Fatal Frost

by Henry James

  ‘The agony of choice.’ Frost played with a cigarette but couldn’t light it – he feared the girl might choke, as she seemed to be having trouble breathing through the gag. ‘But the building is surrounded. You’ll never get away with it.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Hartley-Jones snorted. ‘You’ve never worked with anyone in your career. You’re a loner. A maverick. Mullett told me that too. But the problem with being alone is that there’s nobody to look out for you when you overstep the mark. No, Mr Frost, I’d like to be out of here by full-time. Your decision, please? Suicide? The maverick detective ends it all; a failing marriage proved too much? Yes, I know about that too. The story would be wholly convincing, I’m sure you’ll agree. “He took his own life, with a shotgun in a disused warehouse.”’

  ‘How do I know you’ll let her live?’

  ‘You don’t. But you have no alternative. Turn round, please, face the corner.’ Frost turned round and took a pace forward. Hartley-Jones followed him. Frost felt sure he could overpower the bigger man as long as he got the right hold. He braced himself ready to turn and pounce. The question was, where was the knife? As the killer moved in behind him, near enough for Frost to smell his cologne, and the cold steel barrel of the shotgun was held against his neck, there was a sudden creak as the door in the opposite corner flew open. The gun was swiftly retracted. Frost spun round to grab the man’s arm and caught a familiar face rushing in.

  Clarke distinctly heard the blast. As the pigeons rose in a cloud of alarm from the roof of the building, her heart almost stopped.

  ‘Shotgun,’ Simms said flatly across the roof of the Escort. The constable from the area car was at Clarke’s side. ‘Gunfire, ma’am.’ He stood awaiting instructions.

  Saturday (4)

  ‘HE’S DEAD, SIR,’ said Frost in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Dead?’ Mullett said, amazed. ‘Well, I’m staggered. How?’

  ‘He took his own life.’ Frost paused. ‘Well, sort of.’

  ‘Sort of? Can you be more specific?’ Mullett fiddled nervously with the ivory letter opener.

  ‘There was a tussle, and Mr Hartley-Jones shot himself in the chest. I think his original plan was to shoot himself, but when I turned up he thought he might be able to go on living if I were out of the way.’ Frost gestured his innocence. ‘And I may well have been, if it wasn’t for DS Waters here.’

  ‘Well, what a relief,’ Mullett said, not really sure what he meant. He scrutinized Waters, who sat looking comfortably unruffled. Frost himself looked positively spruce and betrayed no signs of having recently wrestled for his life. He got up, moved to the window and tweaked the blinds. It was probably for the best, he mused. No awkward questions on his close association with a murderer to answer. Who’d have thought it; he’d known Michael Hartley-Jones for twenty years or more. Mrs M had always thought him odd and prone to depression, but a murderer? Heavens, this really didn’t bear close scrutiny. Best buried and forgotten. ‘And the girl?’ Mullett finally asked.

  ‘Fine, if a little traumatized.’

  ‘Hmm …’

  ‘The girl, Emily, had read Samantha Ellis’s diary, in which she wrote about Hartley-Jones and falling pregnant, though she was unsure who the father …’

  ‘Jolly good, jolly good, well done. I’ll read the rest in your report.’ Mullett had more pressing issues. There had been an offer already on his house. ‘But in future, be so good as to let me know what your movements are. If I make the effort to come in on a Saturday, at least have the decency to leave a note or tell the desk sergeant.’

  Frost was speechless.

  ‘Now, moving on, why do you have my estate agent in the cells?’

  ‘Ah yes. Mr Everett is suspected of …’

  ‘Yes, I know. He’s involved in some very important business.’

  ‘What … selling houses?’ Waters said, who’d remained quiet until now.

  Mullett ignored him. ‘Now, about the question of bail.’

  ‘Bail!’ Frost spluttered. ‘He’s a bloody murderer!’

  ‘Oh, come now, Jack,’ Mullett soothed. ‘You don’t really think he murdered a chimney sweep, do you? He’s a regional manager of one of the country’s most prestigious estate agents.’

  Frost pursed his lips, visibly rattled. ‘And members of the golf club don’t go around gutting teenage boys and laying them out on the course?’

