Frost at Christmas

by RD Wingfield

  The end cell was locked. It was silent within--ominously silent. Clive put his eye to the spy-hole. His heart lurched and stopped. Level with his eye, a pair of legs hung downward, swaying and twisting grotesquely.

  The occupant of the cell had hanged himself.

  Clive hurled himself .at the door, but of course it was locked. The fools. The bloody fools! They'd left him in charge but had taken the keys. He yelled. His voice echoed back at him but no one came. The chap in the other cell started banging on his door, shouting to know what was going on.

  Feeling sick, Clive raced up the stone corridor and out of the cell block. He saw the station sergeant going through a door marked Charge Room. But he had no breath. He croaked incoherently, tugging at the sergeant's uniform to get him to do something, anything. When Wells realized what Barnard was trying to tell him his face drained of color. He snatched the spare bunch of keys from the charge room and tore to the end cell. As he poked the key in the lock, the door swung open.

  Clive followed the sergeant into the cell. Sitting on the wall bed, tears of laughter streaming down their faces, were P.C.s Stringer and Dobson. Hanging from the ceiling on the end of a piece of rope was the pair of men's trousers they had stuffed with straw.

  The station sergeant smiled. "It's one of the oldest tricks in the game, son. I thought you'd been in a police station before."

  MONDAY--3

  Superintendent Mullett was taking sadistic pleasure in making Frost wait. The man had eventually slouched into his office in his usual insolent manner wearing that disgrace of a mac with the frayed sleeves and that ridiculous scarf.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?" No apology, nothing.

  Without raising his eyes from his correspondence, Mullett flicked a curt wrist toward a chair and deliberately took his time signing his letters, reading them through with studied slowness, and blotting them carefully afterward.

  He heard Frost fidget in his chair. Good. The display of his superior's displeasure and the humiliation of being ignored were having the desired effect. His pen crawled at a snail's pace to intensify the torture.

  More fidgeting sounds from Frost.

  Mullett's pen crawled on.

  The sound of a match being struck.

  A match? Mullett's nose twitched. A smoke-ring gently nudged his pen and drifted across his desk. He followed it with incredulous eyes.

  This was intolerable. Frost was smoking. Without even asking permission--which would have been icily refused-- he was smoking, leaning at ease in the chair, swinging an unpolished shoe from side to side. He gave Mullett a reassuring smile.

  "When you're ready, Super...."

  Mullett winced. He hated being addressed as "Super". Everyone knew it but Frost.

  "Put out that cigarette," he snapped with such ferocity that the cigarette immediately dropped from Frost's startled lips and landed on the carpet. There was a smell of burning wool from the blue Wilton. Frost ground at the pile with his dirty shoes and managed to distribute a mess of broken cigarette and charred wool over a wide area. He moved his chair to cover up the burn and smiled inquiringly at Mullett.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?"

  As soon as Frost had gone, Mullett would go down on his hands and knees and inspect the damage. In the meantime he contented himself with a long hard stare.

  "I wanted to see you more than half an hour ago. You've kept me waiting, Inspector."

  "I had to have a look at Bennington's Bank. Someone jemmied their door."

  "I would have thought your Divisional Commander's summons took priority. And you weren't at the briefing meeting!"

  A theatrical smiting of palm to freckled forehead. "The meeting? Clean forgot all about it, sir."

  Mullen took the envelope from his drawer. "I've had a complaint about you, Inspector." He unfolded the memo. "From Superintendent Gibbons of the Police Training Center--"

  Frost's blank expression masked his relief. This was a comparatively trivial matter. He'd been asked over to the training center to speak, as an experienced officer, to new recruits and to give them practical hints that would assist them in their chosen career.

  "So, you told them how to fiddle their car expenses," accused Mullett.

  "1 only mentioned it in passing, sir."

  "In passing, or not, that was what you were talking to them about when Superintendent Gibbons entered the lecture room. 1 was ashamed to get his memo. Fortunately he wrote to me confidentially, as a friend, and didn't copy it to H.Q. I'm most concerned about you, Frost. I had occasion to look in your office today. Frankly, I was appalled. The mess, the untidiness . . . and I found that statistical return that County has been screaming for still uncompleted."

