Frost at Midnight

by Henry James

  Sunday (7)

  Baskin thwacked on the harsh overhead light in his pokey office, causing Frost to blink rapidly.

  ‘That dumpy ex-copper had enough of you, ’as she, Jack?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Bird you’re shacked up with. I seen you at the weekend mincing about Market Square with ’er and the nipper.’

  ‘No, no, no. You got the wrong end of the stick there, Harry,’ Frost spluttered, belatedly adding ‘’Ere, what do you mean, “dumpy”?’

  Sauntering rather than jumping to her defence. Typical.

  Baskin arched a cynical eyebrow. ‘Whatever.’ He peeled the cellophane off a cigar the size of a small truncheon. ‘You’re here for one of two reasons; the first being you ain’t getting any.’ He flumped down behind the desk, the leather chair farting as it smoothly accommodated his bulk, and worked on the cigar in silence, seemingly forgetting to conclude his thesis explaining Frost’s appearance at the Coconut Grove.

  ‘And the second reason?’ Frost prompted.

  ‘You tell me, eh?’

  Frost pulled up the chair. ‘Rachel Rayner?’

  ‘Out on licence.’

  ‘Out on a tombstone.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Dead. Found this morning in St Mary’s churchyard.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Baskin was genuinely surprised. ‘How?’

  Frost shrugged. ‘Not sure yet. When was the last time you saw her, Harry?’

  ‘She was here last week, as it happens. Just after she were released.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To enquire after my ’ealth. Why d’you think?’

  Frost sparked up a Rothmans. ‘You were shot,’ Frost said dryly.

  ‘Money.’

  ‘Did you owe her? She used to work here, after all.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Well, why?’

  ‘After Kate.’

  Kate Greenlaw, one of Harry’s ‘exotic dancers’; mid-twenties, four or five years Rachel’s junior, but the two were friends.

  ‘And did she find her?’

  ‘Nah. Kate quit after all that business last year. Got a new one in. The one you was ogling. Karen Thomas.’

  ‘She seems a cut above the usual?’ Frost complimented.

  ‘Eastern European extraction; Polish, I think. Thomas ain’t her real name – it’s summat unpronounceable. Old man flew a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain.’

  ‘Blimey, that’s a bit exotic for you.’

  ‘Nah, you’ve seen one tit, you’ve seen ’em all.’

  Frost had heard this line many, many times. ‘Talking of tits, Hornrim Harry’s not been in here, has he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your golfing buddy, my super.’

  ‘You got to be joking. That one’s so uptight, I doubt his blood pressure could handle it. He’ll have a coronary before long.’

  High blood pressure? Though this was news to Frost, it came as no surprise.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a medical man, Harry?’

  ‘I ain’t, but Avery has warned ol’ Mullett to keep his cool on the green a number of times.’ Avery was a snooty Denton GP. Baskin chuckled to himself. ‘Yes, your gaffer don’t ’alf get hot under the collar if he flunks a shot.’

  Frost was eager to get back to the matter at hand. ‘Why would Rachel be after Kate?’

  ‘I just said. They’re mates.’

  Frost waited for more, but that was evidently all there was. Harry started shuffling papers on the desk. He clearly didn’t want to hang around, this being his night at home. Frost had questions about the new dancer but now was not the time. Besides, he’d agreed to meet Waters and Sandy Lane and it had already gone half nine.

  The Eagle on Eagle Lane was a coppers’ pub and despite a recent paint job it was still a hellishly grim place to be for last orders on a Sunday night.

  Waters spied the hack, Sandy Lane, sitting in the far corner as he paid the barman for his pint.

  ‘There he is,’ Frost said, ‘like one of the dirty-raincoat brigade.’

  ‘That’s rich, you’ve a fondness for a grubby mac yourself,’ Waters said.

  ‘Not in bleedin’ August. If ever there were a bloke looking ripe for nicking it’s him. “Shifty” is not even close.’

  The reporter spotted them, and raised a half-drunk pint of Guinness.

  ‘Sandy! What gives?’ Frost said cheerily as they approached.

