Fatal Frost (DI Jack Frost)

by James, Henry

  ‘Granted, but you’ve certainly got a number on your payroll – Clarke and Myles were speaking to one young girl only yesterday, just before Clarke got stabbed in your car park.’ Frost reached for another cigarette.

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ Baskin said hastily, ‘that has absolutely nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Did I say it did?’ Frost replied quickly. ‘However, you know the press – if that hack Sandy Lane gets hold of it, it certainly won’t do your business any good. I can see the headlines now: “Copper Stabbed in Massage Parlour Car Park”. Copper. If the plod aren’t safe, then who is?’

  Baskin’s face was hardening but Frost continued to push.

  ‘Something tells me he works for you. I don’t care what he was doing in London, or what he does for you, I’m only interested in what he might have seen on the train on Saturday night.’ Frost noticed Baskin’s features relaxing as soon as he realized that he and his operations were not under scrutiny. He didn’t give a toss about his employees, that much was certain.

  ‘I see, I see. I think Mark’s the lad you’re after,’ he said finally. ‘He went up to the West End on Saturday to Chinatown to see his grandma. But I couldn’t tell you where he is now.’

  ‘Mark?’ Frost said, surprised. ‘Doesn’t sound very Chinese to me.’

  ‘So what?’ Baskin smiled. ‘Not prejudiced, are you, Mr Frost?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem all that bad,’ Waters said as they got in the car. Compared with some exchanges he’d witnessed, he felt the one between Frost and the corpulent gangster had practically verged on the friendly. The Cortina juddered, jolting him in the back. ‘Jesus,’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Sticky gearbox,’ Frost grumbled. ‘Do you have to smoke that thing in here?’

  Waters wound down the window rapidly; cigar smoke and the smell of hot vinyl that had filled the car was gradually replaced with fresh air. ‘Why did you say I was with the Vice Squad?’

  ‘It beats saying you’re part of some poncey government experiment, or whatever it is. Besides, Harry has been shunting more porn videos than you can shake a stick at. Doesn’t hurt to make him sweat a bit.’

  ‘OK, fair enough. Where to now?’

  ‘We need to try and find this Mark, so we’ll swing by the new dry cleaner’s on London Street where the other refugees from the laundry are. If we get no joy there, we’ll head over to the Chinese restaurant. We’ll just have to hope the boy hasn’t gone far.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable to me. The grand tour of Denton Central continues, then.’

  ‘Yep, and the great thing is we can grab a bite at the same time. Ever had Chinese takeaway for lunch? I wonder if it tastes as good without half a dozen pints of IPA.’

  Waters thought the prospect nauseating, especially in the current heatwave. ‘A little hot for that, isn’t it?’

  Frost looked at him in genuine puzzlement. ‘Talking of which, grab me that sunhat and shades out of the glove box. Pounding the streets in the midday sun doesn’t really agree with me.’

  Waters passed over the shades and crumpled panama and then relaxed in the passenger seat, toking on the Cuban cigar. He was glad to have explained his personal predicament to Jack Frost. He’d instinctively struck him as genuine and dependable – a good bloke to have on side. On the others the jury was still out.

  Derek Simms was in a jubilant mood. He’d been pivotal in ID-ing the dead girl by the train line – an impressive piece of detective work, he thought. He’d also managed to establish that a bag had been found by a cleaner in an empty train carriage on Sunday. The guard had agreed to bring it back on an incoming train, so Simms was on his way to pick it up.

  He arrived at the station ahead of the 2.45 to Paddington, on the off-chance he’d catch Feltham, the second taxi driver that Frost had identified. The cab controller said he was on an airport run and would be back any time now.

  The photo of Samantha Ellis lay on the passenger seat. Simms had showed it to the station clerk, who remembered her buying a ticket at around 10 a.m. on Saturday. The man checked off the ticket sales that day, day-returns mostly, all purchased around the same time. Given it was a bank holiday weekend there was a fair bit of through traffic.

  Christ, it was hot. His back began to sweat against the plastic Cortina seat. He chucked the Auto Trader to one side and got out to stretch his legs, wandering over to the kiosk next to the photo booth. He was thirsty as hell.

