R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

It didn’t wake the bugger up. No response. “He’s either not in or he’s determined not to answer,” said Frost.

“Well, if he won’t answer the door, there’s not much more we can do,” said Webster.

Frost withdrew his thumb and looked at all the bell pushes. At the bottom was a button marked Caretaker. He thought for a moment, then smiled. “You come with your Uncle Jack and I’ll show you a way of getting inside someone’s place that they never taught you at police college.”

Wondering what the old fool was up to now, Webster followed him back across the road to the phone box. Frost draped his handkerchief over the receiver and dialled the number of Demon Police Station.

“Denton Police,” answered a tired-sounding Sergeant Wells.

“I’m phoning from outside those new flats at Halley House,” said Frost in a low voice. “There’s a man on the balcony of the fourth floor trying to break into one of the apartments.”

“Can I have your name please, sir?” asked Wells as Frost whipped away the handkerchief and hung up.

“Back to the car, son, quick.”

In the car, Frost’s hand hovered expectantly over the handset, snatching it up as Control called through.

“Control to Mr. Frost, come in, please.”

“Frost.”

“Ridley here, sir. We’ve had a report of someone trying to break into the flats at Halley House. You’re near there, aren’t you?”

“Right outside,” answered Frost. “We’ll attend to it right away.”

The caretaker, an obsequious Uriah Heep in a thick grey dressing gown, kept yawning and jingling his bunch of keys like the jailer at the Bastille. “This is most disturbing,” he said. “The tenants won’t like it one bit. But how could anyone climb up to the balconies from the outside?”

“These cat burglars can get up anywhere,” said Frost, wishing the man would just give him the keys and go. “It was the third balcony along the fourth floor.”

“I’ll come up with you,” said the caretaker. “I don’t want any of my tenants to be disturbed. It’ll give the place a bad name.”

But Frost was quick to decline his kind offer. “He could be armed. We don’t want to expose you to any danger.” The keys were zipped into his hand. “Thank you,

sir. If you hear any gunfire, dial 999.”

The lift purred up to the fourth floor and deposited them on to a red-and-black-patterned carpet which deadened their footsteps as they walked to a mat black door bearing the number 43. Frost pressed the bell push with one hand and hammered at the door with the other. He waited, then hammered again.

“Listen!” he exclaimed, like a bad actor. “Is that a cry for help?” Before Webster could reply that he couldn’t hear a damn thing, Frost unlocked the door with the pass key and stepped inside.

“Mr. Miller?” Silence. Frost slid his hand down the door frame to locate the switch, and clicked on the light. The flat looked and felt empty. They were in a large lounge, its walls decorated with coloured prints of vintage racing cars; the centrepiece was a framed original poster advertising the 1936 Grand Prix at the old Brooklands racing circuit.

On the doormat were a couple of letters. Frost bent and picked them up. One was a circular, the other a letter from Bennington’s Bank, Denton. “Either he doesn’t bother to pick up his post, or he hasn’t been in tonight,” he said, dropping them back where he found them.

“Anyway, he’s not here,” said Webster. “Let’s go.”

“Patience, son, patience,” said Frost and padded across to a half-open door which led to the bedroom. The bed was made up and didn’t appear to have been slept in. Above the bed was a brushed-aluminium framed print of two naked lovers, facing each other, kneeling, mouths open, kissing, their bodies just achingly touching. Frost gave it his full attention, then starting poking into drawers, riffling through their contents.

Webster was getting fidgety and anxious. They had no right to be there, let alone search through private belongings. If Miller came back and caught them, reported them to Mullett… “We ought to leave,” he said edgily. “We shouldn’t be here.”

‘ We shouldn’t, son,” agreed the inspector, ‘but Master Roger should. According to his car-theft report, he was just off to bed when he remembered he’d left his briefcase in his motor. He went out to fetch it, and presto, the Jag had vanished. So why isn’t he in bed, crying his eyes out?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Webster, inching toward the door. “Let’s talk about it back at the station Now what are you doing?”

“Just being nosey, son.” He had opened the sliding doors of a huge built-in wardrobe to expose row upon row of expensive suits packed tight on the rails next to hangers sporting tailored silk shirts, all monogrammed RM. “Don’t you hate the bastard for having all these clothes?” he said. On the wardrobe floor, side by side in serried ranks of shoetrees, were dozens of pairs of hand-sewn leather shoes, intricately patterned in brown and cream. Frost measured one against his own foot. “Do you reckon he’d miss a pair, son?”

Webster folded his arms and waited for the inspector to stop playing his silly games, his eyes constantly moving to the door, waiting for Roger Miller to burst in and demand to know what they were up to.

“All right,” said Frost at last, “I’ve seen all I want to.” He looked at his watch. “Sod the returns, son. Let’s go home.”

I should bloody-well think so, thought Webster.

They gave the worried caretaker his keys back. He had been sitting by his phone, his ears straining for the fusillade of gunshots which, together with the two dead policeman, would give the flats some bad publicity. “Seems clear up there,” announced Frost. He then asked where the tenants kept their cars.

“In our basement car park,” replied the caretaker. “Why?”

“We’d better give it the once-over,” said Frost. “He might be after nicking an expensive motor.”

The caretaker took them down to the basement in the service lift. Some forty cars were parked in areas marked off with the tenants’ flat numbers.

“What do you expect to find?” Webster muttered sarcastically. “The Jag dripping with blood? You don’t think he’d be stupid enough to leave it here?”

“You never know your luck,” said Frost, turning to call to the caretaker. “Where is Mr. Miller’s parking space?”

“Over there in the corner that’s his car.”

Frost looked at Webster in triumph. They squeezed through gaps between cars to reach the section marked Flat 43. But the car parked there wasn’t blue and it wasn’t a Jaguar. It was a black Porsche.

“Of course that’s Mr. Miller’s car,” insisted the caretaker. “He goes to his office every day in that.”

“What about his Jag?” queried Frost.

“There’s only room for one car per tenant. He parks his Jaguar round the corner, down a side-turning.”

Webster didn’t bother to hide his smirk at Frost’s deflation. That was exactly where Miller said the Jag was stolen from. It looked as if his story about the theft might prove to be correct.

With slumped shoulders Frost shuffled back to the lift that would take them up to ground level. Then he remembered one last important question. “Did Mr. Miller drive the Porsche to the office today?”

“Yes,” replied the caretaker, “I saw him.”

Webster couldn’t understand why that answer made Frost look a lot more cheerful.

Back across the road to the Cortina. The car radio was buzzing away.

“Control to Mr. Frost. Come in, please,” pleaded Bill Wells for the twentieth time.

“Frost!”

“Thank God I’ve caught you, Jack. I’ve just spoken to Mr. Mullett about this hit-and-run business. He’s going spare. He says on no account repeat no account are you to attempt to contact Roger Miller. He wants this handled with kid gloves and everything done strictly according to the book. So please, Jack, stay away.”