A Touch of Frost djf-2

by R D Wingfield

  Wells approached and gave a mocking bow. “You rang, my lord?”

  “Don’t ponce about when addressed by a senior officer,” rebuked Frost sternly. “Where’s Dave Shelby’s notebook?”

  “I thought you knew,” said Wells. “It’s missing.”

  Thank God for that, thought Webster. Now we can all go home.

  Frost frowned. “Missing?”

  “It wasn’t on the body, Jack, and it wasn’t in the car. Mr. Allen’s made a search, but no trace of it. He reckons it might have fallen from Shelby’s pocket when he was in the getaway car.”

  “So what news on the getaway car? Someone should have spotted the Vauxhall by now.”

  “Stan Eustace was always good at finding places to dump his stolen motors, Jack.”

  “About the only thing he is good at.” He took the brown envelope from his desk and handed it to Wells. “I’m off home. Here’s your lousy overtime returns. Stick them in the post bag.”

  Wells looked at the envelope, his eyebrows arched. “It’s gone three o’clock in the morning, Jack. The County collection was ages ago. If this doesn’t reach them first thing today it’ll miss the salary cheques and we’ll have a bloody mutiny on our hands.”

  Frost waved an airy hand. “Don’t get excited. Webster can drop them in the County letter box.”

  Webster’s beard bristled. “I can do what? It’s an hour’s drive each way.”

  Another airy wave from Frost. “Fifty minutes at the outside a lot less if you’re not too fussy about obeying traffic lights. Use my car. You can take Sue with you and drop her off on the way back.”

  As he crawled into the car, Webster realized that he wasn3t going to be able to do it. He was too tired. He’d fall asleep at the wheel. Susan got out and moved around to the driving seat. “Slide over,” she said. “I’ll drive. You’d better spend what’s left of the night at my place you’re in no fit state to drive back.”

  Webster did a mental inventory of Susan’s tiny flat — no sofa and only one bed. He felt his tiredness slipping away but didn’t make it obvious. He stuffed the envelope into the dash compartment. “I didn’t bring my pyjamas,” he said.

  “And I haven’t got a nightdress,” murmured Sue, turning the ignition. Webster leaned back in his seat and purred. The night wasn’t going to be a total disaster after all.

  On the way back from County Headquarters he could fight sleep no longer. When he opened his eyes the sky was dawn-streaked. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Nearly there,” she told him. “I’m taking a shortcut.”

  The shortcut was a narrow lane joining two side roads. A short, bumpy ride.

  “Look out!” cried Webster. Something loomed up in front of them.

  The headlights had picked out a car. A car parked bang in the middle of the lane, no lights showing. They could have run straight into it.

  Carefully, Sue manoeuvred the Cortina to squeeze past. Webster twisted his head to look back. The lunatic who parked it so dangerously deserved to be booked. Then his heart sank.

  The car was a red Vauxhall Cavalier.

  The registration number was CBZ2303.

  “Oh no!” croaked Webster in disbelief.

  “What’s up?” asked Sue.

  “Every bloody thing is up,” he said despairingly as he reached for the handset. He called Denton Control to report he had found Stan Eustace’s getaway car.

  Thursday day shift

  Webster sat in the car with Sue and waited. Within twenty-five minutes Detective Inspector Allen had arrived on the scene. He must have been asleep in bed when the call came through, but in those twenty-five minutes he had managed to shower, shave, and put on a freshly pressed suit. He looked immaculate. By contrast, Detective Sergeant Ingram, sour and crumpled at his side, looked as if he hadn’t slept properly for a week, which tended to underline the whispered rumours of his marital troubles. He looked even more sour when Allen doled out a few begrudging crumbs of praise to Webster.

  “Well done, Constable. Good piece of observation.”

  The obligatory acknowledgement over, Allen and Ingram approached the Vauxhall and sniffed gingerly around, looking but not touching. Webster had hoped he and Sue would now be allowed to drive off and get to bed but Allen didn’t seem ready to dismiss them yet.

  Allen was standing on tiptoe to see over the hedge that bordered the lane. Behind it was a field of tall grass, heavy with early-morning dew. He dragged back his cuff to consult his watch. If he could do it in twenty-five minutes, what was holding up the forensic team?

