R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

“All quiet,” she reported with relief. No sooner had she said this than one of her patients called out and started bringing up blood.

“Another one for the morgue,” Frost whispered to Webster.

“Mr. CrolPs in the end bed,” called the nurse as she and the student dashed off to attend to the crisis.

Their shoes squeaked as they tiptoed over the highly polished floor to the far bed where a weasel-faced man, his forehead decorated with a strip of sticking plaster, was sleeping noisily. Frost undipped the charts from the end of the bed and studied them. “Hmm. Both ends seem to be in working order. Give him a shake, son.”

Webster’s gentle shake was about ten on the Richter scale. Croll snorted, choked in mid snore then jerked his eyes open, flicking them from side to side as he tried to identify the shapes looming over him in the dark. He groped for the bedside lamp, blinking in surprise as he switched it on.

“Hello, Tommy,” said Frost, his voice generously laced with insincere concern. “How are you?” He scraped a chair across to the bed and sat down.

“Mr. Frost!” Croll fumbled under the pillow for his wristwatch. “It’s quarter past four in the morning!”

“I know,” agreed Frost. “As soon as they told me you were in here, I dropped everything to come and see how you were. You’re a hero, Tommy, a bloody hero.”

“Hero?” echoed Croll uneasily. He never knew how to take the inspector.

“The way you fought like a tiger to try and stop Mr. Baskin’s money being nicked. How’s the poor head?”

Croll touched the sticking plaster and winced. “Terrible, Mr. Frost.

Stabbing pains like red-hot knives.”

Frost nodded sympathetically and stared down the ward. The two nurses had managed to calm the patient and were now straightening and smoothing the bedclothes. “Tell us what happened, Tommy.”

“Not a lot to tell, Mr. Frost. It was all over so quickly.”

“That’s what my girl friends used to say, Tommy.”

Croll forced a grin. Frost always made him feel uneasy. And he wished the inspector would tell him who the bearded bloke hovering in the background was. He had such a miserable face, he looked like an undertaker. “It was like this: Bert went to fetch the car, like always, and I locked myself in. After about five minutes I get the signal. Naturally I think it’s Bert.”

“Naturally,” agreed Frost.

“I unbolts and flings open the door so he can come in when, wham, I’m welted a real right crack round the ear hole.”

“Did you see who hit you?” the bearded bloke asked.

“No, I didn’t but I sodding-well felt him,” replied Croll, his hand again tenderly touching the sticking plaster. “It knocked me out cold. The next thing I know, I’m in here with this roaring great headache. I can stand pain, Mr. Frost, but this is just as though my skull was split open.”

“I saw a bloke with his skull split open once,” said Frost. “A bus had gone right over his head a double-decker, full of passengers even eight standing on the lower deck.

You could hear this scrunching and this squelching and then blood and brains squirted out all over the place. His eyes popped right out of their sockets. We found them in the gutter. I had a job eating my dinner that day.” He switched on a smile as he recalled the nostalgic moment, then abruptly switched it off. “What did you do with the money, Tom?”

Croll, still shuddering from the description of the bus victim, was knocked off balance by Frost’s sudden change of direction. “Money? What money, Mr. Frost?”

“The 5,132 quid you and Bert Harris pinched,” said the bearded one.

“May I drop dead if I’m not telling the truth, Mr. Frost Croll began, his hand on his heart, but Frost cut in before he tempted fate further.

“It had to be an inside job, Tommy. Whoever did it had to know the arrangements and the signal for tonight. Only three people knew: Mr. Baskin, Bert, and you…”

Croll’s head sunk back on the pillow, his eyes showing how hurt he was. “That’s a wicked thing to suggest, Mr. Frost. Look at me wounded in the line of duty. I nearly had my head smashed in.”

“But it wasn’t smashed in enough,” explained Frost patiently. “If your brains had been splattered all over Mr. Baskin’s floor and halfway up his wall, well, I might believe you, but as it is…”

And before Croll realized what he was up to, Frost’s hand had snaked out and ripped the sticking plaster from his forehead. Croll yelled and clapped a hand over his wound, but Frost had already seen it.

“A waste of bloody sticking plaster, Tommy. I’ve seen love bites from toothless women cause deeper wounds than that.”

“I’m injured internally, Mr. Frost,” said Croll, putting a finger to his forehead to see if he was bleeding. “It don’t show on the outside.”

More activity in the ward. The Asian doctor, who seemed to be the only doctor on duty in the entire hospital, flapped in and made for the patient who had called out. Frost now saw that the front of the student nurse’s uniform was one dark, spreading stain of blood. The other nurse was rigging up apparatus for a blood transfusion. She signalled to Frost that she wanted him to leave.

“We’ll chat again tomorrow, Tommy,” said the inspector, moving away from the bed.

Croll pushed himself up. “Mr. Frost, I didn’t do it. I swear.. ”

“I believe you,” beamed Frost. “Just tell me where you’ve hidden the money and I’ll believe you even more.”

When they reached the main corridor they had to press back against the wall so that an orderly, pushing a patient in a stretcher, could pass by. The patient, head swollen by a turban of bandages which were almost as white as his bloodless face, looked a hundred years old.

It was the hit-and-run victim.

At four forty-five in the morning Denton Police Station was a dreary mausoleum, and the flowers Mullett suggested would have made it look more funereal than ever. It echoed with cold emptiness. Only two men were on duty, Police Sergeant Wells and Police Constable Ridley, the controller. Wells, slumped at the front desk, stared at the ticking time bomb the computer had presented him with. The licence plate found at the scene of the hit-and-run had been trotted through the massive memory banks of the master computer system at Swansea. The print-out read:

Registration Mark: ULU 63A

Taxation Class: Private! Light Goods

Make/ Model Jaguar 3.4

Colour: Blue

Registered Keeper: Roger Charles Miller Address: 43 Halley House, Demon.

What the computer didn’t say was that Roger Miller was trouble. Big trouble. He was the son of Sir Charles Miller, member of Parliament for the Denton constituency. And Sir Charles was even bigger trouble. He had money and he had influence, owning businesses as diverse as security organisations, newspapers, and commercial radio stations. He constantly criticised the police in his newspapers, and he was a permanent thorn in the side of the Chief Constable. And it was his son, Roger, a twenty-year old spoiled brat, who had brought seventy-eight-year-old Albert Hickman to the brink of death.

Wells twisted his neck to see what luck Ridley was having in contacting Detective Inspector Frost. “Control to Mr. Frost, come in please.” Over and over, Ridley repeated the message, flicking the receive switch and getting only a mush of static in response. “Still no answer, Sarge.”

“Damn!” said Wells, reaching for the phone. He dialled the first two digits of Mullett’s home number, then changed his mind and banged the receiver down. “Do you think I should phone Mullett?”

“That’s for you to decide, Sarge,” was Ridley’s unhelpful reply.

“You’re in charge.”