Morning Frost

by Henry James

  ‘You seem unconcerned. Does Mr Palmer often disappear without leaving any word?’

  ‘I’m not his keeper, am I?’ Nicholson sighed. ‘Last I heard, he was off shooting.’

  ‘Shooting?’

  ‘Yeah, shooting birds. Pheasants.’ Waters knew Pumpy had a passion for blasting anything that moved on his farm, in line with his aspirations to be a country gent. ‘That time of year, ain’t it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Do you partake?’

  ‘No, I don’t. We don’t mix socially.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘So you didn’t dine with him Saturday night?’

  ‘“Dine with him”?’ Nicholson sneered. ‘Forgive me, Officer, but are you listening to me? I last saw him Friday and I don’t socialize with him. Get it?’

  Waters was unfazed by the barely disguised aggression; he was trying to slowly draw the man out from behind the tinted lenses. Attempting to bully such a character wouldn’t work; irritating and teasing him might prove more successful than heavy-duty tactics. Waters jotted down a line in his notebook. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Are you trying to wind me up? Wait—’ Nicholson, on the verge of losing his rag, suddenly calmed down. ‘This in connection with Baskin getting shot?’

  ‘What do you think it might be to do with?’

  ‘Ha ha, you might be smart in Denton, Sergeant, but this is Rimmington. Superintendent Kelsey knows we’re not trouble.’

  What was that, Waters wondered – an allusion to police protection? ‘OK, say it is Baskin we’re concerned with …’ Waters felt there was no need to mention Daley; Nicholson might tip Palmer off and they’d never get to the club owner himself.

  ‘Right. There was one of your lot here Friday, asking questions. You think something’s happened to Marty? Like what happened to Harry?’

  ‘The sooner we find him, the sooner we’ll know he’s OK,’ Waters said diplomatically.

  ‘I see.’ Nicholson rocked back in his boss’s chair, thoughtfully. ‘Excuse my firing off there.’ He smiled. ‘Nobody likes to be harassed by the old bill, especially when they’re busy. Look, you might want to tap up these French geezers Marty’s taken a shine to.’

  ‘Frenchmen, in Denton?’ Waters said in mock surprise. ‘Have you a description?’

  ‘They run an antiques shop in Gentlemen’s Walk, right pair of dandies.’

  Waters was struck by a contradiction; if Nicholson didn’t socialize with Palmer, how would he know he kept company with a pair of French antiques dealers, or know where the store was? ‘OK, we’ll check them out. Sue?’ He turned to Clarke who’d remained quiet. ‘You have a few questions for Mr Nicholson.’

  ‘We’re also enquiring about a member of your club – one Paul Game?’

  Waters saw Nicholson’s right eye twitch ever so slightly. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’

  ‘Can you check whether Game was a member? And if so, when he was last here. It would be a big help.’

  ‘Of course.’ He picked up the phone and called the front desk. ‘What did you say the name was again?’ Nicholson muttered into the phone, then looked at Clarke. ‘Been a naughty boy, has he?’

  ‘You might say that,’ cut in Waters. ‘We want him to help us with our enquiries.’

  Nicholson replaced the receiver. ‘Yeah, we have a Game on the books.’

  ‘But not a regular player, then?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Nicholson smiled broadly, displaying badly stained teeth.

  ‘If you don’t recognize the name.’

  ‘I can’t see who’s playing from sitting here, can I, dear?’ he said sharply.

  ‘It’s not your desk, remember?’ Clarke said, getting up. ‘Besides, there’s the mirrored glass.’ She wandered over to the far wall. Nicholson’s gaze pivoted round to follow her.

  Waters kept his eye on Nicholson. ‘You didn’t ask when Game last played here.’

  ‘Huh?’ Nicholson grunted, watching Clarke at the plate glass.

  ‘I said, you didn’t ask the front desk when he last played.’

  Nicholson stood up aggressively. ‘Well, you’re welcome to check the register on your way out.’

  Waters flicked through the Dirty Penguin log book; all manner of barely legible scrawl affronted his vision. He began to wonder whether holding a cue precluded you from holding a pen. The ‘PRINT YOUR NAME’ column was nothing but a collection of smudges and stains.