  Then the brittle early-morning quiet was shattered as carloads of hastily summonsed off-duty men and the team from Forensic arrived. Soon the area swarmed with men crawling over every inch of the Vauxhall and its surroundings. The car was dusted for prints inside and out, the interior was given microscopic scrutiny for traces of blood and tissue, and then the seat covers and carpets were removed and vacuumed to retrieve clinging hairs and fibres.

  Other men were on their hands and knees, noses almost grazing the road surface as they looked for anything the murderer might have dropped. It was still dark, but the area was floodlit. The first success was the finding of a small patch of oil a few yards up the lane, indicating that another car had recently been parked on that spot for some time. More than likely this car was the backup that Stan Eustace transferred into after he had dumped the Cavalier. Judging from the amount of oil leakage, the other car must have been an old banger.

  One team was given the task of knocking on the door of every house in the vicinity to ask if anyone had seen a car parked in the lane during the previous day, or if they had seen the Vauxhall drive up.

  “I know it’s early and most of the householders are going to be tucked up in bed,” said Allen, addressing the team, ‘but that is their hard luck. Today they are all going to see the dawn break for a change. How you wake them, I don’t particularly care. Just do it. And if anyone complains that their beauty sleep is more important than finding the murderer of a police officer, let them write to the Chief Constable. Most important, I want you to make sure you speak to everybody in the house, not just the poor sod who staggers downstairs to open the door. Now off you go.”

  Another two men went with Ingram to search the section of the field near the hedge. It wasn’t expected to yield anything but Allen, unlike Detective Inspector Jack Frost, always did things thoroughly.

  Webster tried to catch the inspector’s eye to ask permission to leave, but Allen had marched straight past and was at the Vauxhall to talk to the two men dusting it for prints. “Anything yet?”

  One of them looked up from his work and shook his head. “Not a damn thing so far, Inspector. It’s been wiped clean.”

  As Allen turned away, Webster moved forward to let the inspector know he was going to make a move.

  “Good morning, son. The whole bloody place stinks of coppers, doesn’t it?”

  Webster visibly cringed at the familiar breezy voice. Where the hell had he come from? It was far too early in the morning to stomach a fresh dose of Jack Frost.

  With a grin and a nod to his assistant, Frost, looking as if he had slept in his clothes in a ditch, shuffled over to the immaculate Allen.

  “Hello, Frost,” said Allen without the slightest hint of enthusiasm. Events were going quite well and he didn’t want Frost’s jarring presence messing everything up. “Bit early for you, isn’t it?”

  “Bit late, actually,” yawned Frost, rubbing an unshaven chin. “I haven’t been home all night. I fell asleep in the office.” With his head on one side he gave the Vauxhall the once-over, his hands scratching an itch on his stomach through his mac pockets. “So this is where Useless Eustace switched motors?”

  “Yes,” acknowledged Allen curtly. “Your assistant spotted it.” He was now beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t be better served with Webster than with Ingram, who had been getting quite slapdash of late.

  “It’s the way I train them,” Frost said,
moving forward for a look inside the car. The two men from Forensic shifted out of his way as he poked his head inside the driving door. “I can’t see much blood.”

  “We haven’t found any yet,” Forensic admitted, ‘but we’re still searching.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have to look very hard for it,” said Frost. “Shelby’s head was half blown off. The inside of the car ought to be swimming with blood, brains, and bits of ear hole.”

  Allen pulled a face. Frost’s crudeness was hard to take at the best of times, but at this tender hour of the morning…! “Eustace could have wrapped the body in waterproof sheeting. A sheet was missing from the boot of Shelby’s patrol car when we went through it yesterday.”

  Frost tapped his first cigarette of the day on the packet and lit up. Then he had his first cough of the day. “I don’t care what you say,” he spluttered, “I just can’t see Useless Eustace as a police killer.”

  Allen started to reply, but his attention was diverted by a shout.

  “Mr. Allen!”

  He looked up. An arm was being waved from behind the hedge. Ingram had found something. “Excuse me,” he muttered, hurrying over to see what it was.

