A Touch of Frost djf-2

by R D Wingfield

  No-one seemed to want to open the door, so Frost banged again, a little harder this time. He lifted the flap of the letterbox and peeked through- He was rewarded by a Cinemascope view of a white-slacked crotch approaching. He straightened up smartly as the door opened and Sadie Eustace, Stanley’s well-padded, tough little brunette wife, in white slacks, black jumper, and enormous blue doughnuts of dangling earrings, put her hands on her hips and demanded to know what they wanted.

  “Stan in, Sadie?” asked Frost, pushing past her and jerking his head to the stairs for Webster to search the upper rooms.

  “Where’s your warrant?” screamed Sadie, following behind the inspector as he opened and shut doors, looking for her husband.

  “Warrant?” said Frost, going through the elaborate pantomime of patting his pockets as if trying to locate it. “I’ve got it here somewhere.” By the time he had patted the last pocket he had looked in every downstairs room.

  There was a crashing of doors from above. “What’s that hairy bastard doing up there?” cried Sadie, frowning up the stairs where Webster, fearing a stomachful of lead shot, was flinging open doors, then pressing himself flat against the wall a la Starsky and Hutch. The last door he crashed open was the bathroom, where the shock waves sent a mirror tumbling down from a shelf to shatter on the floor. That was when Webster actually did fling himself flat on his face, hugging the carpet and inhaling dust.

  “You all right, son?” called Frost up the stairs.

  “Yes,” said Webster curtly, standing up and brushing dust from his clothes. “I slipped.” He thudded downstairs to the kitchen where Sadie, her arms folded, her earrings quivering angrily, was glaring at the inspector.

  “You come bursting into my house without a warrant ‘

  “I thought I had it on me, Sadie,” said Frost, not in the least shame-faced. “My mistake. So where is Stan out selling the loot?”

  “Whatever you want him for, he didn’t do it. He hasn’t been out of the house all day. What’s it about?”

  “Armed robbery,” Webster told her. Behind her he could see a stripped pine-wood paper-towel dispenser that Stan had fixed to the wall. It was hanging lopsidedly from one corner.

  “Armed robbery? My Stan?” She laughed derisively. “Do me a favour!

  You’re out of your tiny minds.”

  “No doubt about it, Sadie, I’m afraid,” said Frost, trying to fix the paper-towel dispenser in place, then giving it up as a bad job. “It’s got your Stanley’s fingerprints all over it it was a balls-up from start to finish.”

  The phone in the hall rang. Sadie stiffened. “Excuse me,” she said, trying to sound casual, but Frost barred her way. “Answer it, son,” he told Webster.

  The phone was on a telephone table under the stairs. Webster picked it up and listened. The sound of pay-phone pips, which stopped when the money was inserted. “Hello… is that you, Sadie?” asked a man’s voice. In the background, Webster could hear traffic rumbling past the kiosk. “Sadie, it’s me, Stan. I’m in a spot of bother. I need your help.”

  “Stan, it’s the bloody police,” Sadie screamed from the kitchen.

  Immediately there was a click, then a splutter of the dial tone.

  Webster hung up and returned to the kitchen.

  “Stanley?” asked Frost. Webster nodded. “Well, he knows we’re on to him now, son.” He turned to Sadie. Her bosom was heaving and her eyes were ablaze with defiance. “Nice one, Sadie, but what’s the point? He can’t keep running all his life.” She said nothing. Her lethal expression said it all.

  They let themselves out. As they closed the door behind them they could hear her crying.

  Back in the car Frost was wondering whether to tuck it around a side-turning and wait a while in case Stanley returned, but he decided against it. Even Useless Eustace wasn’t that stupid.

  Then the radio called him. Johnny Johnson, sounding grim.

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “We’ve just had a phone call, Jack. A Mr. Charles Fryatt. He reports seeing an apparently abandoned police car.”

  Frost stiffened. “Where?”

  “In Green Lane, the cut-through to the main road.”

  Frost felt his heartbeats quicken. “And Shelby?”