  ‘All right, Jack, as it ’appens I was hoping you might enlighten me there … Dead girl found in St Mary’s? Legs akimbo on top of one of Denton’s forefathers – that’s not what the meek and ’umble line up for on a Sunday morning, is it?’ He paused mischievously. ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘Might be,’ Frost said, aloof. For all his sniffing around Lane had clearly not gleaned the woman’s identity.

  The reporter looked suspiciously from one to the other. ‘He wouldn’t be banging on the door of my gaff on a Sunday, if it wasn’t …’

  ‘You can see the cogs grinding through, can’t you?’ Frost joked to Waters. ‘Go on, put the bugger out of his misery.’

  ‘You recall the hit on the Gregory Leather payroll last year? Girl desperate to escape her psycho boyfriend grabs the cash, guns down the minder?’

  ‘How could I forget. Pumpy Palmer’s sidekick – hacked the old porker to pieces on a snooker table. In Palmer’s very own club.’ He sniffed distastefully.

  ‘Quite, but once Palmer’s murder died down, and that psycho Nicholson was safely banged up, the girl that committed the robbery became the centre of attention. The case dragged on and on and eventually …’

  ‘Wait, you’re not telling me it was her in the churchyard …?’

  Waters nodded.

  ‘Well, blow me down.’ Lane’s eyes lit up. ‘How?’

  ‘Under investigation,’ Frost said. ‘But you’re to keep shtum, got me? I don’t want to wake up tomorrow with this girl’s boat race plastered all over the paper.’

  ‘Ahh … come off it – this is a great story …’

  ‘No, I’m serious: you can hold off a day or so. Tell us first what you know.’

  ‘Not much, but all right …’ Lane had spent his Sunday harassing shocked pensioners after a god-fearing friend of Lane’s mother had disturbed him at home. Once alerted to the discovery in the churchyard he was on to it, like the true newshound he was. And one had to hand it to him, he’d been pretty thorough – he even knew the name of the person whose tomb the body was found on (something the police hadn’t bothered to note).

  ‘The verger found ’er, apparently,’ Lane concluded, ‘but he’d scooted off by the time I got there.’

  ‘That’s about the sum of it,’ Frost agreed. ‘But that’s not what we want to know.’

  Lane’s jaundiced complexion sagged.

  ‘You covered the case extensively; Rachel Curtis getting released like that,’ Waters encouraged.

  ‘Ah, I see. The widow of that warehouse bloke that got shot, she vowed to—’Ere, wait. You gotta tell me something first!’

  ‘We just told you her name,’ Waters said.

  ‘Yeah, but I’d’ve got that meself in a day or so …’

  ‘Hey man, and if that’s the game we’re playing we could just ransack the Echo’s offices – you’d have printed everything you’d been told. We’d just need to trawl through the last three months.’

  ‘There might be stuff I kept back,’ Lane protested indignantly.

  ‘Yeah. Right. That’ll be the day,’ Frost said cynically. ‘Look, we haven’t got all night so, OK then, what do you want to know?’

  The hack fidgeted uncomfortably; he wanted something, anything – the information itself was irrelevant, it was the bartering that was important, being in a position of power. Suddenly a sly grin passed over his face.

  ‘All right, park the bird in the churchyard for a second.’ He drained the Guinness. ‘Is it true that roly-poly Hudson is having it off with some stripper tart at the Coconut Grove?’


  ‘What, the manager of Bennington’s Bank?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest,’ Frost said flatly, ‘it’s hardly a CID matter, is it?’

  ‘Be a huge scandal, though, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘If you say so … not my field.’

  ‘Well, keep your ear to the ground, Jack, eh?’

  ‘All right, now come on! They’ll be ringing the bell for last orders any minute,’ Waters interjected; this was getting tedious – this wasn’t his idea of a fun Sunday night. ‘Your turn. The family of the Gregory robbery victim, Albert Benson, what’s the lowdown?’

  ‘Keep your hair on.’ Lane adjusted his pose, and peered into the empty pint glass.

  Frost spun round and hollered across to the barman, ‘Oi Dennis, another round, please, mate?’

