Fatal Frost (42 page)

‘All I’m saying is, look to the motive for re-forming the Five Bells and see what that throws up … But I still think we’re missing something.’

‘The Fifth Bell. Miss Parke?’

‘There’s her, yes … but something else too.’

‘She’s coming back by train,’ Simms explained. ‘First thing tomorrow. I told her we wanted a chat and she suggested meeting her at the station.’

‘Blimey,’ Frost said, stifling a yawn. ‘Someone actually being forthcoming, a first in this case.’

Clarke watched Myles and Waters link arms and make their way down the street, laughing together. Simms ambled off after them, swaying slightly and calling for them to wait up.

‘Well,’ she said to Frost. ‘What’s it to be?’

It was 12.45. Frost, though dishevelled and tired, looked sharp and sober in the moonlight, his eyes shining brightly.

‘I’m needed at home,’ he said.

‘At this time of night? For what?’ She huffed. She could feel
herself
getting emotional, no doubt intensified by the drink. She bit her bottom lip. ‘Look, the lad I was seeing … it was nothing. I just did it to—’

Frost placed his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘It’s not that, love,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Mary is …’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘I see.’ Clarke could think of nothing else to say. ‘You’d best go, then.’

He leaned over and kissed her gently on her cheek, then turned in the direction of the station. She’d definitely drunk too much to drive.

Myles had recently moved into the block next door to hers, a ten-minute walk away.

‘Hey! Wait up!’ she hollered and made after her three colleagues, who were stumbling off into the night.

‘Evening, Johnny.’ Frost nodded at Night Sergeant Johnny Johnson, sitting in a soft pool of light behind the Eagle Lane reception desk, doing a crossword. The rest of the station was in darkness. The comforting murmur of a small portable transistor radio took the edge off the silence.

‘Just popping down to the cells. Left a friend down there …’

‘Right you are, Mr Frost.’

Frost flicked the corridor light on and made his way downstairs. Propped in the far corner a PC sat dozing. He peered in the first cell: a drunk. He looked like ‘Mugger’ Moore. What was he doing still here? Never mind, he thought, and moved on to the next one. ‘Ah, there you are,’ he muttered before banging fiercely on the door. ‘Wakey, wakey!’

The snoring skinhead leapt up, dazed, taking a moment to register where he was. ‘Frost?’

‘Martin. Bet you thought I’d forgotten about you.’ In truth he had, until he’d sat behind the wheel of the Cortina five minutes ago.

The sleepy thug grunted.

‘But no, I just thought you might like a taster of what you’ve got to look forward to.’

The PC had woken from his slumber and now unlocked the cell door so that Frost could step inside.

‘Well, had any thoughts?’

‘About what?’

Frost yawned. ‘With your record, I won’t have any trouble at all getting you banged up again; and that’s just for your antics in Milk Street. But it’s your visit to the pawnshop I’m interested in, and if you want to help yourself, then you’d better help me. The jewels – where did you get them?’

‘Me nan’s, just like I told that old bastard at the pawnshop.’

‘I don’t believe that for a minute. But what we’re going to do is this: you’re going to tell your little brother that I want to know where he got those jewels from. Do you know why?’

‘Why?’ Martin Wakely rubbed his tired eyes.

‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to pin every burglary that’s happened round here in the last six months on you and your little brother. It’s one thing running around jabbing people with a penknife, but armed robbery is something else altogether.’

‘Armed robbery? What you talking about?’ Wakely’s cell bunk groaned in protest as he shifted position.

‘A newsagent was robbed at the start of this week by a gang of kids. The owner swore blind they were armed. Don’t believe it myself; reckon the old fingers-in-the-pocket routine worked a treat.’ Frost shoved his hand in his mac to demonstrate. ‘See? Now you or I would call their bluff, but not an elderly Asian shopkeeper who thinks every white face a vicious racist.’

‘He was never armed!’

‘Wakely junior? But what about the gun his big brother was waving around in Milk Street this afternoon?’

