Frost at Midnight Page 5

  John Waters elbowed the flat door open, holding his suit over his shoulder. He could hear Kim in the kitchen, back from her early shift at Rimmington. Tossing his keys on to the sideboard, he made to creep up on his fiancée. The diminutive blonde was at the hob, whistling softly to herself. He was a foot away when she spun round wielding a wooden spoon.

  ‘You think I couldn’t hear you? You great lunk!’

  He lifted her up in a show of affection. He was the luckiest man in Denton.

  ‘You’d never make a cat burglar.’ She smiled up at him, showing off her pristine white teeth.

  ‘I hope things never get to that state …’

  ‘How’d it go?’ she asked.

  ‘How’d what go?’

  She pushed him away. ‘John – don’t tell me you forgot to go? Wait – have you been drinking?’

  He looked confused, then said, ‘Ah, the church … yes. We did go – but there was no rehearsal. A body – a woman’s body – was found in the churchyard.’

  Kim Myles’ annoyance evaporated as swiftly as it had arisen. ‘Of course. I heard … That was St Mary’s.’ She looked so sad. ‘I try to keep your work and our wedding separate—’

  The phone rang, interrupting a thread that could have ended with another work/life argument.

  ‘Hello?’ she enquired politely into the receiver. ‘Yes, he is … who may I say is calling?’ Kim held the phone out and looked away in distaste.

  ‘Waters.’

  ‘Detective,’ a familiar voice said. ‘You’re after me, I gather? Funnily enough, I was after you, too, but when I got home the wife said you’d been round.’

  Sandy Lane. Bloody hack.

  ‘Sandy. Yeah, I was after you, but it can wait until tomorrow.’ Waters watched Kim saunter past, disrobing; she’d always have a bath after finishing a shift.

  ‘What you want might wait,’ said Sandy. ‘But what I want won’t.’

  Waters immediately grew suspicious; Lane knew something.

  ‘News and deadlines wait for no man,’ Lane continued. ‘Meet you in the Eagle at nine.’

  The line clicked dead.

  It was one thing questioning Lane, but another thing entirely being pumped for info for newsprint; he could imagine being stitched up. He’d bell Frost, or rather leave a message at the Jade Rabbit – best there were two of them.

  Frost had arranged with the Hammonds’ neighbour, a sweet old dear by the name of Ridley, to mind Richard for tonight. The WPC had cleared it with social services – as they were already over-stretched, they could offer no alternative on a Sunday. The lad was shockingly self-sufficient; the epitome of modern times, a typical latchkey kid. Tomorrow they’d move him to the aunt in Rimmington if his mum had not surfaced. Frost had called Clare Hammond from the station before setting off for Baskin’s nightclub and advised her of the situation.

  There were several vehicles in the club’s car park. It was almost dark and the neon lights caught on a number of bonnets nearer the entrance. He turned off the engine and the cassette player. ELO’s Time had been in there since he could remember. Who’d be there on a Sunday evening, Frost wondered, as he pushed the door of his Metro shut. It was balmy and insects bothered the air around him.

  The Coconut Grove, Harry Baskin’s nightclub, was on the outskirts of town, hidden beyond woodlands at the end of a leafy country lane (or as Frost had described it to colleagues, ‘an outside privy at the bottom of the garden where jazz mags come to life’). In any case it was secluded. No way to know who was within, unless and until you banged on the door to find out. Frost nodded to the doorman.

  ‘Wotcha Gary, Harry in this evening?’

  ‘Sunday’s his night off, Mr Frost.’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’ Frost pushed the double doors open and entered the club. He reckoned the bouncer would call Harry the second he’d crossed the threshold. Frost knew Baskin of old and they had sparred many a time over the years. They had grown surprisingly close after Harry was shot the previous year; but the old gangster had recovered his health, restored his inherent mistrust of the law and re-established a dignified distance between them. It was all very cosy Frost playing cards with Baskin, while the latter lay wounded in a hospital bed, but Baskin had to maintain his self-respect – he couldn’t be seen to be growing soft – and since then the two had barely spoken.

  Frost’s eyes fought to adjust to the dingy atmosphere inside. ‘Flamin’ heck,’ he cursed. Inside, the joint was reminiscent of a Soho sex club. He walked cautiously towards the rectangle of light that was the entry kiosk.

