Frost at Christmas

by RD Wingfield

  Frost casually opened the cupboard door and an avalanche of toys cascaded to the floor at his feet. He found a Yo-Yo and demonstrated some tricky variations to his detective constable who tried not to show his contempt for Frost's childish behavior.

  Frost unhooked the string from his finger and dropped the Yo-Yo back on the heap. "Tell you what, son, you do one of your thorough London searches in the bathroom while I poke this lot back in the cupboard."

  The large bathroom, with its paneled tangerine bath, toilet, and washbasin, didn't take much searching, but Clive wasn't going to let the inspector show him what he'd missed. It was really too small, but he checked the bathroom cabinet. Just the usual toiletries, body cologne, talcum powder, bath foam, and an electric razor. He unscrewed the cap of the talc and sniffed the loin-stirring Joan Uphill perfume. He put the talc back and closed the cabinet. The only real possibility was the airing cupboard. He opened it up and looked inside. Most of its space was taken up by the hot-water tank and the wooden racks each side holding ironed linen. But they'd taught him to be thorough in London. Sliding out a couple of the wooden racks, he slid his hand around the back of the tank until it was wedged between hot, bare metal and the rough surface of the wall. Nothing hidden there. He could guarantee that. The space above the cylinder? More racks and more clothes. Brushing his new suit free of brickdust and cobwebs, he called across to the inspector that he'd finished.

  Frost sauntered over, his mac unbuttoned and flapping. He surveyed the bathroom. "No bidet? She must chuck her fag-ends down the loo." He dropped his own cigarette end to a sizzling death, lowered the toilet seat, plonked himself down on it, and lit up a fresh one, his eyes flitting about the room.

  "That was quick, son. Congratulations."

  There was something in the way he said it that put Clive on his guard. Had he missed anything? Of course he hadn't, how could he? But he still felt uneasy.

  Frost pumped out a mouthful of smoke.

  "Did you have much trouble getting the bath panel off?"

  Clive groaned inwardly. He could have kicked himself. The bath was boxed-in with plastic panels screwed to internal battens. A screamingly obvious hiding place, so obvious he'd missed it. But the scruffy old fool had spotted it.

  Frost gave an understanding smile and handed Clive a screwdriver produced from the depths of the mac pocket.

  After a token display of reluctance, the screws turned easily and he dropped them, one by one, into Frost's palm for safe-keeping, then off came the panel to be rested up against the other wall. The space revealed was large enough for two or three bodies but contained only dust, a heap of wood shavings, and a wet patch where the waste-pipe had been leaking.

  "Nothing, sir."

  Frost beamed. "I found the loot from six break-ins once, hidden behind bath panels. We knew it was in the bathroom. One brave lad even stuck his hand down the S-bend of the lav. I won't tell you what he found, but it wasn't the loot. Then I had one of my rare bright thoughts. We took out the bath panels and there it was, PS12,000 worth. A good hiding place. I wish a few more crooks were clever enough to use it. It's the first place I look now and I haven't found a bloody thing since."

  A light tread on the stair and a rattle of cups.

  "In here, Mrs. Uphill," called Clive.

  She stopped dead when she saw the removed panel and Clive on his knees by the bath.

  She knew.

  She knew they weren't looking for a live child. They were looking for a body.

  Her hands shook. The cups rattled.

  Frost gently took the tray from her and passed it to Clive.

  "You think she's dead?" she whispered. Frost didn't answer. "And am I supposed to have killed her--my own daughter?"

  Frost leveled up the ends of his scarf. His voice was soft. "We see lots of rotten things in the Force, Mrs. Uphill. You'd be surprised what people do. They kill their kids. Nice people. Loving parents with beautiful children, and they kill them. We had a mother, saw her husband off to work, kissed him goodbye, then drowned her three kids in the bath. Mentally ill, of course. Afterwards she went out shopping and bought them all sweets. Couldn't understand where they were when she got back. I doubt if that's what's happened in your case, but we have to check, even at the risk of hurting your feelings."

  There was silence. Even Clive was moved. Then she turned and clattered downstairs. She was sobbing.

  "I wonder if she's hidden the body in the airing cupboard," said Frost.

