Winter Frost

'You knew I wanted that case. By rights it should be mine.'

'We'll work together on it,' said Frost. 'If I sod it up, I'll take the blame. If we crack it, you can take the credit.'

She gave a grudging nod. Unlike her, she knew the inspector didn't want to rise any higher in the force.

Morgan finished a phone call and called over to Frost: 'Is it all right if I take a bit of time off to visit the dentist, guv?'

'Sure,' nodded Frost. 'Take all the time you like — as long as you do it in your lunch hour.' Back to Liz. 'How's your armed robbery going?'

She suddenly felt a wave of nausea ripple through her stomach and sat down heavily in the spare chair.

'You all right, love?' asked Frost.

'Just a stomach upset,' she muttered. She'd been putting it off, dreading the result, but as soon as she got back to the flat she would use the pregnancy testing kit. 'The armed robbery? I haven't got very far yet. A description of the two men, but no sign of the car they hijacked. The old boy who tackled the gunman demanded to see me last night to tell me nothing we didn't know. I'm on my way now to the hospital to talk to the husband.' She shot an accusing glance at Morgan. 'You were supposed to be checking the background of the cashier.'

'Was just about to do it as you came in, ma'am,' said Morgan, scuttling out of the office.

Frost grinned to himself. Morgan was picking up his own bad habits.

Police Sergeant Bill Wells squinted up at the wall clock, then pushed open the doors to the stairs leading up to the canteen for a tentative sniff. He frowned. He couldn't smell frying bacon. If they'd run out of cooked breakfasts again… PC Collier was due down to relieve him any second. He should have made Collier wait and gone up first himself but flaming Mullett kept phoning, demanding all sorts of stupid information for his meeting at County. Damn. Collier or no Collier, he was going up for his breakfast. It wouldn't hurt for the lobby to stay unmanned for a couple of minutes.

He screwed his face up in annoyance as the sound of someone clearing their throat and a gentle tapping on the desk demanded his attention. A little fat man in a checked suit, clutching a plastic carrier bag. Not another dead cat, he pleaded. People were always bringing dead cats into the station. 'Found this in my front garden, officer.'

'Yes, sir?' he grunted, ready to grab the bag, stuff it under the desk and belt upstairs.

'Can I speak to someone?' asked the man.

Aren't I bloody someone, muttered Wells under his breath. 'What about, sir?'

The man pushed the carrier bag under Wells' nose. 'I found this in my garden.'

Wells peered warily inside, remembering the woman with a similar carrier bag who had brought evidence of a burglar defecating on her carpet for DNA testing. If this was the same, he'd made certain Liz Maud had to handle it. But this was different. Grinning up at him from the bottom of the bag was a human skull.

Frost raised his head from the folder when Wells burst in demanding to know where Wonder Woman had crept off to.

'The hospital,' Frost told him. 'She'll be back after lunch.'

'Then you've drawn the short straw,' said Wells, passing over the carrier bag. 'Bloke found this in his back garden.'

Frost looked inside. 'Bloody hell!' He pushed the bag away. 'If it isn't claimed within three weeks, tell him he can keep it.' He went back to the folder. 'Give it to Morgan, it will be good experience.'

'He's out doing a job for Wonder Woman. It's got to be you. There's no-one else available.'

'Sod it!' groaned Frost. 'Why do I always get landed with the long-dead?' He followed the sergeant out to the lobby and nodded curtly to the little fat man. 'Found it in your garden?'

The man nodded. 'I was pulling down an old shed. We're selling the house and my wife thought the shed was an eyesore and would bring the price down. When I broke up the concrete base I found this.'

'How long had the shed been there?'

'Donkey's years. It was there when we moved in and that was thirty years ago.'

Frost fished out the skull from the bag and looked at it, hoping it would give him inspiration. He was struggling to find reasons to send Fatty away and forget the whole thing. 'Probably built your house on an old burial ground — they did that, you know.'

The man shook his head. 'It was marsh land. They had to drain it before they could build. You don't have graveyards in marsh land.'

You're too bleeding clever for your own good, thought Frost. Aloud he said: 'That's all you found — just the skull?'

'That's all I brought. There's lots of other bones there as well. I thought it best not to disturb them.'

Frost nodded gloomily. 'We'll get someone down there to have a look.' He waited for the man to go, then turned to Wells. 'I want two uniforms with shovels.' As the sergeant was making the arrangements he put the skull on the counter and stuck a lighted cigarette between its yellowed teeth.

'Very funny!' sniffed Wells. 'Now get the bleeding thing out of here.'

Frost put the cigarette back in his own mouth. 'How old do remains have to be before we don't have to bother to investigate them?'

'Seventy years.' Wells turned his attention to PC Collier who had returned back late from the canteen. 'Any breakfasts left?'

Collier shook his head. 'You might get a bacon sandwich if you hurry, Sarge.'

Wells hurried. He would tear Collier off a strip when he got back.

Frost took one last look at the skull before dropping it back in the carrier bag. 'You'd better be over seventy years old,' he told it, 'or you've ruined my bleeding day.' ^^

The area car pulled up outside the semi-detached house with the 'For Sale' board stuck firmly in the lawn by the front gate. PCs Collier and Jordan got out, picks and shovels over their shoulders, looking like two of the seven dwarfs returning home after a stint in the diamond mine. A grumpy-looking Frost followed them up the garden path. The front door opened before they were half-way and the fat man scanned the street anxiously before urging them in. Behind him, arms folded, stood his wife, a dragon of a woman, her lavender-dyed hair complementing the smell of lavender furniture polish which hit them like a baseball bat. She didn't look very happy. 'That's right!' she barked at her husband. 'Let everyone in the bloody street know we've got the police coming.'

'I didn't know they'd come in a police car, did I?' protested the fat man.

'What did you expect them to come in — a corporation dust cart?' She switched her attention to Frost and Co. 'Wipe your feet and shut the door — quick.'

Her eyes glowered at them as they marched down the hall which had been lined with old newspapers to protect the carpet from police hobnails, through the kitchen, and into the back garden.

The broken concrete was stacked neatly alongside the components of the dismantled wooden shed. Poking through the compact earth was something that looked suspiciously like a human shoulder bone. 'All right,' sighed Frost, moving well out of the way. 'Get digging.'

From the row of houses overlooking the garden many lace curtains twitched. Uniformed policemen digging up a garden was of consuming interest.

'I hope you're satisfied,' nagged the woman to her husband. 'Now everyone in the flaming street knows!'

'What was I supposed to do?' pleaded the man.

'Like I said — dig another hole and bury the lot.'

Best bit of bloody advice you ever had, thought Frost.

'There might have been other skeletons there for all I knew,' protested the husband.

'Might? With our flaming luck you can bank on it. How are we going to sell the place now?' Her head jerked as she glowered up at the twitching curtains and open windows. 'Had your bloody eyeful, have you?' she bellowed.

This had the effect of increasing the number of spectators as other people rushed to their windows to see what the noise was all about. Frost was finding it chilly, just standing and watching. 'I suppose there's no chance of a cup of tea?' he asked as she spun round to return to the house.