A Touch of Frost

Tuesday night shift (2)

Police Sergeant Bill Wells, sad-faced and balding, raised his head to the ceiling where all the noise was coming from and bared his teeth in anger. Upstairs, that was where he should be. Up there, enjoying himself, instead of being stuck down here as station sergeant, trying to cope with the running of the district with hopelessly inadequate numbers of staff.

He was one of the few members of the Denton Division forced to be on duty on this special night, the night of the big party. And what was unfair was that he should have been up there. Today should have been his day off. But at the very last minute, for his own peculiar reasons, the Divisional Commander had revised the duty roster, so now Wells was on duty, as was Jack Frost. This didn’t worry Jack Frost, as he intended to sneak upstairs whatever the rosters said. You could get away with it in plainclothes but not if, like Sergeant Wells, you were wearing a uniform. There was no justice.

The skeleton duty force could only cope if the night was almost incident-free. Indeed, all duty men had been instructed not to look for trouble, to walk away from it if it crept up, and to turn a blind eye to all minor of fences But already things had started to heat up with the discovery of a dead body down a public convenience, and it was a well-known fact that shifts that started badly almost always ended badly.

And the damn phone, ringing almost nonstop, wasn’t helping; the calls were usually from members of the public complaining about the noise. It was so unfair. The people upstairs were having all the fun and he was having to cope with all the complaints.

The phone rang again. He snatched it up and blocked his free ear with his finger to try and drown out that monkey music from above.

“Would you mind repeating that, madam? I’m afraid I can’t hear you.”

The woman caller was gabbling away excitedly, but even with the phone pressed so tightly against his ear it hurt, he couldn’t make out what she was agitated about.

“Would you mind holding on for a moment, madam?” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and relieved the steam pressure of his myriad grievances by yelling at young Police Constable Collier, who was painstakingly hacking out a report on the antique Underwood typewriter. “Do something useful for a change, Collier. Get upstairs and tell those drunken layabouts to keep the row down. Some of us are trying to work.”

But before Collier could move, the lobby doors parted to admit the tall, straight-backed figure of Police Superintendent Mullett, Commander of Demon Division. The Superintendent, with his glossy black hair, clipped military moustache and horn-rimmed glasses, looked more like a successful businessman than a policeman. He was wearing his casual party wear: a tailored grey suit, a silver-flecked shirt, and a blue-and-silver tie. Wells and Collier immediately stiffened to attention but were waved at ease. The thump of the disco from above made Mullett wince, and he could feel his head starting to ache, but he put a brave face on it. After all, he was one of the lads tonight, like it or not.

“They seem to be enjoying themselves up there, Sergeant Wells,” he shouted over the din. “Not too loud for you, is it?”

“No, sir,” lied Wells as he pushed the phone to Collier so the constable could take over the call. “Nice to hear people enjoying themselves… for a change.”

Mullett nodded his approval, his gaze wandering around the dingy lobby with its stark wooden benches and the Colorado Beetle Identification poster flapping on the dark grey walls. “I never realized just how dreary this lobby looked, Sergeant. It’s bad for public relations. Do you think you could see about cheering it up… get in some house plants, or flowers, or something?”

“Yes, sir. Good idea, sir,” mumbled Wells, raising his eyes to the ceiling in mute appeal. Bloody flowers indeed! He was a policeman, not a bloody landscape gardener.

“Is Inspector Frost about?” asked Mullett anxiously. He was hoping the answer would be no. He preferred that Frost, with his impressed clothes, his unpolished shoes, his rudeness, and his coarse jokes, should be well out of the way when the Chief Constable arrived.

“Out on an inquiry, sir. Body down a public convenience off the Market Square.”

A public convenience! Mullett flinched as if he had been hit. It sounded just the type of distasteful inquiry that Frost would get himself involved in, but at least it had the advantage of keeping him out of sight when the V.I. P arrived.

He leaned across the desk to the sergeant, taking him into his confidence with great news: “The Chief Constable said he might look in, Sergeant, to say goodbye personally to George Harrison. You might ask one of your spare constables to keep an eye on the road outside.. ”

“I haven’t got anyone spare, sir,” cut in Wells hastily. “I’ve only got one constable with me to help run the entire station.” He indicated young Collier, who didn’t seem to be making much progress with the caller on the phone.