  Waters had to marshal his feelings: Nicholson was a wrong ’un; he smelt bad – Waters was streetwise enough to know this, and what’s more, Nicholson knew he knew.

  ‘John, over here,’ Clarke called from the rear wall. The foyer was like a hall of mirrors, apart from the back wall, which featured free-standing trophy cabinets. Waters joined Clarke, who was peering at a team photo.

  ‘Check this guy out.’

  ‘Looks miserable there too,’ Waters said, recognizing Nicholson standing at the edge, holding a cue.

  ‘Not him; the blond guy next to him.’

  ‘It’s not – surely?’ And then he read the caption beneath the photo.

  Tuesday (4)

  ‘Louise Daley?’

  ‘Yeah – used to work for you a few years ago.’

  Baskin frowned, and pushed the noxious lunch tray to one side, unfinished. ‘Nah, doesn’t ring a bell. So many sorts tramp through the Grove, be hard pushed to remember them all.’

  Frost shifted in the visitor’s chair to avoid the sharp sunlight piercing the blinds behind the hospital bed. ‘She was mixed up in that spate of bank robberies about a year ago.’

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ he said excitedly, then broke into a violent coughing fit and beat his chest with a club of a fist. ‘Bleedin’ nurses – if they didn’t confiscate me fags I wouldn’t have this cough. Sorry, yeah, I remember Louise; smart. Too smart to be getting her kit off for the likes of me.’

  ‘Quite,’ Frost agreed. ‘Did you treat her roughly?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You know, knock her around a bit.’

  ‘Most certainly not!’ Baskin protested vehemently, as Frost sat back, fearing another coughing fit. ‘What do you take me for!’

  ‘Sorry, Harry, had to ask.’ Frost grimaced. ‘Well, there must be a reason for her to take a pop at you?’

  Baskin shrugged. Frost continued: ‘Daley is pals with Palmer; the most obvious suggestion is that Palmer paid her to bump you off. Are you sure he didn’t have a reason to nobble you?’

  ‘Nah, can’t think of anything.’

  ‘What about that warehouse you tipped me off on – that wasn’t something to do with Palmer? You know, where you reckoned stolen electricals were being stored?’

  ‘Nah; told you – I got no beef with Marty, and would never rat on him. Got a low opinion of me, eh?’ The wounded man looked hurt. ‘The Pumpster was in ’ere only yesterday as it ’appens. Nice of him to pop by.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not a lot. Come to think of it, he was a bit subdued.’

  ‘Maybe he’s worried it might be him next.’

  ‘Maybe. But I don’t think it was him that done it, as I said.’ Baskin sniffed.

  ‘All right, Harry, just trying to piece things together,’ Frost said. ‘What was the deal on the warehouse out at Rainham, anyway? I got that tip from you. Palmer owns that warehouse.’

  ‘Err … Does he? But it’s nothing to do with Pumpy; apart from the snooker. The tip came from an accountant.’

  ‘An accountant? Snooker? What about snooker?’ Frost leaned forward excitedly.

  ‘An accountant who was working for one of the big electrical stores. Game, his name is. Paul Game. Told me there was gear leaving his store for this old place out by Rainham. Someone was “leaving the door open” as it were, making it easy to have it away with stuff.’

  ‘Why’d he tell you?’

  ‘He was drunk at the Coconut Grove one night and told me a
nd Rachel that these guys he’d met at the Dirty Penguin were strong-arming him to half-hitch stuff out of his own store. But it was getting a bit much for him.’

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me – “a bit much”?’

  ‘They were making too many demands on him – getting him to nick more and more gear.’

  ‘But we staked the place out and saw bugger all.’

  ‘Maybe they knew you were on to them. Like my flowers?’ Baskin said, changing the subject and indicating the bouquet on the table, arranged in a vase. ‘Missus brought me them.’

  ‘Lilies,’ Frost pointed out. ‘Maybe the wife wasn’t expecting you out.’

  Silence descended on the small hospital room.

  ‘Harry, why didn’t you tell me all this before?’ Frost resumed eventually.

  ‘I didn’t see it as relevant. The accountant wasn’t going to take a pot-shot at me.’