  ‘So,’ Lane began, hunching over the table, savouring the moment, ‘the deceased’s wife was absolutely livid that Rayner/Curtis got off the hook; she threatened merry hell, vowed all manner of retribution.’

  ‘To be expected …’

  ‘Nah, I mean when I interviewed her about it, she was seething – this was not grief, this was pure hatred. There was something dark and deep to it.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Waters asked, moving to allow the barman to place another pint in front of him. Only Jack Frost could command waiter service in a fleapit like the Eagle.

  ‘Meaning? Meaning it’s personal,’ Lane said in a low voice.

  ‘Cobblers,’ Frost blurted angrily, ‘of course it’s personal – the woman has as good as killed her old man. That’s pretty bloody personal if you ask me. What are you, some sort of psychiatrist?’

  ‘All right, Jack, keep your hair on,’ Lane apologized.

  ‘Wait,’ Waters said, ‘I want to know what you’re implying – that Mrs Benson knew Curtis? That’s what that means to me – she hated her even before the shooting?’

  Lane sipped the fresh Guinness thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, you might be right.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Frost said, clearly tired.

  ‘Her son is the bouncer at the Grove, would have known Rachel anyway through work.’

  ‘Big Gazzer? Is his surname Benson? Well, that’s something, I suppose.’ Frost downed his pint. ‘I gotta be off – got a lizard that wants his grasshoppers and a bird needs his seed.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that, some sort of police code?’ Lane asked.

  ‘Chinese code,’ Waters said. ‘Classified, I’m afraid we can’t tell you.’

  ‘But you got to tell me something,’ Lane said, hurt, ‘after what I told you.’

  ‘We told you the woman’s name?’

  ‘Pah.’

  ‘OK, she was shoeless,’ Frost said, rising. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve to move into new lodgings.’

  Waters followed suit as Lane looked up quizzically at them both.

  ‘Shoeless? That all?’

  ‘That’s all we got. A real drag being a copper, you know.’ Waters winked at the hack.

  Outside the pub, Waters lit a cigarette and watched Frost amble off towards his car, and then presumably on to the Jade Rabbit. Frost had not found the time to shift his gear over there that afternoon as planned.

  John Waters had woken feeling bright and alert on a beautiful Sunday morning, looking forward to a last extra run-through of his wedding with his best man before the big day on Friday, but instead they’d been summoned to the church to investigate a dead girl found on a tombstone; then – instead of enjoying a lazy afternoon with his fiancée – he’d had to go on to the morgue. And if that wasn’t enough, rather than feet up watching the box, he’d spent the evening in a shabby pub with an even shabbier hack, only then to watch his pal wander off into the night to unpack a suitcase above a Chinese restaurant. It was at moments like this, one could, if one was that way disposed, question the way one lived one’s life. But Waters chose not to. He drew heavily on the cigarette. He loved his soon-to-be-missus, he loved the job and he loved Frost: there could be no other way.

  Monday (1)

  Dominic Holland stood impatiently watching the builder faff around in the cab of his truck, searching for a calculator. ‘Tradesmen,’ he muttered to himself contemptuously, as he stroked his neatly trimmed beard. Not that he thought the man a crook – he wouldn’t have chosen Todd otherwise – no, the man had an honest air, and he was here punctually at seven thirty in the morning. He doubted the fellow’s arithmetical prowess more. Holland himself possessed a calculator, of course, but he couldn’t lay his hands on the infernal thing, which must be lying hidden in one of the many boxes he’d yet to unpack.

  A crooked smile beneath squinting eyes in the bright August morning, and a wonky thumbs-up, indicated success on the driveway, and Todd marched bow-legged back up to the house, regarding the wrecked lawn as he did so.

  ‘Want me to quote you on re-turfing that for you? Right bloody mess.’

  ‘Let’s just concentrate on the matter in hand,’ Holland replied sharply; as he had no recollection as to how his front lawn had arrived at such a state, he chose to ignore it and the likely associated expense of repairing it.

  ‘Now then, where were we?’

  ‘The swimming pool tiles?’ Holland smiled. ‘My preference for the Mint Melt finish would appear to be costing me dear.’

