Morning Frost

by Henry James

  They clearly hadn’t expected to get away that easily, in spite of the defiant claims of police wrongdoing. Frost allowed a moment or two for the facts to sink in, while watching each closely for a reaction. Windley, who had shown no sign of indignation, exuded relief.

  The solicitor, on the other hand, felt the need to press the point, to justify his trip out on a Sunday: ‘I should think so too. If Mr Waters is injured, then serve him right. The police are issued with ID for a purpose—’

  Windley leapt off the bed and clasped his solicitor’s forearm in an effort to silence him without making a show of it.

  ‘I think, son, you ought to button it, before I change my mind,’ Frost said, sternly.

  ‘All behind us. We’ll be on our way.’ It was the first time the suspect had spoken. Windley was slight and unassuming, with undefined features and longish blond hair, striking Frost as vaguely effeminate.

  ‘Very well,’ Frost affirmed. ‘Aren’t you a teacher at Denton Comp?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Do you know Marie Roberts?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘This is just routine, regarding another enquiry. It would save us both some bother if you answered a couple of questions.’

  Windley looked at his solicitor.

  ‘It’ll save me having to call on you during the school day,’ Frost persisted. The solicitor shrugged agreement. All Frost wanted to know was whether Windley had been on the premises at the time of the attack. He got his answer immediately. ‘Yes.’

  The Eagle Lane car park was verging on full. This added further to DC Sue Clarke’s consternation; on arriving home less than an hour ago, Clarke had picked up an assortment of messages, all claiming to be urgent, but none of them giving any details of why the matter was so pressing. Bill Wells, Mullett’s secretary, Frost at least a dozen times, and bizarrely, PC Miller, Derek’s flatmate, but oddly none from Derek … though, of course, he knew she was away for the weekend. She tried returning the calls but couldn’t get through to anyone, and so had decided to come to the station.

  She didn’t recognize the two uniform who glanced at her on the steps as she entered the building. In the lobby, Superintendent Mullett was in earnest discussion with Desk Sergeant Bill Wells. Wells stopped mid-sentence on spotting her. Mullett, too, turned her way.

  ‘Evening all,’ she said jovially.

  ‘Detective Clarke,’ Mullett said formally. ‘There you are. We were beginning to get concerned.’

  ‘Concerned? Why?’ She looked quizzically at Wells, who managed a smile though looked uncomfortable. ‘I’ve been away … Why, what’s up?’

  ‘Would you be so good as to notify your superior of your whereabouts, even at weekends, so that when something like this happens you can be accounted for,’ Mullett lectured.

  ‘Something like what?’ She looked plaintively at Wells. What was Mullett on about, and why was he even here?

  ‘It’s Derek Simms, Sue,’ Wells said softly, unable to meet her eye.

  ‘Oh my God. What?’ Clarke felt the ground go, and her stomach churn. ‘No …’ she uttered quietly. ‘What … what’s happened?’

  She heard the words spoken by Bill Wells without understanding them. The only ones that stuck out were ‘Jack’ and ‘Jack’s house’.

  ‘Yes, tragic,’ Mullett muttered, stroking his moustache.

  She turned and stared at him blankly as if only vaguely aware of his presence, and whatever he began to say next about a blight on the station she ignored and charged down the corridor towards Frost’s office. Rounding the corner she collided with two men coming up from the cells. One was a short skinny man in a tracksuit, the other was a slippery-looking type in an ill-fitting suit – a solicitor, no doubt. She made her apologies. The man in the tracksuit with longish blond hair reminded her of someone, but her thoughts were interrupted by hearing a familiar cracked laugh in the incident room opposite.

  Clarke pushed open the door. Inside were six or seven uniform, and at the back sat Frost, sharing a joke with Waters. Frost’s face fell on seeing her enter the office.

  ‘What’s happened to Derek?’ she asked flatly. ‘Jack? Tell me, Jack?’

  ‘Sue …’ Frost half smiled.

  Clarke zoned in on him; the room fell deathly quiet.

  Instead of explaining anything he just smiled at her, that cheeky little smile of his that normally softened her vehemence – but not this time. She walked straight up to him, past several bemused uniform, and slapped him squarely across the face. The sound – like a wet fish hitting a marble counter – resonated loudly in the silenced room. His cheek coloured instantly. For all she knew, he had absolutely nothing to do with Simms getting stabbed, but nevertheless she felt instantly better, while at the same time flooded with emotion that until now had been choked up. She hadn’t even cried yet. She swiftly exited the room and ran out of the building.