  ‘Hello, love.’ He beamed at the redhead behind the till. ‘What you got showing tonight? Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet?’

  The girl, she must have been all of nineteen, chewed noisily on some gum. ‘You what?’

  He flashed his badge; the girl was unperturbed. ‘Only two girls on tonight, Karen and Sarah. If you hurry you’ll catch Karen – she’s about to go on.’

  ‘Tell me, has Rachel been in at all?’ This was why he’d really come to the Grove tonight, not Mullett’s stupid errand (Frost had felt instantly that the super was telling porkies; as if he’d know that some stripper was engaged in a spot of blackmail! That was not the sort of tittle-tattle Hornrim Harry picked up on the golf course.)

  ‘Rachel?’ She pulled a face.

  ‘Young, pretty, short jet-black bob?’

  ‘Don’t think so …’

  ‘She used to work here. Robbed a payroll, shot a man last year, right little firecracker.’

  ‘Oh her. You said young. Rachel – she’s at least thirty – yes, she came in looking for Kate.’

  ‘And is “Kate” in this evening?’

  ‘Kate left months ago.’

  ‘Any idea where?’

  ‘Nah, manager might know – she’ll be in there.’ She nodded towards the Bar sign.

  The manageress wasn’t visible so Frost took a glass of wine from the bar, on the house, and went to find a booth. Only the bar itself was lit up, and it was tricky to work out which seats were occupied until you’d practically sat on some sorry individual nursing unpalatable French plonk. He eventually found a chair near the stage. The room was more airless and sticky than usual, heightening the fetid aura of sleaze. Frost settled in.

  Soon the soft lounge music was replaced by loud lush disco – something from Saturday Night Fever? – and the lighting was adjusted; the bar lights went off, and a brash spotlight came on in front of him, illuminating a shiny silver pole centre stage. It was as he’d described to Mullett, like a fireman’s pole. Frost felt his fellow voyeurs shifting in their seats, clearing dry throats, the signature tic of anticipation. He himself felt a quickening of the pulse – he’d been here God knows how often, and witnessed ladies of all shapes and sizes disrobe, but not for a while in the audience itself. He searched for his cigarettes. Damn, he’d left them in his jacket in the car. As he rose to leave, a lithe sequinned figure glided into view.

  The girl, who was only a matter of feet away, was staggeringly beautiful. Frost was rooted to the spot. The dancer reached for the pole and hung there, gently swaying her free hand. And though he knew she couldn’t see him beyond the glare of the lights, he felt her gaze fall on him, right there, standing in the dark. The girl wore her blonde hair up and her face had the fine features of eastern Europeans. She reminded him of the woman that was in that thriller with Jack Nicholson – he forgot her name – but the one with the scene on the kitchen table all the lads at the station were on about, which he still couldn’t find on video … There was something in the eyes, the allure—

  ‘Sit down, Jack, you’re making the place look untidy,’ a gravelly voice said in his ear.

  Sunday (6)

  Superintendent Mullett had not stirred from behind his desk since Frost had left his office several hours ago. He sat, vexed, staring ahead at nothing, his mind a mass of confused possibilities. He’d known this moment would arrive, sooner or later; but he was quite unprepared for it when it h
ad, the shock of it as fresh as if it had happened this very morning …

  Nearly ten months ago, on an autumn morning, a paperboy had come off his bike and been killed, halfway through his round. The first police to arrive at the scene thought it might have been an accident as the location was at the bottom of a steep hill; but the detective handling the case later thought it a hit-and-run. The dead boy was well known to the Mulletts. He had delivered their daily Gazette.

  Following a door-to-door enquiry by his own men – which of course included his own house – Mullett had realized that his wife’s daily departure for work coincided with the incident timeframe. He then discreetly inspected her MG sports car, only to discover the bonnet was marked in a way that suggested an impact, and the windscreen was also cracked. Confronted with these findings Mullett crawled into a cave of denial and kept the information to himself (he knew her to be an awful driver – there had been narrow misses in the past). He had not breathed a word of warning to his wife, for to air the subject would have made it real. And once it was real, the matter would have to be dealt with.