  Only now did it occur to Mullett that Hartley-Jones had been there on Wednesday, proudly witnessing the discovery of his own crime. He gave an involuntary shudder. ‘What proof do you have? Circumstantial evidence? OK, so the sweep may have called round at the Everetts’, but where’s your motive?’

  ‘The times all match. The man was killed on Tuesday afternoon, the same time he visited the Everetts. And the video recorders in the van are the ones that were stolen in the burglaries.’

  ‘Maybe the sweep is the thief?’

  ‘Oh, do me a favour!’ Frost blustered in disbelief. ‘Everett is even allergic to animals, which would explain why he killed the Hartley-Joneses’ cat. I don’t know how or why he killed the sweep, but, believe me, he did!’

  ‘I spoke to the wife,’ Waters said calmly. ‘She said there are still birds in the chimney. Jack reckons the sweep was interrupted in his work; maybe he’d just started on the Everetts’ chimney and for some reason Everett didn’t like it.’

  Mullett scratched his moustache irritably.

  ‘So you’re saying that Mr Everett returns home, discovers his chimney, is, what, being violated? And so he hacks the man to death.’ Mullett leaned back in his chair, glaring at Frost, his eyebrows reaching his thinning brow in incredulity.

  Frost bolted out of the chair, causing Waters to jump. ‘Bleedin’ hell, yes, maybe it was exactly that! Perhaps Everett was hiding stuff up there!’ He sucked rapidly on a cigarette as though hoping for an appearance on Record Breakers.

  ‘What, video recorders?’ Mullett scoffed, taken aback by Frost’s outburst.

  Waters interceded. ‘The lady of the house did ask whether the chimney sweep was a thief, having read about the video recorders. She said something was missing.’

  ‘What?’ asked Mullett and Frost.

  ‘An antique.’

  ‘What sort of antique?’ Frost prompted.

  ‘A salmon gaff,’ Waters replied.

  ‘Can estate agents be “prestigious”?’ Waters smiled as they stood outside Mullett’s office. He’d heard that Frost and Mullett didn’t get on, but it had taken until the end of a very long week to appreciate the true level of that misunderstanding. The pair clearly had absolutely no tolerance of each other’s opinions. ‘I thought they were all a bunch of sharks wheeling around in flash motors.’

  ‘You kept that quiet,’ Frost said, ‘about the salmon gaff.’

  ‘We hadn’t had a moment to talk,’ Waters said. ‘And anyway, there’s no hurry – we have him in a cell.’

  ‘You know what a gaff is, I presume?’

  ‘Not until the lady told me. A poacher’s hook.’

  ‘Not dissimilar to a butcher’s hook. When inserted into, say, a man’s jaw for instance, the wound would be just as fatal.’ Frost had a glint in his tired eyes. ‘First let’s call Regal Estates for a chat with Everett’s staff. Then we’ll have a word with our pals at Rimmington Division – check out their unsolved house break-ins; Regal has a sister office there.’

  Everett sat in the bare interview room with a stoic, silent PC for company. He’d read somewhere that if an officer was present inside the room it was an indication that the police thought the detainee a suicide risk. Well, it was an option, but he was no quitter; the odds were upped, yes, but he wasn’t done yet. The police were unsure when the van was left at the sauna, but according to the paper, the current theory was that it was dumped on Thursday morning, just before Baskin discovered it. This put Everett out of the picture – he was doing the school run on Thursday morning, as witnessed by dozens of other parents: the perfect alibi.

/>   Of course, he’d actually left the van on Wednesday afternoon, but the sauna had been shut all day and Baskin had taken the afternoon off, so nobody was there to notice it.

  The door went, and in came the sandy-haired detective, Mr Frost. He looked fresher than on previous sightings and Everett thought he detected a spring in his step, which was a little unsettling. His tall black sidekick followed him in, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘Cigarette?’

  Everett took one from the proffered pack.

  ‘Now, let’s work this through,’ Frost said, scraping back the chair opposite. ‘And,’ he continued, fixing Everett with a steely gaze, ‘you let me know if we have any of this wrong.’