“He’ll do fine,” beamed Mullett, who had no intention of getting involved in these minor staffing problems. “The instant the Chief Constable’s car turns that corner, I want to be told. I’ll be upstairs with the lads.” He paused. “Sorry I had to put you on duty tonight, Wells, but there are so few men I could really trust to do a good job when we’re short-handed.”

Wells gave a noncommittal grunt.

Mullett pushed open the door to the canteen and steeled himself. He was not a very good mixer as far as social ising with the lower ranks was concerned and would never have attended were it not for the promised visit of the Chief Constable. He squared his shoulders, then, like a front-line soldier going over the top, he bravely charged up the stairs.

Wells glowered after him, speeding him on his way with a blast of mental abuse. “That’s right… go and enjoy yourself. Never mind us poor buggers sweating our guts out down here.” He became aware of Collier’s worried face looking helplessly at him, the phone still in his hand.

“What is it now, Collier? Surely you can handle a simple phone call on your own?”

“She won’t talk to me, Sarge, and she’s getting stroppy. She says she wants a high-ranking officer.”

A loud burst of sound and the crash of breaking glass from overhead.

Wells hoped it was Mullett falling over the beer crates.

“She can’t have a high-ranking officer, Collier. All the high-ranking officers are upstairs getting pissed.” He snatched the phone from the constable’s hand. “Go out and keep an eye open for the Chief Constable’s Rolls… and get some bloody flowers.”

“Flowers?” queried Collier, but seeing the look on his sergeant’s face, prudently decided not to wait for an answer.

Wells stuffed a finger in his ear and put on his polite voice. “Yes, madam, can I help you?”

“What are you going to do about that bloody noise?” screeched the woman caller. “I’ve got three children in bed and they can’t get to sleep!”

“We’ll look into it, madam,” promised Wells.

The sliding panel that connected the lobby to the control room slid back and PC Ridley, the controller, poked his head through.

“I’ve got Dave Shelby on the radio, Sarge. He’s trying to get a body to the morgue. The ambulance men refuse to touch it. They reckon it’s too mucky for the ambulance.”

“Mr. Frost is handling that one,” said Wells.

“I can’t contact Mr. Frost, Sarge. He doesn’t answer his radio.”

“Typical,” snorted the sergeant. “Trust him to hide when there’s trouble.” He consulted a typed list of funeral directors. “Tell Shelby to try Hawkins in the High Street. They’re cheap, they’re not too fussy, and they keep begging us for work.”

“Right, Sarge.” The panel slid shut.

Wells was logging the last call in the phone register when he became aware of” an irritating tap, tap, tap. He raised his eyes. Someone had the temerity to be rapping a pencil on the desk to attract his attention. He jerked up his head and there was the new man, that sulky swine, the bearded Detective Constable Webster, with the usual scowl on his face, tap, tap, tapping away. Furiously, Wells snatched the pencil from the man’s hand and hurled it to the floor. Pushing his face to within an inch of the constable’s, he said, “Don’t you ever do that again, Webster. If you want to attract my attention you address me by name, then wait until I am ready to respond. Understood?”

“Yes, Sergeant, I understand.” Webster almost spat the words out.

“So what do you want?”

“I want to know where the hell this Frost character has got to. I’m supposed to be working with him. Two hours ago he dumps six months’ filing on me and says he won’t be a tick. I’m still sitting in that pigsty of an office, waiting.”

A malicious smile slithered across the sergeant’s face. “You want something to do then, Constable?”

Webster gritted his teeth, trying to stop his irritation from showing. The way these yokels took a childish delight in emphasising the word ‘constable’. But he wouldn’t let them see they were getting through to him.

“Yes, Sergeant. I want something to do.”

“Right,” said Wells, smiling. “You can make the tea.”

“Make it?”

