A Killing Frost

Chapter 3

Frost, DC Taffy Morgan at his side, gazed down gloomily at the muddy, evil-smelling piece of flesh, half-hidden in long, straggling, rain-beaten grass. Jordan and Simms looked on like two puppies wagging their tails at finding the ball for their master. Pity you didn’t chuck the flaming thing in the lake and say nothing, thought Frost. More flaming paperwork to no avail.

‘It’s a bit of leg,’ said Jordan.

‘I know,’ sniffed Frost. ‘I’m a leg man, but it doesn’t turn me on. There’s probably more choice bits lurking about for some silly sod to find, but we haven’t the time or the resources to look for them. Bag it up. See what Forensic make of it.’ He was still hoping this was some medical student’s idea of a joke, but had the growing suspicion that it was going to turn out to be something a lot more sinister.

He took a deep drag on his cigarette and looked around. They were on the outskirts of the lake which had been a magnet for dead bodies so many times in the past. He mooched over to the water’s edge and stared down into the green, slimy water which was being rippled by the cutting wind. At the far end a duck squawked and flapped its wings as it skimmed across the surface. He shivered. It was flaming cold standing here. No way Debbie would risk her brand-new bikini in this slimy muck.

Another possibility kick-started – something he hadn’t considered before. Supposing the boy had done away with Debbie, then roared off in panic. She could have told him she was pregnant and would name him as the father. Possible but the unsubstantiated thought wasn’t getting him anywhere. Where the hell was she and where the hell was the boy? She would have come back for her birthday if she could. He kept trying to kid himself she wouldn’t, but… He stared again over the lake and shivered, this time not from the cold. He had one of his doom-laden premonitions.

He nodded at the lake. ‘I think she’s in there,’ he said flatly. He knew he would never get Mullett’s permission to call the underwater search team out just on the strength of one of his nasty feelings, when their past record had such a low success rate. But he felt strongly this time.

He turned to Morgan and indicated a dilapidated rowing boat, half in, half out of the lake, its bottom awash with muddy water. ‘Feel like a row, Taff?’

Morgan stared at the boat in dismay. ‘Flaming heck, Guv, look at the holes in the bottom. It’s like a sieve. I can’t swim.’

‘I can’t play the violin,’ said Frost, ‘but I don’t moan about it.’ He signalled to Jordan. ‘Push the boat out. Have a prod around with Taffy. She might be in there.’

Jordan was equally unenthusiastic and surveyed the leaky rowing boat with apprehension. ‘Is that an order, Inspector?’

Frost shook his head. ‘Of course not, son. You’ve both volunteered.’

He sat in the car with the heater going full blast, sucking at a cigarette as he listened to the local news on the radio.

… Denton Police are appealing for help in tracing the whereabouts of two teenagers, Debbie Clark and Thomas Harris, who did not return home after a cycle ride yesterday evening. Anyone with information…

Bleeding Mullett, jumping the gun. Appeals to the public always brought an abundant crop of false sightings which some poor sod had to follow through. And I’ll be that poor sod, he thought ruefully.

His head jerked up. What was that? It sounded like Jordan calling. He groaned. God, they’d found her. They’d found the girl. He clicked the radio off and flung open the car door. The cry was repeated. But it wasn’t Jordan. It was the squawk of a flaming duck flying overhead. He sank back in his seat in relief. He didn’t want them to find her. He wanted Debbie to be safe and well. But she was dead… He just knew it.

He started to fidget. Sitting, doing nothing, wasn’t his way of working, so he mashed out the cigarette and climbed out of the car.

Another cry. But it wasn’t the duck this time. It was Jordan. ‘Inspector!’ It was the urgent cry of someone who had found something nasty.

The two men were near the far side of the lake, the boat tilting over at an alarming angle as they both leant over one side to try to pull something out of the water. They were in grave danger of capsizing the rowing boat. They were dragging something out of the lake. Not a body. It was a red cycle, which didn’t seem to have been in the water for very long.

Frost’s heart sank. Debbie’s bike was red. It had to be her bike.

