and sobbed. It was mid-afternoon and she was standing in the corridor of the County morgue. Her sixteen-year-old son, Dean, had been pronounced dead that morning, and she now faced the terrible task of identifying his body. Dr Maltby suspected that Dean had succumbed to catastrophic organ failure after a heroin overdose. It was likely that there was a bad batch of the narcotic in the area – either too strong, too pure, or cut with something deadly. The post-mortem and the toxicology reports would tell them.

  Waters, with the help of a WPC and an orderly, got Cathy to the relatives’ room. The orderly ferried in some hot teas for them, and Cathy, after a while, appeared to regain her composure. In fact, Waters was surprised by just how determined she became not to cry any more, or fall to pieces, as was surely her right.

  Cathy Bartlett was thirty-four years old, petite and slim, with her long crinkly brown hair pulled back off her face in a bun. She was wearing a blue uniform tunic from the supermarket she worked in as a cashier. A life of hard work and struggling against a tide of bad luck had done its best to diminish her good looks, but had failed. The supermarket job she had was only half the story; she was in her final year of a part-time degree at the local poly.

  In his time with the residents of the Southern Housing Estate, Waters had got to know two lads in particular, Gavin Ross and Dean Bartlett. They were both only children from single-parent homes, and had mums who made every effort to keep their kids on track for a better future. In this respect, the two boys reminded Waters of his own background; his mother was also a single parent who had worked hard not to lose her son to the streets. It was seeing his friends and family fall into that life of crime that had deepened the resolve his mother had instilled in him, that had made him choose his path.

  So when he’d first seen Cathy he’d also had tears in his eyes. But now he would take his cue from her.

  ‘Did you find him, John?’ she asked, using his first name without hesitation.

  ‘Yes.’
/>   He’d been in his car early that morning, at the end of a night’s surveillance of the tower block that Tommy Wilkins lived in, when there was a sharp rap of little knuckles on the window. He turned to see three kids on BMXs, and they looked scared or excited, he couldn’t tell which. Waters got out and followed them to the top floor of one of the nearby blocks; there was a young lad slumped in the stairwell. It was presumably the first time the kids had seen a dead body, hence their mixture of emotions.

  There was the usual drug paraphernalia: the bent teaspoon, the syringe. Dean Bartlett was on his knees, doubled over, his arms spread out in front of him. There was blood on the floor, and blood on his fingertips. It looked like he was trying to claw his way through the concrete floor, tunnel his way out of the pain and misery he’d just condemned himself to.

  ‘I had no idea he was on anything, no idea at all.’

  ‘I know, Cathy.’ John Waters took a deep breath, as right now it was the last thing he wanted to ask, but it was also the most necessary: ‘But I need to know, do you know who’s dealing it?’

  She gave a weary shake of her head, as if that was all she’d been thinking about. ‘If I knew, if I had names, I would have told you the other day. I could suggest a load of people who might be dealing it, but you probably know them too, right?’

  Waters matched her weary gesture.

  ‘But none for sure. I’ve got no proof, haven’t actually seen anyone, heard no definite names. It was just a rumour that heroin was on the estate. To be honest, even at the meeting I didn’t think it would …’ her voice trembled, ‘… it would affect us. I thought maybe it was just people panicking because it’s been on the TV so much. And I certainly didn’t think Dean would ever … would ever try it. He wasn’t like that. He’d never been interested in drugs, especially anything like heroin, it would have scared the life out of him.’

  ‘How about Gavin?’

  Cathy Bartlett drew in a deep steady breath as she considered this, as if wanting to phrase what she thought very carefully. ‘If it would be anyone, it would be Gavin. He was always the one to try things first. The more outgoing kid … but … but you know as well as I do, where Gavin went, Dean followed. Eventually.’

  Waters did know that: the pair had been best mates, for all of their young lives. They were always together; they’d even planned on going to college together, to do the same course, to train as electricians. Dean may very well have injected it for the first time, but, considering the result, that seemed irrelevant. Waters suspected that Dean’s best friend had been present, or certainly knew about it. Shooting heroin, for a first-timer like Dean, would be a two-man job, and would involve someone who had done it before. Did Gavin lead the way – did he give Dean the lethal fix?

  Cathy Bartlett wrapped her arms around herself as if a cold gust had just blown into the room. She began a slow rocking motion on the edge of her chair, then grabbed at the tissues sprouting out of the box on the table. She lost the battle to contain the pain she was feeling, and from her red-rimmed eyes the tears began to fall again.

  ‘My baby boy … such a waste … such a …’

  Tuesday (1)

  Jimmy Drake took his tea and plate of Bourbon biscuits into the living room for his elevenses and set them down on the side table next to his favourite chintz-covered armchair. He was still in his woollen striped dressing gown, and at this time of day it felt totally decadent. He could hear his wife upstairs, fussing about, as he liked to call it.

  Usually when he opened his copy of the Daily Express his hands automatically went to the racing section – but not today, he thought; today, instead of finding who’s the favourite for the three-thirty at Doncaster, I’ll find out what’s actually happening in the world, and not just in the hermetically sealed one of racing. Jimmy and all his friends were ‘racing men’, and all racing men ever talked about was the little world they inhabited: horses, horse racing, the dogs, football results, cricket scores, snooker games, egg and spoon races, in fact, just about any activity you could gamble on.

