Frost at Christmas

by RD Wingfield

  "No, I bloody-well wouldn't," cried Frost. "If I had the time to read I'd read a dirty book. What do they say?"

  "Most of them have alibis, sir, which we're checking on. But there was one chap we couldn't get hold of. Mickey Hoskins didn't turn up for work today."

  Frost's eyebrows soared. "Mickey Hoskins?" He whistled softly.

  "The area car's been to his digs a few times, but no one seems to be in. The neighbors say his landlady, Mrs. Bousey, is up in town shopping. They don't know about Mickey though. Haven't seen him since yesterday morning."

  "I want that car parked on Ma Bousey's doorstep," snapped Frost.

  "On its way, sir--Inspector Allen's orders."

  Double-sod Inspector Allen, thought Frost.

  The area car returned at 9:07. This time the hall light was on and the milk had been taken in. Mrs. Bousey was back from her shopping expedition, but there was no light from the upstairs room occupied by her lodger, Mickey Hoskins.

  It was P.C. Mike Jordan's turn to knock. He put on his peaked cap and walked over to the house. A rat-tat at the knocker. Mrs. Bousey wheezed up the passage, flung open the door, and the stale smell of kippers escaped thankfully into the street.

  "Yes?" She was a short, fat woman with scragged-back hair and tiny deep-set eyes.

  "Mick in, Mrs. Bousey?"

  "Ain't been in since Sunday."

  "Oh?" Jordan took out his notebook. "What happened Sunday, then?"

  She coughed, holding the door handle for support. "Had his dinner, went out, never came back."

  "Unusual, wasn't it?"

  "He's paid his rent till Friday, so why should I worry?"

  "Can I take a look at his room?"

  "If you like. But it won't be available until Friday."

  He followed her into the stuffy kipper-scented atmosphere and up the worn linoed stairs. Mickey's room contained a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and a chair. On the table lay a paperback book with a lurid cover; a folded toffee paper acted as a bookmark. Alongside the book was an expensive all-wave transistor radio. A single suit of clothes and some ladies' underwear stolen from washing-lines swayed in the wardrobe.

  Jordan took out his personal transmitter and radioed Control.

  "Highly mysterious," said Frost when George Martin brought him the news. "Nip down to records and get Mickey Hoskin's form-sheet, son."

  Martin waved Clive back. He'd brought the form-sheet in with him. Inspector Allen would have expected it automatically.

  Frost ran his eye down the long list of past convictions. Indecent Exposure, Indecent Assault, Posing as a Doctor, Obscene Phone Calls, Stealing Underwear, etc. etc. He pushed it from him distastefully. "He's a great one for exposing himself, isn't he? If mine was as small as his I'd 'keep it covered up." He pinched the skin of his cheek. "So not only are we looking for a woman in a white fur, we're also looking for a runaway toucher-upper. Perhaps they've eloped." He gave the form-sheet back to the sergeant. "Hang on to it, George, I've got enough paper of my own. And put out an All Patrols message for Mickey. I want him brought in."

  "Already done," said Martin, hurt. Why did Frost think he had to be told everything?

  Frost was trying to balance on the two back legs of his chair. "So Mick left Ma Bousey's after dinner? If he was in his right mind he'd have left before. I had to go there once to bring him in after he'd nicked thirty pairs of calico drawers from the convent clothesline. Ma Bousey was boiling up handkerchiefs and cooking a meat pudding in the same saucepan." He shuddered at the recollection. "I think the handkerchiefs came off worst."

  As Martin made his departure, Frost's chair crashed to the ground. He scooped up the top layer of papers from his desk and passed them over to Clive. "Try and find room on your desk for these, would you, son?"

  On top of the pile was a deckle-edged sheet of notepaper scrawled with green ink. Clive read it.

  Old Wood Cottage, Demon Dec.

  To the Chief Policeman:

  Dear Sir,

  A lost soul in Limbo cries for Justice. The earthly Coroner may say Matthew Finch killed himself but the spirits know he was murdered. His Widow's hands are stained with GUILTY BLOOD.

  Yours sincerely, Marth Wendle Clive read it again. He wasn't sure if it was meant to be a joke.

  "There's a special file for cranks," Frost told him.

