Frost at Christmas

by RD Wingfield

  Frost averted his eyes and walked much faster. "My wife was in that ward, son. After I'd visited her, I always felt I could do with a drink. There's a little pub round the corner...."

  It was a cheerful little pub with a crackling log fire and glittering Christmas decorations. There was only one other customer, a small man in a heavy overcoat, drinking at a corner table. Frost warmed himself at the fire, letting the friendly atmosphere unwind him as it had always done after those ghastly visits to the hospital when they kindly told him he could stay as long as he liked. That meant he had no excuse for cutting the visit short. He just had to sit there, with a false smile, nothing to say, sharing her pain, watching her die.

  Clive returned with the drinks and Frost's change. "Not a bad little pub this, sir," he remarked. But Frost wasn't listening. He was staring at the corner table. The little man had gone, leaving behind an almost full spirit glass. Frost walked over to the table.

  "Did you see him go?"

  "Who?" asked Clive.

  "Little bloke, sitting here. Couldn't get out fast enough when we came in. Even left his drink." Frost picked Up the glass, sniffed the contents, then drunk it down in one gulp. "Scotch. And bloody good stuff. See if you can see where he went."

  Clive got outside just in time to see the rear lights of a departing car. He returned and told Frost.

  Frost shrugged. "Never mind, probably not important. I've got a job for you, son."

  "Oh, yes?" said Clive, warily.

  "Nip out to our car and radio the station. I want all surveillance removed from the Uphill house."

  Clive was incredulous. "Removed? But you've only just asked to have it put on."

  "I know," said Frost. "I'm afraid I'm having one of my fickle moods at the moment. So hurry up and do it, then wait for me in the car."

  Control was equally incredulous. "Are you sure you've got the message right?"

  "Of course I'm sure," snapped Clive. "He wants all surveillance removed."

  "No disrespect," said Control, "but I think I'd like to hear it from the inspector."

  The car door opened. Frost took the handset. "Frost here. I want all surveillance away from the Uphill house, pronto. Up and under, over and out." He returned the handset to Clive and slammed the car door. "Finger out and foot down, son. We're going to Mrs. Uphill's house of pleasure."

  As they neared Vicarage Terrace, Frost directed Clive down some back streets and they eventually emerged at a side turning from which they could see No. 29 without being too obvious. The car lights were extinguished. They waited.

  "What exactly are we doing here?" asked Clive after five minutes of watching an empty house in an empty street.

  "Thought you'd never ask," replied Frost. "While you were radioing through to Control, I got on the blower to the hospital. I wanted to know if anyone had phoned, or i

  called, asking about your lady friend, Mrs. Uphill. And someone had. Guess who?"

  "I give up," said Clive, wishing Frost would get to the point.

  "A shifty little bloke in a heavy overcoat. He'd called at the Porter's Lodge not fifteen minutes before, asking how poor Mrs. Uphill was and when she'd be coming out."

  Clive was unimpressed. "So? It could have been a neighbor."

  "And it could have been a client wondering how long he'd have to have the cold showers. But it wasn't. Apart from the police, son, who the hell knew she was in hospital? No, it was our little bloke from the pub. The one who left his whiskey. The porter told him she'd be kept in over night, so off he went."

  "I still don't see--" began Clive.

  "Her attacker is a cheap crook, son. He's got her change purse and her house keys. He knows the house will be empty all night, so he can just walk in and help himself."

  "Then why did you send away the surveillance car?"

  "Because I want to catch the little sod, not frighten him off. Duck down, quick. I think this is him."

  A light-colored car cruised to the end of Vicarage Terrace, reversed, and slowly made its way back again. A couple of minutes later the car returned, drove past Mrs. Uphill's, stopping three houses away on the opposite side of the road. For a while nothing happened, then a small man got out carrying a large suitcase. He looked up and down the street, then walked briskly across to No. 29. The sound of a key in a lock, a door opening and quietly closing. He was inside.

  Clive's hand reached for the door handle. "Shall we go in and get him?"

  But Frost settled back in his seat. "No. He's got to come back to his car, so let's wait for him."

  They waited. Frost was on his fourth cigarette. "I spy with my little eye, son," he said. The little man was leaving the house. The suitcase seemed almost too heavy for him as he staggered across the road.