  Meanwhile, at Eagle Lane, the division was swamped and the ‘accident’ was very much on the back burner, all the more so after Derek Simms, the detective leading the investigation, was himself murdered. The paperboy’s death and the circumstances surrounding it were all but forgotten about. To all intents and purposes it might never have happened and thus Grace Mullett was off the hook … until now. He reached across the highly polished veneer of his desk for his pills. He didn’t feel too clever.

  Frost must have discovered something. But what? This sort of shifty behaviour was out of character for him. Whatever else you could say about Frost, he always played it straight. Unless … he’d just been biding his time? Maybe Frost had it in for him. It was certainly possible. Mullett had made his feelings about Frost well known; the pair tolerated one another at best, but underneath it all, maybe Frost wanted one up. If he did have some solid evidence against Grace, how would he use it? Blackmail him to get Sue Clarke reinstated? And then what … Mullett knew how these things worked. Clarke today, but what about tomorrow? No, no, none of this would do, not at all …

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  Desk Sergeant Bill Wells. The superintendent was suddenly aware of the hour. It was dark outside. How long had he sat here, stewing?

  ‘Ah Wells, what is it?’ he said, gripping the small tablet bottle firmly.

  ‘Expenses print-out, sir. You asked for analysis of CID running costs …’

  ‘Leave them here, thank you, Wells.’ The man looked how he now felt – exhausted.

  ‘Sorry it took so long. I couldn’t get the printer to work, paper keeps clagging up, and …’

  ‘Yes, yes, quite.’ Mullett did not have the patience for this now.

  ‘… then I thought I’d run it wrong as the figures were so big—’

  ‘Big?’ Now Mullett’s interest was piqued. ‘Where?’ He snatched the reams of music-ruled computer paper and smoothed them across the surface of his uncluttered desk. ‘Where and who?’

  Wells edged closer reluctantly. ‘Err, might be a mistake. There.’ He jabbed a coarse finger at the faint grey type. The print overlying the green rules of the paper was barely legible. The imbecile had fed the paper in the wrong way, surely; was every technological improvement hampered by buffoonery? He ran a manicured nail along from the staggering figure until it stopped abruptly at the name: FROST, W.

  ‘Hmm. Well, well!’ Mullett exclaimed. ‘Numbers this large can only be explained by fraud of the most heinous kind.’

  ‘Jack wouldn’t do such a thing. I’m sure these figures can be supported by paperwork,’ Wells said unconvincingly.

  ‘On car expenses? How the devil do you figure that? He loathes driving, avoids getting behind the wheel at all costs, he’s idle that way. He’d much rather be chauffeured round and about by all and sundry.’

  Detective Constable Arthur Hanlon had barely touched 60 mph in the unmarked Austin Princess. The drive was going to be much longer than his passenger PC David Simms had bargained on. Thankfully, Hanlon’s tales of Eagle Lane police station were thoroughly entertaining. Usually David Simms would tune in to Simon Bates’s Top 40 countdown – he loved his music – but any story pertaining to Denton’s eccentric Eagle Lane division was worth listening to. Simms had been at the station ten months now, but his older brother Derek had worked there before him, in CID. Hearing about the goings-on in his brother’s day made him feel connected in some small way. Hanlon hadn’t known Derek well, but he excelled at recounting anecdotes of sparring between the station commander, Mullett, and Inspector Frost. The only disappointment was that Hanlon had not once mentioned Sue Clarke. Simms was curious about the CID detective who had been his brother’s girlfriend. David had met her only fleetingly before she disappeared under a cloud from Eagle Lane. Then he discovered she had had a baby a few months ago. He was desperate to know more, but had yet to find an opportunity; he was keenly aware of his youth and was too polite to ask openly.

  ‘Aha, there’s the area car,’ Simms said. South Yorkshire Police had offered to send two men to pick them up at the city limits and escort them to their final destination. Hanlon pulled over into the lay-by and wound down the window. A thin policeman approached the car and after a brief exchange, it was agreed they’d tailgate the last few miles into Brightside.

  ‘Bleak up north,’ Hanlon commented, ‘nothing bright about it.’