  Waters placed the coffee mug tentatively on Frost’s desk.

  ‘Bit harsh,’ Frost said, rubbing his cheek.

  ‘Sign of affection,’ Waters said dismissively, picking up the uniform call log.

  ‘You think so? Really?’

  ‘No, not really.’ He sighed. They’d been trying to laugh off Windley’s self-defence line. But it wasn’t really funny, and Clarke’s appearance had brought them back to earth with a bump. The dismay on the girl’s face had made something they’d tried to keep impersonal crushingly real. Waters turned his attention to perusing the results of the enquiries so far. The house-to-house calls on Vincent Close and the streets surrounding it had yielded nothing, despite their promptness. The investigation’s main hope – often the lucky breakthrough in such cases – was finding the murder weapon which the killer might have tossed away in panic, so every garden in the close had been combed. Nothing.

  Simms had been murdered in the small hours of Sunday morning. Did they really expect to trace the killer? Countless murders went unsolved in every part of the country, and Denton was no exception. In fact, their clean-up rate over the last six months was poor, and Waters knew that Frost felt this keenly. However, at that precise moment it was hard to believe it, as he sat there noisily slurping his coffee.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing, man?’ Waters said, annoyed. ‘Get after that girl.’

  ‘You think so?’

  Frost made to go and clapped him on the shoulder.

  Waters answered the trilling phone. It was Superintendent Mullett. Watching Frost march out stoically, cigarette clamped between his teeth and slamming the door behind him, Waters winced as Mullett lectured him again on Windley.

  Sunday (7)

  ‘But I don’t get it, Jack. Why would Derek turn to you?’

  Frost drained his pint. ‘Another?’ She nodded, and though coughing aggressively, helped herself to another of his cigarettes. Being a Sunday, the Eagle was practically deserted, but they’d elected to stay at the bar and not take a table. ‘Oi,’ he remonstrated. ‘You’ve had half a packet in half an hour.’

  ‘I’m upset, aren’t I?’ Clarke replied defensively. ‘Answer my question – why would he spend the whole evening with you, even if his car had broken down round the corner?’

  ‘A bit of fatherly advice – you know.’ Frost nodded at her midriff.

  ‘Oh, so he told you.’ She bowed her head, and fiddled nervously with her cigarette in the ashtray. This fidgeting made Frost nervy himself. ‘But you’ve not got children – why on earth would he ask you?’ she protested, perplexed. ‘He doesn’t even ask you about police work; something you’re supposed to know about.’

  ‘I’m older, and he reported to me … He wanted to know how his career might be affected. To be honest, we only touched on that. In the main, we discussed the Roberts case. He’d been to see the woman, as you asked him to.’ He was desperate to change the subject, knowing he was tired and bound to say the wrong thing. He reckoned that in the last four days he’d had little more than a few consecutive hours of sleep. That was pushing it, even by
his standards, making his thought processes murky. Frost paid the barman for the drinks.

  ‘Here you go.’ He placed Clarke’s glass neatly on the beer mat. ‘Just what you need.’

  ‘Ta. But Jack,’ she persisted, ‘why would he go to you? He didn’t even like you …’

  ‘Charming,’ Frost snorted.

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s not like you and Bert Williams.’

  Frost immediately reached for his cigarettes at the mention of DI Williams. ‘It’s almost a year to the day since Bert was murdered. Wait …’ Frost pinched his eyes shut, his thumb and forefinger meeting at the bridge of his nose. Cigarette smoke snaked up his forehead, as he recalled his dream when asleep in the Simpsons’ garden.

  ‘What, Jack?’

  ‘You’ll think I’m mad.’

  ‘I know you’re half crazy anyway.’ Her glossy eyes met his intently.

  ‘I think I foresaw Simms dying. Dead, I mean …’

  ‘What? Don’t be ridiculous …’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean foresaw exactly, but I did have this strange dream – nightmare, really – where I was standing at the foot of Mary’s grave—’ He suddenly stopped himself. How ridiculous did he sound?

  ‘Go on,’ Clarke prompted.