  "Ah, yes. I must get around to that. Anything else, sir?"

  Yes, there was. Mullett gathered himself for his main at tack.

  "Were those the clothes you wore at the training center?"

  Frost looked down at his apparel with surprise. "Why . yes."

  The superintendent smoothed his mustache carefully as if it was insecurely fixed with spirit gum. "Superintendent Gibbons thought you had turned up in your gardening clothes--"

  Frost shot up. "Of all the bloody cheek!"

  "It's not a bloody cheek, Inspector! I've been meaning to talk to you about your dress for some time. That mac's a disgrace. And those trousers--when were they last pressed? And as for your shoes. ..."

  Frost tucked his shoes under the chair to hide them from view. "With respect, sir, I'm supposed to be solving bloody crimes, not tarting myself up like a tailor's dummy."

  Mullett sighed and slumped back in his chair. How could you get through to people like this? Very carefully, and explaining all the ramifications and dangers, he told Frost about the Chief Constable's nephew.

  Sergeant Wells flung open the door to Inspector Frost's office. "You'll be working in here, Barnard."

  It was a mess. A tiny dingy office; two desks, buried in paper, a filing cabinet that wouldn't close properly, and a hatrack. The room was overheated by an enormous cast iron radiator running beneath a window that overlooked the car park. The wall calendar still showed the previous month and untidy heaps of paper and opened files carpeted the brown linoed floor.

  Wells stepped on to an oasis of virgin lino. "You'll have to get the place tidied up a bit, Barnard. Paperwork was never the inspector's strongest suit."

  Clive was speechless. This wouldn't have been tolerated for a single day in London.

  The door crashed against the wall and Frost entered, eyes blazing. He kicked a heap of papers and hurled himself into a chair.

  "That bloody four-eyed bastard!"

  The station sergeant smiled knowingly and gave Clive a broad wink. "Just come from the Divisional Commander, Jack?"

  "I'd like to pull his bleeding mustache out, hair by hair." He spotted a fresh memo on his desk, gave it a brief glance, snorted, and screwed it up. It missed the waste-paper basket by a good six inches and joined the other debris on the floor. "Do you know the latest? I've got to wet-nurse the snotty-nosed illegitimate son of our Chief-bloody-Constable.''

  Wells grinned and jerked a thumb toward Clive. "Not his son, Jack--his snotty-nosed nephew. And this is him."

  Frost overflowed with apologies, handshakes, and offers of cigarettes. "Don't take any notice of me, son. I'm not usually like this--only when I've been rubbed up the wrong way by some horn-rimmed, hairy-lipped, stuck-up cow's son of a Divisional Commander who shall be nameless."

  The station sergeant coughed pointedly. There was a newcomer in their midst.

  Frost took the hint. "Yes, you're right, Bill, I'm supposed to imbue our young hopefuls with respect for rank even though I haven't any myself. Flaming arseholes--!

  He had just noticed Clive's suit.

  "One hundred and seven quid," announced Sergeant Wells gravely.

  Frost's eyebrows shot up. He tested the material between nicotine-stained fingers and shook his head. "For that money you could have got a prop
er one, son. And for work the criterion is never wear a suit you wouldn't be happy letting a drunk be sick all over."

  Behind an impassive face, Clive's resentment flared. Have your fun, you bucolic sods, he thought. We'll see who has the last laugh.

  Frost, who had a cornucopia of tasteless anecdotes to suit every occasion, was telling a story about his early days in C.I.D.

  "I'd bought myself this suit from the Fifty Shilling Tailors and the very first day I wore it this little fat drunk lurches up and deposits his lunch all over me. Naturally, I admonished him with a sharp knee to the groin, but that suit never looked the same again."

  "It doesn't, Jack," agreed Wells, straight-faced, "and it's about time you had it cleaned."

  Frost grinned. "Funny you should mention my clothes, Bill. Our beloved Divisional Commander has just informed me I'm doing the ragman out of a living. I suppose my mac compares unfavorably with that PS107 creation."

  "He didn't care for this either," admitted Clive.