  "Top drawer, I think. If there's no room, bung it in 'miscellaneous'. The woman's a bloody menace, always writing in about something. She's a witch or a spiritualist or some such. According to her, no one dies naturally. The graveyards are chockablock with murder victims and us dim sods are too thick to see it."

  Clive wasn't convinced. The letter seemed so definite. "This chap Finch, sir. Could it have been murder?"

  Frost pursed his lips and considered. "Impossible. That was one of Inspector Allen's cases and he never makes mistakes. Here, I was going to show you my tin medal, wasn't I?" He rummaged around in the wrong drawer. Clive was about to put him right but remembered just in time that he wasn't supposed to know. Frost stopped and looked into the opened drawer with a puzzled frown.

  "You haven't borrowed any of my money have you, son? No? Bloody odd. There was about 45p in small change. I keep it to pay for stuff I have sent down from the canteen. Fine bloody thing when your money isn't safe in a cop shop, isn't it?" He slammed the drawer shut and tried the next. "Ah, here it is." He passed the box over to Clive.

  "Hooked on my swelling chest by the regal hands of Her Majesty, that was. Thrilled my wife to bits when I got that."

  It was a silver cross hung on a dark blue ribbon, the words "For Gallantry" in the center. Clive asked him how he'd won it.

  Frost's fingers found the scar on his cheek. "Young tearaway he was, son. Forget his name. Held up Bennington's Bank over the road with a gun. He was a bit unstable--popped to the eyeballs on drugs. I mean, who in his right mind would pick a bank so near the cop shop? We were over there in seconds with truncheons drawn so we could knock the bullets out of the way when he started firing--one of those times when a cop wouldn't mind having a gun too, like they all do in America. Not that we'd know how to use the damn things.

  "There was a woman in the bank with a kid in her arms and a baby in a pram. He grabs her as a hostage and rams 'the gun in the kid's ear, then looks at us cops and dares Us to approach. We did all the clever things like telling him to be sensible and come and be arrested, but he just stands there, sweating and twitching and rolling his eyes. The woman was crying, the kid was screaming his head off, and the baby in the pram was gurgling. He was just itching for someone to step out of line so he could relieve the tension by pulling the trigger. Everyone saw that, except me. I thought, he's bluffing, so I marches over, bold as brass and dead ignorant. The yobbo switches the gun from kid to me. He was shaking from head to foot and the sweat was pouring off in buckets, from which I brilliantly deduced the gun wasn't loaded and all I had to do was to take it from him.

  "His first bullet went in my stomach and properly ruined my theory. I was too stupid to stop and just went on. The next shot tore through my cheek and the one after grazed my scalp, under my hair. By the time it dawned on me I was being fired at, I'd grabbed him, and my mates pounced and reasoned with him with their truncheons. I was lucky. The shot to my stomach hit my belt buckle so all I got was a bloody great bruise. The one in my cheek just went in and out. He got eleven years and I got a medal." He took it from Clive and dropped it back into the drawer. "There's definitely 45p missing from here."

  His phone rang.

  "Frost. What? The stupid sod!--and he's only just told us? You've got the address? Right, I'm on my way with Flash Harry." He slammed the telephone back. "Come on, son. The headmaster of Tracey's school has just phoned Search Control about a girl called Audrey Harding. She's twelve, older than Tracey, but a great friend. And Audrey didn't turn up for school today."

  As a schoolgirl was involved, they took a woman police constable with them and she sat huddled up on the back seat, not sa
ying a word throughout the journey. Clive sneaked a look at her through the driving mirror, but with her peaked cap pulled down and her collar turned up against the cold, there wasn't much on show to set the pulses racing.

  "We're here," announced Frost, and the car pulled into the curb, outside a group of Victorian terraced houses.

  The girl who answered the door was a blood-racing blockbuster in brushed-denim jeans and a tight cotton teeshirt that adhered like cling film to the most gorgeous breasts Clive had seen for many a long day. They held his gaze like the hypnotic grip of a snake's eyes.

  "Cor!" breathed Frost, adding quickly, "Sorry to trouble you, Miss. We're police officers."

  "Who is it?" A raucous female voice from the depths.

  "The police," called the girl.

  A door along the passage opened and a woman with a shop-soiled baby-doll face waddled out, wearing a dress twenty years too young for her.

