A Lethal Frost

by Danny Miller

  ‘Jack! Over here—’ started to yell Melody Price, who had spied him through the shifting wall of the crowd.

  Kelsey hissed at her to be quiet as, alerted by her cry, he spotted Frost, too.

  That was the last thing Frost needed. He wanted to put out a call to all officers in the area, summon a firearms unit, secure the place. Do the right thing. Do what Superintendent Peter Kelsey would have done before he turned rotten.

  On the teeming concourse, a corridor seemed to open up like the Red Sea, or that’s how it felt for Frost, and maybe for Kelsey, too. What happened next unfolded almost in slow motion; just how it had played out the last time Frost had taken a bullet. Kelsey’s grip tightened around Melody’s arm, and his other hand pulled the gun from his coat pocket, a Beretta 92 semi-automatic, then quickly pocketed it again. He’d stopped by the entrance to the bar, to make sure that the detective clocked the pistol.

  They both stood looking at each other for what seemed like an interminable amount of time, at least for Frost. It wasn’t even a Mexican stand-off, because the sharp pencil he had in his pocket was no match for a loaded gun. So he moved first, and he gestured to a table that had become available near the counter. Kelsey nodded, and practically dragged Melody over to the table and dumped her in a chair. Frost joined them.

  ‘Jesus, Jack, what the hell—’

  In unison, Frost and Kelsey both told her to shut up, or words to that effect. Melody got the message. It took a moment for the two men to adjust to their new circumstances.

  Peter Kelsey spoke first: ‘This is a bloody mess.’

  ‘It is. And it needs resolving as quickly and as peaceably as possible … sir.’

  ‘Sir?’ Kelsey laughed.

  ‘Do you gentlemen really need me here, if you’re going to resolve it? Give you a bit of privacy?’

  They both gave her looks that again shut her up.

  ‘I called you “sir” because you’re still my superior officer, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what to do. Even now, with all that’s happened, I think you know what the right thing to do is. But you need to act fast, surrender. I’ve called this in and armed officers will be here soon, if they’re not already—’

  ‘Forget it, Jack. I don’t think you’ve done anything of the sort. I saw your face, you’ve been caught with your trousers down.’

  Frost tried to resolutely laugh off the suggestion, but of course, Kelsey was right. ‘Mind if I smoke? Don’t worry, all I’ve got in my pocket is a pencil.’

  Kelsey gave him a nod. Frost reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve the French ciggies – and whilst he was in there, he took the trouble to turn on the tape recorder. He offered the Gitanes to Kelsey, who refused with a sour laugh.

  ‘I see you’ve been talking to Eddie Havilland. He lives over in France half the year, which makes another reason he’s unfit for his job.’

  ‘Yes, me and Winston did chat.’

  ‘That’s right, Frost, Winston. Very clever, you worked it out. How about me?’

  ‘Socks. As in, sweaty sock – Jock. Put that together with your liking for colourful argyle socks.’

  ‘George and Harry, a pair of flash cockney bastards, got a stupid name for everyone. What did Eddie tell you?’

  ‘He gave me a tape. I saw you on it, in a hotel room, with a couple of girls, neither of whom looked like your wife. Snorting cocaine. All pretty tame, sort of thing that makes the headlines seemingly every day; but career-ending for a copper nonetheless. And as for Havilland, his proclivities did run to the—’

  ‘Disgusting?’

  ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Right, Melody?’

  ‘I’m not saying a word until I can speak to my lawyer.’

  Kelsey whipped out the gun and shoved it in her ribs. She went to scream, but Kelsey, with his free hand, grabbed at the back of her neck and squeezed it. ‘You’ll tell Detective Inspector Frost everything, or I’ll blow you away right here, right now!’

  ‘OK … OK …’

  Melody Price regained her composure and told her tale. George Price had been running high-stakes card games at some hotels in the Denton area, and in other locations where he regularly worked the races. To liven things up, and keep the punters happy, there was plenty of food and booze, and Harry Baskin spiced it up further when he started to provide ‘hostesses’ in the form of girls from his club. Then Melody came on to the scene, and she turned up the heat even more with drugs, cocaine. The devil’s dandruff, the marching powder, was making its presence felt and was thought of as a harmless party drug, almost socially acceptable in certain circles. Its price made it the drug of choice for the moneyed elite. Of course, it was Eamon Hogan who supplied the drugs.