“We won’t get any tea from the canteen, Webster. It’s out of bounds to the workers. So you’ll have to make it manually, which I trust is not beneath the dignity of an ex-inspector? There’s a kettle and o’her stuff in the washroom. Brew up enough for six.” He lowered his head and returned to his entry in the log book.

Webster didn’t move.

Wells raised his head. “Is there a problem, Constable, something in your orders that you don’t understand?”

Webster’s face was rigid with fury. “You want me to make the tea?” He said it as if he had received an improper suggestion.

Wells chucked his pen down and bounced back Webster’s glare with a scorcher of his own. “Yes, Constable. Any objections?”

“Yes,” snapped Webster, jerking a thumb at young Collier, who was hovering by the lobby door, anxiously peering out into the road. “What about him? Why can’t he do it?”

“Because he is doing a very important job for Mr. Mullett. And anyway, why should he be the tea boy instead of you? You’re both the same rank… you’re both constables… or have you forgotten?”

“No,” snarled Webster, “I haven’t forgotten.” As if the buggers would let him forget! He spun on his heel and barged out of the lobby, slamming the door behind him.

That’s put the bastard in his place, thought Wells, feeling better now he had syphoned off some of his pent-up frustration.

Collier raced over excitedly. “The Chief Constable’s car, Sarge.”

“Well, don’t wet your knickers about it, Constable. Go upstairs and tell Mr. Mullett, quick.” Wells adjusted his uniform and made his back ramrod straight. He rapped on the panel and warned Control that the Chief Constable was on the way through.

The phone on his desk gave a little cough. Wells glowered at it, daring it to ring. It defied him. So did the other phone. Damn and blast! He’d planned a quick exchange of dialogue with the Chief Constable in which the Chief would look around the empty lobby and say, “All on your own, Sergeant?” and he would reply smartly, with much diffidence, “Yes, sir, but I can cope. I can run this place single-handed if need be…” And the Chief Constable would smile approvingly and make a mental note that there was some very promising promotion material here. Instead, the Chief Constable, in immaculate evening suit, breezed through, nodded curtly at Wells and said, “Those phones need answering, Sergeant.”

The first phone call was from a man living in the senior citizens’ flats off Arberry Road. Some idiot in a sports car was roaring round and round the block, cutting across the lawns and waking the oldies up. Wells scribbled details and promised action. No sooner had he replaced the phone than it rang again. He picked up the second phone. Another senior citizen complaining about the same thing. “Yes, we’ve got it in hand,” he promised, reaching for the first phone yet another old fool wanting the police to do something about this hooligan in the racing car.

As he was taking details, Wells was annoyed to see the Chief Constable pause to have a few morale-boosting words with young Collier, who ought to be answering bloody phones instead of fawning on the top brass. Behind Collier, the Divisional Commander, all atwitter, greeted the honoured guest and escorted him upstairs where the raucous noise had mysteriously abated.

And all the time this damn old man was droning away in his ear about the sports car and the inefficiency of the police who were never around when they were wanted. “I don’t suppose you managed to get its registration number,

Mr. Hickman?” he asked when the caller ran out of breath.

“No,” replied the old man, ‘but you’ll be able to trace him. His licence plate fell off when he hit the dustbins.”

“Right, Mr. Hickman, thank you very much,” said Wells, scribbling out the details. “We’ll send a car over there right away.” He jotted down the time of the call… 10.53, and slid the note through to Control.

Ridley, the controller, checked his wall map. Arberry Road. Charlie Alpha would be the quickest. He depressed the microphone button. “Control to Charlie Alpha. Come in please.”

The old man in the call box replaced the phone and dug his fingers hopefully into the coin-return receptacle in case there was any money there. There wasn’t. He shivered as a gust of wind found the broken pane in the kiosk door. He was still in his pyjamas, with his overcoat as a dressing gown and his sock less feet uncomfortably cold in his hastily laced shoes.

That hooligan in the sports car. It was the second night running the residents had had to put up with it. Screaming tyres, the horn blasting away, speeding round and round the flats as if it were on the Silverstone racing track. Tonight was even worse. The car had left the road and had ripped up lawns and flower beds as it took a short cut. Then there was that almighty crash as it hit the dustbins and sent them flying and clanging. But that was the driver’s downfall. The impact had knocked off the licence plate. The police would get him now. Hickman hoped they’d take away his licence for life and fine him hundreds of pounds. Or, better still, send him to prison. What they ought to do is bring back the birch. That would make these lunatics think twice before they disturbed the sleep of innocent people.