  "If he said that, son, then I'm going to have to force myself to like it." As he spoke, he worried something on his right cheek with his fingertips.

  Clive eyed Frost more closely. The right cheek! He hadn't noticed before. It was scarred. A knot of white puckered scar tissue under the right eye. He found himself staring and pulled his eyes away.

  Frost's internal phone buzzed. It was buried beneath the papers on his desk, but he dragged the receiver out by its flex. A terse message from Inspector Allen--would Frost report to his office right away. Click. No "please", just the bare message. Frost reburied the phone. "Another bastard I hate. You might as well come with me, son. Give you a chance to see what a real detective looks like."

  A real detective looked thin, wiry, and sour, but on top of the job, his chilly office reeking of floor polish and uncluttered efficiency, with the desk clinically clear, the "In" tray empty, the "Out" brimful of memos and instructions in Allen's neat hand.

  Allen frowned when he saw Frost had brought someone in with him, but forced out a wintry smile when he realized it was the Chief Constable's nephew. As soon as he'd restored Tracey Uphill to her mother he'd take the new D.C. under his wing. Another career man, Allen knew his promotion to chief inspector would be announced shortly and he was aiming to be detective superintendent within a year. He'd overtake Mullen yet. The commandership of the new, enlarged division wasn't the one-horse race his superintendent blithely imagined.

  Shaking hands briskly with Clive he nodded his visitors to chairs.

  "You weren't at the meeting this morning, Frost?" It was barked out as a question.

  "No, Allen," beamed Frost, lighting a cigarette and dropping the match on the polished lino, "I forgot."

  Allen rose from his chair, picked up the discarded match, and deposited it carefully into his empty waste-paper basket.

  "Thanks," said Frost cheerfully.

  Allen took a couple of deep breaths and returned to his seat.

  "The missing girl. I want you to question the mother. Something's wrong. If this was a straightforward missing-from-home we should have found the kid by now."

  "There's always the possibility she's done the kid in," suggested Frost.

  Clive smiled tolerantly at this outrageous suggestion. You'd only got to look at the woman. . . . But Inspector Allen seemed to agree with Frost.

  "Precisely. That's what I want you to check. Have a nose around. It wasn't searched properly last night."

  "Right," said Frost, stretching out his legs and drawing on the cigarette.

  Allen's eyes narrowed. "I mean now!" he barked.

  That's the way to treat lazy buggers like Frost, thought Clive as the inspector shot to his feet.

  "Congratulations," said Frost.

  "On what?" asked Allen in surprise.

  "On your promotion to chief inspector coming through."

  "But it hasn't," said Allen.

  "Oh," said Frost, "I thought it had," and he sat down again and finished his cigarette.

  Frost took Clive with him to the control room to pick up a personal radio, but the constable in charge was loath to part with any more.

  "You've already got two and you haven't returned them, sir," he said, pointing to the signed receipts in his issues book.

  "Important job for Inspector Allen," said Frost, breezily signing for a third. "You'll have them all back this afternoon, without fail." He snatched a radio from the shelf and hustled Clive out before the constable could protest further.

  His car, a gray, mud-splattered Morris 1100, was hidden in a side street. It was a cold day and as soon as Frost had cleared the passenger seat of a pair of dirt-caked gumboots and some yellowing Daily Mirrors, he slid in and rammed the heater switched to "High". Then he chucked the keys across to Clive and allowed himself to be chauffeured.

  Inspector Frost was the sort of navigator who screamed "Turn right!" just as the car was.passing the appropriate turning. He didn't bother with advance warnings; Clive was forever slamming on the brakes and executing tight U-turns and the gumboots on the back seat kept falling to the floor.

  They had left the town and were winding their way eastward down a rutted road running alongside forlorn miserable fields, unfarmed and overgrown, sites compulsorily purchased for the future expansion of Denton New Town.

  To the right was one of the search parties, a thin straggle, moving slowly and methodically, poking the undergrowth with sticks, a cumulus cloud of smoky breath hovering over their heads in the cold air. Frost leaned over and honked the horn. One of the searchers turned and waved, then resumed the slow, patient prodding. Even at that distance the mud-splattered Morris was plainly identifiable.

