R. Wingfield - Night Frost

Frost looked up. ‘That’s right, Super. Old lady living alone. He got away with about?80 in used fivers.’

‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Inspector,’ said Mullett, ‘but this would be the sixteenth such break-in in three weeks, the victims all senior citizens?’

Frost gave a vague shrug. ‘I haven’t been counting, but you’re probably not far out.’

‘I am exactly right,’ snapped Mullett. ‘Sixteen — all senior citizens, most of them robbed of their life savings. What are we doing about it?’

‘What the hell can we do about it?’ replied Frost. ‘He leaves no clues and nobody sees him. It doesn’t give us much to go on.’

‘What does he take?’ asked Gilmore. ‘If it’s jewe1lery have we got all the local fences covered?’

‘Good point!’ agreed Mullett.

‘Of course I’ve got the fences covered,’ replied Frost ‘Even a dim old twat like me thought of that. If anyone tries to sell any of the loot, I’ll be contacted. But he takes very little jewellery. He concentrates on cash — used notes Many of these old people mistrust banks. They keep wads of banknotes in the house. They stick it in the wardrobe or in the middle drawer of the dressing table under the condoms and the leather knickers. They think no-one will find it there — but it’s the first place he looks.’

‘You say there’s been no clues,’ said Mullett. ‘I understand people have spotted a blue van in the vicinity. That should give you something to go on. There can’t be that many blue vans in Denton.’

‘Sixteen burglaries,’ said Frost. ‘In two instances, we found neighbours who claim they saw a van parked in the vicinity late at night. One thought it was a small blue van, another a biggish van, dark-coloured, could have been blue.’

‘But it’s a lead,’ insisted Mullett. ‘Do a check on all blue vans.’

‘Do you know precisely how many blue vans there are in the Denton area alone?’ asked Frost, producing and waving a small notebook.

Mullett flapped a hand. He didn’t want to know, which was a relief to Frost as he had no idea himself, although he was fully prepared to pluck an astronomical figure out of thin air if Mullett called his bluff ‘It doesn’t matter how many there are, Inspector. We’ve got a computer. It can churn out the information in seconds.’

‘But the computer can’t check through it and knock on bloody doors and question people,’ said Frost. ‘That’s what us poor sods would have to do and it could take weeks — months — and still lead nowhere.’

Mullett gave Frost a vinegary smile. ‘It’s easy to be negative, Inspector. I offer suggestions, you offer objections. I’m getting a lot of flak from the press on this one. I want him caught now. That’s your number one priority. We haven’t got many men, but take as many as you like.’ He frowned with annoyance as Sergeant Wells’ hand kept flapping, trying to attract his attention. Not more of the man’s moans, he hoped. ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

‘With respect, sir. It’s all very well saying Mr Frost can have as many men as he likes, but I’ve still got a night shift to run and I’ve hardly any men to do it. This flaming flu epidemic doesn’t seem to have hit the criminal fraternity yet.’

‘I’m well aware of that, thank you, Sergeant, which brings me to my next point. We’re under strength so some things will have to go by the board. We are going to have to turn a blind eye to many of the minor crimes, even…’ and he flashed a paternal beam in Gilmore’s direction, ‘… suicides which look slightly doubtful. We will not go out of our way to look for trouble. I don’t want any arrests for drunkenness, rowdiness, soliciting, illegal parking, loitering — anything minor like that. We just haven’t got the time or the manpower.’ He smiled at Wells. ‘So that should lighten your load quite a bit, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ mumbled Wells, doubtfully.

‘Fine,’ said Mullett, closing his notepad and turning to go. Then he remembered one other item. ‘Oh — Inspector Frost. I had a visit from the vicar of All Saints and Councillor Vernon this morning. They are very worried at this current wave of mindless vandalism in the cemetery. There was another incident over the weekend. How are the patrols going?’

‘What patrols?’ asked Frost.

‘The anti-vandalism patrols I asked you to organize. I sent you a memo.’

‘I never got it,’ said Frost hastily. It was probably buried somewhere in his in-tray together with all the other stupid rubbish Mullett kept sending him.

‘And I spoke to you personally about it.’

‘Ah — so you did,’ agreed Frost, vaguely remembering Mullett chuntering something about graveyards, ‘but as you so rightly said, Super, we can’t waste time on these piddling trivialities.’

Mullett gave Frost a pitying shake of the head. Hadn’t the man any common sense? ‘There’s no such thing as a piddling triviality when a member of the town council is involved, Inspector. See to it right away — the vulnerable time seems to be between ten and midnight.’

‘I’ve got no-one to send,’ said Frost.

‘Then attend to it yourself, Inspector. These are difficult times, so we act as a team. We’ve all got to pitch in.’ Mullett looked at his watch and yawned. It had been a long day and it was freezing cold in the Briefing Room. Time for him to get home to bed.

Rain dripped down the upturned collar of Frost’s mac. ‘How long have we been here?’ he asked peevishly.

Gilmore wriggled his watch free of his sleeve. ‘Five minutes.’

Frost hunched his shoulders against the cold, penetrating drizzle and wound his scarf tighter around his face to blunt the teeth of the wind chewing on his scarred cheek. As he stamped his feet to try and bring some feeling to his frozen toes, his wet socks squelched in his shoes. ‘This is all a bleeding waste of time,’ he muttered, rasping a match on a weather-eroded headstone. The match splintered, then flared to show the moss-blurred inscription:

George Arthur Jenkins

Born and Died

Feb 6th 1865

Suffer the little children to come unto me

‘There’s one poor little sod who never drew his old age pension,’ he muttered moodily, letting the wind extinguish the match.

The sky was black and heavy with rain and the graveyard looked as lonely and as miserable as a graveyard should look at half-past ten on a cold, wet night. They were in the old Victorian section among weather-eroded angels who wept granite tears over the graves of long-dead children, and where overgrown grass straggled over the crumbling headstones and collapsed graves of their long-dead grief-stricken parents. Through the rain, way over on the far side, Frost could see the serried ranks of stark white marble marking the modern section, where the recently deceased slept an uneasy, decaying sleep. One of the cold marble headstones marked the grave of Frost’s wife. He hadn’t visited it since the funeral.

Detective Sergeant Gilmore, shutting his ears to Frost’s constant moanings, was squinting his eyes, trying to focus through the lashing rain to something over to the left, near an old Victorian crypt. Was it the wind shaking the ivy, or could he see someone moving about?

Frost peered half-heartedly in the direction of Gilmore’s pointing finger and grunted dismissively. ‘There’s sod all there. It’s the wind.’ He perched himself on the infant Jenkins’ headstone and sucked hard at his cigarette. ‘How long have we been here now?’

‘Eight minutes,’ replied Gilmore.

Frost ground his cigarette to death against the headstone and stood up. ‘That’s long enough. We’re going.’

‘But Mr Mullett said…’