  ‘Can of Coke and a pack of Bensons, please, mate.’

  ‘That’ll be eighty-six pence, please, guv.’

  Simms pulled a pound note out of his wallet.

  ‘Nasty business, that girl,’ the vendor said.

  Simms looked at the man who had handed him his change: flat cap, denim jacket, late fifties. ‘What do you know about it?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders. Just then Simms heard the train pull in. He quickly made his way down the stairs and on to the London-bound platform, a dribble of alighting passengers greeting him on his descent. The guard was waving from his van a couple of carriages down. Did he really look that much like a copper? He jogged along the platform and the man handed down a sequinned bag. It looked like a teenage girl’s, all right. Result. Now all he needed to do was speak to that taxi driver.

  Tuesday (4)

  ‘HE NO HERE!’

  Frost’s seemingly innocuous request to speak to Mark appeared to have sent the owner of the Chinese takeaway, the Jade Rabbit, into something of a rage. He gesticulated angrily, banging a large serving spoon on the counter, causing an array of soy-sauce bottles to vibrate.

  Waters watched from near the doorway as Frost, still dressed in a panama hat and Polaroids, proceeded to wind him up.

  ‘Yes, he bloody well is!’ Frost shouted back. ‘Your brother from the dry cleaner’s down the road just told us he’s living here!’

  ‘He no here – you go, I call police!’

  ‘I am the flamin’ police!’

  The small, moustachioed owner looked defiantly at the sweaty, middle-aged detective without recognition. If he did know, he wasn’t letting on.

  ‘Listen, I know all about the laundry your brother’s family ran, I know it was bought out by Baskin and they had to downsize. But I’m afraid to say I’ve just been down to see them, and bailiffs have locked the place up. Understand? Bailiffs?’

  The man retained his silent, inscrutable stare.

  ‘The place has gone bust, so Mark is staying with you. Your bleedin’ brother just told me that!’ Frustrated, Frost felt for cigarettes, snatching off the hat and shades. The owner’s face was suddenly alight with recognition.

  ‘Flost! Mr Flost!’

  ‘He thought you were undercover!’ Waters laughed. ‘Those dodgy shades and that straw hat – more appropriate on the Riviera.’

  Frost responded by jetting a plume of smoke in his direction.

  Suddenly, the door of the takeaway opened and in walked a Chinese youth of around twenty, a large scratch adorning his left cheek. He clocked Frost and Waters and immediately turned on his heel, dashing out of the restaurant with Frost launching after him. Twelve stone of detective in full swing caught Waters’ little toe through the thin canvas of his Green Flash trainers, causing him to cry out and stagger back. It took him a moment to regain his balance. He limped out of the takeaway just in time to see Frost at full pelt down the middle of Queen Street, ignoring the traffic at the upcoming junction. A car sped out from the left and was forced to swerve wildly around him, horn blaring as it mounted a traffic island and Frost collided with the boot. When Waters arrived at the scene Frost was bent over double, wheezing as if oxygen was going out of fashion.

  ‘You all right?’ exclaimed Waters.

  ‘Of course I’m all right! Nearly had the little blighter.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure you did. He had a head start, though; gave him the edge.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Frost puffed. ‘Think I’ve got a stitch. Anyway, where were you? Big lad like you, thoug
ht you’d nab him easily …’

  ‘Bit of foot trouble.’ Waters smiled at Frost. He did like this unconventional guy who seemed on the verge of a coronary. ‘He probably won’t get far. Anyway, we should see what this character, his uncle, has to say about Mark’s activities on Saturday.’

  ‘Oi, you!’ The driver of the stricken Volvo, a bearded, balding man in a polo neck, had climbed out of his car and was shaking a fist at Frost. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing in the middle of the road! You’re lucky I didn’t kill you!’

  DC Clarke pushed aside a Tupperware of cottage cheese and picked up a pen. She was following up on the case of the missing boy. Sixteen-year-old Tom Hardy, a conscientious boy just starting his O level exams, had vanished into thin air, which according to his mother was not like him at all.

  ‘So, Mrs Hardy,’ Clarke said, mustering her patience. ‘Let me get this straight. You and your husband went away for the weekend, leaving Tom on his own—’

  ‘No, he wasn’t on his own – his sister Emily was at home.’