  Once Melody had married George Price, the Dublin gangster, who already fixed races in Ireland and had his hooks into some Irish bookies, sensed a real opportunity with George. And once Hogan found out who attended some of the big-money private games, namely Kelsey and Havilland, he saw even more opportunities. He could blackmail a councillor and a top copper and have them in his back pocket. It was perfect for his future plans to relocate to the British mainland.

  And this is where Melody really excelled; the ex-porn star, who’d worked both in front of the camera and behind it, knew all about hidden cameras and how to secrete them in hotel rooms. Soon they had the Citizen Kane of blackmail footage: Kelsey snorting cocaine and enjoying three-in-a-bed romps; and Havilland, well, Havilland splashing around in the bathroom with two very well-paid girls who were willing to test the waters of his depravity for the right money. Either way, now the two public servants were not only under the cosh with their gambling debts, but well and truly on the hook with Eamon Hogan.

  Click!

  Melody stopped talking and Kelsey turned towards Frost as the tape came to an end.

  Kelsey shook his head and tutted, ‘You’d make a lousy undercover copper, not like your little friend Eve Hayward.’

  Frost reached into his bomber jacket and put the tape recorder on the table.

  Kelsey considered the device. Then, with his free hand, he adroitly turned over the C60 cassette and pressed record. ‘Good idea, Frost, get it all down. I need … I need to tell you everything so … so it’s on the record in my own words. First off, just a small thing in the greater scheme of things: I gave Eamon Hogan the details of the jewellery job in Rimmington. I hid vital evidence that would have pointed directly to his gang. Then George, George Price …’ He started to laugh.

  Melody Price glared at him. Before she could say anything, Frost asked, ‘What’s so funny?’

  The brittle laughter quickly stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I just thought, you probably think I took his day’s takings to make it look like robbery. Being a copper, throwing you off the scent. And I suppose I did, or at least that’s what I told myself. But in reality, I took the money because I genuinely needed it. By then I was just a common, desperate thief, really.’

  ‘I never thought it was a robbery. Or if it was, it was carried out by a rank amateur. George Price had on him a watch and gold money clip that were worth more than what was in his bag. Also, how fortuitous for the robbers for George to happen to park up in that spot.’

  ‘I arranged to meet him there, but I didn’t plan on shooting him. I just wanted to reason with him. I wanted the tapes. I told him to hand them over, or burn them, just get rid of them. I was practically begging him. He just sat there in his car … smirking … like I was dirt on his shoes. We used to be friends, or at least that’s what I thought. But I was just an easy mark for him, a gambling addict, a money tap that he wasn’t prepared to turn off. Not once did he try and stop me getting in deeper and deeper. He owned me lock, stock—’

  ‘I take it he refused to give you them.’

  ‘He said he’d think about it. But Eddie was right, he knew it was useless trying to reason with them. They would always keep a copy, just in case. It was a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads …’ Kelsey’s free hand again grip
ped the back of Melody’s neck, and she expelled a whimper of fear. ‘This bitch would make sure of that!’

  ‘Jack! Do something!’ she gasped, her terrified eyes bulging.

  ‘Easy, Superintendent Kelsey, easy. So when George Price refused, you shot him?’

  ‘Good work, Frost – remind me of my rank, keep me talking? Right?’

  ‘Not for me, for you. Like you said, your wife, your family, you want to tell them.’

  Melody breathed a sigh of relief as Kelsey took the pressure off her neck.

  ‘I thought I’d killed him. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have killed the others … Jimmy Drake and Little Stevie. I caused pain … I know that. I killed two men … two people. For that I’m truly, truly sorry.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Yes … that’s all.’

  ‘Young Dean Bartlett and Gavin Ross? How about them?’

