A Lethal Frost

by Danny Miller

  Frost laughed. ‘Don’t bother with the ID parade.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Aye, aye! Fancy seeing you here, Signor Jack Frost, the capo di tutti capi of crime solving!’

  Frost glanced around to locate the owner of the voice he’d recognized. It was Sandy Lane, the chief crime reporter at the Denton Echo. Sandy had a nose for sniffing out a good story, as good as any of the sleaziest red-top hacks. And he had a red nose to prove it, where the booze had fired up his face with a beaming display of burst capillaries. He firmly believed that hanging around pubs was more profitable than hanging around newsrooms waiting for the phone to ring – that’s where good stories lurked, and so did Sandy, nursing his three fingers of Scotch with just the lightest of touches of soda water.

  Before Sandy Lane could take a seat, Frost winked at Clarke and muttered that he’d tell her why later. Sue got the message and sidled out of the booth. ‘I’ll leave you two, err, um, gentlemen to it. I’ve work to do.’

  Sandy Lane upped the broadness of his Italian accent. ‘Bella donna, don’t leave on my behalf, love, I’m always looking for the woman’s side of the story.’

  ‘Thank God we’re not in an Indian restaurant, Sandy, or you’d be doing your best It Ain’t Half Hot Mum.’ She left the café.

  The hack took her seat opposite Frost.

  The DI glanced at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be queuing up outside a pub door by now?’

  Sandy Lane dropped the accent and got serious. ‘Any more news on the George Price shooting, or is Terry Langdon still the headline?’

  ‘The jeweller’s job in Rimmington, that’s your headline, surely.’

  ‘It was yesterday. Don’t you read the papers, Jack?’

  ‘Not yours. Not if I can help it.’

  ‘No skin off my nose. The Rimmington job looks like a London team, the way they set it up with the van.’

  ‘Rimmington’s not my patch.’

  ‘You know why I’m here, Jack. Don’t you want to be front-page news? A young lad from the estate ODs. That’s the headline.’

  Frost lost his appetite. He peeled off some napkins from the holder and ran them around his chin and his hands, then scrunched them up and dropped them on his plate. Conversation over.

  ‘The nationals are going to be down here, they’ll be all over it. Drugs, it’s the plague. We’ll be like America soon. Tell me what you want to say, Jack, I’ll get it out there before you’ve got Mullett orchestrating one of his press conferences.’

  ‘You want an exclusive, right?’

  ‘I’ll take an “anonymous source” from Denton CID.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’ve got kids too.’

  Frost’s eyes narrowed on Lane, searching for a glint of sincerity beneath the hack’s hardened cynicism. He must have seen something, because he then grabbed another napkin from the dispenser, reached over and plucked a pen from the breast pocket of Sandy’s shiny blazer, and began to write on the napkin.

  ‘That’s my job, isn’t it?’

  Frost ignored him and carried on writing. When he stopped, he folded the napkin and stuck it in the blazer breast pocket, like a smart silk square.

  ‘There you go, stick that where the sun don’t shine – otherwise known as your front page.’ Frost slid out of the booth and exited the café.

  Sandy Lane took out the napkin and read it. After a moment or so, the hack smiled – he couldn’t have put it better himself. Just the one spelling mistake, a slip of the pen, really. His rheumy eyes then darted about the table as he exclaimed, ‘He’s nicked my bloody pen!’ Just at that moment Angelo’s unsmiling wife approached the table and presented the hack with a bill for the detectives’ teas and bacon sarnies.

  Tuesday (4)

  Jimmy Drake would be sat at the bar of the Winchester Club, where he could be found most days when he wasn’t at the races. It was Jimmy’s local, and very accessible, day or night. He just stepped out of the kitchen door, or through the lounge’s French windows, and walked down to the bottom of the garden, and he was there.

