R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

‘Your choice,’ said Frost, standing and buttoning up his mac. ‘Let us know when he puts rat poison in your baby food and cuts holes in your condoms.’

‘Hold it!’ barked Beazley, flapping Frost back into the chair with his hand. He tugged at his lower lip in thought, drumming the desk with a gold fountain pen. Then he chucked the fountain pen down on the desk and jabbed a key on his phone. ‘Archer, get your arse in here now.’

Barely had he released the key than there was a timid tap at his door and a little man with thinning, sandy hair blinked nervously at him.

‘You wanted me, Mr Beazley?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Beazley. ‘I want a cheque made out right away for fifty thousand pounds.’

‘Who shall I make it out to?’ asked Archer.

Beazley stared at him in mock surprise, as if he was being asked a stupid question. ‘How the bloody hell do I know?’ He turned to Frost. ‘Who does he make it out to?’

Frost read from the blackmail letter. ‘Fortress Building Society account number FDZ32432.’

Archer had barely left the room before he was back, breathlessly clutching a large chequebook which he placed on the desk in front of Beazley. He stood back deferentially. With barely a glance at it, Beazley uncapped his fountain pen and slashed his signature as if signing for petty cash, then ripped out the cheque, more or less along the perforation, and handed it to Frost, who stuffed it unceremoniously into his mac pocket.

‘Right, Mr Beazley, leave the rest to us.’

Beazley flailed a podgy hand of dismissal and returned to his study of the store’s trading figures with a series of grunts and groans. As Frost left, Beazley was already on the phone to his hapless grocery manager. ‘Hoskins, what the bleeding hell is up with your weekend sales figures…?’

Once outside Beazley’s office, Frost dragged his cigarettes from his pocket and lit up. As he walked away, someone called out that he had dropped something. He looked down. Bloody hell! It was the flaming fifty-thousand-pound cheque. He scooped it up and put it in the comparative safety of his inside jacket pocket. ‘Your money’s safe with me, Mr Beazley,’ he told himself.

The note on Frost’s desk, pinned down by his ashtray, screamed in red block capitals: ‘MR MULLETT WANTS TO SEE YOU URGENTLY’. His internal and outside phones both rang together. Mullett would be on the internal, so he answered the other one first. It was PC Jordan.

‘Inspector, we’re over at that girl Audrey’s house. I think you’d better get over here right away and hear what her mother has got to say about Debbie’s father.’

Audrey, a serious-looking twelve-year-old wearing glasses, looked troubled.

Her mother – dark-haired, plumpish, in her late thirties – nodded grimly to Frost in greeting.

‘What have you got to tell me, Mrs Glisson?’ he asked.

She took one of Frost’s offered cigarettes. He lit up for both of them. She inhaled deeply and held the smoke in her lungs for a while before exhaling, a look of bliss on her face. A woman after Frost’s own heart. ‘I shouldn’t really be smoking. Those health warnings on the packets frighten the life out of me.’

‘It’s not a very good sales pitch, is it?’ smiled Frost. ‘So what can you tell us?’

Mrs Glisson turned to her daughter. ‘Go on, Audrey. Tell the inspector.’

‘Mum!’ protested the girl, shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Tell the detective why you stopped going to sleepovers at Debbie’s house – go on, tell him.’

Audrey lowered her head and talked to the tabletop. ‘It was her dad. He used to keep bursting in on us when we were getting undressed for bed. Never knocked or anything. And when I was in the shower, he’d charge in saying, “Oops, sorry, didn’t know you were there.” But he knew. He’d taken the bolt off the door – said it was broken.’

‘Did he touch you – interfere with you?’

‘No. I made sure I wasn’t alone when he was about.’

‘He’s a dirty bastard,’ said her mother.

‘What did Debbie say about this?’ Frost asked.

‘She seemed embarrassed… wouldn’t talk about it. She started to tell me something about him once, then clammed up.’

‘If you ask me, he’s been abusing his own daughter,’ offered Mrs Glisson, flipping ash on the floor. ‘If Debbie’s gone missing, Audrey reckons she’s either run away from her father or the sod’s done her in.’

‘Oh, Mum!’ protested Audrey. ‘I told you not to tell anyone.’

‘Debbie’s gone missing,’ insisted her mother. ‘You shouldn’t hide these things. It could be serious

‘It may not be that bad,’ Frost told them. ‘She could have run off with her boyfriend.’

‘What, Tom Harris?’ asked Audrey. ‘She might have done. She said they were going to get up to larks round his house this week while his mum and dad were away.’

‘They’re not round the parents’ house,’ Frost told her. ‘We’ve checked.’ Then he remembered. ‘Debbie took her new bikini with her. Any idea why?’

‘I know she and Tom used to go skinny dipping in that lake in the woods. She might have gone there.’

Skinny dipping? thought Frost. Bloody hell. What a lucky bastard that Tom is. In my day, if you caught sight of a girl’s bare knee you had to have a cold shower. But you wouldn’t take a bikini if you were going skinny dipping.

He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’

The girl and her mother both shook their heads.

‘Well, thanks for the information. If you think of anything else that might help, let me know.’ He scribbled his name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to the mother. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’

‘What do you reckon, Inspector?’ Simms asked when they were outside

Frost frowned thoughtfully. ‘The father definitely sounds like a dirty bastard. He might be interfering with his daughter, but we’ve got no proof. His wife knows something, but I don’t think she’d tell. When Debbie turns up we can see if she wants to make a complaint, but we’ve got to find her first.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and stared across to the dark shape of Denton Woods. ‘Skinny bloody dipping? A bit too flaming cold for that, surely. Just to be on the safe side, after you drop me off, go and have a look round the lake. It’s deep enough to drown in and you could easily get cramp swimming when it’s cold. See if their bikes are there.’ In his pocket, his hand found a piece of paper. The building-society account number given by the blackmailer. Shit, he’d forgotten about it… and he still had the cheque to pay in and he also hadn’t checked to see if the account details were genuine.

His mobile played its little tune. It was Bill Wells.

‘Jack, Mr Mullett’s going spare. He wants to see you right now.’

‘I think he fancies me,’ said Frost. ‘Tell him I’m on my way. And Bill, would you contact the Fortress Building Society and see who, if any one, has an account number FDZ32432.’

Mullett slid the heavy glass ashtray across just too late to stop Frost’s cigarette dropping a cylinder of ash on his desk. ‘His daughter,’ he said, ‘missing since last night and you tell him you have no intention of organising a search?’

‘Not at this stage,’ said Frost. ‘I’m more or less convinced she’s done a runner with her boyfriend…’ His voice tailed off. Doing his usual trick of reading upside-down memos in Mullett’s in-tray, he spotted one from Head Office with his name at the top. He carefully moved his chair forward so he could read what it was about, but Mullett forestalled him, quickly pulling the in-tray away and dropping some other papers on top. Frost’s eyes narrowed. Hello, what’s the slimy bastard up to?