Clive grunted.
'You know,' explained Stringer. 'Where we keep the prisoners until we can get them to court.' He pushed open an iron door. 'This is the drunk cell with the drain, so we can hose the sick down…'
Clive's impatience burst. 'Look, I have been in a police station before, you know. How long have you been on the Force?'
'Three months,' replied the younger man, proudly.
'And I've been in it for two years-in one of the toughest areas of London. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know, so just show me where things are, don't explain them tome.'
Stringer's face reddened. 'Sorry. I was only trying to help.' His expression cheered up as the door to the cell section opened and another uniformed man stepped in.
'Oh, Harry… this is the new chap, Clive Barnard from London. Clive-Harry Dobson.'
The two men shook hands. Dobson was about Clive's age, a good-looking, curly haired man with an innocent expression.
'Young Keith showing you the ropes, is he?'
'Nothing I can show him,' said Keith. 'He knows it all.'
'I wish I could work in London,' said Dobson. 'Do me a favor, Keith. Come with me to fetch the prisoners' breakfasts. They should send them down, but you know how short-handed we are with this search.'
'Sure,' replied Keith. 'Are the prisoners all right to be left?'
Dobson scratched his chin. 'Well… as far as I know. The bloke in the end cell's been acting a bit queer, scream ing and sobbing. Off his chump if you ask me, but he's quiet now. Keep an eye on them until we get back, Clive. Shouldn't be long.'
Without waiting for his agreement, they were off.
Clive watched them go. Just trotting off and leaving the prisoners-what a way to run a station! In a properly organized station, like London, the man in charge of the cell section stayed put and the food was brought to him.
Better take a look at his charges. His feet rang on the stone flags and the familiar damp uriney carbolic smell tweaked his nose. The first two doors were ajar, the cells unoccupied, but the next was locked. Peering through the peep-hole he saw the occupant, a pimply faced youth with long, dank hair laying on the wall bed and staring blankly at the ceiling. Somehow aware he was being watched the youth jerked two fingers toward the spy-hole.
Another unoccupied cell, then the drunk cell with its floor sloping down to a grated drain. And that seemed to be it. Then he remembered the other prisoner Dobson had mentioned, the queer fellow in the end cell.
The end cell was locked. It was silent within-ominously silent. Clive put his eye to the spy-hole. His heart lurched and stopped. Level with his eye, a pair of legs hung downward, swaying and twisting grotesquely.
The occupant of the cell had hanged himself.
Clive hurled himself. at the door, but of course it was locked. The fools. The bloody fools! They'd left him in charge but had taken the keys. He yelled. His voice echoed back at him but no one came. The chap in the other cell started banging on his door, shouting to know what was going on.
Feeling sick, Clive raced up the stone corridor and out of the cell block. He saw the station sergeant going through a door marked Charge Room. But he had no breath. He croaked incoherently, tugging at the sergeant's uniform to get him to do something, anything. When Wells realized what Barnard was trying to tell him his face drained of color. He snatched the spare bunch of keys from the charge room and tore to the end cell. As he poked the key in the lock, the door swung open.
Clive followed the sergeant into the cell. Sitting on the wall bed, tears of laughter streaming down their faces, were P.C. s Stringer and Dobson. Hanging from the ceiling on the end of a piece of rope was the pair of men's trousers they had stuffed with straw.
The station sergeant smiled. 'It's one of the oldest tricks in the game, son. I thought you'd been in a police station before.'
MONDAY-3
Superintendent Mullett was taking sadistic pleasure in making Frost wait. The man had eventually slouched into his office in his usual insolent manner wearing that disgrace of a mac with the frayed sleeves and that ridiculous scarf.
'You wanted to see me, sir?' No apology, nothing.
Without raising his eyes from his correspondence, Mullett flicked a curt wrist toward a chair and deliberately took his time signing his letters, reading them through with studied slowness, and blotting them carefully afterward.
He heard Frost fidget in his chair. Good. The display of his superior's displeasure and the humiliation of being ignored were having the desired effect. His pen crawled at a snail's pace to intensify the torture.
More fidgeting sounds from Frost.
Mullett's pen crawled on.
The sound of a match being struck.
A match? Mullett's nose twitched. A smoke-ring gently nudged his pen and drifted across his desk. He followed it with incredulous eyes.
This was intolerable. Frost was smoking. Without even asking permission-which would have been icily refused- he was smoking, leaning at ease in the chair, swinging an unpolished shoe from side to side. He gave Mullett a reassuring smile.
'When you're ready, Super…'
Mullett winced. He hated being addressed as 'Super'. Everyone knew it but Frost.
'Put out that cigarette,' he snapped with such ferocity that the cigarette immediately dropped from Frost's startled lips and landed on the carpet. There was a smell of burning wool from the blue Wilton. Frost ground at the pile with his dirty shoes and managed to distribute a mess of broken cigarette and charred wool over a wide area. He moved his chair to cover up the burn and smiled inquiringly at Mullett.
'You wanted to see me, sir?'
As soon as Frost had gone, Mullett would go down on his hands and knees and inspect the damage. In the meantime he contented himself with a long hard stare.
'I wanted to see you more than half an hour ago. You've kept me waiting, Inspector.'
'I had to have a look at Bennington's Bank. Someone jemmied their door.'
'I would have thought your Divisional Commander's summons took priority. And you weren't at the briefing meeting!'
A theatrical smiting of palm to freckled forehead. 'The meeting? Clean forgot all about it, sir.'
Mullen took the envelope from his drawer. 'I've had a complaint about you, Inspector.' He unfolded the memo. 'From Superintendent Gibbons of the Police Training Center-'
Frost's blank expression masked his relief. This was a comparatively trivial matter. He'd been asked over to the training center to speak, as an experienced officer, to new recruits and to give them practical hints that would assist them in their chosen career.
'So, you told them how to fiddle their car expenses,' accused Mullett.
'1 only mentioned it in passing, sir.'
'In passing, or not, that was what you were talking to them about when Superintendent Gibbons entered the lecture room. 1 was ashamed to get his memo. Fortunately he wrote to me confidentially, as a friend, and didn't copy it to H.Q. I'm most concerned about you, Frost. I had occasion to look in your office today. Frankly, I was appalled. The mess, the untidiness… and I found that statistical return that County has been screaming for still uncompleted.'
'Ah, yes. I must get around to that. Anything else, sir?'
Yes, there was. Mullett gathered himself for his main at tack.
'Were those the clothes you wore at the training center?'
Frost looked down at his apparel with surprise. 'Why. yes.'
