automatically.
Frost ran his eye down the long list of past convictions. Indecent Exposure, Indecent Assault, Posing as a Doctor, Obscene Phone Calls, Stealing Underwear, etc. etc. He pushed it from him distastefully. 'He's a great one for exposing himself, isn't he? If mine was as small as his I'd 'keep it covered up.' He pinched the skin of his cheek. 'So not only are we looking for a woman in a white fur, we're also looking for a runaway toucher-upper. Perhaps they've eloped.' He gave the form-sheet back to the sergeant. 'Hang on to it, George, I've got enough paper of my own. And put out an All Patrols message for Mickey. I want him brought in.'
'Already done,' said Martin, hurt. Why did Frost think he had to be told everything?
Frost was trying to balance on the two back legs of his chair. 'So Mick left Ma Bousey's after dinner? If he was in his right mind he'd have left before. I had to go there once to bring him in after he'd nicked thirty pairs of calico drawers from the convent clothesline. Ma Bousey was boiling up handkerchiefs and cooking a meat pudding in the same saucepan.' He shuddered at the recollection. 'I think the handkerchiefs came off worst.'
As Martin made his departure, Frost's chair crashed to the ground. He scooped up the top layer of papers from his desk and passed them over to Clive. 'Try and find room on your desk for these, would you, son?'
On top of the pile was a deckle-edged sheet of notepaper scrawled with green ink. Clive read it.
Old Wood Cottage, Demon Dec.
To the Chief Policeman:
Dear Sir,
A lost soul in Limbo cries for Justice. The earthly Coroner may say Matthew Finch killed himself but the spirits know he was murdered. His Widow's hands are stained with GUILTY BLOOD.
Yours sincerely, Marth Wendle Clive read it again. He wasn't sure if it was meant to be a joke.
'There's a special file for cranks,' Frost told him.
'Top drawer, I think. If there's no room, bung it in 'miscellaneous'. The woman's a bloody menace, always writing in about something. She's a witch or a spiritualist or some such. According to her, no one dies naturally. The graveyards are chockablock with murder victims and us dim sods are too thick to see it.'
Clive wasn't convinced. The letter seemed so definite. 'This chap Finch, sir. Could it have been murder?'
Frost pursed his lips and considered. 'Impossible. That was one of Inspector Allen's cases and he never makes mistakes. Here, I was going to show you my tin medal, wasn't I?' He rummaged around in the wrong drawer. Clive was about to put him right but remembered just in time that he wasn't supposed to know. Frost stopped and looked into the opened drawer with a puzzled frown.
'You haven't borrowed any of my money have you, son? No? Bloody odd. There was about 45p in small change. I keep it to pay for stuff I have sent down from the canteen. Fine bloody thing when your money isn't safe in a cop shop, isn't it?' He slammed the drawer shut and tried the next. 'Ah, here it is.' He passed the box over to Clive.
'Hooked on my swelling chest by the regal hands of Her Majesty, that was. Thrilled my wife to bits when I got that.'
It was a silver cross hung on a dark blue ribbon, the words 'For Gallantry' in the center. Clive asked him how he'd won it.
Frost's fingers found the scar on his cheek. 'Young tearaway he was, son. Forget his name. Held up Bennington's Bank over the road with a gun. He was a bit unstable-popped to the eyeballs on drugs. I mean, who in his right mind would pick a bank so near the cop shop? We were over there in seconds with truncheons drawn so we could knock the bullets out of the way when he started firing-one of those times when a cop wouldn't mind having a gun too, like they all do in America. Not that we'd know how to use the damn things.