  “Mr. Fryatt says he saw no sign of a driver, not that he looked very far. He thought he’d better get straight to a phone and tell us. Can you get over there?”

  “On our way,” said Frost. “Over and out.”

  Green Lane was little more than a bumpy dirt track turning out of Bath Road and almost petering out before it reached Denton Road. The Cortina jolted and shuddered as it picked its way over the potholes and followed the twisting lane down into a depression completely hidden from both main roads.

  “Look out!” called Frost and Webster braked abruptly as the headlights swooped down on the bulk of something directly in their path. It was Shelby’s patrol car, the Ford Escort, looking lost and miserable in the darkness.

  Cautiously, they approached. The driver’s door gaped open; a stream of police-channel chatter flowed from the radio. Frost’s torch beam pried inside. The keys swung from the ignition, a clipboard with the day’s standing instructions lay on the passenger seat. He picked up the handset and radioed through to Control to report they had arrived at the scene.

  “Any sign of Shelby?” Johnson asked anxiously.

  “Not yet,” replied the inspector.

  “Don’t move!” called Webster urgently. “Just look down, by your feet.”

  About an inch or so from where Frost was standing the beam of Webster’s torch glinted on something. The ground was wet. Stained with red. Frost dropped to his knees to examine it closer. He dabbed it with his finger. It was blood. A lot of blood.

  “And look there!” called Webster, swinging his torch up to the rear-door window of the patrol car.

  The window was a crazy paving of shattered glass, milkily opaque. Embedded in the glass, also held in the paint work of the door, were tiny flattened pieces of metal. Lead pellets, identical to the pellets found in the wall at the pawnbroker’s. Ingram’s theory wasn’t looking so farfetched now.

  “Shit!” said Frost. He returned to the handset. “Johnny. It doesn’t look too happy, I’m afraid. There’s blood and shotgun pellets all over the place. You’d better send a full team down here right away.”

  Within twenty minutes the area was cordoned off and was droning with mobile generators that fed the many floodlights illuminating the scene. Men from Forensic were crawling, inch by inch, over the car. Scene-of-crime officers were taking photographs with blinding blue flashes, dusting for prints and circling blood splashes and lead pellet pockmarks with white chalk. A group of off-duty men who had spent most of the previous night and this morning combing Denton Woods on their hands and knees now scoured the scrubland on their hands and knees.

  Frost, leaning against his Cortina, watched gloomily, the smoke from his cigarette spiralling upward. This was the time for experts and specialists and for attention to detail, so he kept well out of the way. Webster, who had been talking to a couple of the Forensic men, came over to join him.

  “Forensic says the ground’s too hard to leave any proper impression, but there are traces of a second car. The other vehicle was ahead of Shelby’s patrol car, probably blocking the road. It looks as if Shelby stopped, got out, and was fired on as he walked toward the other car.”

  “Then where is he?” asked Frost.

  “Probably been taken away in the other car. There are marks where something was dragged.”

  “Why?” said Frost, scratching his head. “Why not leave him?” He looked up. “Hello… what does that toffee-nosed git want?” One of the Forensic team, a man with long grey hair, was waving Frost over to the abandoned car.

  “Preliminary report, Inspector,” he announced briskly. “The blood on the ground and the blood splashed on the car is group B, which is Police Constable Shelby’s group. The quantity of blood spilt suggests the wounding
must have been extensive. Obviously, without knowing the area of the wounding, we can’t be more specific. From the quantity of pellets we have recovered it seems pretty definite that only one cartridge was fired, and from the flattening of the pellets and the spread, I think we can safely say that the gunman was not much more than nine feet away from the patrol car. In other words, he would have been standing about… here.” He moved to a point some nine feet away and marked it with his heel. “Our reconstruction is that the other car had already stopped. Shelby got out of his vehicle and walked toward the other car. The gunman climbed from his car and shot your policeman, who fell to the ground, bleeding extensively. The gunman then dragged Shelby to his own car and drove off with him.”

  Frost looked down at the darkening pool which sluggishly reflected the overhead lights. “Any idea how long the blood has been there?”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector, I should have said. About four to five hours.”

