Frost at Christmas (19 page)

   A quick tap and the door opened before he could say "Come in."

   "I've come for the empty cups, sir." It was Keith Stringer, the young P.C. from the front office.

   Frost waved a hand to the window ledge.

   "You didn't drink your tea, sir . . ." Mildly reproachful.

   Frost looked up wearily. "Sorry, son, by the time I got here it was cold. Hold on a minute, would you? Put the cups down . . . shut the door."

   The young man looked puzzled, but did as he was told.

   Frost's thumb indicated a chair. "Sit down." He slid a packet of cigarettes across the desk.

   "I don't smoke, sir."

   The inspector grunted and took one himself. "Keith isn't it - Keith Stringer?"

   "Yes, sir."

   "Hmm." Frost rubbed his chin and patted some papers into a neat pile. Outside in the car park the sound of a car door slamming. Frost sighed and shook his head sadly.

   "Tell me, son, how much money have you pinched in total - to within a couple of quid, say?"

   Stringer's eyes widened. He searched the inspector's face for a hidden smile . . . it was a joke, of course. Frost met the gaze steadily. Stringer sprang to his feet, face hot, lips compressed.

   Frost crashed his fist on the desk. "Sit down." The young constable jerked back in his chair, seething with resentment.

   Frost stubbed out the cigarette and poked the butt back into the pocket. "Look son, you probably think me useless and decrepit, and perhaps you're right, but I'd be a real right twit if I couldn't solve a simple case of someone nicking money from my desk drawer . . . money that's always missing after you've been in with the tea . . ."

   Eyes blazed. "I'm not staying here to be insulted, sir. I'm reporting this to the Police Federation Representative, so if you want to say anything further to me . . ."

   The inspector knocked Stringer's hand from the door handle, grabbed him by the tunic, and slung him back in his chair. His eyes were soft and reproachful, his voice calm. "I'll call the Divisional Commander if you like, son, and tell him I want your pockets searched. You see . . . I marked the money . . ."

   Stringer flinched and, as if a plug had been pulled, the color drained from his face. Defiance shriveled and he crumpled in the chair.

   The door opened and the station sergeant's head poked round. "They're ready, Jack . . ." he began, then he felt the electric tension in the air. His head swivelled from the white-faced constable to the stiff figure of Frost behind the desk, the scar on his cheek twitching.

   "Thank you, Sergeant."

   The questioning raised eyebrows were ignored, so the head withdrew tactfully and the door closed.

   Frost relit the cigarette butt and sat on the corner of his desk, dribbling the smoke from his nose. "It's not only my money, son. What about that tramp we found dead - the poor old sod whose quid you pinched? If he had had that quid he might have found himself lodgings for the night and still be alive. He was hunched up in a wooden hut, no bigger than a coffin, frozen to death."

   The constable buried his face in his hards.

   Frost's face was touched with pity. "But if it's any consolation, son, I can't see old Sam wasting a good quid on rubbish like food and lodgings . . . The odds are he'd have blown it on bottles of cheap wine and drunk himself to death a few seconds before the cold got him. So you haven't really got his death on your conscience . . . only the fact that he died
knowing
a copper had stolen his money, and when he came to us to complain, we insulted him and sent him off with a flea in his ear. I hope you feel as rotten about it as I do."

   Stringer raised his head from his hands. "What are you going to do, sir?"

   Frost pinched out the butt and flicked it into his wastepaper basket. "That depends on you, son. You'd better tell me about it."

   The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, said "Later", and dropped it back on the rest. The young man was staring at the floor, lips quivering, but no words came.

   "I'll give you a start to help you, son. Now I'm a rotten driver. When I drive, my eyes are anywhere but on the road. I see lots of things that don't make sense at the time, but I file them away in my mind for future reference. More than once I've seen you coming out of Sammy Jacobs' Betting Shop. Not that there's anything wrong with the odd bet, of course, providing you know when to stop - and providing you visit the shop during business hours. But I've seen you coming out when the shop has been closed."

   "I owe him nearly four hundred quid," said Stringer, his eyes still fixed on the floor.

   Frost whistled silently. "Four hundred quid! It's .going to take a hell of a time repaying that with the odd pennies from my drawer and the occasional quid from a drunken tramp."