  ‘Nah, it was nothing – just the wife trying to torment me from beyond the grave.’ He took a swig of his pint. ‘Little firebrand – trust her to be coming up from the earth, not descending on a cloud with a pair of angels …’

  Clarke looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. He reached across and patted her thigh affectionately. She recoiled.

  ‘Anyway, Simms did mention the rape case you’d been working on, and that you thought the girl was fishy. Well, he paid her a visit and he reckoned your instincts were right.’ Frost thought it indelicate to say why, the truth being her attempt to chat him up.

  ‘Why, did she admit that she had a boyfriend?’

  ‘Oh, not in so many words, but he suspected she rather liked men. His theory was that she was caught in flagrante on Friday morning by that pupil.’

  ‘I knew it!’ She downed her drink and then reflected for a moment. ‘Poor, poor Derek. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Nope, that was it.’

  ‘Nothing? Really?’

  ‘Err, well, he did say he was really fond of you.’ Simms hadn’t actually said those words, but Frost thought it was safe to presume, and he knew it was what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill him?’ she cried, suddenly overcome with emotion. Frost delicately patted her shoulder and smiled at the inquisitive barman polishing glasses at the far end of the counter.

  ‘We’ll get them, Sue,’ he assured her. He realized that now was not the time to posit the theory that the intended victim was him himself. Clarke didn’t yet know that Simms had been stabbed getting into his Cortina, and he wasn’t about to tell her. He drained three quarters of his pint, deciding it was time to head off. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find them, mark my words,’ he said, struggling to suppress a beery belch. ‘Mark my words.’

  Louise Daley lazily poured Cinzano into a Wombles mug and saluted a slim streak of notes on the yellow Formica kitchen table. A hundred quid was a hundred quid. And the Frenchman wasn’t bad in bed either, if a little noisy.

  There was no denying it, everything she’d done recently had been a disaster, but she was stoic, a trait her mother had taught her; if you accept your fate it will enable you to stay calm, avoid panic and make the best of the situation. Her plan had been to make a tidy sum from Palmer, exact her revenge and rub out Frost, and then do a bunk to Spain, letting it all blow over for a couple of months before returning to look after her sick mother. But it had all gone to pot. Both Frost and Baskin were still alive, and someone else had made off with the payroll. Who the bloody hell had done it? As Palmer had said, there were few women ballsy enough to commit armed robbery in broad daylight.

  It was her father who had put her in touch with Palmer. Andrew Daley had run with Palmer in the sixties, when both had been small-time crooks. They’d moved out of London in the seventies when drugs and racial tension began to change the dynamics; it wasn’t a scene that two men in their late fifties wanted to be involved in, so they’d gone in search of a quieter life, winding up in Denton. When the Daleys’ marriage had broken up, Andrew had relocated to Southall with a girlfriend, but he still kept in contact with Palmer.

  Louise had no idea what Palmer’s beef was with Baskin, and she wasn’t interested – the less she knew the better. Despite his penchant for unnecessary violence Marty Palmer had been good to her and she couldn’t blame him for making her skip town with only sixty quid of his. She had blown it, after all. She could’ve had five grand for the hit on Baskin which she’d failed to pull off; then he’d given her the payroll tip; if all had gone to plan, she would’ve netted over eight thousand pounds, enough to buy a place on the Costa del Sol and then split her time between Denton and Spain … but instead she had a measly £160.

  She stretched and then reached to turn off the radio – on a Sunday night the listening choice was limited to obscure indie crap or classical music – and looked at the paltry collection of cassettes. She topped up her Cinzano and slipped Off the Wall into the radio cassette player. She swayed playfully in the drab kitchen, daydreaming. It wasn’t all bad news: Spain might be off the cards for the time being, but as Charles dropped her off to get her car he’d mentioned he had a place in France. She’d be away at first light getting out of Denton, with thoughts of Paris …

  ‘This is good!’

  Frost hungrily poked a forkful of meat and potatoes into his mouth. ‘Can’t remember the last time I had a roast dinner.’

  ‘Our pleasure.’ Kim Myles smiled coyly.

  ‘Now, tell me about this living together lark?’ Frost grinned benevolently at them both.