  Frost took a stroll across to the Cortina, where Webster, slumped in the front seat next to Sue, was fighting hard to keep his eyes open. Sue was talking to him, but he just didn’t seem able to take in what she was saying. Wasn’t it just his rotten luck spotting that car! If he’d kept his eyes closed, he would now be lying in the snug warmth of Sue’s little single bed, his arms locked around her un-night dressed body, caressing her gorgeous but why torment himself? He yawned. The thought of yet another long, dreary day muddling through with Frost seemed an unbearable prospect.

  Frost spotted the yawn and, of course, with his one-track mind, misinterpreted it. “Tired, my son? Heavy night with Sue, was it? You should have tried getting some sleep instead.”

  Webster was so tired he couldn’t even raise a scowl in protest.

  “One thing about a beard,” bur bled Frost, rasping his chin again, ‘you don’t suffer from five o’clock shadow.” He turned his head. “Hello, what’s Old Clever Balls looking so happy about?”

  Allen was striding over, Ingram trotting at his heels. “Thought you might be interested to see this, Frost, especially as you can’t see Eustace as a police killer.” He held up something in a polythene bag. “We’ve found Shelby’s notebook.”

  Frost took the bag from Allen and turned it over and over in his hands.

  “Where was it?”

  Ingram pointed. “I found it in that field, close to the hedge, near where the Cavalier was parked.”

  Frost looked puzzled. “And how the hell did it get there?”

  Allen sucked in air, then sighed. How dense could you be? “I’d have thought that obvious, Inspector. Eustace found it in the car after he dumped the body. It must have fallen from Shelby’s pocket. It was incriminating evidence and he had to get rid of it in a hurry.”

  “Oh, I see,” exclaimed Frost as if this now explained everything. “He wipes the car clean of prints, doesn’t leave a speck of blood behind, but he gets rid of vital evidence by just chucking it over the nearest hedge.”

  “What did you expect him to do with it?” snapped Allen in exasperation. “Eat it? Stick it up his arse? He daren’t keep it on him, it linked him with the killing. What else could he do but chuck it?”

  A uniformed man approached and gave Allen a smart salute. “Lady in the cottage down the lane, sir. Says she saw a black Morris Minor parked down here for most of yesterday afternoon.”

  Allen’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Good work. I’ll be with you in a couple of seconds to talk to her.” He took the polythene bag from Frost and handed it back to Ingram. “I want the notebook checked for fingerprints. Odds are it’s been wiped clean, but you never know your luck.” He noticed Frost still hovering. “I’m sure you’re very busy, Inspector. Don’t let me hold you up.”

  “Actually, I want to take a look in the notebook. Dave Shelby was supposed to have interviewed our anonymous phone caller. I’m hoping he kept his mind on the job long enough to write down the name and address.”

  Ingram held open the bag so Frost could carefully extract the notebook, holding it by its corners with his handkerchief. An elastic band looped around the unused pages allowed Frost to go directly to the entry, the very last entry Shelby had made before he died. It read Desmond Thorley, Dove Cottage. Interviewed re rape case phone call.

  “Bingo!” cried Frost, snapping the notebook shut and dropping it into the polythene bag. He trotted across to the Cortina. Neither Webster nor Sue seemed willing to yield their front seats, so he climbed into the back.

  “It’s all happening, son. I’ve got the name and address of the bloke who made the anonymous phone call. Drop Sue off, then we’ll go and pay him a nice early visit.”

  Webster’s spirits plummet ted to a new low. “It’s barely four o’clock in the morning,” he complained. “He’ll be fast asleep in bed …” He yawned conspicuously and added pointedly, “The lucky bastard!”

  “He won’t still be in bed after I’ve kicked his door down,” replied Frost cheerfully. “Come on, son, hurry up. There’s lots to do.”

