R. Wingfield - Frost at Christmas

The station sergeant backed away until the wall stopped him, then spoke in the careful tones of an expert telling his pupil how to defuse a live bomb.

"Now step back, Sam. Don't sit down. Don't touch anything. Just stand there… and whatever you do, don't move! Good. Now we've only got to disinfect that one little spot." He fanned his face vigorously with his notebook.

The old tramp glowered with red-rimmed, watery eyes set deep in a gray-stubbled, leathery face.

"Never mind the bleedin' insults. Where's my quid?"

Wells held up a hand and explained patiently. "Now listen, Sam. You had six pence on you when we picked you up. Six pence is not a quid. A quid is one of these pieces of paper with the Queen's head on it, and you didn't have one. You came in with six pence and you were given six pence when we turned you out. We didn't charge a penny for our hospitality, nor for the fact that you were sick all over our nice clean floor. You had that on the taxpayers." He explained to Frost, "Sleeping rough, drinking meths, and urinating on the gravestones in the churchyard."

The old man had built up a fresh head of indignation. "I wasn't as bloody drunk as all that. I had a pound note and six pence. Your copper put it in an envelope, and when he give it back to me the quid had gone."

Wells tried again. "The quid was never there, Sam. Besides, we count the money out and you sign for it as being correct. We hold your evil-smelling mark on a receipt in full discharge of your six pennies."

Cracked lips curled back to show broken brown stumps. "I never signed no receipt."

"The cross might have been forged, Sam, but the smell was unmistakable. You were too full of meths… you wouldn't have known what you were doing."

"I know how much I had. I want my quid."

"Where did you get the pound from, Sam?" asked Frost. "Not been selling your body, I hope."

Sam spun round and Frost jumped back as the aroma nudged its way toward him.

"I… I found it." It was said with defiance, but he wouldn't meet Frost's eye.

"So, now you've lost it," murmured the sergeant. "Easy come, easy go."

A smolder of hate. "That young copper pinched it."

The station sergeant brought a large thick ledger from beneath the desk and banged it down on the counter.

"Right, Sam. You've made a very serious accusation. I take it you're going to prefer charges."

The face screwed up, the red dots of eyes burned as he swung his head from one to the other of them like a rat cornered between two terriers. "And a fat lot of bleedin' good that would do me. You'd all lie your effing heads off."

He hobbled out into the fresh air. It took a good thirty minutes with doors and windows open to persuade the smell he'd brought in with him to do likewise.

"You've got to know how to handle these sods," said Wells, poking the ledger back. "Who does he think is going to touch his money after he's wiped his grimy fingers over it?"

The internal phone buzzed. Wells answered it. "Oh. Yes, sir. He's on his way." The maroon scarf streaked past his eyes and off down the corridor to Mullett's office.

"These are the cells," said P.C. Keith Stringer, who had been detailed to show the new man around.

Clive grunted.

"You know," explained Stringer. "Where we keep the prisoners until we can get them to court." He pushed open an iron door. "This is the drunk cell with the drain, so we can hose the sick down…"

Clive's impatience burst. "Look, I have been in a police station before, you know. How long have you been on the Force?"

"Three months," replied the younger man, proudly.

"And I've been in it for two years-in one of the toughest areas of London. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know, so just show me where things are, don't explain them tome."

Stringer's face reddened. "Sorry. I was only trying to help." His expression cheered up as the door to the cell section opened and another uniformed man stepped in.

"Oh, Harry… this is the new chap, Clive Barnard from London. Clive-Harry Dobson."

The two men shook hands. Dobson was about Clive's age, a good-looking, curly haired man with an innocent expression.

"Young Keith showing you the ropes, is he?"

"Nothing I can show him," said Keith. "He knows it all."

"I wish I could work in London," said Dobson. "Do me a favor, Keith. Come with me to fetch the prisoners' breakfasts. They should send them down, but you know how short-handed we are with this search."

"Sure," replied Keith. "Are the prisoners all right to be left?"

Dobson scratched his chin. "Well… as far as I know. The bloke in the end cell's been acting a bit queer, scream ing and sobbing. Off his chump if you ask me, but he's quiet now. Keep an eye on them until we get back, Clive. Shouldn't be long."

Without waiting for his agreement, they were off.

Clive watched them go. Just trotting off and leaving the prisoners-what a way to run a station! In a properly organized station, like London, the man in charge of the cell section stayed put and the food was brought to him.

Better take a look at his charges. His feet rang on the stone flags and the familiar damp uriney carbolic smell tweaked his nose. The first two doors were ajar, the cells unoccupied, but the next was locked. Peering through the peep-hole he saw the occupant, a pimply faced youth with long, dank hair laying on the wall bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. Somehow aware he was being watched the youth jerked two fingers toward the spy-hole.

Another unoccupied cell, then the drunk cell with its floor sloping down to a grated drain. And that seemed to be it. Then he remembered the other prisoner Dobson had mentioned, the queer fellow in the end cell.

The end cell was locked. It was silent within-ominously silent. Clive put his eye to the spy-hole. His heart lurched and stopped. Level with his eye, a pair of legs hung downward, swaying and twisting grotesquely.

The occupant of the cell had hanged himself.

Clive hurled himself. at the door, but of course it was locked. The fools. The bloody fools! They'd left him in charge but had taken the keys. He yelled. His voice echoed back at him but no one came. The chap in the other cell started banging on his door, shouting to know what was going on.

Feeling sick, Clive raced up the stone corridor and out of the cell block. He saw the station sergeant going through a door marked Charge Room. But he had no breath. He croaked incoherently, tugging at the sergeant's uniform to get him to do something, anything. When Wells realized what Barnard was trying to tell him his face drained of color. He snatched the spare bunch of keys from the charge room and tore to the end cell. As he poked the key in the lock, the door swung open.

Clive followed the sergeant into the cell. Sitting on the wall bed, tears of laughter streaming down their faces, were P.C. s Stringer and Dobson. Hanging from the ceiling on the end of a piece of rope was the pair of men's trousers they had stuffed with straw.

The station sergeant smiled. "It's one of the oldest tricks in the game, son. I thought you'd been in a police station before."

Superintendent Mullett was taking sadistic pleasure in making Frost wait. The man had eventually slouched into his office in his usual insolent manner wearing that disgrace of a mac with the frayed sleeves and that ridiculous scarf.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" No apology, nothing.

Without raising his eyes from his correspondence, Mullett flicked a curt wrist toward a chair and deliberately took his time signing his letters, reading them through with studied slowness, and blotting them carefully afterward.

He heard Frost fidget in his chair. Good. The display of his superior's displeasure and the humiliation of being ignored were having the desired effect. His pen crawled at a snail's pace to intensify the torture.