Morning Frost

by Henry James

  ‘Come on, Frost, do something right for once in your life!’ shouted Mullett from the other side of the grave. The superintendent, whose complexion was even more of an angry puce than usual, was flanked by Frost’s old boss, DI Williams, now deceased, and DC Simms. Both stood expressionless, their faces ashen white.

  ‘William?’ Mary called gently, a touch of seduction in her voice. ‘Come here, you know you want to …’

  Frost frantically trod backwards, but the soles of his shoes could find no purchase on the wet, slippery turf. Before his eyes, Mary was ascending weightlessly from the grave, calling softly, like a siren from mythology. She reached the point where she was close enough to touch; he stretched out his hand, and as he did so her features abruptly changed; the gentle, pleading countenance gave way to a malevolent smile revealing blackened teeth. Panic swept through him, he could feel himself crying, No! No!

  ‘Flamin’ heck!’

  Frost cursed as he propped himself up on the cold, concrete patio, a metal swing-seat bashing him on the shoulder. It took a moment to register where he was, as it was pitch black, but it suddenly dawned on him that he was in his in-laws’ gazebo. He pulled himself back up on to the rocking garden seat and used the Ronson to illuminate his watch: 3.45 a.m. ‘Cheese and Scotch. Fatal mix,’ he muttered, shaking his head. He was shivering, although fortunately heavy cloud cover had smothered the worst of the chill. He pulled the hip flask from inside his overcoat and took a deep pull.

  ‘Ah, that’s better,’ he said to himself and patted his pockets for cigarettes, but couldn’t find any. He rose unsteadily from the swing chair, a crick in his neck making him wince, and made his way slowly to the ghost-white oblong he knew to be the Simpsons’ back door. To his surprise, it was unlocked. He tutted but at the same time couldn’t believe his luck, thinking how nice it would be to get a couple of hours’ kip on the settee before attempting to drive home.

  Simms glared at the obstinate PC, who folded his notebook nonchalantly and tucked it inside his uniform. Two ambulance-men stretchered the dead boy to the rear of their vehicle and disappeared into it, leaving his bicycle lying innocently at the roadside. Twenty yards away, the motorist who had discovered the lad hovered uncertainly beside his turquoise Marina, while the uniform’s partner manned one end of the roadblock. It was close to 8 a.m. Simms had been awake for barely half an hour; he had not been happy to be roused at seven thirty by Control.

  Maltby got up from the pavement, brushing his hands on his cords with an air of finality. He made his way across to Simms and the PC.

  ‘It’s difficult to say,’ was his disappointing response to their questioning looks. He pulled out a handkerchief the size of a tea towel.

  Simms sighed loudly. ‘Really?’ he huffed. ‘Because I could’ve sworn it looked just like a road accident.’

  ‘I’m playing it by the book,’ the PC countered, ‘and the book now says, “sudden deaths” require a CID officer present.’

  ‘Balls, not when it’s this bleedin’ obvious,’ Simms snapped.

  ‘But you can’t assume the obvious,’ rejoined the constable. ‘As a detective you must keep an open mind.’ Was the cheeky bastard smirking?

  The recent decree from on high was vague, but following the case in Essex where a raft of murders had been discovered to have been wrongly pronounced suicides by uniformed officers on arrival at the scene, the rules of attendance had changed. As usual, they’d changed in a way that left little room for common sense, or so Simms reckoned. What made it worse was that in this case PC Watkins, he was convinced, was taking the piss.

  ‘I’ll tell you what is obvious – that someone here needs a clout round the lughole …’

  ‘Gentlemen, please,’ Maltby said, wiping a severely red nose. ‘It’s not really for me to say, but looking around you, you should consider the possibilities.’ He swapped the handkerchief for a hip flask. Simms declined a swig, having seen the state of the hanky. ‘The gradient of the road is such that a bicycle could easily reach forty miles per hour or more coming downhill, a speed which, if the descent was interrupted, could easily kill the cyclist.’ Simms and Watkins regarded One Tree Hill behind the ambulance. The prow of the hill was a good mile off. ‘But it’s certainly curious that there’s no hint of damage to the bicycle that would indicate a collision.’

  ‘And no evidence of a skid. No tyre mark. On the road,’ PC Watkins added eagerly.

  ‘Hard to tell,’ Simms countered. ‘This road’s just been resurfaced. And maybe a car clipped the bike rather than hit it.’