  Frost watched as Kelsey swallowed hard. His mirrored lenses reflected the detective’s face, and he couldn’t hide his contempt. Whatever decency, whatever copper there was left in him, Kelsey was feeling it now, feeling it finally die. He didn’t have the answers for the madness, for what he’d unleashed, and Frost suspected there wasn’t enough tape to capture how he’d withered into the hollow man he had become.

  Kelsey made a gasping sound, like he was trying to catch his breath. ‘I need a drink. My throat’s dry. A wee dram. That will get me talking, a nice glass of Scotch.’

  Frost glanced over to the bar; the latest race had started so it wasn’t too busy. He stood up.

  Melody looked alarmed. ‘You’re not leaving me, Jack?’

  Kelsey urged him on. ‘She’ll be fine. No more, it’s over.’

  ‘Then why don’t you give me the gun?’

  ‘Don’t push it. What difference would one more make, right here at the races? Poetic justice, this is where I lost most of it. Now, are you going to get me that bloody drink?’

  Frost raised his hands in a placating gesture, then went to the bar and ordered three whiskies. He wanted a Hamlet cigar, but realized that would be pushing his luck. The drinks came. A thought struck him: what Havilland had said about a genuine suicide needing privacy, otherwise it’s just a cry for help … Kelsey had spent an age looking at that tape recorder before he turned it on … Is that when he’d decided to kill … Christ …

  He left the drinks on the counter and ran back over to the empty table. There was a commotion outside the bar, and he heard from some way off Melody Price scream, ‘Get off me!’

  On the concourse, there was a scrum of people now returning to the bar, and as he forced his way through the crowd, he saw Melody Price sprawled on the floor with Sue Clarke astride her, putting on the handcuffs.

  ‘I came up to see what was taking you so long, and saw Lady Muck here running off, so I grabbed her, and she whacked me and tried to get away—’

  Frost took a fistful of Melody’s hair, pulled it hard and barked, ‘Where’s Kelsey?’

  ‘The men’s!’

  Frost ran towards the toilet, and he saw two, three, four men running out of it, scared, just like if a madman with a gun had rushed in and emptied the place. Frost went in.

  Peter Kelsey, with his aviator sunglasses and peaked cap now discarded on the floor, was standing in front of the mirror. Tears streamed down his red mottled cheeks. His face was distorted with torment, guilt, self-loathing, and it was tearing him apart. On seeing Frost he turned sharply towards him and raised the gun.

  Clarke handed Melody over to uniform, and made her way towards the panicked crowd on the concourse who were gathered near the men’s toilet. Two more uniformed coppers who were on duty at the races joined her. Clarke told the crowd to move away, it was police business. She stopped dead when she heard the sharp crack of the gun being fired.

  Three Days Later

  Frost was at Denton General. He’d just parked up the Metro when he saw PC David Simms, in his civvies, walking out of the hospital with a pretty blonde. Frost recognized her as the nurse who’d come to the young PC’s aid with the bedpan and seen off Bad Manners Bob. Good for Simms, thought Frost.

  He collected his tin of Quality Street off the passenger seat and made his way into the hospital. He’d been spending too much time in this place of late, he thought, but there was only one person he wanted to visit today – DS John Waters. His friend and colleague was now officially off the critical list and stable. The other patient of note, George Price, had had his operation earlier in the day and was expected to make a full recovery – just as Sandy Lane had fictitiously reported. But what a changed world George Price would wake up to. His best friend, Jimmy Drake, was dead and his wife, Melody, was now at an undisclosed location being paid for by the government and about to start a new life without him, under a new identity.

  Melody Price, her survival instincts fully functioning and ready to spring into action the minute she felt the net closing in, had cut a deal with Eve Hayward and the serious crime team in London. The minute she was nicked she told them she could give them Eamon Hogan.