  ‘Denton’s no brighter,’ Simms said. ‘This has some faded industrial lustre at least. Architecture. Denton has nothing. A new town, soulless, concrete thrown up like that, bish bash bosh.’

  ‘I don’t know much about “lustre”,’ Hanlon said as he followed the panda car through the traffic, ‘Denton was once a market town, the old mill and that.’

  ‘Pah. You’d not notice it. The Southern Housing Estate is Denton now, sprawling mass that it is.’

  Finally they reached their destination, a Victorian terrace set amongst strings of identical streets. There was a fine drizzle in the air, and the temperature was noticeably a few degrees colder here than down south.

  The Yorkshire policemen rapped on the door of the house.

  ‘It’s about Rachel?’ a woman with crooked glasses asked, as she peered round the door.

  ‘May we come in?’

  Reluctantly she allowed the four men into her front room. Simms stood by uncomfortably as Hanlon delivered the news, and told her that she would be required to identify the body. In his brief time at Denton, the young PC had only twice been in similar circumstances. The woman, in her early fifties, absorbed the news calmly, nodding slightly as Hanlon finished relaying the discovery of her daughter’s body.

  ‘In a churchyard, you say? Tch, of all the places …’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘Do I have to come with you?’

  The policemen glanced at one another.

  ‘I know it’s tough, ma’am,’ one of the Yorkshiremen said, ‘but yes, you ought to come.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Rachel’s dead; me going south won’t bring her back, will it? She had it coming. Mixing with such scum.’

  Hanlon was unsure what to do; for all his bravado on the way up, the big man was used to being led. Simms could see the fellow was crying out for Frost to tell him what to do.

  ‘Ah, well, I suppose given the distance, it may not be necessary after all,’ Hanlon said uneasily. A silence fell.

  ‘May I ask when you last saw your daughter, Mrs Curtis?’ Simms asked eventually.

  ‘I ain’t seen ’er.’

  ‘What, not at all?’

  ‘Not since last summer.’

  ‘So … not since she’s been out?’ Simms said, unable to help himself.

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve known she were out, if it weren’t for all that fuss in t’papers.’

  The Yorkshire coppers looked to the Denton men expectantly.

  ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I don’
t want the neighbours seeing you lot round here any longer than necessary.’

  After five minutes of stilted questioning, they were in the Princess again for the long ride back. Hanlon was far less chatty this time, and wore a frown. Once they hit the M1 Simms reached over and turned up the radio. Paul Young was still number one; this cheered Hanlon up, reminding him of Frost’s nomadic existence. Simms stared out of the window. Frost might be laid-back about his sleeping arrangements, he thought, but he won’t be so blasé when we show up empty-handed.

  Sue Clarke laid out the blouse and skirt on the bed. She could hear her mother talking at her son in an annoying baby voice in the next room. She hoped she didn’t sound so daft herself – it really did grate. He should be asleep by now. She hoped her return to work wouldn’t unsettle the baby too much; he was too little to be affected, that was what she told herself anyhow … She picked up the pleated skirt and, holding it at arm’s length, gave it a shake; it looked on the small side. Clarke took pride in her appearance, and since moving from uniform to CID she always did her utmost to look professional and smart. Plain clothes seemed little more than an excuse for her male counterparts to slob about.

  She ironed the outfit and hung both items on the back of the bedroom door. In the sitting room her mother sat quietly watching Tales of the Unexpected, with the lights off. Philip was safely tucked up in his cot. The flat was now neat and tidy, all traces of her previous lodger gone. Her mother, primly sat there with a cup of tea in front of the telly, cut a very different figure to the previous incumbent – who’d usually slumped there spread-eagled with a can of Hofmeister lager. She sat down next to her mother and as she did so her foot caught on an object poking out from underneath the sofa. She bent down and pulled out an LP. Sidney Bechet. One of Frost’s jazz records. Sometimes they would sit together on Sunday nights, when the baby was asleep, listening to music. Frost would talk about how he’d discovered jazz through inheriting his mother’s collection, slowly working his way through the century’s greats, from Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver to Miles Davis. Clarke didn’t like the scratchy old ditties herself but enjoyed hearing his passionate descriptions of the music. His own record player was in storage. If only he would get himself sorted. She wondered where he was now.