R.D. Wingfield - Frost at Christmas

A fumbling at the door handle, then two steaming cups poked through followed by Clive Barnard who kicked the door shut behind him.

"Sorry I've been so long, sir. I had to wait for the digging party to be served first."

Frost returned to his desk and accepted the hot tea gratefully. "Thought you'd already been, son." He stirred up the thick mud of sugar at the bottom of the cup, then he suddenly realized what the cryptic note on the back of the envelope meant-"Check Aunt-Tea". Of course, Farnham, Mrs. Uphill's regular, was supposed to have gone to his aged aunt's for a nice spot of anti-climax after thirty quid's worth of strenuous exercise and his story hadn't been checked. Clive was detailed to attend to this right away.

"Take the car, son-I'll be going in the van with the grave-diggers. When you've seen the old dear, come down to Dead Man's Hollow and join in the fun. I reckon we'll have to dig down to Australia before we find anything, though." He was to remember this remark afterward. When he was wrong, he certainly was wrong. dive's hand was on the door handle when Frost had another thought. "She's probably old and nervous, so you'd better have a woman P.C. along with you. Take the same one as before…" dive's face lit up. "Hazel!"

"Blimey," said Frost, "Don't tell me I've done something right for a change. Don't let anyone catch you smiling, son, they might think you're enjoying working with me."

As the door closed, Frost ripped open the two envelopes, but he knew it was just to delay what he had to do. Both Christmas cards. He dropped them on the desk, then steeled himself to pull open the top right-hand drawer of his desk. His heart sank when he saw what he expected to see.

A quick tap and the door opened before he could say "Come in."

"I've come for the empty cups, sir." It was Keith Stringer, the young P.C. from the front office.

Frost waved a hand to the window ledge.

"You didn't drink your tea, sir…" Mildly reproachful.

Frost looked up wearily. "Sorry, son, by the time I got here it was cold. Hold on a minute, would you? Put the cups down… shut the door."

The young man looked puzzled, but did as he was told.

Frost's thumb indicated a chair. "Sit down." He slid a packet of cigarettes across the desk.

"I don't smoke, sir."

The inspector grunted and took one himself. "Keith isn't it-Keith Stringer?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hmm." Frost rubbed his chin and patted some papers into a neat pile. Outside in the car park the sound of a car door slamming. Frost sighed and shook his head sadly.

"Tell me, son, how much money have you pinched in total-to within a couple of quid, say?"

Stringer's eyes widened. He searched the inspector's face for a hidden smile… it was a joke, of course. Frost met the gaze steadily. Stringer sprang to his feet, face hot, lips compressed.

Frost crashed his fist on the desk. "Sit down." The young constable jerked back in his chair, seething with resentment.

Frost stubbed out the cigarette and poked the butt back into the pocket. "Look son, you probably think me useless and decrepit, and perhaps you're right, but I'd be a real right twit if I couldn't solve a simple case of someone nicking money from my desk drawer… money that's always missing after you've been in with the tea…"

Eyes blazed. "I'm not staying here to be insulted, sir. I'm reporting this to the Police Federation Representative, so if you want to say anything further to me…"

The inspector knocked Stringer's hand from the door handle, grabbed him by the tunic, and slung him back in his chair. His eyes were soft and reproachful, his voice calm. "I'll call the Divisional Commander if you like, son, and tell him I want your pockets searched. You see… I marked the money…"

Stringer flinched and, as if a plug had been pulled, the color drained from his face. Defiance shriveled and he crumpled in the chair.

The door opened and the station sergeant's head poked round. "They're ready, Jack…" he began, then he felt the electric tension in the air. His head swivelled from the white-faced constable to the stiff figure of Frost behind the desk, the scar on his cheek twitching.

"Thank you, Sergeant."

The questioning raised eyebrows were ignored, so the head withdrew tactfully and the door closed.

Frost relit the cigarette butt and sat on the corner of his desk, dribbling the smoke from his nose. "It's not only my money, son. What about that tramp we found dead-the poor old sod whose quid you pinched? If he had had that quid he might have found himself lodgings for the night and still be alive. He was hunched up in a wooden hut, no bigger than a coffin, frozen to death."

The constable buried his face in his hards.

Frost's face was touched with pity. "But if it's any consolation, son, I can't see old Sam wasting a good quid on rubbish like food and lodgings… The odds are he'd have blown it on bottles of cheap wine and drunk himself to death a few seconds before the cold got him. So you haven't really got his death on your conscience… only the fact that he died knowing a copper had stolen his money, and when he came to us to complain, we insulted him and sent him off with a flea in his ear. I hope you feel as rotten about it as I do."

Stringer raised his head from his hands. "What are you going to do, sir?"

Frost pinched out the butt and flicked it into his wastepaper basket. "That depends on you, son. You'd better tell me about it."

The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, said "Later", and dropped it back on the rest. The young man was staring at the floor, lips quivering, but no words came.

"I'll give you a start to help you, son. Now I'm a rotten driver. When I drive, my eyes are anywhere but on the road. I see lots of things that don't make sense at the time, but I file them away in my mind for future reference. More than once I've seen you coming out of Sammy Jacobs' Betting Shop. Not that there's anything wrong with the odd bet, of course, providing you know when to stop-and providing you visit the shop during business hours. But I've seen you coming out when the shop has been closed."

"I owe him nearly four hundred quid," said Stringer, his eyes still fixed on the floor.

Frost whistled silently. "Four hundred quid! It's. going to take a hell of a time repaying that with the odd pennies – from my drawer and the occasional quid from a drunken tramp."

"I'm paying him back twenty pounds a week, sir. I have to give my mother money for my keep, then there's the hire purchase on my car. I'm only left with a couple of quid in my pocket."

"I see. So any extra little pickings would be a Godsend. Pity you didn't come and tell me, son. I've got more than enough on Sammy Jacobs. But that's not all, is it?"

"No." Stringer spoke to the ground. "He says a score a week isn't enough. He wants the lot repaid, otherwise he's going to the Divisional Commander. I haven't got that sort of money."

Frost sniffed. "I suppose Sammy suggested a way out?"

"Yes, sir. He wanted some information. If I get it to him, he'd let me off the debt."

Frost felt the corner of the desk boring its way into his buttock. He stood up and rubbed himself. "What information?"

"He wanted to know when we were going to pull the beat constable off his normal foot patrol to keep watch at Bennington's Bank. As you know, he's being pulled off tonight."

"And you told him?"

"Yes, sir."

Frost clapped his hands together with delight, then dialed Detective Sergeant Hanlon on his internal phone. "Hello, Arthur-Jack Frost. Sad news. You're going to have to forgo your nightly connubials. I've had a tip-off-something big. This Bennington's Bank business, it's just a decoy to draw our chap from his usual beat so someone can pull off a job undisturbed. I've no details, so we'll have to play it clever. We pretend we don't know. The constable stays watching the bank, but you and a couple of your best men are lurking in the vicinity of where the beat copper usually is between, say, two and three in the morning… If I knew the exact address I'd have given it to you, Arthur-even I am not that bleeding dim. No-with I the search for the kid we can't spare any more men. We keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. I'll be in touch." He swung the phone by the cord and flicked it back into the cradle.