For once, he didn’t want his gut feeling to be proved correct. Then he heaved a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Debbie’s. It was a man’s bike. And the boyfriend’s bike was blue, so it couldn’t be his.

‘Chuck it back,’ he called. ‘It’s a man’s bike… Women’s bikes don’t have bars in case it snags their bloomers.’

‘You’re behind the times, Inspector,’ yelled Jordan. ‘Bikes are unisex now.’

Frost went cold. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

With a final heave they hauled the dripping bike into the boat. Jordan bent and examined it. ‘Same make and same serial number, Inspector. It’s Debbie Clark’s bike.’

Frost turned his back against the wind and lit up another cigarette. Shit and double shit. He waited impatiently while they rowed across, stepping back as they humped the bike out of the boat and laid it on the grass. He double-checked the serial number, but Jordan was right. He took another look at the murky, icy water. If her bike was there, the girl’s body could be there, caught up in jettisoned debris somewhere – perhaps the boy’s body as well, Why had he been so bloody cocksure in assuring the parents they’d soon be back home again, safe and sound. He shook his head to dispel the morbid thought. They’d found the bike, that was all. Debbie could still be alive and well, shacked up with the boy somewhere, miles away. But that didn’t make sense. Why dump the bike? She’d need it to get home again. And why chuck it in the lake so it wouldn’t be found? No. She had to be in that lake. There was enough evidence now for him to ask Mullett to call the police frogmen in and do a thorough search.

‘Get it over to Forensic,’ he told them. ‘I doubt if any prints have survived submersion, but don’t confuse them by adding your own.’

He pulled the mobile from his pocket and rang Mullett.

‘I’m at Denton Woods, Super. We’ve just fished Debbie Clark’s bike out of the lake. I think her body’s in there. We’re going to have to call the underwater search team in.’

He watched impassively. It was just a matter of time before they dragged the kid’s body up. Her thirteenth bleeding birthday. All her cards waiting to be opened. He dreaded going back to the house and breaking the news. Not many bloody laughs in this job.

The underwater team waded out and plunged under the surface. His heart juddered skipped a beat each time they hauled something up and dumped it in their rowing boat. As the boat filled it was rowed to the shore and its contents dumped. Soon the shore round the lake was littered with retrieved debris, including supermarket trolleys, a DVD player and a video recorder whose serial numbers tallied with goods stolen during an ancient burglary; and a long-dead fox.

Morgan and Jordan, in the small rowing boat, were keeping well out of the way of the frogmen, and were prodding the bottom with a large pole. ‘Over here,’ called Morgan, waving frantically at the frogmen. ‘I think it’s a body…’

‘Don’t let it be,’ pleaded Frost to himself ‘Please, don’t let it be.’

He had to force himself to look as two of the frogmen broke the surface, hauling up a bulging dustbin liner, water streaming from holes in the bottom. With difficulty, Morgan and Jordan got it into the boat and rowed over to where Frost was waiting.

‘Not heavy enough to be a body, Guv,’ reported Morgan.

‘Don’t sound too bleeding disappointed,’ snapped Frost. The sack was tied with string, secured by tight knots. He slashed the string with his penknife, stepping back quickly as evil-smelling lake water belched out. ‘You found it, Taff. To you the honour of looking inside.’

Very gingerly, Morgan slipped his hand inside and pulled out a sodden item of clothing. ‘Men’s trousers, Guv,’ he announced.

‘They’re girls’ slacks, you Welsh git. You’re so busy pulling them down from the scrubbers you go out with, you don’t notice they haven’t got a fly opening.’ But Debbie hadn’t been wearing slacks when she left the previous night, so unless she’d changed somewhere…

Morgan delved inside, again and pulled out more women’s clothes: a sodden yellow sweater, a bra, black tights, and a pair of trainers with half a brick wedged inside to make the plastic sack sink. Frost shook his head. ‘These aren’t Debbie’s clothes.’ He prodded the sodden sweater with his foot, then picked it up to examine it more closely. It was turned inside out as if it had been dragged off over the head. He then held up the bra. The fasteners were hanging by a thread as if the bra had been ripped off. This wasn’t looking too happy. It looked as if the clothes had been forcibly removed.