  Frost settled back in his seat, then drew dive's attention to a large clearing where a smoke-belching bulldozer was rooting up the stumps of trees.

  "Used to be woods there when I was young, son. Thick woods--with birds, squirrels, the lot. Many's the time in the hot fiery days of my youth when I've taken the shy trembling lady of my choice for an advanced anatomy lesson under the green bough." He sighed deeply. "That was weeks ago, of course. Oh, we should have turned left back there, son. All right, back a bit. More . . . more . . . you've bags of room."

  She was waiting for them on the doorstep, skin scrubbed clean of makeup, ash-blonde hair pulled off her face and tied with a black boot-lace ribbon. She could have been a child, until you got close and saw the lines of worry, the eyes puffy from crying and lack of sleep. When she heard the car pull up outside she was sure they were bringing Tracey back, but when she opened the door she could see there was only two men. Please, please, she thought, don't let it be bad news.

  The untidy man with the scarf gave her a reassuring smile. "No news, I'm afraid, Mrs. Uphill. Couple of questions you might help us on though."

  She led them through to the lounge, buttocks wriggling in tight slacks, even in grief arousing strong sexual responses from the two men.

  Frost settled down in an armchair and worried away at his scar for a minute before starting his questions. He was going to have to upset her and he hated upsetting anyone. The question he should ask was, "Have you killed your daughter, Mrs. Uphill, and hidden her body somewhere?

  If so, you might tell us so we can call in those poor sods searching in the cold." Instead he said, "Any further thoughts as to where Tracey might have gone, Mrs. Uphill? We've covered all the obvious places."

  She brushed back a straying wisp of hair. "If I had I'd have phoned the police."

  "You had no quarrel with the child? Any reason why she might have left home?"

  "No. We went through all this last night!"

  Frost pushed himself up from the chair. "We'd like to search the house, if you don't mind."

  She looked startled. "It was searched last night."

  "Children can be devils, Mrs. Uphill. She could have sneaked back in and hidden somewhere."

  "She's not in the house." The woman hugged herself as though for warmth. The room was hot, but the col
d was inside her. Her teeshirt had ridden up showing naked cream beneath. She looked like a frightened, lonely child and Clive wanted to put his arms around her--and not just because he wanted to reassure her.

  "We haven't got all sodding day, son," snapped Frost. "We'll start at the top and work our way down."

  The upper floor contained two bedrooms and a bathroom. They looked in the main bedroom first. Thick drawn curtains shut out the daylight. Clive found the switch and a tinted bulb slashed the bed with rose-colored light. The large double bed was unmade, a crumpled, flimsy lemon nightdress lying on a pillow. A pyramid of half-smoked cigarettes in the ashtray testified to a sleepless night.

  They searched the room thoroughly, moving the bed and the large dressing table. Then Clive slid open the door of the built-in wardrobe and his startled gasp of horror sent Frost running over. But it was a doll; an expensive, life-sized, blonde-haired doll, the hidden-away Christmas present Tracey had asked Father Christmas for. Clive braced himself for some biting comment, but Frost mildly remarked, "Blimey, son, it looks bloody real, doesn't it?"

  It was a large wardrobe, but apart from the doll, it held only clothes swaying on hangers; lots and lots of expensive clothes.

  Frost pulled back the curtains and looked out on Vicarage Terrace. You could just see the vicarage and the Sunday school at the end of the street. What had happened to the child after she left that Sunday school? He shifted his gaze back to the room and the ceiling....

  "Blimey!"

  Clive followed his gaze. A mirror was fixed to the ceiling, positioned to reflect the occupants of the bed. The detective constable's mouth went dry as he pictured a naked, writhing Joan Uphill, her body splashed with red light, her hair spread over the pillow....

  "Must be a sod to clean that," said the down-to-earth Jack Frost, adding, as an afterthought, "Perhaps the man has a feather duster stuck up his arse."

  The other bedroom was the child's, the walls papered in a Tom and Jerry pattern, with nursery characters decorating the lampshade and the door of the white-painted cupboard. A row of dolls sat solemnly on a windowseat staring at the small bed which was neatly made. A small radiator heated the room, but it seemed cold ... and empty.