  Frost nodded gloomily. This would tie in with the time Stan Eustace was speeding away from the pawnbroker’s.

  “We’d like to take the car back for detailed examination,” said another of the Forensic team.

  “Sure,” agreed the inspector, trying to work out what he should do next. Everyone was looking for the red Vauxhall Cavalier, and until that was sighted all he could do was wait.

  Two more cars pulled up. Mullett emerged from his silver grey Rover at the same time as Allen and Ingram climbed out of their black Ford. Like an army detachment, all keeping perfect step, they marched purposefully toward Frost.

  “Nasty business,” said Mullett after peering into the abandoned Escort and examining the blood puddle. Allen, not trusting the garbled version he would get from Frost, took the situation report direct from Forensic before bustling back to join the Divisional Commander.

  “Anyone who has lost that amount of blood is going to need medical treatment, and damn quickly,” Allen snapped. “I take it you’ve warned all doctors and hospitals, Frost?”

  “Yes, I did manage to think that out for myself,” said Frost.

  “Hospitals and doctors all advised.”

  Missing with his first barrel, Allen fired the second. “And you’ve got a car watching Eustace’s house? He’s bound to try and sneak back.”

  Bull’s-eye! thought Frost ruefully. “Actually we were just on our way there.” He began to move toward the car.

  “No. You stay here,” said Allen, thinking what a feather in his cap it would be if he were the one who arrested

  Eustace. “This requires a police marksman, like Sergeant Ingram.” He swung around to Mullett. “We’ll need to draw a revolver from the armoury, sir. Would you arrange the necessary authorisation?” And with the Divisional Commander’s agreement, he yelled for Ingram to join him and trotted off to his car.

  Good bloody riddance, thought Frost, watching them drive away.

  “Nasty business,” said Mullett again.

  A squawk from a car radio. One of the uniformed men picked up the handset and answered the call, then waved and yelled, “Air Frost. Control wants to speak to you urgently.”

  “Right,” said Frost, leaving Mullett with Webster, neither of whom could think of a thing to say to the other. Mullett dredged his mind for some innocuous small talk. “Getting on all right?” he said at last.

  “Yes, thank you, sir,” replied Webster tonelessly, his eyes fastened on Frost, who was leaning against the car, the handset to his ear, his expression revealing that something was terribly wrong.

  Frost walked slowly back to the Commander, his face grim. “Mr.

  Mullett,” he said.

  Mullett felt the cold of approaching bad news and shivered. “Yes, Frost?”

  “PC Shelby, sir. They’ve found him in a ditch about three miles from here, just off the new Lexington Road.”

  “Is he all right?” whispered Mullett. A silly question because he already knew the answer. The expression on Frost’s face simply screamed it out.

  Frost looked down at the blood on the lane. “No, sir. He’s dead.”

  “That must be him,” said Webster as the car headlights picked out the figure of a man flagging him down. The man in a thick overcoat and muddy boots was a farm labourer. He had found the body.

  “He’s down here,” said the man, his boots clomping as he took them down a winding lane that snaked back to the farm where he worked. They followed in silence. Tall boundary hedges on each side made the lane very dark. A little way down, and they could hear the gurgle of water. It reminded Frost of the previous night when he’d followed Dave Shelby down those steps to the body of Ben Cornish. The clomping of boots stopped. The man pointed to where the lane started to make a lazy curve and where a drainage ditch, some two feet deep, hugged the side of a hedge-bordered field. From behind the hedge the plaintive lowing of cattle quivered gently in the darkness.

  “He’s in there,” said the farm labourer. “In the ditch.” He wasn’t going any farther. He had seen it once. He didn’t want to see it again.

  The two detectives moved forward. A narrow verge, overgrown with lank grass, separated the ditch from the lane. Flattened grass lurched over and combed the surface of muddied water which overflowed slightly at that point because of some obstruction. Webster fumbled for his torch and clicked the button.

  A waxen hand, bobbing gently up and down, poked through green slime. The body was sprawled facedown in the stagnant murk. The water made the police uniform look jet black.