‘Any other girls reported missing recently, Guv?’ asked Morgan.

‘Girls are always being reported missing,’ grunted Frost. ‘And as far as “recently” goes, these clothes could have been dumped here months ago.’ He dropped the sweater on top of the rest of the clothes. ‘Stuff them back in the sack and let Forensic have a sniff. And when we get back to the station you can go through the records to see if the clothes match the description of any girl reported missing.’

‘Inspector Frost!’

He turned round. One of the underwater team on the far side of the lake was splashing to the shore, holding something aloft in his hand. At first Frost couldn’t make out what it was, then he cursed vehemently. ‘Shit!’

It was another chunk of chopped-off foot.

An hour and four cigarettes later, the frogmen called off their search. ‘Nothing else there, Inspector.’

‘Good,’ beamed Frost, nodding towards the debris that littered the ground. ‘Put all this stuff back where you found it, then you can go home.’

The senior frogman grinned. ‘Wouldn’t want to do your chaps out of a job.’ He made his way back to the van.

Frost kicked at a rusting petrol can. ‘So where’s the boy’s flaming bike?’ he muttered ‘He’ll be our prime suspect if we find the girl body.’ He looked out again over the lake. Jordan and Morgan had retrieved the bike from somewhere in the middle. So how did it get there? It couldn’t have been thrown that far. Of course! The flaming leaking rowing boat. There could be prints on the oars. But damn! Everyone had been using the boat. It would be smothered in prints by now, covering up the originals. A waste of time sending it to Forensic. Still, it would give the lazy sods something to do. ‘And get the boat and oars over to Forensic,’ he called.

His mobile chirped. Bill Wells from the station again. ‘The girl’s father has phoned, Jack. Wants to know the latest.’

‘Knickers,’ cursed Frost. ‘He’s bound to want to take me out and buy me a drink and I haven’t got time. I’ll go round and see him on my way back and tell him we’ve found his daughter’s bike. Get the main Incident Room ready, Bill, I’ve got one of my nasty feelings about this.’

‘You’d better tell Superintendent Mullett first. He hates to find these things out by accident.’

‘I know, I know,’ sighed Frost. ‘As soon as I get the flaming time – bits of legs, blackmail at the supermarket, missing teenagers and that bloody rape. Where’s Skinner? It’s about time that fat sod did a bit of work.’

‘He’s in with Mullett. The red light’s on we mustn’t disturb them.’

‘Red light? They’re having a love-in.’

Wells chuckled. ‘Oh – something else, Jack. The boy’s parents have returned from holiday. They’ve found your note and want to know what it’s all about.’

Frost groaned again. ‘Right, leave it to me.’ He hung off and turned to DS Arthur Hanlon, who had just arrived. ‘Job for you, Arthur. Go and see the boy’s parents. Just tell them we think he’s run away with the girl and we’ve got everyone out looking for them. Don’t tell them we’ve found Debbie’s bike. I’ll be round with that news after I’ve seen the girl’s father.’

‘Right, Jack?

‘One other thing. Do a wee for me when you get the chance – I’m busting – and do one for yourself.’

Hanlon grinned and hurried off to his car. As Frost slid into the driving seat of his own car, the flaming mobile rang yet again. It felt hot as he pressed it to his ear. It was an angry sounding DCI Skinner.

‘What’s this about the Incident Room being prepared?’ he barked.

Frost told him about the discovery of the bike. ‘Then who gave you permission to turn it into a murder inquiry?’ hissed Skinner. ‘In future you make no decisions without checking with me first and obtaining my express permission. From now on, I do the murder cases. You’re off this one. I’m taking over. Comprende?

‘Jawohl, mein herr,’ said Frost, giving a Nazi salute as he clicked off the phone. One less case for him to sod up. He was thinking about the luxury of doing a wee and having something to eat when the flaming mobile rang again.

