R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

‘What particular sod did you have in mind?’ asked Frost.

‘The burglar. The sod who pinched my stuff.’ Frost blinked at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t you know what is going on in your own flaming station? I was burgled, wasn’t I? Sod broke in while we were away in the caravan on holiday. When I came back, the place had been done over. I’d been burgled.’

‘Who’d burgle this bleeding place?’ said Frost.

‘You’d spend more on petrol driving here than you could nick. You’re saying you had a burglary and you didn’t report it?’

‘Of course I flaming well reported it. A little fat bloke came round.’

‘Detective Sergeant Hanlon?’

‘That’s him. And he was bloody useless. Nosed around, got some bloke to chuck fingerprint powder all over the place, then pissed off. That was the last I heard. I thought you were here to tell me you’d caught him.’

‘You used to do a bit of burglary yourself, Bill. This sounds like an insurance fiddle to me.’

‘Insurance fiddle? Don’t talk to me about insurance companies. They’re quick to take your flaming premium, but when you’re unlucky enough to be robbed, they won’t pay out. They want receipts. Who the hell keeps receipts?’

‘Especially when you nicked the stuff in the first place,’ said Frost, stuffing the search warrant back in his mac pocket. ‘What was taken?’

‘He turned the place over – made a right bleeding mess of it. Flaming amateur, if you ask me. All he took was an old wallet with a couple of quid in it.’

‘And the wallet was all you claimed for on your insurance policy?’

Billy spread his hands and shrugged. ‘All right, Inspector Frost, I’ll come clean as it’s you. I might have exaggerated about the brand-new telly and DVD player and the wife’s designer clothes, but all he took was the wallet with a couple of quid in it.’

‘Was there anything else in the wallet apart from money?’

‘Condoms, you mean? No, the wife has her own method of birth control. She bolts the bedroom door.’ He wheezed heartily at his own joke.

‘What about a cashpoint card for the Fortress Building Society?’

King screwed up his face in thought. ‘Might have been. I haven’t dealt with them for ages. I’m with the Woolwich now.’ He frowned. ‘Are you telling me the bastard took that as well?’ He reached for the phone. ‘I’m closing my account. There wasn’t much left in it, but that bastard isn’t going to have it.’

Frost knocked Billy’s hand away from the phone. ‘No, don’t do anything. If he tries to use it, Billy, we can get him.’ He pushed himself up from the chair. He’d check with Hanlon, but King’s story had the ring of truth about it, and for all his faults, Billy wasn’t the kind of bloke who would go around poisoning baby food. He paused as a thought struck him. The pin number. The blackmailer would be unable to withdraw money without the pin number. ‘Was your pin number in the wallet?’

‘Of course it was. Safest place for it. I wrote it on the back of the card.’

Frost smiled. ‘What would crooks do without prats like you, Billy?’ He waved away the offer of a cup of tea and remembered his long-delayed wee. ‘Do you think I could use your toilet?’

‘But I haven’t got a report of a flaming burglary;’ said Frost, riffling once more through his over flowing in-tray. ‘I felt a bigger prat than usual, going in there with a search warrant to find a card that had already been nicked.’

‘I definitely sent you a copy, Jack,’ insisted Hanlon. ‘I gave it to that Welsh bloke.’

‘Gave it to the Welsh bloke?’ exploded Frost, pushing his in-tray away. ‘You might just as well have flushed it down the flaming karzy.’ He opened his office door and bellowed down the corridor. ‘Lloyd flaming George. Come here!’

DC Morgan came trotting in, not knowing his offence, but wearing his hang-dog look of contrition, just in case. ‘You wanted me, Guv?’

‘No,’ snapped Frost. ‘I don’t flaming want you, but I’m stuck with you. The crime report Hanlon gave you?’

Morgan looked blank for a moment, then brightened. ‘All filed away, Guv.’ He pulled open the drawer of the filing cabinet.

‘You didn’t think I should see it first – just in case I wanted to know what was going on?’ He held his hand out for the report and skimmed through it. ‘Smashed a back window to get in and cut his hand doing so. That rings a bell. Did we take a sample for DNA?’

‘Not worth the expense, Jack,’ Hanlon told him. ‘All he’d taken was a wallet with a few quid in it. SOCO found the odd print, but couldn’t match them with anyone on record.’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ said Frost. ‘This bloke is a rank amateur, like flaming Taffy here. Plenty of stuff he could have pinched, but he didn’t touch it because he wouldn’t know where to sell it. All he could handle was money and he was flaming lucky to find the wallet.’

‘And you reckon this is the same bloke who’s blackmailing the supermarket?’

‘Yes. Now he’s got the account details, he can have the hush money paid in.’

‘But for all he knew, when Billy King realised it was pinched he’d have stopped it with the building society.’

‘I doubt he thought that far ahead, Arthur. He probably tried the card out, found it worked and reckoned he was on to a winner. A flaming amateur trying for the big time. Shouldn’t be hard to nab the sod. We’ll pay Beazley’s cheque in, then we’ll watch all the cashpoints and when our blackmailer tries to make a withdrawal, we’ve got him.’

Frost stared again at the cheque with Beazley’s signature scrawled along the bottom. He blew off the ash that had fallen from his cigarette and looked across the desk at DC Morgan. ‘You know, Taff, with my forgery skills I reckon I could overwrite this with my name, cash it and do a bunk to somewhere exotic like Bangladesh or Basildon.’

Morgan grinned. ‘But it wouldn’t be honest, Guv.’

Frost nodded. ‘Agreed, but that wouldn’t stop me. It would be the fact that I would be letting that nice Mr Beazley down. I’d hate to think of his little, fat, greasy lower lip quivering with disappointment.’ He held out the cheque and passbook. ‘Nip across to the building society and give it to. Mr Selby, the manager. He’s expecting you. Tell him you’re the dopey cop I told him about.’ He pushed himself up from his chair. ‘Right. Let’s break the news to Hornrim Harry that his overtime bill is going to hit the roof tonight when we are out covering all the cashpoints’ He made a mental list of all the things that could possibly go wrong with the operation and shuddered. ‘This is going to be a complete balls-up, Taffy. I just know it.’

Morgan grinned. ‘I have every faith in you, Guv.’

‘That’s because you’re a prat, and a Welsh one at that,’ said Frost, making his way to the old log cabin.

Mullett wasn’t in his office. In fact the entire station seemed strangely deserted. Frost checked his watch, then he remembered. Bleeding hell! Fatty Arbuckle’s meeting. The one he had promised not to be late for.

Frost hastened to the main Incident Room, pausing at the door to listen. Skinner’s voice was booming out. He turned the door handle very carefully, hoping to slip in unobserved, but as he entered he received the full force of Skinner’s blistering glare. All heads turned to look at him, including Hornrim Harry, who was seated alongside Skinner and was doing his ‘frowning and tutting’ disapproval act.

‘Ah, Inspector Frost. Nice of you to join us,’ sneered Skinner.

‘No problem,’ beamed Frost, completely unfazed. ‘I didn’t have anything else to do.’ Sarcasm just bounced off him. He was relieved to see that his usual seat – back row, near the door – was vacant, so perhaps he could sneak out when things got boring.