'There was a woman in the bank with a kid in her arms and a baby in a pram. He grabs her as a hostage and rams 'the gun in the kid's ear, then looks at us cops and dares Us to approach. We did all the clever things like telling him to be sensible and come and be arrested, but he just stands there, sweating and twitching and rolling his eyes. The woman was crying, the kid was screaming his head off, and the baby in the pram was gurgling. He was just itching for someone to step out of line so he could relieve the tension by pulling the trigger. Everyone saw that, except me. I thought, he's bluffing, so I marches over, bold as brass and dead ignorant. The yobbo switches the gun from kid to me. He was shaking from head to foot and the sweat was pouring off in buckets, from which I brilliantly deduced the gun wasn't loaded and all I had to do was to take it from him.
'His first bullet went in my stomach and properly ruined my theory. I was too stupid to stop and just went on. The next shot tore through my cheek and the one after grazed my scalp, under my hair. By the time it dawned on me I was being fired at, I'd grabbed him, and my mates pounced and reasoned with him with their truncheons. I was lucky. The shot to my stomach hit my belt buckle so all I got was a bloody great bruise. The one in my cheek just went in and out. He got eleven years and I got a medal.' He took it from Clive and dropped it back into the drawer. 'There's definitely 45p missing from here.'
His phone rang.
'Frost. What? The stupid sod! — and he's only just told us? You've got the address? Right, I'm on my way with Flash Harry.' He slammed the telephone back. 'Come on, son. The headmaster of Tracey's school has just phoned Search Control about a girl called Audrey Harding. She's twelve, older than Tracey, but a great friend. And Audrey didn't turn up for school today.'
As a schoolgirl was involved, they took a woman police constable with them and she sat huddled up on the back seat, not saying a word throughout the journey. Clive sneaked a look at her through the driving mirror, but with her peaked cap pulled down and her collar turned up against the cold, there wasn't much on show to set the pulses racing.
'We're here,' announced Frost, and the car pulled into the curb, outside a group of Victorian terraced houses.
The girl who answered the door was a blood-racing blockbuster in brushed-denim jeans and a tight cotton teeshirt that adhered like cling film to the most gorgeous breasts Clive had seen for many a long day. They held his gaze like the hypnotic grip of a snake's eyes.
'Cor!' breathed Frost, adding quickly, 'Sorry to trouble you, Miss. We're police officers.'
'Who is it?' A raucous female voice from the depths.
'The police,' called the girl.
A door along the passage opened and a woman with a shop-soiled baby-doll face waddled out, wearing a dress twenty years too young for her.
'Mrs. Harding?' enquired Frost. 'It's about your little girl, Audrey.'
'What-her?' asked the woman, jerking her thumb to the girl.
Her? This was Audrey, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl? She looked eighteen or nineteen-a well-developed eighteen or nineteen. Clive and the inspector exchanged open-mouthed glances.
'We'll all get our deaths of cold standing here,' said Mrs. Harding. 'Come on in.' She waddled off, leading them to a small sitting room, baking hot from the coal fire roaring up the chimney. In the center of the room an ironing board had been set up. Frost unbuttoned his mac, unwound a few yards of scarf, and signaled for Clive to start the questioning.
Mrs. Harding said, 'All right if I carry on with the ironing?'
Clive nodded. 'You weren't at school today, Audrey?'
'So what?'
'She had a bad chest,' offered her mother from the ironing board. Audrey coughed obligingly to corroborate the story.
'Try camphorated oil for it,' suggested Frost, adding ' sotto voice, 'About half a gallon…'
The woman police constable suppressed a giggle. Clive frowned. This was a serious inquiry. Couldn't the old fool keep his cheap jokes to himself, just for once?
'They haven't sent three cops down just because I didn't go to school, surely?' asked the girl, rubbing her hands over her chest in a way that made Clive envious and Frost uncomfortable.
'No. It's about Tracey Uphill. I believe you know her?'
'I know her,' said the girl. 'Her mother's a tart.'
Mrs. Harding banged her iron down angrily. 'Maybe she is, my girl, but you shouldn't say so. There's some things you don't talk about.' In a confidential aside to Frost she added, 'My uncle was an undertaker, but we never mentioned it to anyone. Some things are best left unsaid.'