‘Billy King!’ said Wells as soon as Frost answered.

‘Billy King?’ echoed Frost, frowning. The name rang a distant bell. His brain riffled through its data bank and came up with scraps information. ‘Tubby little sod. Didn’t I nick him years ago? House-breaking, petty larceny…’

‘That’s him,’ said Wells.

‘Then what about him?’

‘You asked me to check with the building society about that account number. It belongs to Billy King.’

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Frost happily. ‘We don’t often get luck like this. He’s used his own flaming card. The man’s a prat. I’ll put my wee on hold and pay him a visit right now.’

‘Before you do, Jack, DCI Skinner wants you to go round to the Clarks’ and break the news that we’ve found Debbie’s bike. He hasn’t got time to do it now.’

‘As long as he said “please”,’ said Frost sweetly, before ending the call and hurling obscenities into the air.

Clark glowered at him. ‘What the hell do you want, Frost? I was told you were off this case.’

‘I’m no longer in charge,’ explained Frost, ‘but Detective Chief Inspector Skinner asked me to call with the latest developments.’

‘And they are?’

‘I think I’d better come in,’ said Frost.

He followed Clark into the lounge, where Mrs Clark sat huddled in an armchair. She looked up in alarm as Frost entered. ‘It’s bad news, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Frost. ‘It could mean nothing. I just don’t know. We’ve found Debbie’s bike.’ He gave them the details.

‘Why was her bike thrown in the lake?’ shrieked Mrs Clark. ‘Something’s happened to her. I just know it.’

So do I, thought Frost, but he kept his face impassive. ‘There could be all sorts of reasons, Mrs Clark. She could have left the bike somewhere, someone stole it, rode off, then dumped it in the lake. That sort of thing often happens.’

‘She could be drowned in that lake.’

‘That’s the only thing we’re positive about at the moment. We’ve had the frogmen out. She isn’t in the lake, that I promise yow’

‘Then where the bloody hell is she?’ demanded Clark.

‘She could be holed up with the boy somewhere, too frightened to come home.’

‘If she is, I’ll wring that lad’s neck,’ snarled Clark.

Mrs Clark had buried her head in her hands and was sobbing convulsively. ‘She’s dead. I just know it. My little Debbie… she’s dead.’

‘We’ll find her,’ said Frost, hoping he sounded convincing. ‘Try not to worry. We’ll find her.’

Clark showed him out. ‘You’d better bloody find her,’ he snarled. ‘And if your procrastination has caused my daughter any harm, you’ll wish you’d never been born.’

Thank God that’s over, thought Frost as he climbed into his car. If we do find her body, I hope bloody Skinner is the one to break the news. So now for Billy King.

Billy King’s house was a shabby-looking, two storey property, standing all on its own on disused farmland. Parked in front of the house was a dilapidated caravan, its flaking cream and green paint showing large patches of rust, the wheels sunk deep in muddied ruts.

PC Collier watched Frost pound on the front door with the flat of his hand and rattle the letter box. They could hear sounds from inside, but no one came to the door. Frost banged again, emphasising his knocking with a couple of hefty kicks.

At last the door was opened by a squat little double-chinned man in his shirtsleeves.

‘Give us a flaming chance! Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it!’ Then recognition dawned. He poked a podgy finger at the inspector. ‘Detective Sergeant Frost! Cor, haven’t you aged?’

‘Detective Inspector,’ corrected Frost.

‘Inspector?’ gasped King incredulously. ‘They’ve never made you a flaming inspector!’ He turned to PC Collier. ‘Frost was always a scream – a pleasure being arrested by him cos he always made you laugh!’

‘Then this will make you flaming wet yourself,’ Frost told him. ‘I’ve got a warrant to search your premises.’

‘Pull the other one,’ giggled King. ‘You think I don’t know what this is all about? Come on in. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ They followed him through to a small kitchen. ‘Have you caught the sod yet?’

‘What particular sod did you have in mind?’ asked Frost.

