Winter Frost

'Don't remember.'

Frost was getting fed up with this. They were getting nowhere and he wanted to get out of the oppressive atmosphere of this tiny, dirty scullery. 'Just bloody concentrate. We found a skeleton of a man in a garden in Nelson Road. We're trying to establish who he is. Could he be your son?'

She gave the saucepan a shake. 'No.'

Frost dug into his mac pocket and pulled out the wrist-watch. He thrust it at her. 'Is this your son's watch?'

She jerked her head away. 'No.'

'Look at the damn thing before you say no.'

'Don't have to. Boy couldn't tell the time. He didn't have a watch.' She rose painfully from her chair and unhooked the other chicken from the nail and started to tear out its feathers. 'I want you to go now. I've got work to do.' The knife crashed down, completely severing the chicken's head and nearly splitting the table top in two. The old girl wasn't as frail as she looked.

She followed them out to the front door and banged it shut behind them. They could hear bolts slamming home.

Frost's nose twitched. 'Doesn't fresh air smell funny.' He shivered and tightened his scarf. After the fetid fug of that kitchen, the cold cut like a knife.

They trudged down the path. Morgan nodded at the potato ridges in the kitchen garden. 'She must be as strong as a horse, guv.'

'She smells like one,' grunted Frost.

'I mean, all on her own, digging the garden, tending the chickens and the goat. She must be as old as the Queen Mum.'

'I was wondering who she reminded me of,' said Frost.

'What's our next move?'

'We forget it, Taffy. She probably killed her son, but we're never going to prove it. We let it drop.'

But Morgan wouldn't let it drop. He kicked a lump of the dug-over earth. 'She could have more bodies buried here, guv.'

Frost groaned. 'What the hell are you on about now?'

'Where did she get the money from to buy this place? The council said they'd heard the old boy who used to live here had died, but they had nothing official. Perhaps she killed him, buried him, then pretended he'd sold it to her. I reckon we should dig the place up.'

Frost's hand flicked this suggestion aside. 'We've got enough flaming dead bodies without digging around to find more, Taffy.'

'If she killed her son and the old boy, guv, she should be made to pay.'

'The old cow's pushing ninety. She lives in a shit-house. Prison would be like the Mayfair Hilton in comparison. How is that making her pay?' He sighed. 'Sod it, Taffy. I hate it when you're keen. All right, you can do the ferreting. Get the old boy's name from the town hall and find out if he was still in the land of the living after he was supposed to have sold the place…'

It was chicken casserole for lunch at the canteen, but Frost didn't fancy it. He grabbed himself a sausage sandwich and was half-way into it when he suddenly remembered he was supposed to be attending the post-mortem of Sarah Hicks. Dropping the remains of the sandwich in his pocket, he dashed down to the car and was still wiping crumbs from his mouth as he charged into the autopsy room to be greeted by a scowling Drysdale. 'Just made it, doc,' he panted. 'I thought I was going to be late.'

'You are late,' snapped Drysdale. 'I said two o'clock.'

'Oh,' said Frost. 'I could have sworn you said twelve minutes past.' He shuffled on a green gown. 'If you could speed it up, doc, I've got lots to do.' He hoisted himself up on a stool and watched as the pathologist took a scalpel and scratched a preliminary red line down the stomach. Suddenly it hit him. Only a few hours ago he had been talking to the poor cow. Only a few days ago he had sat on this same stool while Drysdale performed the autopsy on little Vicky Smart. Someone was killing toms, someone was killing little girls, and he was supposed to be leading the hunt for the killers, but was getting absolutely nowhere. All his brilliant theories had proved false, all his dead cert leads had fizzled out. He no longer had any faith in his rogue cab driver theory, expecting it to blow up in his face like all the others. The responsibility was too bloody great. He was out of his depth. The pillow case flaming burglar was more his mark and he was getting nowhere with that case either.

'Are you still with us, Inspector?'

He snapped out of his mournful reverie. Drysdale was talking to him. 'Sorry, doc. What was that?'

'I said the condition her arteries were in, she could have suffered a heart attack at any time.'

Frost nodded gloomily. It didn't make him feel any better.

Four o'clock in the afternoon, dark as night outside and the pub was already crowded. The autopsy had depressed him and the awareness of his own inadequacy hung heavily over him. He couldn't face going back to the station without a drink inside him.

As he pushed his way through to the bar a familiar raucous laugh made him stop and turn. Leaning across the bar, chatting up the bespectacled barmaid, was Taffy Morgan clutching a beer glass. His back was to Frost, but some sixth sense told him he was being observed. Morgan turned and started guiltily. 'You looking for me, guv?'

As good an excuse as any. 'Yes,' lied Frost, 'I've been looking everywhere.'

'Sorry, guv. I was so busy getting the gen on that old farmer, I didn't have time for any lunch, so I popped in here for a quick sandwich.'

'Yes,' grunted Frost, 'I saw you drinking it. You can buy me one now, a pint!' He sipped the beer as the DC filled him in.

'I've tracked down that old boy's family, guv,' he began. 'It looks as if I was wrong about her killing him. The old girl bought the place from him for Ј3,500 in 1957 — paid cash apparently. The old boy died in his bed three years later. They showed me the death certificate.'

'Cash?' queried Frost. 'That was big money in those days — something over thirty thousand quid today.' He scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'In arrears with her rent, then suddenly comes up with that sort of money?'

'Tell you what I was thinking, guv,' offered Morgan. 'Suppose she had her son insured and killed him for the insurance money?'

'Insurance companies don't pay out without a death certificate and you don't get one if you dump the body in someone else's back garden.' He worried at his scar. 'We haven't time to sod about with ancient history, but we can't leave it like this. A body's planted in the garden next to her and her son goes missing. Then she suddenly comes into three and a half thousand quid. I hate to say it, but sometime or other we'll have to go back to Shangri-la, or whatever she calls the bloody place.' He downed the drink and wiped his mouth. 'But some other time, not now. Let's get back to the station.'

As they left, Morgan turned to wave to the dark-haired, bespectacled barmaid. 'What do you reckon to her, guv?'

Frost gave her an approving look. 'I wouldn't kick her out of bed on a cold night.'

'You know what turns me on, guv?'

'Every bloody thing turns you on,' said Frost, feeling a lot more cheerful now. Morgan always had this effect on him.

'What turns me on is the thought of making love to a girl who wears glasses. She strips to the buff, but keeps her glasses on.'

Then you can breathe on the lens and she can't see how small your dick is,' said Frost.

He was about to dart through the lobby when he saw the grim, angular figure of Doreen Beatty in earnest conversation with Bill Wells. Frost froze and waited in the corridor until she left, then hurried across.

'What did old mother Beatty want?'

'She wanted you,' replied Wells. 'Reckons a man's been stalking her all around the town.' He glanced at the description he had noted down. 'Dirty, shifty-eyed, loose-mouthed and oozing lust.'

'Sounds like Mullett,' grunted Frost, pushing through the swing doors. 'He always fancied a bit of rough.'

He went through his usual ritual of riffling through the papers in his in-tray. The only item of interest was a copy crime report from Lexton Division concerning three robberies from private houses where pillows were found in the middle of the beds and the pillow cases missing. The pillow case burglar was working further afield. Frost hoped Lexton would have more luck than he did. If they caught the man it would automatically knock his outstanding crime figures down to a respectable level. There was also a request from Belton Division asking that the case of Big Bertha be added to the Denton Division list of unsolved crimes as the killing undoubtedly took place in Denton District, the body being simply dumped in Belton. A good argument, but it wouldn't help Frost's crime figures, so he buried it deep under all the other papers. He looked up as Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon came in.