  You callous bastard, thought Clive. Aloud he said, "I've looked, sir."

  ' Frost accepted this and sipped his tea reflectively. "Hmm. Not bad. If she makes you a cup of tea like this afterward it's well worth the thirty quid she charges for her services. Grab a chair and come with me, son. I've found something else you must be dying to investigate."

  Something else Clive had missed. A trapdoor in the ceiling just outside the bathroom. It led to the loft. Clive's torch beam crawled over the rafters. A suitcase. Big enough, but too light. He dragged it down. Inside were some infant clothes and a ball of white angora baby wool. They had been there a long time. Nearly nine years.

  "We always wanted kids," said Frost, "the wife and me. She couldn't have them." He held the chair steady as Clive clambered down then diffidently dragged something from his inside pocket and offered it to the detective constable.

  "I found this tucked inside Tracey's Beano Annual." Clive looked at it in wide-eyed disbelief. Frost's words didn't seem to make sense. "In her Beano Annual, sir?"

  Frost nodded gravely.

  It was an unretouched black and white photograph of a nude girl sitting on a draped box, leaning back, supporting herself on her hands. The model could not be identified since the top of the photograph had been torn off, although traces of dark hair could be seen resting on the shoulders. Somehow the effect seemed vaguely distasteful, not erotic, but pornographic, although there was nothing pornographic about the pose apart from the model's nudity.

  Frost took the photograph back and raised it to his nose. "Smell that, son--acid fixer. Amateurs never wash their prints as thoroughly as professionals. You can always smell traces of hypo." He studied it again. "That mark on the top of her left arm, son. What do you make of it?"

  Clive moved to the open door of the bathroom for more light. "It's not too clear, sir. Could be a birthmark."

  "Yes, that's what I reckon." He pulled the cigarette from this mouth, flipped it into the toilet basin, and flushed it down. "I wonder who she is ... and how Tracey got hold of it."

  "It wouldn't be . . . ?" Clive didn't like to say it. He pointed downstairs.

  "Good Lord, no", son!" The photograph went back into his inside pocket. "I'll show it to her anyway. She's in the trade, she might recognize the model from the salient features. But first we'd better see how many bodies she's got buried in her back garden. I don't suppose you looked last night."

  Clive assured him that they had.

  Frost snorted. "A quick flash round with your torch in the dark--and you were looking for a living child above the surface, not for signs of recent digging."

  The garden was mainly concrete patio and lawn. There were a couple of rose-beds, but the soil was rockhard and had not been disturbed. Frost probed the lawn to see if it was composed of turfs which could be reassembled to conceal a grave, but it had been sown from seed. The patio was unblemished. It contained a dustbin which they checked. Running along the side of the house there was a concrete path leading to the front. In it a black metal inspection cover to the sewage system was set. A heavy cover. It took the two of them to lift it. But desperate people with a body to hide can find hidden strength.

  Frost rubbed his chin. "You'll hate me for this, son, but you're going to have to give your new suit the shock of its young life. Have a poke around down there, would you?"

  My day will come, you bastard, thought Clive behind a set grin, determined not to give Frost the satisfaction of seeing his annoyance. He crouched over the hole and let
his torch beam cut through to the gurgling horrors below.

  Apart from the obvious, nothing. He ignored Frost's heavy-humored request to see if his cigarette end had emerged yet.

  They manhandled the cover back then poked about in the garage and Mrs. Uphill's red Mini. Frost seemed to be losing interest in the proceedings, hustling Clive on before he had finished. They gave the ground floor of the house a very perfunctory going-over. The inspector wouldn't let Clive clear out the meter cupboard under the stairs.

  "She's not here, son," he snapped impatiently. "Leave it."

  You're the boss, thought Clive, and followed the inspector into the lounge where the young mother sat, staring blankly into the plastic logs of the electric fire.

  "She's not here, Mrs. Uphill," said Frost. "Do you think her father might have taken her?"

  She didn't raise her head. "I'm not married."

  "I know, Mrs. Uphill, but the child has a father."

  A bitter grin made her face look ugly. "Yes, she has a father. I haven't seen him since before Tracey was born--since the day I broke the news to him that I was pregnant. That's when he decided he didn't want to see me any more. Coincidence, wasn't it?"