‘The burglar. The sod who pinched my stuff.’ Frost blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t you know what is going on in your own flaming station? I was burgled, wasn’t I? Sod broke in while we were away in the caravan on holiday. When I came back, the place had been done over. I’d been burgled.’

‘Who’d burgle this bleeding place?’ said Frost.

‘You’d spend more on petrol driving here than you could nick. You’re saying you had a burglary and you didn’t report it?’

‘Of course I flaming well reported it. A little fat bloke came round.’

‘Detective Sergeant Hanlon?’

‘That’s him. And he was bloody useless. Nosed around, got some bloke to chuck fingerprint powder all over the place, then pissed off. That was the last I heard. I thought you were here to tell me you’d caught him.’

‘You used to do a bit of burglary yourself, Bill. This sounds like an insurance fiddle to me.’

‘Insurance fiddle? Don’t talk to me about insurance companies. They’re quick to take your flaming premium, but when you’re unlucky enough to be robbed, they won’t pay out. They want receipts. Who the hell keeps receipts?’

‘Especially when you nicked the stuff in the first place,’ said Frost, stuffing the search warrant back in his mac pocket. ‘What was taken?’

‘He turned the place over – made a right bleeding mess of it. Flaming amateur, if you ask me. All he took was an old wallet with a couple of quid in it.’

‘And the wallet was all you claimed for on your insurance policy?’

Billy spread his hands and shrugged. ‘All right, Inspector Frost, I’ll come clean as it’s you. I might have exaggerated about the brand-new telly and DVD player and the wife’s designer clothes, but all he took was the wallet with a couple of quid in it.’

‘Was there anything else in the wallet apart from money?’

‘Condoms, you mean? No, the wife has her own method of birth control. She bolts the bedroom door.’ He wheezed heartily at his own joke.

‘What about a cashpoint card for the Fortress Building Society?’

King screwed up his face in thought. ‘Might have been. I haven’t dealt with them for ages. I’m with the Woolwich now.’ He frowned. ‘Are you telling me the bastard took that as well?’ He reached for the phone. ‘I’m closing my account. There wasn’t much left in it, but that bastard isn’t going to have it.’

Frost knocked Billy’s hand away from the phone. ‘No, don’t do anything. If he tries to use it, Billy, we can get him.’ He pushed himself up from the chair. He’d check with Hanlon, but King’s story had the ring of truth about it, and for all his faults, Billy wasn’t the kind of bloke who would go around poisoning baby food. He paused as a thought struck him. The pin number. The blackmailer would be unable to withdraw money without the pin number. ‘Was your pin number in the wallet?’

‘Of course it was. Safest place for it. I wrote it on the back of the card.’

Frost smiled. ‘What would crooks do without prats like you, Billy?’ He waved away the offer of a cup of tea and remembered his long-delayed wee. ‘Do you think I could use your toilet?’

‘But I haven’t got a report of a flaming burglary;’ said Frost, riffling once more through his over flowing in-tray. ‘I felt a bigger prat than usual, going in there with a search warrant to find a card that had already been nicked.’

‘I definitely sent you a copy, Jack,’ insisted Hanlon. ‘I gave it to that Welsh bloke.’

‘Gave it to the Welsh bloke?’ exploded Frost, pushing his in-tray away. ‘You might just as well have flushed it down the flaming karzy.’ He opened his office door and bellowed down the corridor. ‘Lloyd flaming George. Come here!’

DC Morgan came trotting in, not knowing his offence, but wearing his hang-dog look of contrition, just in case. ‘You wanted me, Guv?’

‘No,’ snapped Frost. ‘I don’t flaming want you, but I’m stuck with you. The crime report Hanlon gave you?’

Morgan looked blank for a moment, then brightened. ‘All filed away, Guv.’ He pulled open the drawer of the filing cabinet.

‘You didn’t think I should see it first – just in case I wanted to know what was going on?’ He held his hand out for the report and skimmed through it. ‘Smashed a back window to get in and cut his hand doing so. That rings a bell. Did we take a sample for DNA?’