  The Winchester Club was Jimmy’s garden shed. His brother-in-law, a local builder, had converted it into a bar. Inside the shed was a polished wooden counter with everything you’d expect to find in a regular pub: a big china ashtray advertising Watneys Red Barrel, a Johnnie Walker water jug, Skol beer mats, bags of KP nuts, and three stools in front of it. Behind the bar were mirrored shelves offering every type of spirit you could want, as long as it was either whisky or gin, and there was a small fridge stocked with beers. The rest of the furnishings were made up of a green baize-covered card table with four foldaway chairs neatly tucked under it, and a portable TV on a shelf in the corner. Almost every inch of wall space was taken up with framed photos of Jimmy and his friends and colleagues at the races over the years. Some dated as far back as the 1940s when Drake was just starting out; it was a photographic history of Jimmy and George Price at the races, taking them from flash young Herberts to grizzled old-timers.

  The Winchester Club was strictly members only, and like in the TV series that had inspired the garden-shed transformation, ‘her indoors’ seldom ventured into it. And as promised, that’s where he found Jimmy. At the bar, looking at the paper, with the racing on TV. Jimmy turned round to greet him. But it wasn’t much of a greeting. In fact, Drake just looked disappointed. He couldn’t blame him for looking at him like that, he was feeling it acutely himself. A sense of shame. But he really didn’t need it from Jimmy. A man he’d known for a long time, a man he liked.

  But, of course, Jimmy didn’t know the full story. Just how far he’d fallen, just how bad things had got. Drake didn’t have a clue. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet up with him. But he knew it was too late, and Jimmy’s opinion of his character didn’t really matter now. When you’re in this deep, just getting to the other side of it, getting away with it, that’s all that matters. And you’ll do whatever is necessary. And anyway, he wasn’t going to take morality lessons off a bookie’s clerk. Sure, he’d take responsibility for his actions, but for all their jocular banter, for all their bonhomie and apparent friendship, in many ways they were the ones who’d got him into this bloody mess in the first place, who kept letting him play. But only he could get himself out of it now.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘I’ll have a Scotch, please, Jimmy. Splash of water.’

  ‘Of course you will, a wee dram of Glenfiddich, never a drop of Bushmills, right?’

  He nodded. And Drake got up and went behind the bar to pour the drinks. It was never too much trouble for Jimmy to fix people a drink. He enjoyed doing it, enjoyed playing the host, enjoyed playing the role of Dave, the real Winchester Club barman in Minder, as much as he enjoyed playing Arthur Daley, its most famous patron.

  He’d sat here so many times before with Jimmy and George, watching the racing, having a bet, George being the bookie, and him being the punter, whilst Jimmy served them drinks. Or sat at the card table playing gin rummy, and not for the peanuts on the bar either. It all seemed like harmless fun, even though there was a price to pay – which he did. And then it got out of hand. And then it got dangerous.

  Jimmy poured the Scotch and said, ‘Inspector Frost, he seems to think there was some significance in you and this “Winston” owing George money. And I have to say, when I saw the amount, I thought there was too. Who’s Winston?’

  He shook his head, like he didn’t have a clue. Of course, he didn’t know if Jimmy believed him, but at this stage it didn’t really matter. Jimmy’s wife was gone for the day. No one knew he was here.

  ‘Oh well, maybe it’s best I don’t know anyway. It’s George’s business, not mine. I’m just a humble clerk, a pen-pusher. And I’ve got faith that he’ll be out of hospital soon. Then he’ll sort it out.’

  ‘What did you tell Frost?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything, obviously, or you probably wouldn’t be sitting here. And at the time I wasn’t sure
who Socks was, not really, just guessing. I know now though, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘But like I said, George will sort it out.’

  ‘What if …?’

  ‘If he doesn’t make it out of hospital?’ As he thought about the possibility, Jimmy was no longer the smiling congenial host, he was deadly serious. ‘Then I’ll tell Frost everything I know.’

  ‘But like you said, Jimmy, you don’t know anything.’

  ‘That’s true. But by closing time, or when you’ve had enough to drink, you’ll have to tell me something. You understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  Drake handed him the drink. He took a deep swig, followed by two more in quick succession, and then finished it off with a throaty and satisfied ‘Ah’. He needed that. He needed the courage, the Dutch courage, as they say, the bottle. He couldn’t help but feel the cruel irony of who was providing him with it.