  Everett sat back and listened to a catalogue of robberies that had occurred within the Denton and Rimmington areas over the last two years, all of which were jobs he’d done. It seemed he had been clumsy. The black detective had noticed that the window he’d smashed at Forest View had not been the obvious pane to break, being a stretch from the latch. On another occasion, a cottage window outside Rimmington was the only sign of a forced entry, but it was physically impossible to reach the latch through it. Thus the police had rumbled him; all the broken windows were decoys. Keys were evidently being used. The plods had turned up the fact that all the properties had had a change of ownership within the last two years, and that Regal had handled the sales.

  The sandy-haired one, Frost, relayed this information without smugness or arrogance, and said that if Everett had not been mugged, the police would probably have been none the wiser; a fact that he’d rather have not known. It was bloody unfair to be caught out by bad luck and not their detection.

  ‘Our sweep, Ken Smith, was also unlucky,’ Frost said. ‘His misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time cost him his life. But don’t worry, I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure you forgo the best of yours. I’ve met your sort before; bored with the cushy day job and turning to crime for kicks. It makes me sick.’

  Everett swallowed hard and said, ‘It wasn’t me – I didn’t kill him … I was at the school on Thursday morning dropping off the kids when the body was discovered.’

  The two policemen exchanged glances, causing Everett to feel an involuntary rumbling in the bowels.

  ‘Thursday morning?’ Frost said. ‘Who cares where you were Thursday morning.’

  ‘But I read in the press …’

  ‘You don’t want to believe what you read in the press,’ Frost said seriously. ‘We know you drove across town on Wednesday between three and four in the afternoon.’

  Everett started to protest.

  ‘Ahh. Ahh,’ Frost cautioned. ‘You gave some fictitious appointment to your staff, which sadly for you just doesn’t ring true.’

  ‘Why?’ Everett said eventually.

  ‘It rained on Wednesday afternoon, the first time it rained in Denton for some days.’ After an interval of silence, Frost said, ‘You made one fatal mistake.’

  Everett looked mystified.

  ‘You left the wipers on. When you turned the engine off, they were halfway across the windscreen.’ Frost smiled.

  Clarke was glad the BMX gang had been caught. Not for her own sake; the wound she’d sustained on Monday was a distant memory. Frost had given the nod to uniform to pick up four boys, with the understanding that Wakely junior would be treated favourably. It was going to be messy and tiresome to resolve; given the age of the boys, Social Services would be involved, and the case would drag on for months, but at least the streets would be safer.

  With the demise of Michael Hartley-Jones, Superintendent Mullett, who’d just left Eagle Lane for the rest of the weekend, no longer had any interest in the robbery cases, so Clarke was unlikely to have to testify. This was a great relief, as what she would have said she had no idea, having failed to recognize her attackers.

  The morning had been an eventful one, and she pondered how she’d left things with Frost. She felt daft sitting around the office on Saturday afternoon – essentially waiting for Jack to finish. Her purse was out on her desk and the strip of the Silk Cut pack with Danny’s number was poking out of the top. She’d decided to tear it up.

  ‘Right, that’s me done.’ Simms stretched back in his chair. ‘It’s been a week and a half, this one. What you up to now?’ He smiled. ‘Fancy a beer?’

  Despite being at a loose end she felt reluctant to join him. ‘Got a few things to do.’

  ‘OK, well, I’m meeting some friends in the Bull. Nice beer garden. Perfect afternoon for it.’ She feigned a smile; the Bull was rough, and not her pub of choice. He got up to go. He really wasn’t a bad lad. ‘Well, if you have a change of heart, you know where I am.’ Was he hitting on her? Kim Myles told her he’d just dumped Liz Smith, Mullett’s secretary, as soon as he found out she was Martin Wakely’s cousin.

  ‘Yeah, OK, maybe. See ya.’

  ‘Aha.’ Frost entered the room, patting Simms on the shoulder as he left. He looked pleased with himself. ‘Got him sussed.’ He grinned.

  ‘Well done,’ Clarke said. ‘I wish we could say the same for that pervert this morning.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He flopped down opposite her in Simms’s chair and bashed the fan on.

  ‘Well, do any of us have him sussed? What sort of man seduces teenage girls and disembowels their boyfriends?’