  Simms took a step forward towards the bicycle, brushing shoulders with the ginger-haired and bearded PC as he did so. Next to the bike was the lad’s holdall, copies of the Sun and Mirror spilling casually into the gutter. If he had indeed come off at speed, would they not be scattered more widely across the road?

  ‘Maybe he just hit a stone or something and went over the handlebars …’ he muttered uncertainly, reaching for the cycle itself – a Raleigh ten-speed racer – and pulling it upright. As he straddled it he recalled having had something similar when around the same age as the boy – 26-inch frame too – but he’d not been on a bike since. He flipped the pedal round and swerved uncertainly in the road as the two uniform and the police surgeon looked on. He made a wide arc, bringing the bike to a squealing stop in front of them.

  ‘Brakes work all right, then,’ Watkins said.

  ‘Yep,’ Simms agreed. He looked up the hill. The early morning sun reflected off the recently tarmacked road. The incline was steep, but was it really steep enough that a tumble at speed could have killed the boy outright? ‘OK, I’ll take it from here,’ he said resignedly.

  Superintendent Mullett rubbed his head miserably. Hangovers were not something his constitution was designed to cope with. Worryingly, as he got older he’d started to suffer memory loss; the last few times he’d had one over the eight, he’d experienced a total blank the next day.

  ‘Would you like me to run through that again, sir?’ the polite young man in the lab coat asked. Mullett regarded the ugly object in front of him, which now consumed most of the space on his immaculate desk. No, he couldn’t face another run-through, not now, not feeling like this.

  ‘Perhaps later?’ He smiled wanly.

  ‘Of course, I’ll be here most of today and the weekend, installing the others.’ He blinked through enormous spectacles.

  ‘Jolly good. Maybe turn it off for now?’ The thing was frightfully noisy, whirring away.

  The lad looked faintly dismayed. ‘If you’re sure?’

  Just then the telephone flashed red, followed by a trilling ringtone that Mullett could swear was louder than usual.

  ‘Mullett here.’

  ‘Stanley, how the devil are you today?’

  Assistant Chief Constable Winslow from County HQ. That was all he needed.

  ‘Fine, sir. Tip-top.’ The technician was still loitering in front of his desk holding a box of floppy disks. Mullett, finally out of patience, flapped him away angrily. ‘Never better.’

  ‘Really? I say, you have a remarkable recovery rate.’ Winslow chuckled. ‘Very impressive considering the rate you were putting them away yesterday afternoon.’

  Mullett winced, feeling a ping of alcoholic queasiness deep within his system.

  ‘Any news on the body parts in the field?’

  ‘Early days, sir. We’re searching the surrounding area. If there was anything more to be found we’d have uncovered it by now. A perplexing mystery.’

  ‘Hmm, indeed.’ A pause down the line; it was difficult enough to work the ACC out when he was in the same room, let alone down the wire at County.

  ‘Now then,’ Winslow continued, ‘about Jim Allen. I think we must agree that a transfer to Rimmington is all but in the bag. After successfully implementing IRIS he picked up some casework over there, and being a man down, Kelsey has requested he stay until the end of the year.’

  Mullett sighed audibly; he knew where this w
as heading.

  ‘Now’ – Winslow was chuckling again – ‘you’ve had that little sexpot Myles, and the black chappie, with whom I believe she’s entangled—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Detective Sergeant Waters. Solid, dependable chap – very good,’ Mullett cut in, eager to avoid discussing that particular liaison. ‘Waters has requested a permanent transfer from East London, and we have him at least until December. So,’ he concluded, as forcefully as he could muster, ‘there’ll be no need for any review of personnel until January at the earliest.’

  ‘Now, now, Stanley,’ the ACC berated. ‘You cannot continue an inspector down indefinitely. Bert Williams has been dead a year now, and you’re forever bleating about being under-resourced. Now the wife has passed away there’s no reason not to press ahead. I saw him yesterday on the box, fending off those jackals from the press – you must admit it was a deft performance. Promote Jack Frost.’

  Mullett was over a barrel. And based on the DS’s recent behaviour, he had no good reason to protest; since Mary’s illness had worsened, Frost had subdued his maverick ways – although his clear-up rate had slipped too.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he snapped, unable to suppress his annoyance, ‘but surely not today, the day after the funeral?’

  ‘No, make it Monday,’ Winslow said with finality. Then he added, as if as an afterthought, ‘I hear Harry Baskin has been shot.’

