R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

Skinner exchanged glances with Mullett, as if to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll soon get rid of this useless bastard for you.’ Mullett nodded and smirked a tight smile of acknowledgement.

Frost was sitting next to the young WPC who had been with the rape victim in the hospital. He didn’t know her name. His warm smile met with a blank stare.

‘Right,’ resumed Skinner. ‘For the benefit of our late arrival I’ll quickly repeat what I said before, as I am sure many of you haven’t taken it in properly. I’ve only been in Denton division a few hours and already I’ve noticed slackness, slovenliness and laziness almost without exception. I hear moans about shortage of man power. If you all put in a full day’s work, there would be no shortage.’ He picked up a sheet of paper and fluttered it at arm’s length. ‘This, in case you haven’t looked at it for some time, is your contract of employment. If you read it, you will be aware of the following points. Point number one: you are allowed one – repeat one – meal break of forty-five minutes per shift. It does not allow you half an hour of extra breaks, morning and afternoon, for tea, coffee, sandwiches and bleeding fairy cakes. I don’t want to see anyone in the canteen outside the official forty-five minutes, unless they are off duty.’

Frost had mentally switched Skinner’s voice off and it was just droning away in the background as he started to work out how many men he would need to stake out the various Fortress Building Society cashpoints. He looked up. Skinner didn’t appear to be looking his way, so he decided this might be a good time to out. He was just opening the door very carefully when Skinner spotted him.

‘Going somewhere, Frost?’

‘Just checking that the door was closed properly. Flaming draught,’ said Frost, slamming it tight and giving the handle a few wiggles. He, turned up his coat collar and faked a shiver, then slunk back in his seat. The fat bastard must have eyes in the back of his head.

‘Now that Inspector Frost has checked the door for us,’ continued Skinner, ‘there are other time-wasting practices that I want rectified. Shift starting times are constantly delayed because officers are wasting time changing from civvies to police uniform and having a bloody good chat about last night’s bleeding football while they do so. The man hours wasted by this would be enough to provide Denton division with three more officers.’ He let his glance roam the faces in front of him as he repeated this to emphasise his point. ‘Three new officers. And probably better flaming officers than we have got now. So in future, ladies and gentlemen, you will change into your police uniform before you leave home and will start your shift the minute you walk through the station doors.’

There was a rumble of discontent. Skinner looked up in mock surprise. ‘Does that present a problem?’

Bill Wells raised a hand.

Skinner jabbed a finger at him. ‘And you are…?’

‘Wells – Sergeant Wells.’

Wells! thought Skinner. Ah yes. The thicky who kept me hanging on the phone this morning. The thicky who thinks he deserves promotion. The thicky who had better watch his bloody step or he’ll be following Frost out of Denton, if not leading the flaming way…

‘Yes, Sergeant Wells?’ he cooed, knowing what was coming and primed to shoot the stupid git down.

‘If I walk to the station in the morning wearing my uniform, people think I’m already on duty and they yell at me to solve their problems – domestic disputes, vandals, missing flaming cats – and all in my own time.’

‘If you saw someone kicking his wife’s teeth in, would you say, “Sorry I’m not on duty yet”? A good policeman is always on duty.’ He dismissed Wells with a derisive twitch of his hand. ‘And, of course,’ he continued, ‘we will also gain man hours if, as I require, you finish your shift dead on time, not half an hour early so you can get changed. You will now leave your uniform on until you get back home.’ He paused. That thicky sergeant had his hand up again. He sighed loudly and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Yes, Sergeant Wells?’

‘Same point as before,’ replied Wells. ‘I’ve finished my shift, I’m walking home and, because I’m still in uniform, I’m going to get dragged into all sorts of things.’

‘The same point, the same answer,’ snapped Skinner. ‘Nearly everyone in this station is not pulling their weight. I exclude Superintendent Mullett, of course.’ Mullett beamed back his acknowledgement. ‘Too many people are slacking, skiving, duty dodging, doing sloppy paperwork, not completing required returns.’ Here he glowered meaningfully at Frost, but the man appeared to have fallen asleep with a lighted cigarette in his mouth. Skinner tightened his lips grimly. The inspector didn’t know what was coming to him! ‘None of this,’ he went on, ‘will be tolerated in future. Any deviation and I’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.’ He turned to Mullett. ‘Anything you’d like to add, sir?’

Mullett shook his head. ‘No, Chief Inspector. I think you have covered all points admirably.’

Everyone except Frost stood as Mullett and Skinner gathered their papers and left the room, closing the door on a bubbling simmer of indignation and discontent.

A fuming Bill Wells made his way across to Frost. ‘What do you think of that, Jack?’ he spluttered.

Frost beamed up at him. ‘Skinner’s all sweet talk now, but wait until he’s been here a few weeks – he’ll be a real right bastard.’

Skinner was with Mullett when Frost entered. He was seated alongside Mullett behind the desk and seemed to be pushing the superintendent out of position. Every now and then Mullett made a half-hearted attempt to move his chair back to centre, but Skinner didn’t yield an inch. Mullett’s expression indicated that he was starting to wonder whether he had made the right decision in accepting Skinner into Denton division. But the man had promised he would get rid of Frost quickly and painlessly, and that weighed heavily in Skinner’s favour.

Mullett opened his mouth to ask Frost what he wanted, but Skinner beat him to it. ‘What is it, Frost?’

Frost grabbed one of the two visitors’ chairs and dragged it across the blue Wilton, leaving twin tracks of scuff marks. He plonked himself down and lit up. ‘I’m going to need a hell of a lot of men on overtime for the next two nights,’ he said.

Mullett was already shaking his head – the division was under attack from County for the size of its overtime bill – when Skinner asked, ‘Why?’

Frost filled them in about the supermarket blackmailer. ‘So we need to stake out the cashpoints and nab the sod when he tries to draw out his money.’

Skinner’s eyes glinted. ‘And you reckon you can catch him?’

How the bleeding hell do I know? thought Frost. Aloud he said, ‘One hundred per cent sure.’

Skinner rubbed his chin in thought, then jabbed a finger at Frost. ‘OK; I’m taking charge of this case. You carry out the stake-out – and you’d better give me a result. When you catch him, arrest him, then hand him over to me.’

‘Right,’ nodded Frost enthusiastically. If it meant getting the extra bodies on overtime, he didn’t give a damn who was supposed to be in charge of the case. It meant someone else could take the flak for a change if the whole damn thing went pear-shaped, as most of Frost’s fool proof enterprises tended to.

‘How many men will you need?’

‘There are five Fortress cashpoints, two men on each – ’

‘Hold on,’ interrupted Skinner. ‘How do you know he’ll use a Fortress cashpoint? He can use the card anywhere.’

‘That’s where our luck’s in,’ Frost told him. ‘You can only use Fortress cards at their own cashpoints. They haven’t joined Link yet. So all we’ll need is two men on each of the five cashpoints, with another man as back-up and an area car lurking in the background in case we have to chase the sod. I’m hoping he’ll leave it until it’s dark when there are fewer people about, so the main group will be covering from eight until, say, six the next morning – unless we catch him earlier, of course. And we’ll need a skeleton surveillance team, with no back-up but able to call in reinforcements if necessary, during the day. They won’t be on overtime, of course.’