  "Mrs. Harding?" enquired Frost. "It's about your little girl, Audrey."

  "What---her?" asked the woman, jerking her thumb to the girl.

  Her? This was Audrey, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl? She looked eighteen or nineteen--a well-developed eighteen or nineteen. Clive and the inspector exchanged open-mouthed glances.

  "We'll all get our deaths of cold standing here," said Mrs. Harding. "Come on in." She waddled off, leading them to a small sitting room, baking hot from the coal fire roaring up the chimney. In the center of the room an ironing board had been set up. Frost unbuttoned his mac, unwound a few yards of scarf, and signaled for Clive to start the questioning.

  Mrs. Harding said, "All right if I carry on with the ironing?"

  Clive nodded. "You weren't at school today, Audrey?"

  "So what?"

  "She had a bad chest," offered her mother from the ironing board. Audrey coughed obligingly to corroborate the story.

  "Try camphorated oil for it," suggested Frost, adding ' sotto voice, "About half a gallon. ..."

  The woman police constable suppressed a giggle. Clive frowned. This was a serious inquiry. Couldn't the old fool keep his cheap jokes to himself, just for once?

  "They haven't sent three cops down just because I didn't go to school, surely?" asked the girl, rubbing her hands over her chest in a way that made Clive envious and Frost uncomfortable.

  "No. It's about Tracey Uphill. I believe you know her?"

  "I know her," said the girl. "Her mother's a tart."

  Mrs. Harding banged her iron down angrily. "Maybe she is, my girl, but you shouldn't say so. There's some things you don't talk about." In a confidential aside to Frost she added, "My uncle was an undertaker, but we never mentioned it to anyone. Some things are best left unsaid."

  "Quite," said Frost, motioning for Clive to continue. * "You don't go to Sunday school, do you Audrey?"

  "Only to ballet classes and tap-dancing," chimed in the mother. "We believe in religion and that sort of thing, but we don't want it rammed down our throats, especially on a Sunday."

  "Tracey's been missing from home since 4:30 yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Harding."

  Her eyes saucered. "I know! Her poor mother. I mean ... they must have feelings the same as anyone else."

  "She was a friend of yours, Audrey?"

  "I knew her a bit," said the girl in an off-hand voice, "but I haven't seen her outside school for a couple of weeks, now."

  "Are you sure?" Clive persisted.

  "My girl's not a liar," stated Mrs. Harding firmly, watching a ball of spit fry on the sole-plate of her iron.

  "Can you think of anywhere she might have gone?"

  Audrey shook her head and scratched her stomach. She yawned to make it clear she was getting bored.

  "She was seen with a woman in a white fur coat. Any idea who that woman might be?"

  "No idea." She studied her vivid orange fingernails.

  Then Frost chipped in. "Do you play Bingo, Mrs. Harding?"

  Flaming hell, thought Clive. What's Bingo got to do with it?

  Mrs. Harding's iron delved the depths of a voluminous bra. "Yes, I do, twice a week regular down the old Grand Cinema. It's my only bit of pleasure. But how did you know?"

  Frost beamed at her. "We had reports about a beautiful woman playing there. And I happened to see the Bingo cards on your mantelpiece."

  Mrs. Harding simpered. "Aren't you observant? Eyes everywhere." She added the ironed bra to the finished pile.

  "Been lucky?"

  "I've had a couple of good wins."

  "I had a feeling you had. And I've got a feeling you can make a smashing cup of tea."

  "Would you like one?" she said, switching off the iron. "It won't take a minute."

  When she was gone Frost leaned across to the girl. "Oi, Fanny--does your mother know you borrow her fur coat?"

  The girl went white. "Shut up!" she hissed.

  To the woman police constable Frost said, "Keep the mother occupied in the kitchen and shut the door."

  "All right, Audrey," he continued as the door closed, "let's have it. You borrow her fur coat, don't you, without her knowing?"

  "She'll murder me," whimpered the girl. "She'd belt me rotten if she knew. She bought it with her Bingo money, neary three hundred quid, and no one must touch the bloody thing. You won't tell her, will you?"

  "You wore it yesterday, didn't you, when you met Tracey from the Sunday school?"

  "I just wanted to show off the coat. I didn't want her to come with me."

  "You didn't want her to--but she did?"