  ‘Well, clearly, mates of Hornrim Harry,’ Frost surmised.

  ‘Jack, it really isn’t a joking matter. I mean, why go to all that trouble? And what did he do with the boy’s heart? Did he kill him out of revenge for getting the Ellis girl pregnant, or was he a psychopath?’

  ‘He was crazy, that’s all we can be sure of. Who can tell what was going on in his mind? I guess the inspiration for the witchcraft thing came from his wife and her daughter. He clearly meant to implicate the girls, but what he hoped to achieve by that was anyone’s guess. Maybe scare them into submission? He obviously hated the fact they were growing up and he was losing his power over them. They started to realize they could stand up against this filthy pervert and were turning against him, and the revival of the School of the Five Bells was their weapon.’

  ‘Weapon?’ said Clarke. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Their little secret society united them, which gave them strength, and excluded everyone else – specifically men. Well, is it any wonder they hated men, with the likes of him pawing them? Unfortunately, he jumped at the chance to teach them a lesson. All he needed was for the good folks of Denton to believe that a bunch of feisty girls with a grievance against men were in actual fact a gang of evil, murderous witches. Not so difficult, as it turned out.’

  ‘And Samantha Ellis?’

  ‘That we’ll never know for sure. Probably suicide: I don’t think we can pin it on her friends just because they lied to us. I accept they may have been frightened. Maybe Ellis did go to London on her own. She probably wasn’t in the mood for pop concerts.’

  A thought flashed through Clarke’s mind that perhaps the girl had gone to London to try and get an abortion. Why did she think that? Was it because she herself was now a week late? The hair on the back of her neck suddenly prickled. No, surely not, she must have miscalculated.

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’ Frost said. ‘You’ve suddenly gone very pale.’

  ‘No, no, nothing, everything’s fine. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Waiting for John to get back from Denton General. He’s up there with poor Mrs Hartley-Jones, thoughtful young man that he is. That reminds me, I must check the original Five Bells file …’

  The words ‘What about this morning, does it mean anything?’ were on Clarke’s lips, but instead she looked out of the window and thought what a beautiful day, I want some of that. She pulled out her hair clips, shaking her hair free, chucked her purse in her bag, and left the office for the Bull.

  ‘Come on, let’s clear off and have a pint. I’ve had enough for one week. Just need to make one final call.’ Frost closed the t
atty file from 1962. He hadn’t really taken anything in, his mind was on Sue Clarke, the way she had gaily skipped off half an hour ago, full of life. He shouldn’t have gone round to her place this morning. Or should he? He didn’t really know. Tiredness gnawed at his every bone. He had to call his mother-in-law, Beryl Simpson. Time to put his foot down – Mary was coming home. He reached for the receiver.

  ‘Miller’s here. He wanted to explain things,’ Waters said, rousing him from his reverie. Frost pulled back from the phone and on to the pack of Rothmans.

  ‘Oh, spoke to you, did he? What did he have to say for himself?’

  ‘He apologized profusely. He said it was pure jealousy, nothing to do with race. He reckons he’s had a crush on Kim for years. They were at Hendon together.’

  ‘She is a cracker, all right,’ Frost admitted, yawning.

  ‘He’s waiting outside.’

  ‘Sergeant Frost.’ PC Miller nodded. Frost didn’t recognize Miller out of uniform. The constable removed his cheap shades to reveal tired, puffy eyes.

  ‘Yes, son?’ The man looked nervously over his shoulder at Waters, who stood behind him. ‘You’ve nothing to fear from DS Waters now, have you?’

  Miller shifted uneasily on his feet. ‘The stake-out. You had me watching the Pink Toothbrush.’

  Frost rubbed his weary eyes; the shampoo he’d been made to use this morning had irritated them. He never used the stuff usually. ‘Yes, yes, and? Unsavoury goings-on as Hornrim Harry wished for?’

  ‘Yeah, there was that, all right, as the superintendent anticipated but—’

  ‘Really? Good work, son. You put it all down in a report and we can present it to Hornrim Harry on Monday. It’s been a week and a half, this one.’ He yawned, patted Miller on the shoulder and made to leave. ‘And now it’s time for a pint.’ He smiled at Waters.