‘What?’ The burly skinhead got to his feet. ‘My kid brother ain’t never had my shooter …’

Frost pushed him back down. ‘Calm down, or do you want me to call in the PC to witness our negotiation?’ Wakely slumped back. Frost offered him a cigarette, sighing. ‘Maybe it’s a daft idea.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I could never get the charges dropped for the assault on DC Clarke. Assaulting a police officer is a very serious offence.’ Frost waved out the match. ‘What is it with you Wakelys; such an aversion to the law …’

‘It wasn’t Gary.’

‘What?’

‘It weren’t my brother. It were Justin Pile.’ Wakely put his head in his hands. ‘Bunch of dumb kids charging around on BMXs. Don’t know what they thought they were playing at. All right if people are dumb enough to leave their motors unlocked, in this day and age they deserve to get stuff pinched – but after such a close shave with a pair of coppers you’d think they’d keep low. But did they? Nah, of course not – they go rob the Paki shop. Stupid. Like they’re untouchable. I told him, he’d be in for a hiding off me if he didn’t stay well clear of Pile.’ Wakely looked up at Frost almost penitently. ‘You know, they didn’t realize at first it was a copper’s car, not until they tried to leg it. Pile just lashed out at her to get away …’

‘But the attack on the jeweller on Merchant Street? A knife to the neck is armed robbery.’

‘It weren’t my brother. I told him after the copper got stabbed to stay away from Pile. But the rest all got carried away. Anyway, the gems from Sparklers in Merchant Street, them weren’t what I was trying to pawn.’

‘We know that. Those were stolen twice,’ Frost said to himself. ‘But what a mess. What are we going to do, eh?’

Wakely shook his head. ‘He’s not the ringleader … but I ain’t no grass, and he ain’t neither. I can take care of meself, but Gary’s only fourteen – he’d get lynched on that estate.’

‘You tell me now where the jewellery came from, and I promise you we’ll nobble Justin Pile and brush Gary under the carpet.’

‘What’ll happen to me?’

‘You can go. We’ll forget about your little tantrum. But keep your nose clean.’

‘None of this’ll get out, right?’

Frost nodded.

Wakely sighed. ‘All I know is they jumped some guy with a briefcase.’

‘Where?’

‘Rose Avenue.’

Well-heeled North Denton, thought Frost. ‘A briefcase. Suited?’

‘Yes, big tall bloke, put up a bit of a fight …’

‘That’ll do nicely,’ Frost said. Wakely’s description pointed directly to the estate agent he had visited today. Frost banged on the door. ‘Officer!’ he called.

‘What you doing?’ Wakely said, worried.

‘Getting you released.’ He looked at his watch. It was nearly 2 a.m. ‘Now, off that bed, I’m getting in. Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.’

Saturday (1)

WATERS RUBBED HIS
eyes and blinked rapidly. He was still not quite awake. Frost had called him at Kim Myles’s flat at 7 a.m.; no explanation, just a polite request that DS Waters join him at his earliest convenience at Eagle Lane.

It was now just after seven thirty and he was in Frost’s office next to a hungover DC Simms. He looked over at Frost, who was, like himself, in the same clothes as yesterday, energetically shuffling paperwork and puffing on a Rothmans. Waters found Frost’s smoking this early in the morning nauseating in the extreme. Clearly it didn’t agree with Simms either; the lad looked decidedly green. If he hadn’t gone home, Waters wondered, where had the DS ended up last night? He hadn’t been with Clarke; she’d tagged along back to Myles’s flat and sat up complaining about Frost into the small hours, much to his annoyance.

‘Boys,’ Frost coughed, ‘I’m sure there are things you’d far rather be doing than spending your Saturday morning with me, in the nick.’

Simms raised a sly eyebrow in Waters’ direction, prompting him to say, ‘Not at all, Jack, there’s nowhere I’d prefer to be than cosied up here with you and Derek.’