  They jumped him as he was bending to unlock his car door. His yell of surprise roused the sleeping street. Dogs started barking, nervous householders dialed 999. The area car sent to investigate was ordered away by Frost. "Go and find your own crooks."

  Their prisoner offered no resistance, but complained bitterly once he had caught his breath. "Frightened the flaming life out of me, Mr. Frost. What a silly thing to do. I've got a weak heart, you know."

  "As long as you haven't got a weak bladder," replied Frost. He peered at the man, who apparently knew him. "So that's who you are. Meet Dapper Dawson, son-- housebreaker, petty crook, and con man. What have you got in the suitcase, Dapper?"

  "Encyclopedias, Mr. Frost. I'm working my way through college."

  The suitcase was packed tight with furs, jewelry, and small valuables from the Uphill house. On the back seat of Dapper's car was a blue and white carrier bag. It was full of used five-pound notes.

  They took him back to the station and sat him in the interview room with a cup of tea and one of Frost's cigarettes. He needed no prompting. All they had to do was listen as Dapper's story flooded out to produce a long, four-page statement. He had read about the classic Lindbergh kidnapping where a man had obtained ransom money by pretending he had the Lindbergh baby.

  "So I thought I'd try the same. After all, she's only an old bag. What's two grand to her? She can earn that on her back without even getting out of bed. What's up with the bloke with the wonky nose?"

  Frost glared at Clive, who should have known better than to react when a suspect was making a statement.

  "The kid?" continued Dapper. "Of course I haven't got the kid. Kidnapping's not my style, is it? Search my house if you like. If you find any kids, my old woman's been having it off with the milkman."

  They didn't expect to find Tracey at Dapper's house, but an area car investigated, just in case. She wasn't there. She had never been there.

  Dapper signed his statement, thanked Frost for the cigarette, and was locked up in the cell next to the man in the sheepskin coat.

  "We won't have enough cells if you go on like this," commented the station sergeant.

  To Frost's regret, Mullen had left for home and wasn't there to witness his moment of triumph. "If it was one of my usual balls-ups, he'd be there sneering from ear to bloody ear," he reflected ruefully. He went back to his office to shuffle some papers about and found Clive waiting hopefully for permission to go home. Hazel would be at his bedsitter, her uniform folded neatly over a chair, her face scrubbed of makeup....

  "It's 11:15, sir," he announced loudly, looking hard at his watch and yawning.

  "What's this?" asked Frost, picking up a scribbled note from his desk. "Sandy Lane, Denton Echo, phoned. Wants you to phone him, urgent." Then underneath, in the same hand, "Phoned again, 10:30--extremely urgent-- please call."

  "11:15 did you say, son? We'll ring him now," and he dialed the newspaper office. A few words with Sandy, then be banged down the phone and sprang from his chair.

  "Chuck us my scarf, son. It's definitely my lucky day. Sandy reckons he knows the identity of our skeleton, so come on, you can drive me to his office."

  Clive trailed after the inspector to the car park, scuffling the snow p
eevishly. It was a cold, miserable, and never-ending night and he thought of his warm, cozy flat, the gas-fire popping, Hazel peeling off microscopic knickers, rubbing her hands sensuously down her thighs. The mental picture forced a groan of frustration as he turned the ignition key.

  "What's up?" asked Frost. "Not sickening for anything, are you?"

  Sandy Lane squeezed his visitors into his tiny office, a partitioned corner of an open-plan stockade of tightly packed desks, phones, and typewriters.

  Frost had to raise his voice over the hammering of typewriters. "So, who's our skeleton, Sandy?"

  "You'll read all about it in tomorrow's Echo, Jack," said the reporter, dumping a badly smudged proof copy of the following day's paper in front of the two detectives. The black banner headline screamed out at them:

  MISSING BANK CLERK FOUND AFTER 32 YEARS.

  A sub-heading read: "Echo of PS20,000 Bank Robbery", followed by another, "Spirit Medium Leads Police To Mysterious Woodland Grave". Then there was a photograph of Frost, cupid-lipped with a bit more hair than now, captioned, "Detective Inspector Frost, G.C., who is in charge of the case."

  "That picture looks as if I've been dug up after thirty-two years," said Frost.