‘Not worth the expense, Jack,’ Hanlon told him. ‘All he’d taken was a wallet with a few quid in it. SOCO found the odd print, but couldn’t match them with anyone on record.’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ said Frost. ‘This bloke is a rank amateur, like flaming Taffy here. Plenty of stuff he could have pinched, but he didn’t touch it because he wouldn’t know where to sell it. All he could handle was money and he was flaming lucky to find the wallet.’

‘And you reckon this is the same bloke who’s blackmailing the supermarket?’

‘Yes. Now he’s got the account details, he can have the hush money paid in.’

‘But for all he knew, when Billy King realised it was pinched he’d have stopped it with the building society.’

‘I doubt he thought that far ahead, Arthur. He probably tried the card out, found it worked and reckoned he was on to a winner. A flaming amateur trying for the big time. Shouldn’t be hard to nab the sod. We’ll pay Beazley’s cheque in, then we’ll watch all the cashpoints and when our blackmailer tries to make a withdrawal, we’ve got him.’

Frost stared again at the cheque with Beazley’s signature scrawled along the bottom. He blew off the ash that had fallen from his cigarette and looked across the desk at DC Morgan. ‘You know, Taff, with my forgery skills I reckon I could overwrite this with my name, cash it and do a bunk to somewhere exotic like Bangladesh or Basildon.’

Morgan grinned. ‘But it wouldn’t be honest, Guv.’

Frost nodded. ‘Agreed, but that wouldn’t stop me. It would be the fact that I would be letting that nice Mr Beazley down. I’d hate to think of his little, fat, greasy lower lip quivering with disappointment.’ He held out the cheque and passbook. ‘Nip across to the building society and give it to. Mr Selby, the manager. He’s expecting you. Tell him you’re the dopey cop I told him about.’ He pushed himself up from his chair. ‘Right. Let’s break the news to Hornrim Harry that his overtime bill is going to hit the roof tonight when we are out covering all the cashpoints’ He made a mental list of all the things that could possibly go wrong with the operation and shuddered. ‘This is going to be a complete balls-up, Taffy. I just know it.’

Morgan grinned. ‘I have every faith in you, Guv.’

‘That’s because you’re a prat, and a Welsh one at that,’ said Frost, making his way to the old log cabin.

Mullett wasn’t in his office. In fact the entire station seemed strangely deserted. Frost checked his watch, then he remembered. Bleeding hell! Fatty Arbuckle’s meeting. The one he had promised not to be late for.

Frost hastened to the main Incident Room, pausing at the door to listen. Skinner’s voice was booming out. He turned the door handle very carefully, hoping to slip in unobserved, but as he entered he received the full force of Skinner’s blistering glare. All heads turned to look at him, including Hornrim Harry, who was seated alongside Skinner and was doing his ‘frowning and tutting’ disapproval act.

‘Ah, Inspector Frost. Nice of you to join us,’ sneered Skinner.

‘No problem,’ beamed Frost, completely unfazed. ‘I didn’t have anything else to do.’ Sarcasm just bounced off him. He was relieved to see that his usual seat – back row, near the door – was vacant, so perhaps he could sneak out when things got boring.

Skinner exchanged glances with Mullett, as if to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll soon get rid of this useless bastard for you.’ Mullett nodded and smirked a tight smile of acknowledgement.

Frost was sitting next to the young WPC who had been with the rape victim in the hospital. He didn’t know her name. His warm smile met with a blank stare.

‘Right,’ resumed Skinner. ‘For the benefit of our late arrival I’ll quickly repeat what I said before, as I am sure many of you haven’t taken it in properly. I’ve only been in Denton division a few hours and already I’ve noticed slackness, slovenliness and laziness almost without exception. I hear moans about shortage of man power. If you all put in a full day’s work, there would be no shortage.’ He picked up a sheet of paper and fluttered it at arm’s length. ‘This, in case you haven’t looked at it for some time, is your contract of employment. If you read it, you will be aware of the following points. Point number one: you are allowed one – repeat one – meal break of forty-five minutes per shift. It does not allow you half an hour of extra breaks, morning and afternoon, for tea, coffee, sandwiches and bleeding fairy cakes. I don’t want to see anyone in the canteen outside the official forty-five minutes, unless they are off duty.’