  To achieve this, they had to work fast. She was to be a honey trap, a role she was perfectly suited to. Melody called Hogan that very day, before the end of the last race at Radleigh Park, and informed him of what had happened to Peter Kelsey. The story she told was: Jack Frost had confronted Peter Kelsey at the races. Kelsey had admitted he’d shot George, and killed Jimmy and a thief called Little Stevie. Melody said she reckoned that Kelsey had gone there to confront her, probably kill her for her part in the blackmail. Kelsey, obviously unhinged, managed to get away from Jack Frost and run into the men’s toilets, where he then shot himself in the head.

  Of course, that bit was true. But what she neglected to tell the Irish gangster was her part in it, and the fact that Frost had her full confession on tape, a confession that now put the powerful puppet master, Hogan, at the very centre of the whole criminal conspiracy.

  Melody cooed down the phone to Hogan about how upset she was – what if Kelsey had managed to get to her? The shock of his violence and how close she’d come to getting killed by that maniac copper had spooked her; it had made her realize how short life was and how precious each moment was, and she didn’t want to be alone tonight. And with George expected to make a full recovery and be home soon, this was their only window of opportunity, and she was desperate to see him, for old times’ sake. With her tearful quivering voice still managing to sound coquettish and sexy, it was an award-winning performance from her. Eamon Hogan said he had been waiting for this call for years. They arranged to meet at an anonymous-looking motel off a main road some twenty miles from Denton.

  And it was there that a masked firearms unit arrested him, with some twenty officers being involved. Eamon Hogan was carrying a gun equipped with a silencer; a large carving knife and a roll of tarpaulin were found in the boot of his car. It wasn’t clear if the ruthless and suspicious gangster had gone there to make love to Melody Price or to kill her. Or maybe both.

  This is what Frost was pondering as he made his way down the hospital corridor. Then he spied a figure at the other end of it, outside John Waters’ ward.

  ‘Hello, Jack.’

  ‘How are you, Eve?’

  ‘Tired.’

  They went over and sat down on the orange plastic chairs. Frost opened the tin of Quality Street and offered them to her. She selected a blue one. Frost raised an eyebrow at this choice, and mulled over whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Good, because it would leave the pink and orange ones to him, or bad, because it suggested that her taste was suspect. He erred on the side of caution, and decided it was a good thing – after all, he told himself, who the hell am I to be so picky?

  ‘I went by Eagle Lane to say goodbye to Sue, drop off an Action Man for her little boy.’

  ‘It’s not one of those cheap knock-offs, I hope?’

  She laughed. ‘No, he’s a proper one. Got a beard to cover the little scar on his cheek. And to see Superintendent Mullett a
nd the rest of your team, thank them for all their hard work and help. They said you were at home, but the dragon lady at the Jade Rabbit said you’d moved out?’

  ‘I did, yesterday. I’m now living in paradise with a bird.’ Jason Kingly had handed over the keys to the flat on a gentleman’s agreement that Frost would proceed with its purchase pronto.

  Eve Hayward’s eyes widened, and Frost swore he could detect a little tremble in her bottom lip, which she quelled by forcing out a smile and muttering something along the lines of, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

  Jack Frost smiled right back at her. ‘I never told you about my bird. He’s blue, a Norwegian Blue. But they say that about all blue parrots. I suspect he was actually born within the sound of Bow bells, what with all the cockney rhyming slang he comes out with.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘I was rather hoping you would be.’

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to: Frankie Gray, Natasha Barsby, Elisabeth Merriman, Phil Patterson, and Emlyn Rees for the tip.

  And don’t miss THE MURDER MAP, coming soon …

  When art dealer Ivan Fielding is found dead of a heart attack in his home, surrounded by the treasures he’s collected all his life, it doesn’t initially seem like a case for Detective Inspector Frost and the Denton police force. But then signs of a burglary are discovered, and Frost senses there’s more to the story than meets the eye – even though the only thing taken was a worthless amateur painting.

  Then a young girl is abducted outside the school, an infamous gangster fresh from prison arrives in the area, and dead bodies start turning up in the woods. As Frost and his team dig deeper, everything seems to lead back to Ivan Fielding’s murky lifetime of misdeeds.

  Will they find the answers they need before the dead man’s past puts them all at risk?

  OUT IN HARDBACK AND EBOOK ON 22ND AUGUST 2019