  But no more, Jimmy promised himself. Now he’d … retired … he was determined that life would open up to him. He would read books, see more films, go to the theatre, get into London more, take his grandkids places, the Natural History Museum for starters, watch their faces light up in awe as they set eyes on the Diplodocus in the entrance hall. Today’s the first day of the rest of my life, he told himself.

  ‘Here, sign this,’ said his wife, entering the living room with a birthday card in her hand.

  ‘Who’s it for?’

  ‘Malcolm.’

  Jimmy took the card, and saw it had a picture of an old 1930s Bentley racing car on it. He really didn’t know the significance that held for his son-in-law, who was thirty-six today, drove a Volvo, and worked in insurance. Jimmy signed the card without much enthusiasm and handed it back to his wife, Maureen.

  ‘What are you going to do today?’ she prompted.

  ‘Sit here.’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘No, not all day. I’ll probably go down the Winchester later.’

  She pursed her lips, gave a hollow laugh, and then shook her head. It was a medley of reactions that Jimmy took as criticism.

  ‘Well, it is my day off.’

  He hadn’t told his wife that he had … retired. He would, sometime this week, but he just couldn’t face broaching the subject with Maureen today. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that Jimmy couldn’t retire. That was another thing about racing men, they all died on the racecourse. Popped their clogs with heart attacks in the excitement of seeing their horse sprinting for the winning post, or keeled over with despair when they lost, or sometimes burst their livers in the bar – win, lose or draw. But racing men didn’t retire.

  So Jimmy said that they were taking the day off, out of respect for George, knowing that Maureen would smell a rat, and that rat would be Melody Price. Maureen despised Melody. She had the younger woman pegged as a gold-digger the moment she clapped eyes on her, and Melody’s behaviour over the intervening couple of years or so had not assuaged that opinion. So Jimmy would tell Maureen later – right now he just wanted to relax, and enjoy the first day of the rest of his life, as he kept telling himself.

  ‘All right, love, I’m off, and remember, Janice and the kids are popping around later.’

  Jimmy smiled – his grandkids, now that was something to look forward to.

  ‘So don’t eat all the biscuits.’

  ‘I won’t. See you later.’

  She bent down and kissed the top of his head and left. As the front door closed behind her, the newspaper fell open at the racing section. And Jimmy’s eye automatically lit on the runners and riders at Catterick, and one horse in particular that he fancied. And he knew that it would be a day in front of the telly, watching the racing, probably having a bet or three, if he could be bothered to drag himself to the local bookie’s. His feet stretched out and landed on the pouffe with a practised ease, and he let out a satisfied sigh. The first day of the rest of my life.

  The phone rang. Jimmy groaned and hauled himself out of his armchair and padded into the hallway. Each trill of the phone was met with a muttered curse, at the sheer inconvenience of having to get up when he didn’t want to.

  He picked the receiver off the cradle and barked, ‘Hello.’

  He heard the pips go, then the voice: ‘Jimmy? It’s me. I need to talk to you.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘It’s me—’

  ‘Yes, I know who it is. What do you want?’

  ‘Can we meet up, Jimmy?’

  ‘Most irregular, don’t you think?’

  ‘I just need a quick word, in private?’

  ‘It’s really none of my business. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with it.’

  ‘You don’t think—’

  ‘I don’t know what I think. All I know is, I’m out. And whatever will happen, will happen. The big fella, George, he’s still with us. And I’
m expecting a full recovery.’

  ‘Please, Jimmy, I need to see you.’

  There was another long pause.

  ‘Her indoors has just gone out, be gone most of the day. Give it an hour or two. I’ll meet you in the Winchester.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘I’ll see you then. Socks.’

  There was some laboured breathing.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know, it’s a guess. But I know George, and I know his sense of humour. You just want to hope Jack Frost doesn’t have the same one.’

  The voice on the end started to formulate a reply, but the pips went and the line was dead.

  ‘You all right, John?’ Frost asked his friend and colleague, knowing of DS Waters’ close association with Cathy and Dean Bartlett.

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘And now the most stupid bloody question in the world – how’s Cathy?’

  ‘I asked it myself. She’s got her mates around, her sister’s there.’

  Waters was hovering in Frost’s office. The two men hadn’t sat down, because outside in the incident room the team were hard at it, and that’s where they would soon be. Sitting down just didn’t seem appropriate at the moment. Pacing around and thinking, keeping up the sense of urgency, now that did seem appropriate. Who had supplied the heroin? That was the question, the headline written up in big red capitals on the new incident board. Every known drug dealer, however low-key and whatever his merchandise, would be ‘spun around’ and made to know just how serious this was.

  The name of Gavin Ross, also sixteen, was written up on the board – he hadn’t been seen since Sunday night, and his mother was worried sick. Because of his age and vulnerability, there was a search party out looking for him.

  ‘Guv?’

  Frost lifted his eyes up from the stained carpet tiles to find Arthur Hanlon framed in the doorway.

  ‘Don’t you ever knock?’

  Hanlon looked confused. ‘It was open?’

  ‘So find a bit of wood and knock! What?’

  ‘I’ve got Frank Trafford down in Interview Room Two. He’s with his brief, Sarah Hollis; she’s a Legal Aid one. D’you want to see him?’