R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

“Oh, it’s you, Inspector!”

“I’m afraid so, Harry,” acknowledged Frost, sitting uninvited in the visitor’s armchair and rubbing his legs against the upholstery to dry his trousers. “All the good cops are busy on a rape case. A woman attacked in the woods earlier tonight I hope you’ve got a cast-iron alibi?”

“Do me a favour!” pleaded Baskin, the cufflinks rattling as he flicked a hand to dismiss the bouncer. “I can get all the crumpet I want without moving from this desk. They come knocking on my door begging for it.” He jettisoned the remains of the sandwich into a bin. “I’ve had one hell of a night. First the bloody stripper doesn’t turn up, then the so-called cordon bleu chef burns the bloody meat pies, and lastly, this stinking robbery. So forgive me if I find it hard to raise a smile.” He jabbed a finger in Webster’s direction. “What the hell is that?”

Frost introduced the detective constable.

Baskin found it possible to smile thinly as he recognized the name. “Webster! The cop they kicked out of Braybridge! Blimey, we’re getting all the rejects tonight, aren’t we? You’d better watch out for him, Mr. Frost. He beats inspectors up.”

Webster fought hard to keep his face impassive, but behind the mask his anger was building up a rare old head of steam. It wouldn’t take much …

Frost bounced a thin smile back to the club owner. “He also beats up cheap crooks, Harry, so I wouldn’t upset him if I were you. He could knee you in the groin so hard those ladies you mentioned would be beating on your door in vain. What do you say we get down to business?”

Baskin stood up and carefully adjusted the lines of his dinner jacket.

“This way.”

He took them through a maze of passages to an office near the rear entrance, its door newly scarred with deep gashes in the wood. Webster dropped to one knee to examine it. Baskin looked down with a sneer. “You needn’t get out your magnifying glass, sonny. My men did that. We had to axe our way in. A bloody good door ruined.” He opened the bloody good door and showed them into a small cell of a room… concrete floor, grey emulsioned walls, and a single high window fitted with iron bars. A cheap-looking light-oak desk and a non-matching hard-backed chair comprised the furnishings. On the desk stood a phone and a wired switch.

Baskin checked that the corner of the desk was clean, made doubly sure by treating it to a flick of his silk monogrammed handkerchief, then sat on it.

“A lot of our trade is done by cheque and credit card, but we also get a fair amount of cash sloshing about. It jams up the tills, so twice a night we empty them, bring the cash here to be counted and checked, and then it’s taken to the night safe at Bennington’s Bank. There’s a security man on guard in this room all the time the money’s here. He locks himself in. Take a look at the door.”

They examined the inside of the door, which had two strong bolts top and bottom, a double security lock, and a thick iron bar which could be slotted into holders set tight into the concrete walls.

“Simple but effective,” continued Baskin, swinging his leg as he spoke. “We bung the money in the bank’s special bags, then a second security guard nips off to fetch the motor to take it to the night safe.”

“Do you use the same car each time?” asked Webster.

“Do I look that stupid, sonny?” scoffed Baskin. “If anyone wants to rob me, I make it bloody hard for them. A different set of wheels, a different time, a different route each night.”

Webster said, “And who decides on that?”

“I do, sonny, and I keep it to myself until the very last moment.”

“Don’t call me sonny,” snarled Webster.

“Touchy little sod, isn’t he?” grinned Baskin.

Frost had wandered across the room. Taped to the wall behind the desk was a collection of black-and-white glossy photographs, all of nudes, most of them strippers who had appeared at the club. As he scrutinised the various poses, he said, “So, you’ve got one man locked inside, another fetching the car. Then what?”

“The motor’s brought right up to the rear entrance, just outside here. The driver nips in, taps a prearranged signal on that door. The bloke inside gathers up the money bags, unlocks the door, and within five seconds he’s inside the car on his way to the bank.”

“Is it a different signal each night?” persisted Webster.

“Of course it’s a different bloody signal. I work it out myself and don’t tell them until the very last minute. If the bloke inside gets the right signal, he opens the door; if it’s wrong, he presses that switch, which raises the alarm. This was tonight’s signal.” He rapped out a short pattern of taps on the desk top.

“I can name that tune in one,” muttered Frost, seemingly much more interested in the pinups than in the robbery. “It sounds foolproof to me, Harry. Don’t change it.”

Baskin raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed theatrically. “You’ll have me in stitches, Mr. Frost, with your droll humour. Well, it wasn’t so bloody foolproof tonight, was it? Croll locks himself in with more than five thousand quid. His mate, Harris, waddles off to fetch the motor when, guess what? There’s an urgent phone call for Mr. Harris in the foyer. From the casualty ward of Denton Hospital… matter of life and death. The wooden tops in the foyer call him over the Tannoy. He legs it across the foyer, picks up the phone and this tart says, “Hold on a minute, please, and we’ll get the heart specialist.” As it happens, his old lady has a wonky ticker, so he swallows it and holds on.”

Frost said, “Who spoke on the phone? A man or a woman?”

“A woman supposed to be a nurse, wasn’t she, the bloody slag. Anyway, this burke, this cretin, this lump of horse manure, just holds on for bloody ever listening to sod all. After about six minutes of deafening silence, it suddenly occurs to him that perhaps he’s being taken for a mug. He hangs up and dials his old lady’s house… and she answers the phone, bright and cheerful, fit as a bleeding fiddle. So then it’s his turn to have a heart attack. He nip’s back here, wallops out the signal. No reply. He tries again. Nothing. Finally he plucks up the courage to come and tell me about it. Me and the boys come running. Takes us nearly ten minutes with a sledge hammer and an axe to smash our way in and… surprise, surprise! The money isn’t there any more, but Croll’s out cold on the floor, blood trickling from his head, a surprised look on his stupid face, and a pain in the leg where I booted him.”

Frost poked a cigarette in his mouth and scratched a match on the desk top. “So what happened? How come the foolproof scheme didn’t work?”

Baskin stared at the desk top and tried to erase the mark of Frost’s match with a spit-moistened finger. “You tell me. The ambulance took him away before I could get any proper answers.” He took out his silk handkerchief and worried away at the mark on the desk. “That won’t bloody come off, you know.”

Frost puffed a smoke screen over the blemish. “What did you say his name was?”

“Croll… Tom Croll.” Baskin didn’t miss the quiver of recognition from the inspector. “Don’t tell me the little bastard’s got form? Don’t tell me I’ve employed an ex-con to guard my bloody money? I’ll break both his bleeding legs.”

“Live and let live, Harry,” soothed Frost. “If he doesn’t mind working for a crook, why should you mind employing one? Tommy Croll’s done the odd bit of time, but only for petty stuff. He hasn’t got the bottle to pull off a stunt like this. Where’s the other guard, Harris, the one who got the dodgy phone call?”

Baskin seemed preoccupied in watching his cuff links glitter in the light. “He… er… had a bit of an accident walked into a door hurt his nose and blacked both his eyes. I sent him home to recover.”