  “I tried to pull him out,” called the labourer from the other side of the lane. “I thought he might still be alive. But when I saw his face …”

  Frost knelt on the wet grass and plunged his hand through the slime to grab Shelby’s hair so he could lift the head. As it broke through the surface, Webster stifled a cry and Frost felt his stomach writhe in protest.

  The head, dripping water and blood, had only half a face. The left-hand side was bloodied pulp with part of the cheek and lower lip flapping down, showing teeth and bone. There was no left eye, only a spongy red socket, and the forehead was pocked with embedded lead shot. Frost couldn’t look any more. He released his grip, letting the head fall back in the ditch with a hollow plop. He dried his hand by wiping it on his mac.

  Webster was the first to speak. “Shall we get him out?”

  “No,” said Frost, staring into the distance. “Not until the police surgeon has seen him. You know what a fussy little bastard he is.” What is this, he thought, a rerun? I said all this last night.

  After taking a few details, they let the farm labourer get off home. Then a scene-of-crime officer arrived with his expensive Japanese camera and his ultra fast colour film and took flash photographs of the ditch, the grass, and the bobbing white hand. Nothing else to photograph until the arrival of the police surgeon.

  “There he is,” called Webster, watching a car gingerly nose its way up the lane, pulling up a few feet away from the two detectives. Slomon climbed out, nodded briefly to Frost, then peered into the ditch. “Have I got to get down there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Frost, ‘you bloody well have. “Just let Slomon try to skimp this examination.

  The doctor returned to the car for his Wellingtons. He pulled them on, removed his coat, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Then, very carefully, he stepped down into the ditch. “I’d like some light, please.”

  Three torch beams homed in on him as he busied himself with his instruments and thermometers. In spite of the difficult working conditions, Slomon took his time, determined not to repeat the fiasco of the previous night. He explored the body very carefully before clambering out.

  “At a guess, he’s been dead between four to six hours,” he reported, drying his hands on a towel from his car. “Impossible to be precise in these conditions, but the post-mortem will pin it down.” He rolled down his sleeves and shrugged on his jacket. “Again, the post-mortem will confirm, but I’m pretty certain he was dead before he was dumped in the ditch. He would
n’t have survived long with those injuries, anyway.”

  The poor bastard wouldn’t have wanted to live with his face looking like that, thought Frost. “Can we move him, Doc?”

  “I don’t see why not. The pathologist won’t be able to do much with the body as it is.” Slomon went back to his car promising his written report within the hour.

  The scene-of-crime officer seemed too busy with his camera to help, so Webster and Frost pulled off their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and stepped into the ditch. The water was as cold as death as it lapped around their bare legs, and their feet sunk into squelchy black mud. With Frost taking the shoulders and Webster the legs, they heaved. Shelby was heavy and stubborn. He clung to the bottom. They gritted their teeth and pulled. Suddenly, the body tore free from the grip of the thick mud and emerged through the slime, the head with its hanging flaps of flesh flopping down, streaming dirty stinking water. The proceedings were punctuated by blinding blue flashes ripping into the darkness as the scene-of-crime officer took photograph after photograph.

  They laid Dave Shelby on the grass verge, well away from the flattened grass that Forensic would want to crawl over and examine. The scene-of-crime officer brought a plastic sheet from the boot of his car and they draped it over the body.

  From the dark distance they heard the plaint of an ambulance siren, then saw its flashing blue light bobbing over the top of the hedges as it picked its way through the winding lane. But before it reached them, other car headlights flared. The Rover and the Ford. Mullett, Allen, and Ingram approached, their faces set.

  Frost stepped back from the covered body. Mullett bent over and lifted a corner of the plastic sheet, then, his face screwed up as if in pain, turned his head. “Such a waste. A fine young officer. Such a wicked waste.”

  He moved away, his place taken by Allen, who knelt by the body, a torch in hand, peering at the horror of the shattered face as if examining a suspect piece of steak from the butchers. At last he replaced the sheet and straightened up.