  Mullett rubbed his creased brow. ‘Baskin, really?’ How the blazes had this passed him by? He glanced at his watch: 9.15. Why the devil had he not been told?

  ‘Yesterday, at his club. Wake up, old boy! I rather like old Harry – get this one nailed, eh?’ And with a click the ACC was gone.

  Mullett tentatively sipped his coffee, as if it might be poison. Baskin shot! For most of his career, Baskin had been little more than a small-time nightclub owner, but in recent years his profile had grown substantially, and his notoriety along with it. His club, the Coconut Grove, named after the famous jazz club in Los Angeles, was a tawdry affair, boasting strippers and gambling. The council refused it a licence to operate in Denton town centre for fear of lowering the tone, so it was tucked away on the fringes at a discreet distance. The club had ticked along for years without drawing much attention to itself; there was the occasional rumpus, the odd raid, and an air of underworld seediness, but nothing that infringed too much on polite society.

  Then earlier this year Baskin had opened a ‘sauna’ in an old laundry building, a site within spitting distance of Market Square, the town’s respectable historic centre. Residents from nearby flats had raised concerns; there was suspicion that the Pink Toothbrush was, in fact, a brothel. Unable to tolerate so much as a whiff of impropriety on his patch, Mullett immediately had the place put under surveillance. Within a week he had incriminating evidence, although not of the sort he’d hoped for: ACC Winslow had been filmed leaving the premises in the early hours. Though not exactly caught in flagrante, he had, presumably, been up to no good.

  However, no sooner had this all come to light than activities at the Pink Toothbrush went quiet. There were no more complaints from residents, so no need for Mullett to act on this awkward information, to his great relief. He rubbed his chin ruefully, remembering the moment he’d squeezed the revelation out of Frost – and instantly regretted it. It had been the first week of June and Frost had sat opposite him, sweating copiously and wearing that smug, self-satisfied grin of his. ‘Are you sure you really want to know what PC Miller saw that night?’ he’d said. ‘Might be best to brush it to one side.’ It was like a red rag to a bull, as Frost knew only too well. Mullett had unwittingly fallen into his own trap …

  As the superintendent placed the bone-china coffee cup back on its saucer, he noticed that his hands were trembling. He grasped the steel rule he used to assist with reading crime stats and flexed it pensively. Much as he loathed the vulgar club owner, instinct told him he’d be more of a nuisance dead than alive. He picked up the phone, turning to prise the blind slats apart with the rule; the car park was a whirlwind of leaves.

  ‘Miss Smith, get me Frost, immediately.’

  He’d be damned if he’d promote Frost on Monday; a wounded Baskin offered all sorts of opportunities to foul things up for the scrofulous sergeant. Turning from the window, he glared menacingly at the ugly grey box on his desk. And if not Baskin, he said to the machine, tapping the monitor playfully with the steel rule, you will be his downfall.

  ‘I don’t bloody care what it is, I don’t want it!’

  Clarke could hear Frost’s bellow over the ringing telephone before she even reached his office.

  ‘Superintendent Mullett’s orders,’ squeaked a boy in a white lab coat.

  ‘Really? Well, you’ve been misinformed! Those orders don’t carry this far into CID.’

  ‘Jack, can I have a word?’

  DC Sue Clarke stood on the office threshold, unable to enter any further as a mountain range of paper lay between her and the desk, covering most of the famously stained carpet. Dressed in a crumpled black suit, Frost was pacing like a trapped animal. On the desk sat an enormous monitor and an equally vast grey box, with leads sprouting out of them in every direction.

  ‘Not now, darling, bit tied up. Mr Mullett wants me to learn how to play Pac-Man.’

  ‘Sergeant Frost, this computer is not a toy.’

  He snorted in derision. ‘I may appear a Luddite to the likes of you’ – he gestured wildly with a cigarette; it was a constant wonder to Clarke that he and the whole office hadn’t gone up in flames – ‘but I read the papers. I know all about Sir Clive Spectrum, the genius who’s got every kid glued to a screen playing King Dong.’

  ‘It’s Sinclair, Clive Sinclair – Spectrum is the console. And I think you mean Donkey Kong – King Dong is …’ Clarke watched the boy flush.

  ‘Dong or Kong, I don’t give a monkey’s. Alan Turing will be turning in his grave … if, if … what are you frowning about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Clarke shrugged. ‘Just the World according to Jack Frost. Enlightening, as ever.’