Frost had mentally switched Skinner’s voice off and it was just droning away in the background as he started to work out how many men he would need to stake out the various Fortress Building Society cashpoints. He looked up. Skinner didn’t appear to be looking his way, so he decided this might be a good time to out. He was just opening the door very carefully when Skinner spotted him.

‘Going somewhere, Frost?’

‘Just checking that the door was closed properly. Flaming draught,’ said Frost, slamming it tight and giving the handle a few wiggles. He, turned up his coat collar and faked a shiver, then slunk back in his seat. The fat bastard must have eyes in the back of his head.

‘Now that Inspector Frost has checked the door for us,’ continued Skinner, ‘there are other time-wasting practices that I want rectified. Shift starting times are constantly delayed because officers are wasting time changing from civvies to police uniform and having a bloody good chat about last night’s bleeding football while they do so. The man hours wasted by this would be enough to provide Denton division with three more officers.’ He let his glance roam the faces in front of him as he repeated this to emphasise his point. ‘Three new officers. And probably better flaming officers than we have got now. So in future, ladies and gentlemen, you will change into your police uniform before you leave home and will start your shift the minute you walk through the station doors.’

There was a rumble of discontent. Skinner looked up in mock surprise. ‘Does that present a problem?’

Bill Wells raised a hand.

Skinner jabbed a finger at him. ‘And you are…?’

‘Wells – Sergeant Wells.’

Wells! thought Skinner. Ah yes. The thicky who kept me hanging on the phone this morning. The thicky who thinks he deserves promotion. The thicky who had better watch his bloody step or he’ll be following Frost out of Denton, if not leading the flaming way…

‘Yes, Sergeant Wells?’ he cooed, knowing what was coming and primed to shoot the stupid git down.

‘If I walk to the station in the morning wearing my uniform, people think I’m already on duty and they yell at me to solve their problems – domestic disputes, vandals, missing flaming cats – and all in my own time.’

‘If you saw someone kicking his wife’s teeth in, would you say, “Sorry I’m not on duty yet”? A good policeman is always on duty.’ He dismissed Wells with a derisive twitch of his hand. ‘And, of course,’ he continued, ‘we will also gain man hours if, as I require, you finish your shift dead on time, not half an hour early so you can get changed. You will now leave your uniform on until you get back home.’ He paused. That thicky sergeant had his hand up again. He sighed loudly and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Yes, Sergeant Wells?’

‘Same point as before,’ replied Wells. ‘I’ve finished my shift, I’m walking home and, because I’m still in uniform, I’m going to get dragged into all sorts of things.’

‘The same point, the same answer,’ snapped Skinner. ‘Nearly everyone in this station is not pulling their weight. I exclude Superintendent Mullett, of course.’ Mullett beamed back his acknowledgement. ‘Too many people are slacking, skiving, duty dodging, doing sloppy paperwork, not completing required returns.’ Here he glowered meaningfully at Frost, but the man appeared to have fallen asleep with a lighted cigarette in his mouth. Skinner tightened his lips grimly. The inspector didn’t know what was coming to him! ‘None of this,’ he went on, ‘will be tolerated in future. Any deviation and I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.’ He turned to Mullett. ‘Anything you’d like to add, sir?’

Mullett shook his head. ‘No, Chief Inspector. I think you have covered all points admirably.’

Everyone except Frost stood as Mullett and Skinner gathered their papers and left the room, closing the door on a bubbling simmer of indignation and discontent.

A fuming Bill Wells made his way across to Frost. ‘What do you think of that, Jack?’ he spluttered.

Frost beamed up at him. ‘Skinner’s all sweet talk now, but wait until he’s been here a few weeks – he’ll be a real right bastard.’