  ‘I’ll have another, please.’

  Drake, like a good, non-judgemental barman, obliged, and turned his back to him to fill his glass from the optic.

  From the pocket of his Burberry he pulled out a length of thin orange nylon rope and lunged forward to secure it around Jimmy’s neck. The glass fell. Drake tried to say something, some words were formed, but he wasn’t listening. He yanked Jimmy back, pulling him down on to the bar, his hands in the leather driving gloves pulling the rope around Jimmy’s neck with a powerful force, cutting through the layers of his loose flesh so he could feel the sinew and muscle and, eventually, the bone of Jimmy’s neck. It was a sickening feeling, and a sickening sight. So he closed his eyes.

  There was nothing Jimmy could do. The man strangling him to death was younger, bigger and stronger. His body just didn’t have the speed, agility or energy to put up a fight and remained passive to the end.

  There was the sound of breaking glass as the bar shook and spilt its load. He could hear the last gasps leaving Jimmy’s body, as you’d hear the air leaving a bicycle tyre with a diminishing hiss. And he could feel it too, his life leaving his body.

  He released his grip and heard the muffled thump as Jimmy dropped to the floor.

  The man fell backwards and landed on the floor himself, just the other side of the bar from Jimmy’s corpse. He sat on the floor and thought about what he’d done. But he’d had no choice. He didn’t want to kill him, he’d called him up just to find out what he knew, what Jack Frost had been asking him. But the minute Drake had called him Socks, sussed out who he was, he knew he had to die.

  He carried on sitting there, exhausted, his arms numb, yet he could feel the strain move through them like an electric current. To end another man’s life in that way, up close and personal so you could feel his last breath against your face, and hear the croak of the death rattle in his throat, takes something out of you, he thought. Something you’ll never get back. He’d heard men talk about such things. For psychopaths it was the very act of killing someone in that fashion that was the point – the thrill, the buzz, the bloodlust, the obsession. To kill someone with a gun, without the physical contact, would seem pointless to such men: where was the fun in that? They needed to feel something. It was the difference between blowing out a candle from a distance, and snuffing it out with your hand and feeling it burn, with the hot liquid wax between your fingers – it felt good.

  He got to his feet, raised his arms to the ceiling of the shed and stretched. It was like being reborn. And somehow feeling safer, more secure, content in the knowledge that he was now capable of anything, and that nothing could stand in his way.

  ‘Shouldn’t have any problem, not with your curves, Eve.’

  ‘Let’s just get it over with, shall we?’

  DI Hayward was in her hotel room, standing on the carpet in her bra and panties. Tony Norton was kneeling before her.

  ‘It’s cold,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll warm up.’

  He was attaching the recording device to her diaphragm area. As potentially awkward as this situation was, Eve wouldn’t have wanted anyone else bending down in front of her attaching a wire. Tony Norton was an undercover officer par excellence. He’d worn enough of these devices in some of the most dangerous situations to warrant Hayward’s complete trust.

  And as Tony had pointed out, getting wired for sound as safely as possible, to avoid detection, was all dependent on body shape. If you were skinny, the recording device was usually secured to the small of your back, or on the thigh. But still this was never a guarantee. Some criminals were adept at checking for devices. This they sometimes did with an over-the-top greeting, in the form of a lingering hug, like you were a long-lost brother or sister, where the undercover cop would feel hands all over them. Or sometimes they didn’t trust you from the off, didn’t believe you were who you were purporting to be, and they patted you down or asked you to strip off the minute you walked into a room. It was those occasions, rare as they were, that really tested an undercover copper’s mettle, called into action their improvisation skills and ability to think on their feet. Working undercover was like being an actor – you took on a character, made it your own, believed it totally. And if you did get asked to strip off, it was because you hadn’t rehearsed enough.

  Tony Norton was deep cover, which meant only the immediate team and his superiors knew about him. He would never have to reveal himself in a court of law, or stand up in public and give evidence, which allowed him to work more cases, and gave him a longer shelf life as an undercover officer. If evidence needed to be presented, then that’s where Eve would come in.