  Frost suddenly twigged. ‘So you offered to help the accountant out. By snitching a leak to me. And what’s in it for you?’

  Harry sighed. ‘The retailer in question is out on the Lexton Road – Rumbelows.’

  ‘Which happens to back on to the fields not a million miles from the Coconut Grove. Let me guess: you said to him, Slip me a few VCRs out the back and I’ll help you out in return. Meaning, you pocket the goods and tip me off about Rainham, stitching the guy up?’

  ‘I didn’t see it quite like that, Jack. I didn’t stitch the guy up; we agreed you’d come back to me if you found anything, before making an arrest. It was covert.’ Harry started coughing in earnest.

  It was weeks ago and Frost could barely remember, though it sounded plausible. ‘Maybe.’ He fetched his cigarettes out of his mac, took one himself and tossed one on to the bed. ‘You said “they”. Who are “they”?’

  ‘Nobody I’d heard of or remembered. Some fellas he met playing snooker. Small beer.’

  ‘You sure it wasn’t Palmer himself?’

  ‘I told you, his name never came up.’

  ‘And where is this accountant now?’ Frost asked, though already knowing the man’s fate.

  ‘Gone to ground – reckon someone put the frighteners on him.’

  ‘So he’s a bleedin’ liar,’ Frost said crossly. ‘Why didn’t you haul him in?’

  ‘On what grounds?’ Waters countered, unsure why Frost was so angry he’d not arrested Nicholson. ‘Might as well wait until we have something more substantial, after we’ve checked out these French dudes. Why are you so crotchety? Things are going well.’

  ‘Solicitor put me in a bad mood.’

  ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Waters could see something was up, but if Frost didn’t want to talk he couldn’t make him. ‘Well, I’ll head over to Gentlemen’s Walk, then—’

  ‘Wait.’ Frost stood up. ‘We have grounds.’

  Waters stopped in his tracks.

  ‘We have grounds to pull in Nicholson, I mean. Remember last week Clarke was staking out that warehouse at Rainham – nicked VCRs and the like?’

  Clarke looked up from her paperwork.

  ‘Yep – she saw fuck all, bit like me and my phone-box monitoring on Brick Road.’

  ‘She? I am in the room.’

  Frost smiled wanly. ‘The gear came from a bean counter at the Rumbelows superstore on the Lexton Road. The bean counter is none other than one Paul Game.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Game got himself in too deep dealing with some blokes he met at the Dirty Penguin; but it wasn’t Palmer – Harry confirmed that much. There’s every chance this Nicholson character is behind it.’

  Clarke drove the new Sierra fiercely down the narrow country lane. The jubilation she’d experienced knocking Windley to the ground had passed as briefly as the moment itself; now on their way to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere that she’d already spent several cold nights watching she felt nothing but an irrepressible anger.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ she snapped at Frost, who was slumped in the passenger seat staring disinterestedly out of the window. Usually he’d be ticking her off about her erratic driving.

  ‘I’m in a reflective mood.’

  ‘That’s a new one; privilege of rank, is it?’ They’d hardly spoken since their session in the pub on Sunday night. He’d not mentioned his promotion and she’d not congratulated him. Her disappointment at his apparent indifference to her personal situation in the light of Simms’s death had been held at bay whilst dealing with the onslaught at Eagle Lane, but now, out of the station and in close proximity to each other, she felt it rise to the surface. He offered her nothing more, which niggled her further. ‘I can’t imagine what such a mood might reveal.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, nothing.’ He snapped out of his reverie as though suddenly realizing where he was.

  ‘Come off it, Jack. What are you going to do?’ She swerved to miss a cyclist; the lanes were as hazardous during the day as they were at night. ‘I mean, more importantly, what am I going to do?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Yes, do. With Derek gone and this baby …’

  ‘I see. Now is hardly the time. Hey – slow down.’ Frost craned forward, clutching the dashboard. ‘Down here. Park up. We don’t want to lose the element of surprise.’