  "That was her look out. I said she'd have to go when he turned up."

  "When who turned up?"

  "My boyfriend ... my fellow."

  "What's his name?" She told them. Clive wrote it down.

  "Where did you meet him?"

  "Those fields along Meadow Road."

  "And then Tracey went home?"

  "No. The little bitch pretended to go, but she followed us. I suppose she wanted to have an eyeful. We ended up in the Old Wood."

  "The Old Wood? Why did you go there?"

  "To try to shake her off, but she kept following, so we ran and hid behind that big tree--the one near the lake. She went racing past, and we backtracked and belted off home."

  "What time was this?"

  "About 5:30."

  Frost frowned. "You left a kid of eight to find her own way home in the pitch dark?"

  The girl shrugged. "That was her look out. Besides, she knew her way back. And she wasn't going home, she was going to play in the vicarage grounds."

  The vicarage grounds! Clive made a note in his book.

  "Where did you go after that?" continued Frost.

  "To me boy's house. His parents were out."

  "And what did you do there?"

  "What do you think?" The blue eyelid closed in an obscene wink.

  The kitchen door opened and the tea emerged.

  "You won't tell me mum?" Audrey whispered anxiously, the twelve-year-old again.

  "Not unless I have to," murmured Frost. "Ah ... tea."

  So they sipped their tea and chatted and suddenly it was like a family party with everyone talking and Frost gently flirting with the girl's mother who he'd got to parade for them in the white fur coat, dive's eyes were on the woman police constable who had slipped off the greatcoat and peaked cap and was laughing at the inspector's antics. The cap had hidden thick auburn hair which tumbled to her shoulders. She was lovely.

  A sharp pain in the ribs from Frost's elbow. The inspector swiveled his eyes toward Audrey. The girl was examining the perfection of her right shoulder. To do this she had pulled back the short sleeve of her teeshirt leaving the arm bare. And there it was, on the top of her right arm, a brown birthmark--the birthmark last seen in black and white on the headless nude photograph found in Tracey's bedroom.

  As soon as her mother took the empty cups into the kitchen, Frost grabbed the girl.

  "Ever had your photograph taken in the nude, Audrey?"

  "Of course not." Bu
t her eyes were frightened and her hand tugged down the sleeve.

  "God can hear you telling these lies," purred Frost, his face moving close to hers.

  "Piss off, you old bugger," she snapped.

  "Arseholes," murmured Frost, adding sweetly as Mrs. Harding returned, "I was just asking your little girl what Father Christmas was going to bring her this year."

  Back in the car, Frost radioed through to Search Control. George Martin told him the Old Wood had had a perfunctory search but was scheduled for detailed coverage the next morning. The vicarage grounds had been covered thoroughly.

  "Hmm," said Frost, scratching his face thoughtfully. "Better rake up as many men as you can for an immediate search of the woods tonight. It'll be tricky in the dark, but if the kid's there, speed's vital." Outside, the wind was shrilling to gale force.

  Give didn't need further directions once he was piloted back to the main road, so the inspector was able to relax in his seat.

  "Weil," he said, "I don't know what was sticking out ' the most--your eyes or that kid's chest. Oh, sorry--forgot we had a lady on board." He beamed at the woman P.C. in the back seat.

  She smiled back. "Don't mind me."

  "I'll tell you a little story," said Frost, and Clive's heart sank. Not another of his dubious reminiscences! He gritted his teeth and concentrated on his driving.

  "I was sixteen," continued Frost, "and I'd been knocking about with this girl--Ivy Standish her name was--and blimey, was she hot stuff! She'd let you do anything with her--anything except swear. She couldn't stand swearing, so if your trembling hand fumbled on the last button of her cami-knicks and you inadvertently said 'Sod it', that was your lot; you were sent packing, no matter how high your state of expectation. Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, her birthday came along and her mum invited me to the party. It was going to be a surprise, but it turned out to be a bloody shock. You know how many candles she had on her cake? Eleven! I could have got fourteen years for that, so I had my slice of cake and left, hurriedly."

  Wishful thinking, thought Clive, not believing a word.

  When the car reached the Market Square the woman P.C. asked to be dropped off.

  "Are you on stand-by duty then, Hazel?" asked Frost. "Tell you what, I'll get off here and walk. Young Clive will drive you home.''