He didn’t hear the car coming back. He was halfway across the road when the blinding glare of its headlamps transfixed him. The horn shrieked at him to get out of the way. But the old man was going too slowly and the car far too fast.

As if in slow motion, he saw the car leap at him, saw every detail of the radiator as it grew larger, then a terrible, smashing blow as the headlamp shattered his face. The pain was awful. Screamingly awful. But mercifully it didn’t last long before a massive cloud of red and black blotted everything out and he was sucked down, down…

Watching from her window, a neighbour saw the car slow down, hesitate, then rev up and roar away, leaving the crumpled heap lying in the road. She had no phone and had to rush out and hammer at the next-door flat, screaming for someone to call an ambulance. The commotion had woken many of the residents. It didn’t wake Hickman’s wife. Slightly deaf, she slept soundly through it all, thinking her husband was still at her side.

The woman who had seen it happen covered the old man’s bleeding body with blankets as they waited for the ambulance. It was on the scene in exactly four minutes from the time the 999 phone call had been received. The same ambulance and the same two ambulance men who had refused to handle the vomit-sodden body from the toilets. Carefully, they lifted Hickman on to a stretcher and, in a little less than thirty seconds, were on their way to the hospital, speeding past the arriving Charlie Alpha as it turned the corner.

The area car slid to a halt in front of the call box, its tyres just managing to avoid the puddle of blood and the shards of broken headlamp glass. PC Jordan took statements from witnesses while his observer, PC

Simms, was sent to find the fallen licence plate. Then someone remembered Hickman’s wife. A woman neighbour went with Simms to wake her and break the news.

Max Dawson, managing director of Dawson Electronics, the big, modern factory complex on the new Denton Trading Estate, gave a gentle guiding touch to the wheel of his Silver Cloud and turned the car into the private approach road to the house. The car purred as it glided toward the garage. Dawson felt like purring, too. This year’s annual dinner and dance for his staff had been the best ever. His wife, who usually acted like a spoiled brat on such occasions, had behaved herself and had stuck to her promised maximum of four drinks, and all the speeches and presentations had gone off without a hitch.

He stole a glance at Clare in the seat next to him. For some reason she had been edgy all evening, fiddling with her bag, lighting cigarette after cigarette. But at least she had behaved like a managing director’s wife and not like some slut a lorry driver would pick up. She certainly looked stunning in that low-cut red-and-black evening dress. Too damn low-cut perhaps. He’d noticed the way two of his sales representatives had eyed her and sniggered suggestively to each other. He’d mentally noted their names. He wondered if they’d still be sniggering at the end of the month.

The outside lights were on to discourage intruders, but the interior of the house was in darkness. The quartz digital clock on the dash pulsated to show the time as 11.31. His young daughter, Karen, spending the night at her friend’s house, would be in bed. Fifteen-year-old Karen, sweet and unsophisticated, who hadn’t inherited any of her mother’s less endearing habits, thank God.

A touch of the remote control, and the garage door glided upward to receive the Rolls. “We’re home,” he said to Clare, who had her eyes closed.

Originally an early nineteenth-century farm building, the house had been completely gutted and converted, an undertaking that had cost him nearly ninety thousand pounds, but it had been worth it. On the open market there would be no shortage of buyers at an asking price in excess of a quarter of a million.

They went into the huge, split-level lounge with its massive natural-stone fireplace, large enough to roast the traditional ox if the log fire had been real. He pressed the ignition button and the living-flame gas jets plopped into life and licked hungrily at the sculptured logs. The instant warmth and the friendly red glow from the flickering flames increased his good humour to the extent that he was only mildly irritated to see that Clare had gone straight to the bar and was pouring herself a drink. Well, at least she had rationed herself at the function, so he’d let this one go by without comment.

