R Wingfield - A Killing Frost

He was late. It was ten fifteen. He had gone up to the canteen for breakfast and must have fallen asleep over the plate of uneaten food. He had been shaken awake by Sergeant Wells. ‘I thought you were going to the autopsy?’

‘Knickers!’ cursed Frost, snatching a cold slice of toast and ramming it in his mouth as he raced downstairs.

He parked his car in its usual place. Like a milkman’s horse, it seemed to know the way unaided. He glanced quickly round the car park. No sign of Drysdale’s black Rolls Royce, so perhaps the great man himself was late for a change. He could only hope.

Shrugging on a green gown, he hurried into the autopsy room to be greeted by the cloying smell of burnt flesh. A police photographer was moving forward to take a shot of a body on the autopsy table. Sod it, the post-mortem was under way. Then, as the photographer moved back, he saw the wobbling buttocks of a plump figure. His heart leapt. It wasn’t Drysdale. It was Carol Ridley.

He hurried over. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

She flashed a smile. ‘At least you’ve turned up for a change.’

‘Sorry about that. I was called out on a case. I couldn’t get to a phone.’

She nodded as she took up a scalpel and scraped a red line across the blackened flesh of Bridget Malone’s stomach. ‘For new readers,’ she said, ‘the woman and the man died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, but before death they were hit heavily on the head with our old indispensable friend the blunt instrument. This fractured their skulls and would have rendered them unconscious before the fire started.’

‘Just what I thought,’ said Frost.

She flashed him another smile. ‘You are a clever dick.’

‘Kindly leave my dick out of this,’ said Frost.

She chuckled and began prodding about inside the stomach. ‘Want to know what her last meal was?’

‘It’s not on my list of priorities,’ replied Frost, turning his head away.

‘I understand you’re moving to Lexton. I don’t know the place. What is it like?’

‘I’d rather take a look at her stomach contents than go there,’ Frost told her. ‘You doing anything tonight?’

‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, ‘and don’t bloody well let me down this time.’

Frost gave her a happy thumbs up.

She leant forward and lowered her voice. ‘And bring your dick with you, you might need it.’

The autopsy over, he removed the green gown and dropped it in the bin, then went over to the desk to sign himself out.

‘If you’re going back to the station, Inspector,’ said the mortuary attendant, ‘perhaps you could give this to Superintendent Mullett.’ He took a bulging A4 manila envelope from his desk drawer. ‘He’s been asking for it. It’s the items that were in Detective Chief Inspector Skinner’s pockets when they brought him in.’

‘Right,’ said Frost, tucking it under his arm.

He chucked the envelope on the passenger seat of the car and switched on the ignition. Then he stopped. He picked up the envelope and rattled it. Metallic chinking. He ripped it open and tipped the contents on the seat. Some folded papers, receipts, a wallet with Skinner’s warrant card and… a bunch of keys. He snatched them up, not daring to hope. They were Skinner’s office keys – including the key to the filing cabinet in his office. The filing cabinet which contained all the dodgy car-expense claims, plus the form Skinner had made him sign requesting a transfer. All the evidence against him.

He leant back in his seat, lit up a cigarette and smiled happily to himself.

Frost dropped the complete file into the central heating furnace and watched it wither, curl and crumble to grey powder. Then he went upstairs to tell Mullett he had changed his mind about leaving Denton after all.