   "I'm paying him back twenty pounds a week, sir. I have to give my mother money for my keep, then there's the hire purchase on my car. I'm only left with a couple of quid in my pocket."

   "I see. So any extra little pickings would be a Godsend. Pity you didn't come and tell me, son. I've got more than enough on Sammy Jacobs. But that's not all, is it?"

   "No." Stringer spoke to the ground. "He says a score a week isn't enough. He wants the lot repaid, otherwise he's going to the Divisional Commander. I haven't got that sort of money."

   Frost sniffed. "I suppose Sammy suggested a way out?"

   "Yes, sir. He wanted some information. If I get it to him, he'd let me off the debt."

   Frost felt the corner of the desk boring its way into his buttock. He stood up and rubbed himself. "What information?"

   "He wanted to know when we were going to pull the beat constable off his normal foot patrol to keep watch at Bennington's Bank. As you know, he's being pulled off tonight."

   "And you told him?"

   "Yes, sir."

   Frost clapped his hands together with delight, then dialed Detective Sergeant Hanlon on his internal phone. "Hello, Arthur - Jack Frost. Sad news. You're going to have to forgo your nightly connubials. I've had a tip-off-something big. This Bennington's Bank business, it's just a decoy to draw our chap from his usual beat so someone can pull off a job undisturbed. I've no details, so we'll have to play it clever. We pretend we don't know. The constable stays watching the bank, but you and a couple of your best men are lurking in the vicinity of where the beat copper usually is between, say, two and three in the morning . . . If I knew the exact address I'd have given it to you, Arthur - even I am not that bleeding dim. No--with the search for the kid we can't spare any more men. We keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. I'll be in touch." He swung the phone by the cord and flicked it back into the cradle.

   Stringer was now sitting up straight. He seemed to have pulled himself together. "What happens now, sir?"

   Frost twitched his shoulders. "That's entirely up to you, son. I've got enough on my plate with missing kids, ransom demands, and talking spirits. I'll just say this. You've been a bloody fool and you've been found out by a dim old fool like me, so you haven't been very clever, have you? If you want to keep out of trouble never put yourself in a position where crooks like Sammy Jacobs can blackmail you. Do you want to stay in the Force?"

   "Yes, sir."

   "Then buzz off and behave yourself from now on. And from time to time you might repay the odd copper you've pinched from me. My top drawer's always available - all contributions gratefully received.''

   The phone gave an urgent ring. It was the station sergeant.

   "Frost. Oh - thanks. I'm coming now. What? Oh, just a private matter, nothing that concerns anyone but him and me. I'll tell him."

   He dropped the phone back and looked at the young man.

   "Better get back, son. The station sergeant's got a job for you."

   "Right sir . . . and thanks - "

   But Frost had gone, his footsteps clattering up the corridor. Stringer picked up the cups with a shaking hand. He felt like bursting into tears. The open desk drawer gaped accusingly at him as he passed.

The van bumped in and out of snow-covered potholes and the two policemen in the back, with the shovels and the tarpaulins, cursed as they slithered and cannoned into each other. Frost, wedged tightly between the driver and a dark mustached young constable, was able to do little more than grunt with each jolt.

   "Park by those trees," he said. "We walk from here." The mustached copper was looking queasy. "What's up, son - car sickness?"

   A brisk shake of the head. "No, sir - it's just that I don't like the idea of digging up a body."

   Frost snorted derisively. "It's the winter, son, not the summer. Cor, I remember my first body. All decomposing and rotten . . . half the face eaten away by rats and the weather hot and sticky. I'd have given anything for a nice fresh corpse in the winter. You don't know how lucky you are."

   They waded through thigh-deep drifts at Dead Man's Hollow and Frost cursed himself for not having the foresight to grab a pair of Wellingtons like the rest of his digging party who, properly dressed for the occasion, plodded stoically behind him.

   "Right. The first thing to do is to clear the snow away."

   The snow was light and fluffy, all bulk and no substance, like candy-floss, and it was tiring, unsatisfying work, but at last an area was cleared behind piled, shoveled snow.

