Frost at Christmas (6 page)

   The face screwed up, the red dots of eyes burned as he swung his head from one to the other of them like a rat cornered between two terriers. "And a fat lot of bleedin' good that would do me. You'd all lie your effing heads off."

   He hobbled out into the fresh air. It took a good thirty minutes with doors and windows open to persuade the smell he'd brought in with him to do likewise.

   "You've got to know how to handle these sods," said Wells, poking the ledger back. "Who does he think is going to touch his money after he's wiped his grimy fingers over it?"

   The internal phone buzzed. Wells answered it. 

   "Oh. Yes, sir. He's on his way." 

   The maroon scarf streaked past his eyes and off down the corridor to Mullett's office.

"These are the cells," said P.C. Keith Stringer, who had been detailed to show the new man around.

   Clive grunted.

   "You know," explained Stringer. "Where we keep the prisoners until we can get them to court." He pushed open an iron door. "This is the drunk cell with the drain, so we can hose the sick down . . ."

   Clive's impatience burst. "Look, I have been in a police station before, you know. How long have you been on the Force?"

   "Three months," replied the younger man, proudly.

   "And I've been in it for two years - in one of the toughest areas of London. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know, so just show me where things are, don't explain them tome."

   Stringer's face reddened. "Sorry. I was only trying to help." His expression cheered up as the door to the cell section opened and another uniformed man stepped in.

   "Oh, Harry . . . this is the new chap, Clive Barnard from London. Clive - Harry Dobson."

   The two men shook hands. Dobson was about Clive's age, a good-looking, curly haired man with an innocent expression.

   "Young Keith showing you the ropes, is he?"

   "Nothing I can show him," said Keith. "He knows it all."

   "I wish I could work in London," said Dobson. "Do me a favor, Keith. Come with me to fetch the prisoners' breakfasts. They should send them down, but you know how short-handed we are with this search."

   "Sure," replied Keith. "Are the prisoners all right to be left?"

   Dobson scratched his chin. "Well . . . as far as I know. The bloke in the end cell's been acting a bit queer, scream ing and sobbing. Off his chump if you ask me, but he's quiet now. Keep an eye on them until we get back, Clive. Shouldn't be long."

   Without waiting for his agreement, they were off.

   Clive watched them go. Just trotting off and leaving the prisoners - what a way to run a station! In a properly organized station, like London, the man in charge of the cell section stayed put and the food was brought to him.

   Better take a look at his charges. His feet rang on the stone flags and the familiar damp uriney carbolic smell tweaked his nose. The first two doors were ajar, the cells unoccupied, but the next was locked. Peering through the peep-hole he saw the occupant, a pimply faced youth with long, dank hair laying on the wall bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. Somehow aware he was being watched the youth jerked two fingers toward the spy-hole.

   Another unoccupied cell, then the drunk cell with its floor sloping down to a grated drain. And that seemed to be it. Then he remembered the other prisoner Dobson had mentioned, the queer fellow in the end cell.

   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."

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."

Mullett 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.

   "I 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. I 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 proper 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 £107 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 Mullett yet. The commandership of the new, enlarged division wasn't the one-horse race his superintendent blithely imagined.