“I’ll just give the Taylors a ring to make sure Karen’s all right,” he told her.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” his wife snapped.

A touch of jealousy there, he thought. He’d been noticing it more and more of late.

Loosening his bow tie, he walked over to the phone and jabbed at the push buttons.

Debbie’s parents were in bed. It was her father who eventually answered the phone, yawning loudly and at first not taking in what Dawson was saying. “No, Max, Karen’s not here. Isn’t she with you?”

Dawson stared at the phone in disbelief. Had the fool gone mad? “What the hell are you talking about?” he shouted. “She was going to the cinema with Debbie, then spending the night with you. It was all arranged.”

“I know,” yawned Taylor. “Debbie waited outside the Odeon, but Karen never showed up. We assumed you’d taken her to the dance with you.”

“You assumed? Why the bloody hell didn’t you phone to check?”

“Well… we assumed…”

“You stupid sod!” roared Dawson, his face red with anger. “Hold on.”

He put down the phone and charged up the staircase to Karen’s room. Flinging open the door, he looked in. The curtains were drawn, and the room was quiet and still. No sound of breathing. He fumbled for the light switch and clicked it on. Karen’s bed was empty, still neatly made up from the morning. He raced down the stairs, grabbed the phone, and shouted, “She’s not here! If anything has happened to my daughter, I’ll kill you, you bastard!” He was shaking with rage.

“What is it?” asked Clare, clutching his arm. “Where’s Karen?”

“That’s what I’m damn well going to find out.” He raised the phone.

“Is Debbie there?”

“Of course, Max… but she’s asleep.”

“Then wake her, you fool. She might know where Karen’s got to.”

As he held on for what seemed like hours, anger fighting with apprehension, Clare drifted over to the bar and refilled her glass. “Your daughter is missing,” he snarled, ‘and all you can do is get bloody drunk.”

Clare burst into tears. He turned his back on her and waited impatiently for Debbie.

He scuttled through the woods, eyes and ears alert. He thought he had heard something. A scream. A piercing sound that tore a jagged hole in the silence. But all was quiet now… as quiet as the woods ever were at night above the rustlings and the murmurings and the moanings Sometimes, when he was lucky, the murmurings and the moanings came from lovers, hot, sweating, coupling lovers too busy to realize they were being observed. The things some of them got up to… you’d never believe it! And some of the girls were worse than the men… far worse.

He squeezed between two bushes, taking a shortcut. He knew all the shortcuts. There was something in the long grass. Something black. He picked it up. A brassiere. A black, lacy, deep-cupped brassiere, the fastener hanging by a thread as if someone couldn’t wait to undo those fiddling little hooks. He pressed it to his cheek and slowly rubbed it up and down the side of his face then, folding it carefully, pushed it deep into his pocket.

On through more bushes. The moonlight gleamed on something silvery white. He stiffened and stood stock still. It was the white of bare flesh. Holding his breath and moving quietly, with the skill of long practice, he inched forward, parting branches so he could get a better view.

Dear sweet Mother of God!

On the ground, ahead of him, lay the naked body of a young girl, her face raw and battered, the mouth and chin hidden under a mask of blood. Her body was mottled with livid green bruises. Strewn around, on the grass, her clothes. He crouched, making himself smaller in case whoever had done this was still lurking about. He listened. Silence.

It seemed safe, so he inched forward until he could touch her. The flesh was cold. Ice cold. He lowered his ear to her bloodied mouth but could detect no sound of breaming. Slowly his eyes travelled down the bruised and bleeding body to her thighs, then her legs. She was wearing thick black stockings which made the flesh of her thighs appear even whiter by contrast. The pieces of clothing strewn around the body seemed to be a school uniform of some kind. The girl’s black-stockinged legs fascinated him, the stockings’ tops circled by wide red garters, garters that were meant to be seen, not hidden. He would have thought school wear was far less sexy. This one must have been a right little teaser, deserving everything she’d got.

How marvelous it must be, he thought, to have a partner of one’s own as quiet and submissive as this one. He had never touched a naked girl before. He had sweated and groaned in vicarious excitement as he watched other men caress, fondle, and make love to them. But he had never touched one himself. Not properly. Kneeling beside her, he gently stroked the flat stomach.