  The rest of the front page was filled with a greatly enlarged full-face photograph of a sad-looking man with receding hair, aged about thirty-five. The caption said, simply, "Timothy Fawcus."

  Frost frowned. "Fawcus?" he asked. The name nagged a memory.

  "It's his skeleton," explained Sandy.

  "Then tell him to come and claim it, we don't want it." He opened the page for more clues, but the inside was blank and unprinted. Then something clicked. Timothy Fawcus! Of course. He spun round to Clive and explained. "This was 1951, son--before you were born. I'd just joined the Force. Eighteen, I was, sturdy of back and randy as hell--and you had to fight for it in those days, it didn't come crawling round to your flat waiting for you." The blood rushed to Clive's face. How the hell did Frost know?

  "Fawcus was a cashier at Bennington's Bank and the case chained to his wrist held PS20,000. When he went missing, all leave was stopped for the search. We looked everywhere . . . and he was buried in Dead Man's Hollow all the time." He tapped his scar. "I wonder if they'll dig up Tracey's skeleton in thirty-odd years' time."

  Sandy leaned forward. "You reckon she's dead, then Jack?"

  Frost nodded toward the tall window where outside a cutting wind screamed and hurled flurries of snow against the glass. "What do you reckon?" And then he was back again in the distant past. "Remember the chap in charge of the Fawcus case, Sandy? Inspector Bottomley, as fat as a pig with an enormous gut; he had to have his trousers specially built."

  "What happened with Fawcus?" asked Clive.

  It was a simple story. On the twenty-sixth of July, 1951, Fawcus left Denton in the bank's pool car, driven by a junior clerk, Rupert Garwood--their destination, Bennington's Exley branch, some seven miles away--to deliver PS20,000, locked in a case chained to Fawcus's wrist. The car never arrived at its destination. It was found later that afternoon in a side road well away from the route it should have taken. The junior clerk, Garwood, was slumped across the wheel, unconscious from a savage head injury which left him with no memory of what had happened. Fawcus and the PS20,000 were never seen again.

  "I got my first byline on that case," said Sandy, proudly. "It made the London dailies."

  "Poor old Fawcus," said Frost, "wrongly accused for all those years and all the time he was decently dead and buried. He had a family, didn't he?"

  "A wife," answered the reporter. "Don't know what happened to her, though. Er . . . how was he killed?"

  "Shot," Frost tapped his forehead, "through the brain."

  Sandy's hand streaked to his internal phone and he jabbed the button marked "Printing Room". "Mac--Sandy here. Hold everything. We're going to tear down the front page. The police say Fawcus was shot." He dropped the phone and fidgeted, obviously anxious to usher them out and get cracking.

  "You've given me quite a scoop, Jack."

  "You know me," said Frost modestly, "one cheap curry and you've bought my soul. Come on, son."

  "Hold on, Jack. The money--it was gone, I suppose?"

  Frost smiled sweetly. "Dumb as we are, Sandy boy, if we'd found PS20,000 in the case, we might just about have worked out who he was for ourselves." He went to grab the door handle, but the door retreated as a studious young reporter entered.

  "Sorry to butt in, Mr. Lane, but the bank manager refuses to make a statement, and 1 can't get a reply from Garwood's house."

  Frost braked sharply. "Garwood? You mean Rupert Garwood, the kid who was driving the car?"

  "Yes," replied Sandy. "He's back at Denton again, didn't you know? He's Assistant Manager at Bennington's Bank."

  TUESDAY--7

  Police Sergeant Tom Henderson put down his pen and yawned. He'd never get used to working nights. No matter how much sleep he had during the day, his body still insisted on feeling tired and ready for bed as midnight approached. He wriggled his shoulders in a shiver. It was so cold in the lobby and every time that rotten door opened ....

  His phone rang.

  The leather-jacketed youth slumped dejectedly on a wooden bench under the Colorado Beetle poster jerked up a face tight with apprehension.

  Henderson listened, said, "No, not yet," and hung up. He looked across to the leather-jacket and shook his head. The youth slouched back and resumed his mindless study of the opposite blank wall.

  An icy blast roared across the lobby as Inspector Frost and the new chap with the bent nose came in.

  "Hello, Jack."

  "Hello, Tom. Here, you didn't shave today, did you?"