  Clarke took down the particulars. The similarities with the Ellis case were not lost on her. It seemed that as kids reached a certain age the parents wilfully abdicated their responsibilities, and their offspring were taking advantage of the situation and exercising their new-found freedoms, sometimes with dire consequences.

  ‘OK, Mrs Hardy, we’ll be over. Is your daughter at home?’ She thought that the girl in all likelihood would be the last to have seen her brother.

  ‘She’s at school sitting exams. I don’t want her getting distressed over this.’

  Desk Sergeant Bill Wells didn’t need to look at the lobby clock to know it had gone 2 p.m. He could tell by the early-afternoon lull. He couldn’t wait for the shift to end. All that nonsense this morning about the skip had got him pretty peeved. On the upside, he’d had a recent result on the gee-gees and planned to take the wife for a slap-up meal down the Denton Tandoori on his next day off.

  Yes, he thought, between two and three was often the quietest part of the day, as though the villains had an afternoon nap, a bit like half-day closing on Wednesday, or a siesta perhaps. He had hoped to have Johnny Johnson’s portable to listen to the races – he felt another flutter coming on – but with Mullett around, fat chance. He daren’t risk riling him further, especially as he’d failed to do anything about the bloody skip. He hadn’t been able to contact Pooley; he lived in a flat on London Street without a phone.

  Suddenly the tranquillity of the afternoon was shattered. An almighty commotion erupted just outside the door, and PCs Baker and Jordan burst through, wrestling a large, red-faced man between them.

  ‘I ain’t done nothing! I’m telling you – geroff!’ Once he was inside the door the two PCs released the man, who shook himself and tugged down his blue sweatshirt, which had been practically pulled over his head. Wells immediately recognized Steve ‘Mugger’ Moore, a petty felon, as his nickname suggested.

  As a younger man Moore had been a roofer, and had worked on some major projects for the New Town development in the late sixties. Then one night in the Cricketers – it must’ve been some time in the early seventies – he’d drunkenly tried to lift a toilet up and launch it out of the window in the style of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Wells had been a gawking onlooker, too drunk and meek to put a stop to it. Mugger totally shagged his back and from that point onwards never worked again. He’d turned to drink and Lord knows what else, and here he was now resisting arrest and arguing the odds about some petty crime.

  ‘Bill, tell ’em I ain’t done nothing, promise.’

  Wells raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. His wife was still friends with Moore’s missus – they played darts together at the Cricketers.

  ‘Caught him red-handed in the pawnbrokers up on Merchant Street,’ said Jordan, hair still on end after the tussle. Merchant Street, a side road in North Denton, was one of those streets full of untaxed cars, betting shops and pubs. It also had not one, but two pawnbrokers. ‘Trying to have it away with a carriage clock. What use that would be to him, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘I was just looking at it, honest.’

  ‘But can you even tell the time, Stevie old chap? That’s the 64,000-dollar question.’

  At that point a heavily perspiring Frost appeared in the lobby, Waters in his wake. ‘Bleedin’ hot one out there today!’

  ‘Ah, Jack, about time. The super—’

  ‘Spare me, Bill,’ Frost interrupted. ‘I know he’s anxious to see me, it must be at least an hour since we last spoke.’ He smiled broadly at Jordan and Baker. ‘We’re very close, you know.’ The pair looked blankly at each other.

  Suddenly, Moore made a break for it and charged off down the corridor.

  ‘Blimey, must be caught short,’ Frost said.

  ‘Think so?’ said Baker, unsure what to do.

  ‘No, not really.’ Frost rolled his eyes. ‘I think he’s probably about as keen to see me as I am to see the super.’

  Wells watched the blank expressions on Baker’s and Jordan’s faces, who after a moment’s hesitation pelted after Moore. Fortunately for them, the hapless felon had quickly been confused by the warren of similar-looking corridors and re-emerged through the swing doors at just that point, running straight into the arms of his would-be captors.

  ‘Think you’re right, it’s the sight of you, Mr Frost, that’s put him on edge,’ PC Baker said.

