R. Wingfield - A Touch of Frost

A spluttering attempt at a whistle from outside. The door opened. “Someone’s coming,” hissed Webster. With fingers that didn’t seem to want to act quickly, Frost stuffed the photographs back into the wallet. One fell to the floor. He snatched it up, then looked at it again. A bedroom like all the others. Shelby lying on the bed, facing the camera. A woman poised over him, back to camera. Both were naked. There was no way the woman could be identified, but something in the room was familiar.

No time for further study. Back it went into the wallet, and the rubber band was slipped over. Hastily, even as voices were raised outside, he rammed the wallet back on the shelf and slammed the door shut. It clanged as if hit by a hammer. He hadn’t time to move away from the locker before Johnny Johnson came in. Johnson looked at Frost, looked at the locker then closed the door behind him.

“What are you up to, Jack?”

“Nothing,” said Frost, feeling like the window cleaner caught with trousers down by the husband.

“Mr. Mullett has ordered me to find you and take you by the scruff of the neck to the interview room.”

“On our way,” said Frost.

When the inspector had left, the sergeant read the name tag on the locker. He tried the handle. It was locked. Frost was up to something, and Shelby was involved. Right,

Jack Frost, he thought. You’ve got some explaining to do.

“Well?” asked Webster as they quickened their pace to the interview room.

“Nothing,” replied Frost. “Not a bloody thing.”

Roger Miller was sprawled on one of the chairs in the interview room, dragging silently at a cigarette. At his solicitor’s suggestion he had discarded his trendy gear and was wearing a quiet grey business suit to present an illusion of soberness and responsibility.

Next to him, sitting bolt upright, was his solicitor, Gerald Moore, fat, pompous, and humourless, conservatively dressed in black. For the umpteenth time Moore sifted through his briefcase and rearranged the order of his papers.

Roger pushed himself up from the chair. “I’m not prepared to wait here any longer. I’m going.”

Gerald Moore raised an eyebrow in mild reproach. “Your father would wish you to stay.” The solicitor returned to his briefcase sifting.

Roger tore the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it on the floor. He’d been stuck in this miserable little room for nearly two hours. He wasn’t used to people keeping him waiting. Usually he only had to mention that he was Sir Charles Miller’s son and doors were flung open.

The door of the interview room was flung open, and a dishevelled character in a crumpled suit slouched in, immediately followed by a smartly dressed, younger, bearded man. Obviously a plainclothes man and his prisoner, concluded the solicitor, frowning at the intrusion and wondering if the scruffy prisoner was dangerous. He was about to point out they had come to the wrong room when the criminal dragged a chair over to the table, flopped down opposite his client, and introduced himself as Detective Inspector Frost.

A detective! thought Moore. This tramp! No wonder the crime rate is soaring.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, gents,” said Frost, ‘but a murder inquiry was taking our attention. I understand you’ve got something to tell us, Mr. Miller?”

Miller started to speak, but Moore cleared his throat loudly to remind his client that he was to be the spokesman. You had to watch every word you said to the police. “My client has prepared a statement. This is it.” He removed a neatly typed sheet of paper from his briefcase and slid it over to the inspector. Frost let it lie on the table.

“Before I read it, sir, spot of good news. We’ve found your Jag, Mr. Miller. It was parked in a lay-by near Denton Woods. Fairly undamaged once the blood and bits of brain have been washed off it, it should be as good as new.”

The solicitor tightened his lips.

“Naturally we are pleased at the recovery of the car,” he said, making it absolutely clear that he was the one who was going to do all the talking, ‘but we are most distressed that while it was stolen and out of my client’s possession, it was involved in a death.”

“Stolen?” said Frost. “Is that what’s supposed to have happened to it?”,

Roger Miller thrust his face forward. He didn’t like the attitude of this nondescript little pip-squeak. “I’m here to answer questions, not listen to your cheap insinuations.”

“Right,” said Frost, blandly, giving the twenty-year-old youth a twitch of a smile, “I’ll read your statement and then ask my questions.”

The statement read:

I returned home from the office at 6.25 p.m. I had brought some work back with me and I worked on it in my flat until 11.15 p.m.” at which time I realized that some papers I needed to complete my work were still in my briefcase in my car. At 11.20 p.m. I left the flat and walked around the corner to Norman Grove, where I had left my car, a Jaguar, registration number ULU 63A. To my concern, the car was not there. I presumed it had been stolen so I immediately phoned Denton Police Station to report this fact. I then returned to my flat and went to bed. The first I knew about the tragic accident which caused the sad death of Mr. Hickman was when a reporter from the Denton Echo phoned me at my office at two minutes past nine this morning. I was extremely distressed to learn that my car was apparently involved, and I immediately contacted my solicitor and arranged to come to the police to help them in whatever way I can.

“Beautifully typed,” commented Frost when he finished reading it. He let it fall to the table. “You work for your father, I understand, Mr. Miller?”

It was the solicitor who confirmed for his client. “That is correct.

In the head office of Miller Properties Ltd, the holding company.”

“I see,” said Frost, his head swinging from one man to the other. “And you’ve approved this statement, Mr. Moore?”

“Yes, and my client is now prepared to sign it.”

“I want to sign it right now,” said Roger Miller, pulling a rolled-gold Parker pen from his pocket. “I’ve wasted two hours already and I’ve got better things to do with my time than hang about here.”

“And I’m sure Mr. Hickman would have had better things to do with his time than having to hang about on a slab in the morgue,” murmured Frost, ‘but we can’t always choose what happens.”

“For a public servant you’re bloody insolent,” snapped the youth hotly, his pen scratching his signature across the foot of the page. He thrust the paper at Frost. “Can I go now?” He jerked his head at his solicitor, implying that whatever the inspector’s answer, they were leaving.

“Just a few minor points if you don’t mind, Air Miller,” said Frost, whose finger had directed Webster to stand in front of the door, blocking their exit. “Please sit down. It shouldn’t take long.” He gave them a disarming smile as they returned to their chairs. “My trouble is, gentlemen, I’m not very bright. There are a couple of things in your statement that don’t seem to add up. I’m sure it’s my stupidity, so if you could see your way clear to explaining…”

“I’m sure it’s your stupidity, too,” said Miller condescendingly, ‘but try to be as quick as you can.”

Frost scratched his head as if completely out of his depth. “The first thing that puzzled me, sir, is the question of your leaving your briefcase in the Jag.”

Miller gave Frost a patronising smile. “And why should that puzzle you, Inspector?”

“According to all the witnesses we’ve spoken to, sir, you never drive the Jag to your office. You always use the firm’s car, the Porsche. So how did your briefcase get in the Jag?”