A twig snapped. He whirled around. Nothing. But this wouldn’t do. Suppose someone saw him touching the body. Saw him and told the police. The police would think he had done this. He stood up and backed away from her, then turned abruptly, crashing through the bushes to the path that would take him to home and safety.

As he neared the phone box he knew he would have to call the police. Tell them about her. He wouldn’t say who he was, but if anything went wrong… if they suspected him, he’d say, “But I was the one who phoned you. Would I have done that if I’d killed her?” Yes, that would be clever. That would be smart. His hand dug deep into his pocket to caress the lacy softness of the black bra.

Police Sergeant Wells nudged Collier and nodded toward the lobby doors, which were opening very slowly. Jack

Frost tiptoed in, obviously hoping to sneak upstairs to the party without being noticed. Unaware he had an audience, he furtively crossed the lobby and pushed open the door leading to the canteen, letting a warm burst of happy sound roll down the stairs on an air current of alcohol.

With perfect timing, Wells lobbed his grenade. “You can forget the party, Mr. Frost. Mullett’s up there.”

“Eh?” Frost paused in midstride and nearly stumbled before spinning around, looking as guilty as a choirboy caught with Penthouse inside his hymn book “You frightened the bloody life out of me, Bill,” he began, then the import of the sergeant’s words hit him with a clout. Mullett had made it clear to everyone that the party was for off-duty personnel only. “Mullett? Upstairs?” He studied the sergeant’s face in the hope that his leg was being pulled.

“I’m afraid so, Jack. He’s up there boozing and licking the Chief Constable’s boots while you and I have got to stay down here and work.”

“Flaming ear holes,” muttered Frost bitterly.

PC Ridley slid back the panel and called out from the control room, “Mr. Frost. Dave Shelby has radioed through. Your body’s been taken to the mortuary. The post-mortem will be at ten o’clock sharp.”

“Great,” replied Frost. “There’s nothing like a bowlful of stomach contents to give you an appetite for dinner.” He then gave his attention to young PC Collier, who was waving two burglary report forms at him.

“Two more break-ins, Inspector.”

“Shove them on my desk, son. I’ll stick them in the Unsolved Robberies file if I can find room, and in the wastepaper basket if I can’t.” Denton was being plagued with an epidemic of minor break-ins and burglaries. They all seemed to be quick in-and-out, spur-of-the-moment jobs no clues, no prints, no-one seeing anything. Only money was taken, small amounts usually, so, short of catching the villains in the act, there was little the police could do. With more than eighty reported incidents, and probably many more unreported, Mullett had decided there was little point in wasting time sending experienced police officers to the scene of the crime. There would be nothing to see but an irate householder and an empty drawer, vase, purse or tea caddy where the money had been. Instead, a form was provided so the householder could fill in details of the break-in. The forms were then cursorily examined, filed, and usually forgotten. Jack Frost was nominally in charge of the break-ins investigation, and his file of burglary report forms was growing thicker each day. The accumulated figures made the division’s unsolved crimes return look incurably sick.

Another roar of laughter from upstairs. The Chief Constable must have told his unfunny joke and Mullett’s pants would be wet from uncontrolled giggling. Frost stared at the ceiling sadly, then brightened up. Surely Mullett and the Chief Constable wouldn’t stick it out right to the bitter end. As soon as they’d left, he’d be up there, and would he make up for lost time! He ambled over to the desk and offered Wells a cigarette.

“Ta, Jack.” Wells flinched back as the flame from Frost’s gas lighter seared his nose. “You’ll never guess what Mullett’s latest is: He reckons the lobby wants brightening up. He only wants vases of bleeding flowers all over the place.”

Frost was only half listening. For some reason the face of Ben Cornish swam up in his mind, the dead eyes reproaching him for something he had overlooked.

Then he realized he hadn’t told Wells who the body in the toilet was.