   "What now, sir?" asked the driver, breathing heavily and resting on his shovel.

   "Don't look all knowing at me, son," snapped Frost. "I reckon it's a bloody waste of time as well but I wasn't going to call the Divisional Commander a twit to his face and risk not getting a Christmas card. What's the ground like?"

   In reply the driver struck the earth with his shovel. It rang, frozen solid. Digging would be an illegitimate cow's son.

   Frost wound his scarf to just below his eyes. "Prod around lads. If anyone's been digging recently there should be traces." He poked a cigarette through a gap in the scarf and watched them work. His feet were so cold they hurt.

   An excited voice." Inspector!''

   The torch beam picked out broken ground . . . raw earth mixed with decayed leaves where the top surface had been turned over. A patch about eighteen inches square. The others clustered around to study the discovery.

   "Well," snapped Frost, his hands deep in his pockets for warmth, "it won't get any bloody bigger by looking at it. Get digging!"

   "Hardly big enough for a grave," ventured the mustached constable.

   "It may be small," said Frost, "but it's all we've got."

   The man who found it carefully shoveled out loose earth, the torch, like a stage spotlight, following his every movement.

   Frost lost interest. "Just our luck it's some camper's rubbish. If so, you can have my share." The cold had found its way under the folds of the scarf and was chewing and worrying at his scar. The wind started to keen softly at the back of its throat and branches rustled.

   "I've hit something!" called the digger. Then. "Sir!"

   Frost spun round. The cigarette fell from his mouth.

   The beam of the torch held it fast - yellow, dirt-encrusted, but unmistakable. Poking obscenely through the earth was the skeleton of a human hand.

   Frost broke the shocked silence and swore softly. "Just what we bloody-well need!"

   The driver dropped to his knees and examined it closely.

   "It's human, sir."

   "Of course it's bloody human. Anyone else would have been lucky enough to get a dead horse or a cow, but I have to get bloody human remains."

   The earth was too hard for shovels so one of the constables was sent back to the van for some pickaxes, and also to radio Search Control to tell them that the spirits had given a false lead so far as Tracey Uphill was concerned.

   In the distance the sound of a car pulling up, then approaching voices, one of them a woman's - Clive Barnard and W.P.C. Hazel Page.

   "Hello, sir - found something?" asked Clive.

   "A hand, " said Frost. "Why - have you lost one?"

   The
men
moved out of the way so the newcomers could view the discovery.

   "Well, if you've finished admiring it," said Frost, "what did auntie have to say?"

   Clive paused for a moment to heighten the dramatic effect of his bombshell. "Farnham hasn't been to his aunt's for at least three weeks and he wasn't there Sunday."

   Frost lit another cigarette. "I knew he was a liar the minute I saw him. You never can trust randy sods - present company excepted, of course."

   "Shall I bring him in, sir?"

   Frost considered, then shook his head. "Let him sweat until tomorrow. I'm more interested in old Mother Wendle. How did she know something was buried here?"

   "She's a clairvoyant, sir."

   "If the lady wasn't here, I'd say 'shit'," snapped Frost. "I don't believe in ghosts and I don't believe in Father Christmas. She knew it was here and I want to know how she knew."

   A crashing and a cursing as the policeman bringing the picks slipped and fell. He limped toward them and shared out the tools, then told the inspector that Control was sending a doctor and an ambulance.

   "A doctor?" said Frost, nearly losing another cigarette. "Oh, yes, we're not supposed to presume death are we? We're so bloody thick we don't know a dead body when we see one. All right lads, get his chest uncovered . . . the doctor might want to use his stethoscope."

   It was hard going, even with the pickaxes, as they had to chip away carefully to avoid disturbing the position of the bones.

   "Who do you think it was, sir?" asked Hazel.

   "Probably some old tramp who crawled here to die years ago. No relatives, no one's missed him, but we're going to have all the bother of trying to find out who he was."

   Hazel tucked her head deeper into her greatcoat collar. "It'll be difficult to discover the cause of death now, sir."

   Frost nodded. "You're right, love. The police surgeon likes a lot more meat on a corpse than we've got here. Which reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time we had to get the body of this fat woman out of the house? She'd died in her bath - stark naked she was and - "