  "Does he support his child?" asked Clive.

  She stood and took a cigarette from a box on the mantelpiece. "1 was paid off in a lump sum by his parents. They were willing to pay anything reasonable I might ask to make sure their poor misguided son wasn't lumbered with a promiscuous bitch like me and her bastard. And he was the first you know, there was no one else."

  A silence broken by the rasping of Frost's finger against his troublesome right cheek. "And he's never been in touch with you?"

  She shook her head. "If he thinks of me at all, he probably hopes I'm dead. He never even bothered to find out if he had a son or a daughter--or if I died in childbirth."

  Clive felt he would like to strangle the man with his bare hands. Eight years ago. She couldn't have been more than a schoolgirl, fifteen or sixteen at the most, and a virgin. His hatred mingled with jealousy and envy.

  Frost wanted the man's name and address. She found the address in an old diary. Clive made an entry in his notebook. The man's name was Ronald Conley with an address in Bristol. He'd given her the diary as a present eight years before. The flyleaf bore the neatly written inscription "To my darling Joan from Ron" followed by a string of kisses. The two-faced seducing bastard, thought Clive.

  "I'm puzzled, Mrs. Uphill," said Frost.

  She looked at him.

  "Why didn't you meet her from Sunday school?"

  She busied herself lighting a cigarette. It seemed to require her full attention.

  "It's a simple question, Mrs. Uphill. One of our chaps has had a word with the Sunday school superintendent. He says you always met her, winter or summer, rain or sunshine. Yesterday was the only day you missed. Why?"

  She pulled the cigarette from her mouth and spat out the answer. "Don't you think I've reproached myself? I thought she'd be all right. Just this once, I didn't meet her. ..." And then her anger crumbled and her body shook with dry spasms of tearless grief. Clive raised himself from his chair, ready to bound across and comfort her, but a warning glance from Frost pushed him back.

  Frost's hand shot out and grabbed the woman's shoulder. "Listen. There was a man lurking outside that Sunday school last summer trying to molest the kids. You knew about him. Ever since then you've met her. When the sun was streaming down you met her. But yesterday, when it was pitch dark, you thought she'd be all right. Why?"

  She shook off his grip and screamed at him, "Leave me alone, you bastard!" And then she sobbed into her hands, tears squeezing between her fingers. Frost brutally pulled the hands away and shoved his face close to hers. "I don't care a sod about your feelings, Mrs. Uphill. AH I care about is getting your daughter back and I expect you to help, not go into bloody hysterics. Why didn't you meet her?"

  She recoiled as if he'd slapped her face. "I ... I had a man here."

  Frost beamed and settled down in a chair, his tone friendly and cheerful. "A regular?"

  She nodded.

  "Was he late?"

  She dabbed her eyes with one of the few Kleenex tissues remaining in the box and compressed it in her hand.

  "Yes. Usually he was away by 3:30. That gave me plenty ' of time to meet Tracey. But yesterday he said his train was late, or canceled, or something. It was nearly 3:30 when he arrived."

  "What time did he usually come?" Frost, who had a memory like a sieve when it came to detail, glanced across the room to make sure Barnard was jotting down the times in his notebook.

  "2:30."

  "You'd better let us have his name and address."

  She shook her head.

  Frost insisted. "I'm afraid you must, Mrs. Uphill. I know you ladies have this Hippocratic oath to protect your clients' identities. ..."

  "It's not that," she cut in. "I don't know his address, or his name. He said it was Bob, but they don't usually tell you their right names."

  "What time did he leave you yesterday?"

  "About 4:25. But what has this got to do with Tracey?"

  "Probably nothing, but he left as she was coming out of Sunday school. He could have seen her. Describe him."

  "Well, he had a beard--"

  Frost's mind raced. A beard! The man trying to entice the kids into his car. ... He had a beard.

  The description, she gave was detailed--very detailed-- right down to the appendix scar. Age thirty-four or thirty-five, light-brown hair and beard, brown eyes. From some of the other things she'd observed, Frost decided she must have seen him from some pretty unusual angles.