  Henderson grinned and fingered his new beard, the result of many weeks of careful growing and much rude comment.

  Frost caught sight of the youth. "What's up with him?"

  Henderson leaned over, keeping his voice low. "He ran an old lady over. She's having an emergency operation and he's waiting for the result. Touch and go, they reckon."

  "Oh!" Frost let his eyes slide over the kid. Barely eighteen and worried sick. "His fault, was it?"

  The sergeant nodded gravely. "Didn't look where he was going. Staring back at his mates out of the rear window. Never saw her until he hit her, and she was using the crossing."

  "Poor little sod," murmured Frost, a rare look of pity on his face.

  "Poor, sir?" asked Clive, puzzled.

  "Yes, son. I've nearly killed people in my car time and time again ... it was only luck that saved me. He didn't have the luck."

  "And neither did the old lady."

  Frost sniffed. "You're hard, son, very hard. I'm sorry for her, but I'm sorry for him, too."

  Another roar of cold air and the papers on the desk were sent flying. A big red-faced man in a fur-lined parka thundered in, ready to bellow at the first uniform he saw.

  "You! Where's my son?"

  "Dad!" The youth didn't turn his head. He spoke to space.

  "Come on--you're going home." An angry face thrust at Sergeant Henderson. "I'm taking him. You've no right to keep him here."

  "We're not keeping him here, sir," explained the sergeant patiently. "He's free to go. He's given us a statement and we've got all his details."

  "Statement?" He turned angrily to the lad. "You bloody fool--a statement? Tell them nothing!" Back to the sergeant. "His statement is invalid. It was made without a solicitor being present. We repudiate it."

  The youth tilted his head up to his father and spoke as if explaining to an uncomprehending idiot. "I'm eighteen, Dad. I made the statement of my own free will. I wasn't looking ... I hit her." His face showed pain at the recollection.

  The man's hand slapping his son's face was the crack of a whip.

  "Keep your mouth shut, do you hear? I'll tell you what to say."

  The phone on the desk rang. The youth, ready with an angry retort, froze. Henderson raised the receiver and listened.

  "He
nderson. Oh, I see. Yes, thanks for telling me." He replaced the phone with care, then spoke quietly.

  "You might as well go home, son. She died five minutes ago."

  The boy stared at the sergeant. At first it seemed that the news hadn't sunk in. There was a puzzled frown on his face, a face drained of color except for the angry mark of the blow on the left cheek. The lip quivered, and then his face crumpled. He cried with body-wricking sobs. His father, now a different man, placed an arm around his shoulder.

  "All right, son, all right. We're going home." He led the sobbing youth through the doors and out into the cold white night. The door swung shut behind them.

  "As I always say," said Frost, dragging off his scarf, "there's no bloody justice. If he'd kept his mouth shut or lied and said she stepped in front of him without warning, we couldn't have touched him. He's the only witness. But he's been honest. He really cares that he's killed someone. And we'll probably throw the book at him."

  Then, trailing his scarf along the ground, he was off along the corridor to his office. With a despairing look at the wall clock whose hands stood vertical at half-past midnight, Clive dashed off after him.

  "They knew how to tie knots in 1951," muttered Frost, tearing his nails on the fossilized string tied round the Bennington Bank Robbery--July 1951 file that had been disinterred from the upstairs storeroom. The string broke unexpectedly and yellow-edged papers were disgorged on top of the litter already on the desk. He scooped the papers up, and in doing so uncovered an internal memo from Mullett reminding all staff of the last day for the submission of expense claims, stressing that any received late would be held over until the following month.

  Frost passed the file over to Clive and began to scout through his drawers for an expense-claim form.

  "Find a description of Fawcus, son, see if it matches in with the skeleton. If he only had one leg, we've got a mystery on our hands."

  It was a fat file, the pages smelling stale and musty from their long entombment in the unheated storeroom. Near the front was a photograph of a young man in army uniform, the forage cap perched on top of lots of wavy hair, glistening with brilliantine. Handwritten on the back were the words "To my darling Rose with all my love--Tim", followed by a string of kisses. A typed police label read "Timothy Fawcus--early picture--much balder now". Clive turned the photograph over and looked at the smiling, unworried face. Was this the dirt-encrusted skull prised from the frozen grip of Dead Man's Hollow?