  ‘Cheeky mare.’

  They both eyed the technician, who shuffled his feet uncomfortably, looking as much a spare part as the unwanted computer.

  ‘I shall have to report this lack of cooperation to the superintendent,’ he huffed, navigating his way around the paper mounds towards the door.

  ‘Mind my filing system,’ Frost called after him, then turned to Clarke. ‘Honestly, though, would you believe it? Look at the size of the bloody thing! Had to shift all this junk off the desk; the floor’s the only place left to put it.’

  ‘I can see,’ Clarke agreed, then added casually, ‘How was yesterday?’

  ‘Yesterday?’ He looked confused.

  ‘The funeral?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He vigorously scratched the back of his head, which she knew by now to be a sign of nerves. ‘Went off all right, from what I can remember of it.’

  She was about to ask why he was still in his mourning suit, but thought better of it. It wouldn’t do to get drawn into Frost’s chaotic world – it would only distract her from what she intended to say.

  ‘Look, Jack, I really need to talk to you.’

  ‘Fire away,’ he said, fishing out another cigarette. ‘Want one?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not here, I mean I can’t talk to you about … Will you pick up that bloody phone!’ she barked in frustration.

  ‘If you want, but there’s only one caller who’s that persistent.’ He picked up the receiver. ‘Frost. Miss Smith … yes, yes, I’ve been here … Just been having trouble getting to the phone. Really?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Bear with a sore head, you say? How appealing. I’m on my way.’

  He turned back to Clarke. ‘Whatever it is will have to wait. Hornrim Harry requires an audience.’

  As he traversed the stacks of paper he almost lost his balance; he clutched at her shoulders to steady himself, kissing her lightly on the cheek as he pass
ed her. She was left with the tingle of beard and a sense of growing frustration.

  Friday (2)

  Detective Sergeant John Waters took a sip from the plastic cup. The coffee dregs were bitter and tasted of Thermos flask; bearable when piping hot but undrinkable when cold. The first drops of rain hit the windscreen. He’d been staring at the vandalized telephone box on Brick Road since daybreak and the thing was now burned on his retina, to the extent that he wasn’t even sure if he was really looking at it. And what a street: smack in the middle of the Southern Housing Estate, a row of scrubby, pebble-dashed council houses whose front gardens displayed everything from ancient television sets to a Ford Anglia up on bricks. Several were boarded up. Did anyone actually live here?

  Cold and tired, he yawned and adjusted his scarf. His night at the Nag’s Head in Rimmington had drawn a blank. The two girls he’d spoken to, who were barely nineteen, were initially shocked to hear Baskin had been shot. Both had performed at the Coconut Grove last Friday and were due to appear tonight, and their concern for Harry Baskin was quickly replaced with annoyance at the prospective loss of a tenner each, plus tips. Waters had been surprised at the youth of the girls, and he had to admit that in comparison, Rachel Rayner was indeed ‘knocking on’. He’d quickly surmised there was no way either of these two could’ve pulled a trigger, but he hoped they might remember something useful – an argument late one night, a disgruntled punter maybe. He’d left them his card just in case.

  Now stuck alone in a car on a miserable street, he pondered the usefulness or otherwise of rain to the current surveillance operation he was lumbered with; it certainly reduced the number of ordinary people using the phone box, leaving it free for weirdos and perverts with a purpose.

  He tweaked the stereo up a bit. Jelly Roll Morton’s ‘Dead Man’s Blues’ had a satisfying, mournful resonance against the rainy backdrop. It put him in mind of the times he’d spent over at Frost’s. Waters had come to Denton six months ago from the Met, and although there was a mutual respect between the two, he and Frost initially had little common ground for becoming friends. A short while later, Mary was hospitalized. As predicted by the doctors, her condition deteriorated rapidly, and the trauma of her sudden physical frailty had proved too much for the stoic detective sergeant, who took to the bottle with determination. He managed to hide it well; only those who were close were aware of the extent of his pain. Before long he stopped driving, although not through common sense – Clarke had repeatedly confiscated his car keys until at last he acquiesced. To preserve his privacy he took taxis rather than relying on colleagues, until one evening when the cab firm let him down and he allowed Waters to drive him, first to Denton General and then to his empty home, where Frost invited him in for a nightcap. It was the first of several visits.