Skinner was with Mullett when Frost entered. He was seated alongside Mullett behind the desk and seemed to be pushing the superintendent out of position. Every now and then Mullett made a half-hearted attempt to move his chair back to centre, but Skinner didn’t yield an inch. Mullett’s expression indicated that he was starting to wonder whether he had made the right decision in accepting Skinner into Denton division. But the man had promised he would get rid of Frost quickly and painlessly, and that weighed heavily in Skinner’s favour.

Mullett opened his mouth to ask Frost what he wanted, but Skinner beat him to it. ‘What is it, Frost?’

Frost grabbed one of the two visitors’ chairs and dragged it across the blue Wilton, leaving twin tracks of scuff marks. He plonked himself down and lit up. ‘I’m going to need a hell of a lot of men on overtime for the next two nights,’ he said.

Mullett was already shaking his head – the division was under attack from County for the size of its overtime bill – when Skinner asked, ‘Why?’

Frost filled them in about the supermarket blackmailer. ‘So we need to stake out the cashpoints and nab the sod when he tries to draw out his money.’

Skinner’s eyes glinted. ‘And you reckon you can catch him?’

How the bleeding hell do I know? thought Frost. Aloud he said, ‘One hundred per cent sure.’

Skinner rubbed his chin in thought, then jabbed a finger at Frost. ‘OK; I’m taking charge of this case. You carry out the stake-out – and you’d better give me a result. When you catch him, arrest him, then hand him over to me.’

‘Right,’ nodded Frost enthusiastically. If it meant getting the extra bodies on overtime, he didn’t give a damn who was supposed to be in charge of the case. It meant someone else could take the flak for a change if the whole damn thing went pear-shaped, as most of Frost’s fool proof enterprises tended to.

‘How many men will you need?’

‘There are five Fortress cashpoints, two men on each – ’

‘Hold on,’ interrupted Skinner. ‘How do you know he’ll use a Fortress cashpoint? He can use the card anywhere.’

‘That’s where our luck’s in,’ Frost told him. ‘You can only use Fortress cards at their own cashpoints. They haven’t joined Link yet. So all we’ll need is two men on each of the five cashpoints, with another man as back-up and an area car lurking in the background in case we have to chase the sod. I’m hoping he’ll leave it until it’s dark when there are fewer people about, so the main group will be covering from eight until, say, six the next morning – unless we catch him earlier, of course. And we’ll need a skeleton surveillance team, with no back-up but able to call in reinforcements if necessary, during the day. They won’t be on overtime, of course.’

Frost knew there was no way Mullett would authorise this in full, so he had upped the ante by asking for more men than he needed. He had asked Fortress Building Society to put two of their cashpoints out of action overnight, so they would only be watching three instead of five, but he didn’t tell Mullett that.

‘For how many days?’ croaked Mullett, his brain whirling as he tried to calculate how much all this would cost.

‘One or two at the most,’ lied Frost. ‘The minute he draws money out on the card, the building society will phone me. If our luck’s in, we’ll nab him tonight.’ He oozed optimism, but Frost’s luck was rarely in.

Mullett’s head was already shaking when Skinner forestalled him again.

‘I don’t know about during the day. I want every man I can get my hands on to search the woods and other likely places for those missing kids. But you can have a maximum of five bodies for tonight – and let one of them be that dopey Welsh bloke. But if you sod this up

…!’ He let the threat hover like Damocles’ sword over the inspector’s head.

Frost put on his hurt look, as if sodding things up was inconceivable to him. He shot out of his chair and made for the door before they could change their minds.

‘Hold it,’ snapped Skinner. ‘Don’t forget. When you get him, you hand him over to me. I’ll take it from there.’

Frost nodded. Always agree: that was his motto. You could always say you didn’t understand afterwards.

‘But remember, if you foul this up -, began Skinner, his mouth shutting with a snap when he realised he was talking to a slammed door. Frost had made his exit.

‘When are you going to tell him he’s being transferred out of Denton?’ asked Mullett.

‘Not yet,’ replied Skinner, smiling maliciously. ‘I don’t want to dampen his enthusiasm for tonight’s stake-out.’