  ‘Dolphin Dream is cheaper, and as I said, it’s the more popular.’

  ‘Well, that’s precisely why I don’t want it.’

  ‘Well, that’s why it’s costing more, ain’t it? S’obvious.’

  ‘Obvious? What’s obvious about it? I fail to see how simply the colour makes a tile more expensive by forty per cent.’

  Todd’s weather-beaten face cracked an arch expression he usually employed to emphasize building complexity. ‘It’s yer economies of scale, ain’t it?’

  ‘Oh, come now.’

  Holland had heard the savages in the office use the phrase repeatedly whilst knocking up his latest creation, the ‘Dagenham Drainpipe’ – a male trouser so tight, one could be fooled into thinking the wearer had had their lower half spray-painted on. Very tastefully done, but unfortunately the British figure did not lend itself to such a cut in suitable numbers to make mass production economically viable. That he could, reluctantly, understand – and he supposed there was a similar logic to the tiles argument, only not to the degree Pythagoras here was proposing.

  The man went through the elementary multiplication again – it was painful to watch – and yet again failed to arrive at a consistent number.

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t we knock off a monkey for cash?’ He pocketed the calculator, and nodded beyond the gravel drive. The pair proceeded round to the rear of the house.

  ‘I beg your pardon? A “monkey”? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Five hundred nicker off the final price.’

  ‘What, for the green tiles?’

  ‘The whole job price.’

  ‘But what about the colour of the tiles?’

  ‘And the tiles. You can have them pussy pink for all I care.’

  Holland’s eyes narrowed. Was he being taken for a chump? The job was halfway through and yet the final price had yet to be fixed. He surveyed the work in progress; where once lay half an acre of quintessential English garden greenery, now was left, to coin the neighbours’ phrase, a post-apocalyptic hell. And, to be fair, they weren’t far wrong. The transformation had been brutal and merciless. To start with, the border trees had had to go – felled were a huge ancient oak and two enormous horse chestnuts – though they were still very much there, like vestiges from the Somme, poking above the ever-growing mound of earth and rubble. Then there was the earthen hill created by the excavation of the pool, which consisted of all matter of debris, polythene, paper, cardboard, even a tyre from heaven knows where. Holland was reminded of the dustman’s heap from Our Mutual Friend … and …

  ‘So are we set then?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

&n
bsp; ‘Agreed. I want a slice in cash tomorrow morning.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two grand.’

  He had just over a thousand under the bed, but would need to go to the bank for the rest. ‘I’m afraid I have to go up to town on urgent business this evening and won’t be back until Wednesday. Can’t it wait?’

  Todd shook his head woefully. ‘Nah, I need the readies to buy tiles, don’t I?’

  ‘Do you? I had no idea it was such a hand-to-mouth existence. Very well, I shall draw out the cash this afternoon and you shall have it before you “knock off”.’

  ‘Leave it in the mixer, I won’t be here this afternoon.’

  ‘You won’t be here … but … where will you be? It’s the start of the working week! Surely Monday is a full day, even for you?’ Holland had grown accustomed to an industrious start to the week quickly slumping to a minimal effort towards the end. ‘What, pray, can be more pressing; it’s not for the want of work here?’

  ‘Got to price a job,’ Todd said brazenly, and then realizing this wasn’t an adequate response added, ‘I got to look to the future, ain’t I? We’ll be done here end of the week, need to secure the next earner, building trade ain’t like making dresses.’

  Holland very much doubted Todd would complete the job by Friday, but there was little point rubbing the man up the wrong way. ‘Very well. Where do you want it?’

  ‘Just drop the dosh inside the mixer and I’ll pick it up.’

  ‘Inside the mixer?’

  Todd pointed to the rotting cylinder, now more of a rusty bronze than its original bright yellow, resting dormant next to unwanted metal rods, left over from the pool lining. How quaint, he thought, that’s how it’s done in the country. He must try and adjust, blend in a bit.

  ‘I like your cap.’

  ‘Eh?’ Todd touched the peak of his flat cap. ‘Stops me ’ead getting burnt.’