  Waters smiled across the tiny table at his girlfriend. It was an impromptu gesture, and Myles’s idea at that – to invite Frost round for a late Sunday dinner. Waters should have thought of it himself, but luckily his mention of Frost’s flooded kitchen had prompted Myles to come up with the suggestion. ‘… And John can’t stay in that filthy bachelor den for ever with all the boys …’ They had spoken about Simms’s murder over drinks. Frost, Waters had noticed, did not wish to dwell on the young DC’s death, and swiftly switched the topic to their flat-hunting. Guilt, he imagined, though Frost was reluctant to engage emotionally on any level. But talk of the police accommodation on Fenwick Street had unwittingly brought them back full circle to Simms.

  Kim frowned slightly at Waters, sensing Frost was uncomfortable. ‘Anyway, how are you coping?’ she asked warmly, topping up his wine glass.

  ‘You know, muddling along. Glad it’s all over, to be honest. We’d not had an easy run these last few years for one reason or another, but she was in a lot of pain, and in the end it was a relief.’ Frost chewed thoughtfully.

  ‘Great send-off, though,’ Waters added, passing the dish of Brussels sprouts across the table. ‘Who were all those people? For someone who never left the house apart from to go to bingo, Mary sure had a turnout.’

  Frost shook his head. ‘The old man,’ he replied. ‘The apron brigade.’

  ‘The what?’ Myles asked.

  ‘Ah, the Masons,’ Waters said. ‘I should’ve twigged. That would explain Winslow, and Mullett too, I guess?’

  ‘Winslow for sure,’ Frost confirmed, spearing the remaining roast potato, ‘but not being a chosen one myself, I couldn’t say about Hornrim Harry. Certainly there are aspects that would suit him: the peculiar rituals would appeal to his sense of order – but he’d have to get past the Great Buffalo in charge of Denton Lodge.’

  ‘The Buffalos are something else, Jack,’ Waters corrected.

  ‘Yeah, I know that – but this particular Mason could well be mistaken for a giant mammal of some description.’

  ‘You know who runs the Lodge?’ Myles asked in amazement. �
�How?’

  Frost paused in his chewing and took a swig of wine. ‘I’m a detective, aren’t I? I know these things.’

  Very fond of you. The words had played round and round in Sue Clarke’s head since she’d switched off the bedside light and tried to get to sleep. Now half an hour later her conscience pricked her: it was wrong to be more preoccupied with what Simms had felt for her than the fact he’d been murdered. But she couldn’t shake the disappointment of hearing the phrase very fond. It meant nothing – people are fond of dogs, or aunties, or well-worn items of clothing, she thought. It was a million miles from marriage and planning a future together. Maybe Derek was too embarrassed to let on to Frost. No … he’d say nothing if that was the case. Maybe Frost was lying? But why would he do that?

  The sharp trill of the phone pierced the black silence. Startled, she reached too quickly for the receiver, knocking over the glass of water that rested on the bedside table. She cursed as the glass rolled on to the carpet and under the bed.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Evening, Detective Clarke.’ It was the soft tones of Night Sergeant Johnny Johnson. ‘Denton General just called. Albert Benson has just had a heart attack.’

  ‘Who?’ Clarke didn’t recognize the name. Was it the lad shot at the Coconut Grove?

  ‘I believe him to be the gentleman who was shot on Friday – the payroll robbery. Delayed shock.’

  Clarke rubbed her forehead frantically. ‘I see – but why are you calling me? Doesn’t matter … Where’s Frost?’

  ‘We can’t locate Sergeant Frost.’

  ‘I see. So am I needed at the station?’

  ‘No, miss, just thought you should know.’

  ‘Very good. Goodnight, Sergeant.’

  ‘Goodnight, miss.’

  Of course, as the man had died, it would up the ante from armed robbery possibly to murder, or at the very least manslaughter. Clarke gave an involuntary shudder in her cold room, the heating having long since turned itself off. The bodies were piling up. Granted, she was tired and emotional, but she couldn’t help wondering whether she was cut out for police work, or perhaps better suited to something more sedate. Her mother was a librarian, and seemed happy on it, indeed looked younger than Frost, despite being ten years his senior. Did she really want to end up like Frost? Maybe pregnancy was affecting her state of mind; she’d not felt like this before. All the same, her mother wouldn’t be troubled in the middle of the night by overdue library books, of that much she was certain.