  Frost grabbed Wells’s glass of water and took a huge gulp. ‘I have that effect on people, I’m afraid, son. But Mr Moore here is used to being on edge. In his day, Stevie-boy was on the edge of every roof on the Southern Housing Estate. But now he’s found religion, haven’t you, mate?’

  Moore looked ready to burst with pent-up hatred. ‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do. I’ve had the vicar on the horn about his bleeding roof,’ Frost said. ‘Been nicking his lead, haven’t you, you naughty boy.’

  Simms sat in Frost’s office waiting for the DS to put in an appearance. The office was dreadfully cluttered, with paper spilling everywhere. Instead of clearing Williams’s yellowing paperwork, of which there was plenty, Frost had simply plonked his own mess on top of the existing piles.

  Whilst he’d been in uniform, Simms had loathed the grubby detective, not least because of Sue Clarke’s adoration and her subsequent affair. Now he’d been promoted, he recognized the need to tolerate Frost as a necessary evil in order to get on, and at least give the impression of having some regard for him. But in reality, he still disliked him. It astonished Simms how Frost would wilfully rub Mullett up the wrong way – not that Simms had any great love for Mullett, but he was the gaffer, and Simms respected him as such. He couldn’t summon up such respect for Frost, but with DI Allen absent and Frost in charge of CID, he’d have to put up with him for now, at least.

  Like a bad penny, the man himself appeared in the doorway. ‘Right, what you got? Anything?’

  ‘The taxi driver, Feltham, I finally caught up with him down by the station. He remembered dropping both girls off in the Two Bridges area. He gave me rough addresses.’

  ‘So, posh, were they?’ Frost asked. Two Bridges was a hamlet towards Rimmington. Simms, though unfamiliar with it, knew it to be well-heeled.

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Teens. He wasn’t specific. It was dark, I guess.’

  ‘The other driver I spoke to reckoned they were drunk. Did your guy confirm this?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘What was he, a mute?’ Frost stared at Simms directly.

  ‘Sorry.’ The DC fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair. With barely any effort the old git had made him feel inadequate. ‘I did run out to Two Bridges and I tried some houses, but there was nobody home.’

  ‘Late or early teens?’

  ‘He didn’t …’ A glare from Frost prevented him finishing the sentence.

  ‘Well, if they’re early tee
ns, then they’re probably still at school. My guess would be St Mary’s, the private place out that way. If they’re late teens, then where they are is anybody’s guess – St Tropez, perhaps?’ Frost rolled up his sleeves, perspiration patches visible under his arms. His forehead was beaded with sweat. Christ, it was only May, what would he be like in July? Frost offered Simms a Rothmans, which he declined. ‘Yes, my hunch is it’s very unlikely these two knew our poor Samantha Ellis, a mere Denton Comp girl.’

  ‘Shall I go back?’ Simms said. ‘To Two Bridges, I mean.’

  Frost took a seat in Bert Williams’s old, moth-eaten chair. ‘If you think you have the correct addresses, give St Mary’s a call. That will soon answer that.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  ‘I know the headmistress,’ Frost mused, a twinkle in his eye. ‘She’s got a soft spot for me. If it turns out our girls do go there, I’ll follow it up later.’

  Smug bastard, Simms thought. The woman must be blind, and not the only one, either. What on earth did they see in him?

  ‘DS Waters is in with Hornrim Harry, being given an induction. Let me know when he’s finished his talking-to. Decent bloke, that Waters.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s all right for a …’ Simms checked himself, not knowing where Frost stood with the coloureds.

  ‘For a what?’ Frost said. ‘A black bloke? All the same to me, whatever the colour.’

  The subject prompted Simms to remember something that he’d previously given little thought to. ‘My kid brother, David, is at Hendon. He says there’s a couple black fellers in training there. Apparently they get a hell of a time. They tied this one chap up and gave him a right pasting.’

  ‘Well, if anything like that goes on here, I want to know about it, you hear?’

  Simms nodded.

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot – any joy from British Rail on the lost-property front?’

  ‘Yes, they found a girl’s sequinned bag at the depot,’ Simms said hastily, pulling out his note pad. ‘Smoking carriage at the front.’