  While Clive's pen was racing to get it all down, Frost produced the photograph. "Anyone you know, Mrs. Uphill?"

  She stared at it. "No!"

  "We found it in Tracey's room, hidden in a book."

  Her face froze in disbelief. "Tracey's room . . . ? You couldn't have .. . ."

  "Would it be one of yours, perhaps? I understand you ladies keep a supply of stimulating snapshots to help some of your clients get ready to perform."

  "I haven't found that necessary!" she snapped.

  "Perhaps she found it somewhere," said Frost, blandly, pushing it back in his pocket. "It means nothing to kids. Well, thanks for all your help. As soon as there's any news ...."

  She saw them out and watched them walk to the car. Curtains twitched at windows on each side of the street.

  "Bloody nosey neighbors," snorted Clive, "and none of them bothered to go in and comfort her. In London you wouldn't have been able to move for women making pots of tea."

  But Frost was looking through the car window at the figure in the doorway. "If I had thirty quid to spare, son, I'd ask you to keep the engine running for five minutes." He shivered. "Hurry up, it's cold. Bung on the heater."

  Clive started the engine. "Back to the station, sir?"

  No reply. Frost was deep in thought. Suddenly he snapped out of his trance. "Tell me, son, why the hell should anyone want to jemmy the front doors of a bank at three o'clock in the morning?"

  "Eh?" said Clive, wondering what the hell this had to do with Tracey Uphill.

  "Someone tried to jemmy the front door of Bennington's Bank in the Market Square in the wee small hours of this morning. I'm wondering why."

  "To force an entry, sir?" suggested Clive, in the tones of one explaining the obvious to an idiot.

  Frost snorted. "Through the front door of a bank? The big main doors?"

  Clive tried again. "Perhaps someone just wanted to damage the door, someone with a grudge against the bank."

  The inspector wasn't having this either. "You could do more damage peeing through the letterbox. Ah well, life has its little mysteries. Well, come on, son, what are we waiting for? Reverse and back out the way we came."

  Barnard reversed. "Where are we going, sir?"

  "To find this lucky sod with the beard, the appendix scar, and the weekly season ticket."

  "
And how are we going to do that?" persisted Clive.

  1 Frost smiled and rearranged his scarf. "If he came by train, we start with the railway station. I'll tell you the way."

  They passed a dark, gloomy building. Frost jerked a thumb. "That's the vicarage and Sunday school. The church is farther back."

  "Looks a bit of a dump, sir."

  "Yes. My wife's buried in the churchyard."

  An uneasy silence as the journey proceeded, then: "Doing anything for Christmas, son?"

  "I don't know yet, sir."

  "I'm on duty Christmas Day. You can come on with me if you like."

  Christ, thought Barnard, I'd rather have all my teeth out. Aloud he said, "I might have to go to my uncle's."

  "Well, don't say I didn't offer," replied Frost. "Oh, we should have turned right at that crossing."

  MONDAY--4

  A taxi was parked on the railway station forecourt; there was no sign of the driver. Clive pulled up alongside and the two men got out. The sky was darkening and the wind had gathered strength since the morning.

  The booking office was empty, the platforms deserted, no signs of porters or ticket collectors.

  "The mystery of the Mary Celeste," murmured Frost, leading Clive past the ticket barrier to a door painted olive-green and marked "Staff Only". Voices bubbled gently from inside. The inspector quietly turned the handle and crashed the door open.

  "All right--nobody move!"

  A tiny room reeking of shag tobacco, over-stewed tea, and sweat. Four startled heads jerked to the door. A small bald man clutching an enormous brown-enameled teapot was the first to recognize the intruder.

  "It's the bloody fuzz! They can't catch crooks, but they can smell a teapot a mile off." Then he smiled. "Come on in, Jack."

  They squeezed in. The room now held six people and very little air. Apart from the detectives there were the three absent railwaymen--the bald teapot holder who was the booking office clerk, a fat ticket collector sucking at a spittle-soaked, homemade cigarette, and a gangling young apprentice porter in jeans and a railway cap wedged on top of lank, ragged hair. The fourth man wore horn-rimmed glasses and a beaming smile. He was the missing taxi-driver, in for a warm and a cup of tea.