  The warehouse itself was screened off by a wall of conifers, the roof just peeking above the trees. Clarke wrenched on the stiff new handbrake. ‘How many times have I heard that,’ she sighed. ‘For starters, that poky little flat of mine isn’t a fit place to raise a child; not enough room to swing a cat, no garden …’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’ Frost opened the door gently, his attention on the warehouse. ‘I’m homeless; the old harpy of a mother-in-law is selling the house.’

  ‘What?’ Clarke hissed, but Frost shushed her.

  DS John Waters strolled up Gentlemen’s Walk at a swift pace. A chilly autumn wind funnelled forcefully down the narrow pedestrianized street. Hanlon had spoken to Charles Something-or-Other this morning; Waters reckoned he’d been fobbed off – especially now, subsequent to their bracing chat with Nicholson. He knew where Avalon Antiques was situated: between tatty little Keith’s Records, which he loved to browse in when he had a spare moment, and Tile’s the Bookmakers, which he also visited from time to time, and usually left the poorer as a result of one of Sergeant Wells’s ‘hot’ racing tips. He remembered the antiques place opening and although he welcomed the new lease of life – the premises having been boarded up for six months after the previous occupants went bust – he had been surprised. The shops in that row were cramped inside – not ideal for housing large items of furniture. Still, what did he know about antiques? He pushed open the door, which set off a tinkling bell.

  A young girl hurried to greet him, leaving an elderly couple mulling over a bureau.

  ‘Police?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘That obvious, huh?’

  ‘Well, you don’t look like you’d be interested in Queen Anne furniture.’

  ‘What, because I’m black?’

  Her face fell, and panic spread across her features. ‘I didn’t mean … No, I, err … what I thought …’

  ‘I’m joking.’ He pulled out his ID to reassure her.

  ‘Me too, sorry.’ She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I meant the police have been in here quite a lot lately.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There was the armed robbery, for one.’ She pointed at the artist’s impression Sellotaped to the window. ‘And a chap called only this morning … and there was this other man …’

  Waters could see the girl was flustered. ‘Mr Pierrejean around?’

  ‘No, they’ve left.’

  ‘Left? What, for the day?’

  ‘Charles said they were going for a long weekend – the car looked full.’

  ‘“Long weekend”? It’s Tuesday lunchtime? Can you describe these gentlemen for me, miss?’

  Waters listened as the woman explained all about
her two employers – one white with slicked-back hair, the other a fussy dresser of North African descent – how she had come into contact with them, the interview, and her thrill of working for sophisticated foreigners, who knew ‘simply everything’ about antiques.

  ‘They sound charming,’ Waters replied. ‘Tell me, how were they when they left?’

  ‘How were they?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, what sort of mood were they in?’

  The girl pulled at her bottom lip nervously. ‘Very anxious. Very, very anxious. About what, I couldn’t say …’

  ‘Business not going well?’

  ‘As far as I’m aware, business is not great. We’ve hardly sold a thing.’ She glanced over at the couple in their seventies whose attention had now turned from the Victorian bureau to the intimidating presence of Denton’s only black man. ‘When I asked were they off with the police again they said no, they were going to view a house sale in Lexton.’

  ‘Whoa there, “off with the police”? When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday. A tall, bald man in an overcoat came and escorted them off. I think it was him that telephoned, just before they rushed off today.’

  ‘Are you sure he was a policeman?’

  ‘He didn’t say he was a policeman, no; it was his bearing and his manner …’

  ‘Can you describe him in any more detail? Did he wear steel-framed specs, for instance?’

  ‘Yes, he did, with tinted lenses – is he a colleague of yours?’

  ‘Not really; can you remember any details of the conversation you overheard—’

  The doorbell went behind them. A breathless uniformed officer entered, tipped his helmet and said, ‘Ah, Sergeant Waters, Control said we might find you here.’

  Waters looked to the girl and said, ‘You’re right – the police do have a liking for this place. Yes, Constable?’

  ‘You are required urgently.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Not in front of the young lady.’

  Waters excused himself and stepped outside with the bobby. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘A body has been found – hacked to pieces – in Denton Woods.’

  The wipers were at full tilt. It seemed to Charles that the strained pulsing of the Citroën’s windscreen blades matched the pounding of his anxious heart. The situation was hopelessly out of control.