Frost told him. He didn't think the nude photograph was relevant but was very interested in the bearded man.
'I want to know immediately there's any news from Lefington. And I want a typed report on my desk tonight.' He trotted briskly down the stairs. Whatever had been wrong with him seemed to have passed.
'I won't half pay for that when his promotion comes through,' Frost told Clive blandly, pushing the swing doors to re-enter the canteen, but no sooner had they joined the end of the queue when the P.A. system gave a metallic cough.
'Telephone call for Inspector Frost.'
There was a phone in the corridor. The call was from Lefington sub-division. Good news. The railway booking clerk not only recognized the description, but was able to turn up an application the bearded man had made for a season ticket. It contained his full name and address. He was Stanley Farnham, a schoolmaster, who traveled daily by train to Cranford where he taught English at the comprehensive school.
Frost scribbled the address down on the back of a cigarette packet and was profuse with thanks, praise, and offers of reciprocation. The face he turned to Clive beamed with delicious anticipation, like a cat's on finding the door to the canary's cage open.
'No time for tea, son. We've got a beard to interview.'
He tugged the scarf from his mac pocket and reeled it round his neck.
'You'll be letting Inspector Allen know, sir?' asked Clive anxiously.
'But of course. He gets touchy if he thinks I'm ignoring him. I don't know why he should feel jealous-after all, we're both the same rank.' He dialed Allen's office on the internal phone, but it was Detective Sergeant George Martin, Allen's assistant, who answered.
'Oh, hello, George,' chirped Frost. 'Is your esteemed chief there by some unfortunate chance? Gone home for a bath? Well, about time. I'm not a fussy man, but… Look, when he gets back, you might tell him we've traced Mrs. Uphill's weekly customer and we're on our way to interview him. No, I don't think I should ask him first. He likes people to act on their own initiative. Have I done what? The crime statistics? God, is it time for them already? Due in last week? Clang! Well, thanks for the whisper. I'll do them when we get back.'
He hung up and swore softly at the wall. Damn those bloody statistics. Mullett was such a stickler for them going out to H.Q. on time and they were a time-wasting nuisance. There was no problem if your office was organized like Inspector Allen's; you just went to a file and extracted the figures. But if your papers were unfiled and your office was a rubbish tip…
'As soon as we get back, son, we'll do the crime statistics. Be good training for you.'
When they reached the car the inspector realized he'd left his other packet of cigarettes in the office and Clive, spilling over with resentment at being used as a messenger boy, was sent back for them.
The muddle and disorder of Frost's office made him shudder. Since they were last in, fresh deliveries of paperwork had arrived and had been stacked on top of earlier layers on the inspector's desk, held down under the weight of his glass ashtray. The top item under the ashtray looked interesting. A sheet of thick, deckle-edged notepaper scrawled with spidery writing in pale green ink. Clive sat at ' the desk to read it when young P.C. Keith Stringer breezed in with roneoed copies of the new duty roster for January.
'In the boss's chair already?' he grinned, adding a roneoed sheet to the rising paper mountain.
Clive decided not to admit to being engaged in the menial task of fetching cigarettes and countered with a question of his own. 'I thought your shift finished at two?'
'Overtime. We're men short on the search and I need the money.'
'Tell me something,' said Clive. 'What time do you reckon he'll be letting me go?' — 'How do you mean?'
Clive checked his watch. 'I've been on now for nearly eight hours. We've got to interview a man-say another couple of hours-then he's talking about coming back for a jolly session with the crime statistics. To hear him talk you'd think the day had just started.'
Keith's grin widened. 'Haven't you been told about Mr. Frost? He's a smashing bloke and we all like him, but he never wants to call it a day. Since his wife died there's nothing for him to go home for, I suppose, but he doesn't think anyone else has a home either. If you're home before midnight, you'll be lucky. First in and last out, that's him, so say goodbye to your sex life.' He dropped a duty roster on Frost's desk and sailed out of the office.
Clive seethed. Midnight! Well, he wasn't going to put up with that; he'd see Mullett first thing tomorrow morning. Then his heart sank. He couldn't, of course. He was the Chief Constable's nephew. They'd say he was after special treatment.
So where were those bloody cigarettes? He worked his rage off on the desk drawer by jerking it out and was taken by surprise when it shot out easily, spilling its contents all over the floor.
Down on the knees of his flash trousers to pick them up. 'Damn and sod the man,' he cursed, chucking the useless junk back in the drawer. Bad enough to spend all day with the uncouth idiot without spending half the night as well.
One of the things that had fallen to the brown lino was curious. A blue box about the size of a packet of twenty cigarettes, with a crest embossed in gold on the front. It rattled when he shook it, so he peeped inside. A medal of some kind, in the shape of a cross and attached to a dark blue ribbon, nestled on a velvet bed. A long- service award perhaps. It was engraved 'To Jack Edward Frost.'
Clive tossed it in the drawer, found the cigarettes, and raced back to the car.
Stanley Farnham dumped the exercise books for marking on the hall table and picked up the letters from the mat. Two of them, one his monthly statement from Barclay-card, and the other… His pulse quickened. Hanging his overcoat in the hall closet he looked again at the envelope. It bulged. It must be the catalog he'd sent off for last week. Still in the hall, he ripped it open and pulled out the contents. Yes, a large catalog entitled Sex Aids and Sex Toys. He thumbed quickly through it. He would savor it at his leisure later, but just had to see… What's this? A price list for contraceptives, all makes, all colors, all nationalities. He pushed it aside impatiently; he couldn't work up much excitement for latex rubber-wear. A leaflet advertising books-Sexual Positions. This was more promising…
A warning bell inside him rang a fraction of a second before the doorbell screamed.
He wheeled round, nearly dropping the envelope. Two shadows through the frosted glass of the front door.
His heart banged and raced. The envelope! He stuffed it and the catalog into the shallow drawer of the hall table.
The bell shrilled again. A loud bang at the door.
'Who is it?'
'Police.'
The police! Oh God… surely they weren't checking his mail? When the postman had handed him that packet last week, he had been sure there had been a knowing smirk on the man's face.
He fastened the chain on the door and opened it cautiously. He wasn't taking any chances. Sometimes men, pretending to be police officers…
'Mr. Stanley Farnham? Sorry to trouble you, sir. We're from Denton C.I.D. May we come in…?'
This was the elder of two men, a shabby-looking character with a scarred face. The other, much younger, wore a shortie overcoat over a flashy suit and seemed to have a broken nose. A right pair of thugs! He was thankful he'd thought to put the chain on.
He asked to see their warrant cards. This seemed to present some difficulty to the scarred man who spent ages fumbling through wodges of dog-eared papers, but the young man instantly produced a wallet which he flipped open. A brand-new, clean warrant card proclaimed him to be Detective Constable Barnard. Then the other man found his and held it alongside.
'Or if you want to see a dirty one…' he said.
Farnham unhooked the chain and ushered them quickly past the hall table and into the lounge.
'What's this all about? I've only just got in from the school.'
Detective Inspector Frost hung his scarf on the back of a chair and sat down. The other man remained standing.
'Nice little place you've got here, sir.' The inspector's eyes crawled around the tasteful room, taking in the block-mounted abstract prints, the tightly packed bookshelves, the Tippett Knot Garden recording on top of the stereo record player. 'Nice and compact. You took your time answering the door?'
The accusation slipped out so silkily, Farnham wasn't ready with an answer. 'Oh. I… I… I was doing