“Ben Cornish? Oh no!” Wells slumped down in his chair. Cornish was one of his regulars, nothing too serious… public nuisance, drunk and disorderly… but lately he had been on drugs. Hard drugs. “He was only in here a couple of days ago, stinking of me ths and as thin as a bloody rake. I gave him a quid to get something to eat.”

“I doubt if he bought food with it, Bill. I don’t think he’s eaten properly for weeks. When I saw him tonight he looked like a Belsen Camp victim on hunger strike. I reckon the jar of his stomach contents tomorrow will be absolutely empty. Whatever he bought with your quid was squirted straight into his arm with a rusty syringe.”

“I bet his mother took it badly.”

Frost smacked his forehead with his palm. “Damn and bloody blast… I knew there was something I’d forgotten to do. I’ll have to nip round there. Any chance of some tea first?”

“Shouldn’t be long, Jack,” said Wells, adding with a note of smug triumph, “Webster’s making it.”

Frost stepped back in amazement. “How did you get him to do that?”

“Simple. I gave him an order. Why shouldn’t he make it? He’s only a bloody constable.”

“He may be just a bloody constable now,” said Frost, ‘but he used to be an inspector, and half the time he thinks he still is one.”

The subject of their conversation, Detective Constable Martin Webster, twenty-seven, bearded, was in the washroom filling the battered kettle from the hot tap for speed. He banged six fairly clean mugs on to a tin tray and slurped in the milk from a cardboard carton.

Is this what he had come to? A flaming tea boy? Six months ago he had been an inspector. Detective Inspector Martin Webster, wonder boy of Braybridge Division. Braybridge was a large town some forty-three miles from Denton.

Shipping him to this dump called Denton was part of his punishment, just in case being demoted wasn’t enough, and the cherry on the cake was being saddled with that stupid, sloppy, bumbling oaf Jack Frost, who wouldn’t have been tolerated as a constable in Braybridge, let alone an inspector. How did a clown like Frost make the rank? Someone had tried to tell him that the man had won a medal, but he wasn’t swallowing that… not unless they handed out medals for sheer incompetence. Police Superintendent Mullett, the Divisional Commander, seemed to dislike Frost with the same intensity as he detested Webster. “I’m not happy having you in my division,” Mullett had told him. “I accepted you under protest. One further lapse and you’re out…”

So how did Frost manage to get Mullett to recommend him for promotion? Webster smiled ruefully to himself. It probably helped that Frost didn’t stagger into the station roaring drunk and punch his superior officer on the jaw. The memory made him shake his right hand. His knuckles still ached. So hard did he clout Detective Chief Inspector Hepton, that he believed, at the time, he had broken the bones of his hand.

He’d remember that night as long as he lived. The day before, he’d had that damn-awful row with his wife, Janet. The rows had been getting nasty, but this one was the worst ever. Janet didn’t know how badly things had been going for him at the station. There had been complaints about his treatment of suspects. All right, perhaps he had been a mite overzealous, but he was getting results. But then there had been those two incidents, one after the other, where one prisoner had a black eye, and the other bruised ribs, and they’d screamed ‘police brutality’. Both had been resisting arrest and were swinging punches, but Detective Chief Inspector Hepton had preferred to believe them rather than one of his own officers. Hepton had threatened to take him off CID work and put him back into uniform.

He hadn’t told any of this to Janet. All she got was his bitterness, his resentment, and his temper. He couldn’t remember how that last row started. It had built up until he swore at her and called her filthy names. Reacting angrily, she had whipped her hand across his face. He deserved it. That’s what made it so hard to take: He bloody deserved it. He should have let it go, apologized, begged her forgiveness. But he had reacted without thought, the back of his hand cracking across her mouth, splitting her lip, making it bleed. She just looked at him with contempt, face white, blood trickling, then she slowly walked out, slamming the door behind her.

Later, the phone call from her mother’s, saying she was leaving him.

That’s when he should have swallowed his pride and gone after her. Instead he preferred to wallow in self-pity and drink himself stupid on the contents of the cocktail cabinet.

And when he finally staggered into the station, unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, there was Hepton, Chief Inspector-bloody-Hepton, waiting for him, barring his way, that nagging, jarring voice scratching away at his raw nerve ends like a fingernail dragged down a blackboard.