‘You’re a very sick individual if that’s the case.’ Frost snorted. ‘I’m afraid it’s likely to be a rather long day. I have here the Forensics report on Ken Smith, the murdered sweep from Baskin’s sauna car park.’ He opened the buff folder. ‘The VCRs in the back of the van had a bunch of prints, probably the original owner’s. The steering wheel had only three discernible prints – all the sweep’s – otherwise it was clean, suggesting to me a gloved driver drove the van and placed the VCRs in the back of it. The provenance of these VCRs can be traced to burglaries in the Denton and Rimmington area over the last eighteen months. The deceased had spent the best part of forty years in and around chimneys, and soot was embedded in his very skin. Harding reckoned it would have been virtually impossible for the poor sod to move a muscle without leaving a trace of it somewhere. The VCRs are totally clean.’ Frost paused. ‘No, the man who stole these video recorders is more than likely the same man who stole the necklaces Martin Wakely was trying to pawn, and for whatever reason this thief killed Ken Smith …’

‘Who, Wakely?’ Simms asked.

‘No. Chris Everett, the manager of Regal Estate Agents in Denton High Street, who was carrying a not-so-empty briefcase when mugged by a gang of kids on BMX bikes.’

Frost’s theory was that Everett had been on his way to sell the gems and, unluckily for him, had encountered the BMX bandits en route. Frost knew Everett had lied about the contents of his briefcase, given what Wakely had told him last night.

There was one thing nobody could understand; OK, so Everett was a housebreaker, but a murderer too? Why?

‘Maybe the sweep was a fence?’ suggested Waters. ‘You know, Everett offloads the VCRs and the sweep sells them on; they fall out, and Everett murders him.’

‘Estate agent murders chimney-sweep accomplice? Given what’s gone on this week, nothing would surprise me,’ Frost huffed. ‘But what was the trigger? Ken Smith was found in overalls and’ – Frost flicked through the file notes – ‘was “sooty in appearance”, which would lead one to believe he was disturbed mid sweep, as it were. Hence it’s crucial we find out where his last appointment was.’

‘Oh, that reminds me.’ Simms stirred beside him. ‘Johnson passed me a note on my way in. A member of the public rang early this morning, responding to the appeal in the
Echo
.’ Simms rooted around in his jeans pocket. ‘She’s a hairdresser, and one of her Tuesday-morning clients said she was having a sweep round in the afternoon to root out pigeons or something. Wait a sec. Oh Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘The client’s name is Fiona Everett. Lives on Somerton Street, apparently. Jesus.’

Frost’s eyes sparkled. ‘OK,’ he said eventually, after lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Let’s be clever about this. Bring him in, but easy does it. Tell him we’ve got the lads who mugged him and we’ve recovered some jewellery belonging to him.’

‘And if he resists?’ Simms asked.

‘Any trouble, nick him,’ Frost said. ‘No dramatics, Derek. We don’t want his missus getting ruffled when she’s just had her hair done. In fact, John, you stay behind and have a natter with the wife – sound her out, she may not be in on it. Keep them apart so she doesn’t twig there’s something up. Softly-softly does it.’

‘Sure thing,’ Waters said. ‘And what’ll you do?’

‘I’ll pick up Miss Parke off her train. I’m sure you two can cope alone. But tidy yourselves up a bit,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘You look like something the cat’s dragged in.’

Waters couldn’t help but wonder what the young Miss Parke would think when DS Frost rolled up at Denton train station; true, he and Simms could have done with a shave, but Frost looked like he’d slept on a park bench. For a week.

* * *

Frost pummelled the car horn one more time, although it turned out there was no need; Sue Clarke had emerged and was bouncing down the pavement towards the car. And she looked gorgeous. He cursed himself for not going back to her flat last night. His tired brain attempted to grasp his reasoning – had it been discretion in the presence of junior officers, or had concern for Mary truly brought a change in his feelings? All he knew was that, right now, to be snuggled up with her was the most appealing thing he could think of.