  Even to Webster, punch-drunk through lack of sleep, Dove Cottage looked nothing like a cottage. The shape was all wrong. In the dark of early morning it looked just like a railway carriage, and as they neared it he could see that that was exactly what it was. A dilapidated Great Western Railway carriage of pre-war vintage, dumped on a piece of waste ground situated north of the woods. It stood on brick piers, allowing it to rise proud above islands of stinging nettles in a sea of coarse, waist-high grass. Tastefully dotted around to break the monotony of the landscape were mounds of crumbling oil drums, the rotting hulk of a Baby Austin car body, and odd rust-crusted relics of long-obsolete farm machinery.

  Like explorers hacking their way through virgin jungle, they pushed through the wet grass, eventually arriving at the foot of a set of rickety wooden steps that led up to the carriage door with its brass turnkey handle.

  “I think this is our train,” murmured Frost, risking the climb up the steps. He tried the handle, but the door seemed to be bolted on the inside, so he pounded at it with his open hand. The noise echoed like a drum, but there was no movement from within. He hammered again, much harder this time, making the whole structure shake on its brick foundations.

  Inside a bottle toppled over and rolled. A crash of someone bumping into something, the shout of someone swearing, then a bleary voice demanded, “Who’s there?”

  “Two lovely policemen,” called Frost. “Open up, Desmond.”

  The door opened outward, almost sending Frost flying. Desmond Thorley, in his late fifties, very bald and softly plump, un gummed his eyes and squinted at his visitors. He wore a filthy dressing gown the front and sleeves stiff with dirt. Under the dressing gown, were a pair of grimy, food-stained pyjamas, the trousers held up by a rusty safety pin. He looked dirty. He smelled even dirtier.

  “Meet Dirty Desmond,” said Frost to Webster.

  Thorley clutched together his gaping dressing gown to cover his pyjamas. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Frost. I suppose you want to come in.”

  “I don’t want to,” replied Frost, ‘but it’s one of the hazards of the job.”

  They stepped into thick, greasy darkness that smelled of stale sweat, unwashed socks, and bad food. A match flared as Thorley lit an an old brass oil lamp which spluttered and spat out choking black smoke, but at least masked most of the other odours. He cranked up the wick, then replaced the glass chimney. They could now make out, dimly, the camp bed, some upholstered chairs rescued from a rubbish heap, and a card table on which were four food-encrusted plates and various half-finished tins of beans and pilchards. The floor was carpeted with dirty socks, unwashed underclothes, and empty spirit bottles.

  “Be it ever so humble,” said Desmond, noting their disapproval. />
  “Humble?” snorted Frost. “It’s a bloody shithouse.”

  “That,” sniffed Desmond, ‘is rude.” He fluttered a hand toward the chairs. “Sit down if you like, but be careful. The cat’s been sick somewhere and I’m still trying to find out where.” He flopped himself down, but they opted to stand.

  “Did you have a visit from one of our police officers yesterday?” Frost asked him.

  He flapped a vague, limp hand. “I might have done, Inspector, but my memory’s not at its best at this unearthly hour.” His tongue flicked along his lips. “You wouldn’t, by chance, have some alcoholic refreshment about your person?” He spoke like a failed actor, which is exactly what he was.

  From his mac pocket, Frost produced a miniature bottle of Johnnie Walker, part of the spoils from the party. He held it by the neck and swung it from side to side. Desmond’s eyes locked on to it like heat-seeking missiles.

  “Information first, drinkie-poos second,” promised the inspector. “You had a visit from a policeman yesterday?”

  A happy smile lit Thorley’s face as he recalled the incident. “A lovely boy, my old darling. His name was Shelby so good-looking and so macho. He suggested it was I who phoned the constabulary the other night when that poor woman was so brutally used.”

  “And was it you?” asked Webster, keeping close to the door, where a thin whisper of air was trickling through.

  Thorley’s gaze was transferred from the bottle to the constable. “Oh yes. I confessed all to him. How could I lie to someone with such long eyelashes as he had.” He leaned forward to study Webster’s face. “But not so long as yours, dearie.”

  Frost tugged at Webster’s sleeve to remind him who was supposed to be doing the questioning. “Do your courting later, son,” he whispered.

  “I couldn’t help your constable very much,” admitted Thorley. “I found the girl. Like any law-abiding citizen, I phoned the police. That was all there was to it.”

  “Did you see anyone that night?” Frost asked.