And then things were very blurred. He recalled flinging a punch. An almighty punch which spun Hepton around, knocked him into a filing cabinet, and sent him crashing to the floor. Then the room was full of people, angry, shouting, holding him back. Someone must have taken him home because he next remembered waking in his own bed the following morning, his head split by wedges, hoping against hope that it had all been some ghastly drunken nightmare. But Janet wasn’t in bed with him. The house was empty, her clothes gone, and his fist swollen and hurting like hell.

Suspension, Disciplinary Tribunal, demotion to constable, and transfer to Denton and to Jack Frost, the cretin of the year.

“Webster. How much longer are you going to be making that bloody tea?”

Wells’s voice, calling from the lobby, dragged him back to the present. The room seemed to be in a thick mist, outlines blurred and indistinct as the kettle boiled its head off. A roar of delight from the party upstairs. God, how he could do with a drink. Just one. But they’d warned him. Be drunk on duty just one more time…

He turned off the gas ring and made the tea.

In the lobby, Frost and Wells were huddled together exchanging moans. Young Collier was at the Underwood, splashing correction fluid over a typed report as if he were painting a wall. Frost lowered his eyes guiltily as Webster handed him the mug of tea, knowing that he should have taken the detective constable with him on the Ben Cornish job. Indeed, it would have been better if he had then Webster would have been the one floundering about in the wet and nasty instead of him. But he was finding the hair shirt of Webster’s permanent scowl a mite too much to take without the odd break. He pulled the mug toward him. “Thanks, son. Looks good.”

Wells accepted his tea without comment, but Collier, looking up from his remedial work, said, “Thanks very much, Inspector… sorry, I mean Constable,” which provoked a muffled snort of suppressed laughter from the sergeant.

Webster’s face went tight. Laugh, you bastards. My time will come. He rapped on the panel, pushing the mug through as Ridley slid it open. The controller nodded his thanks, then called across to Wells: “That hit-and-run victim, Sergeant they’ve taken him to Denton General Hospital. He’s not expected to live. Oh, and they’ve found the licence plate from the car that hit him.”

“A licence plate from the car that hit him!” exclaimed Frost in mock excitement. “Now that could be a clue!” He sipped his tea. “It’s never been my luck to have a bloody licence plate left behind. I’m lucky if I find two witnesses who can agree on the colour of the car.” Then he paused, the mug quivering an inch from his lips, and whispered, “Listen!”

They listened to comparative silence. No music. No stamping.

Putting his mug down, Frost hurried over to the door that led to the canteen and pushed it open. Various voices called “Goodbye, sir… Thanks for coming, sir…” The Chief Constable and Mullett were leaving. Frost smiled to himself. The minute they left, he’d be up those stairs like a sailor with a complimentary ticket to a brothel.

Picking its moment, the phone rang. “Answer that, Collier,” Wells ordered. He wasn’t going to miss his chance with the Chief Constable again. But Collier was doing his doorman act, standing to attention, holding the main door open for the VIPs to pass through. Crawling little sod, thought Wells disgustedly.

Webster had skulked off to the office and Jack Frost had ducked out of sight as he always did when Mullett loomed into view. That left only Wells to answer the phone.

Mullett and the Chief Constable shimmered into the lobby in a haze of whisky fumes and expensive cigar smoke. The Chief was talking, Mullett was listening, nodding vigorously and murmuring, “Couldn’t agree with you more, sir,” whether he heard what the Chief was saying or not. At the door the Chief Constable paused, smiled approvingly at Collier, and said to Mullett, “You’ve got a smart man there, Superintendent.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Mullett, wondering why Sergeant Wells was looking daggers in his direction.

Wells shifted the phone to his other hand and took down the details. “I see, sir. Well, try not to worry. I’ll have a detective inspector over to you right away.”

He hung up.

Upstairs, whoops of delight. The record player started up again. Jack Frost scuttled out of his hiding place in Control and hurried across to the door. The sound billowed and beckoned as he opened it.

He never made it.

“You can forget the party, Jack,” said Wells. “I’ve got a missing teenage girl for you.”