  ‘So, again, how do you know me?’ asked Tony.

  ‘We first met four years ago, ticket-touting at the FA Cup final.’

  ‘Who was playing?’

  ‘West Ham against Arsenal. West Ham ran out surprise winners in an otherwise dull match. Trevor Brooking got the only goal in a one–nil victory for the Hammers. Brooking scored with a header, which was an even bigger surprise than the victory.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘We met up a couple of months later when we were both bringing cigarettes and booze over from France. Then I didn’t see you for a year. And then—’

  ‘Why didn’t you see me for a year?’

  ‘You were doing nine months at Her Majesty’s pleasure.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.’

  Tony Norton muttered his approval. ‘That’s all they need to know if they ask. Anything else, tell them to mind their own business. Is it still cold?’

  ‘No, it’s warming up nicely.’

  John Waters fiddled with the car stereo, trying to find a radio station that wasn’t playing Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. Arthur Hanlon was making short work of a Greggs jumbo sausage roll, and getting crumbs all over the upholstery. They were parked outside Clay House, a block of flats on the Southern Housing Estate, home to Billy ‘Bomber’ Harris, in a dun-coloured Allegro that Waters had picked up from the station car pool. After his recent handbrake turn that had got kids staring open-mouthed and net curtains twitching, he’d probably never be able to use his car on this patch again … Still, it had been worth it.

  ‘Remind me why I’m here again?’

  ‘A hunch.’

  Hanlon gave a disapproving sigh.

  ‘You don’t believe in hunches?’

  ‘I think as far as scumbag drug dealers go, if we suspect them, we should pull them in. Shake them up, steam in mob-handed, kick down some doors, let them know we’re on to them.’

  ‘They know that already, Arthur.’ Waters nodded in the direction of the noticeboard at the entrance to Clay House, with its poster showing young Dean Bartlett and a reward for information on his death; it was just one of many that had been plastered around the estate. Uniformed officers had traipsed down every walkway and knocked on every door, handing out leaflets with the same information, and giving assurances that all phone calls would be treated in the strictest confidence.
And every Denton panda car had been ordered to patrol the estate at least twice on its round. Even Waters, who was at times critical of where the manpower was directed, and all too aware that the upmarket environs of North Denton were more visibly policed, was pleased with the amount of effort that had been put in, and was sure more was on the way.

  Waters was about to explain all this to Hanlon, when his attention was suddenly taken by something deeply unpleasant splattered up the detective constable’s trouser leg. ‘What’s that?’

  Hanlon followed Waters’ withering look of disgust. ‘Bloody hell! It’s dried chicken sh—’

  ‘Don’t wipe it off in here! What you doing with chickens?’

  ‘Frost worked out that Frank Trafford did in fact have an alibi for the Price shooting. Kelso’s farm reported some of their chickens were missing, nicked the afternoon of the shooting, between three and five p.m. Trafford said he was walking back home from the races about then, but there were no witnesses. To get home he had to pass Kelso’s farm. Trafford had chickens at his house. I had to take the farmer to Trafford’s to identify his hens. They were very excited to see him, they quite literally sh—’

  ‘Thanks, Arthur, I get the picture. So, Trafford’s now up on a chicken-rustling charge, and not attempted murder. Good for him, and clever Jack Frost. That’s what you call using your egg.’

  ‘Yeah, and now I’m cooped up in here.’

  ‘Oh, mate … that’s a rotten yolk.’

  ‘Cracked me up.’

  The detectives stopped laughing when a white Peugeot 205 screeched up in front of them. Three men got out of the car. One of them was instantly recognizable. It was Tommy Wilkins, this time favouring a lime-green Sergio Tacchini tracksuit and with his arm still in a sling. His two cohorts were dressed in the same ‘casual’ football-hooligan attire. They looked around them, searching for coppers probably, and then swaggered their way into Clay House.

  ‘Flash bastards!’ hissed Hanlon. ‘We should nick them just for their dress sense. And those tracksuits don’t come cheap, hundred quid a pop. More expensive than a real suit!’