First Frost (24 page)

‘Yes, it is,’ said Frost, pulling the car to a halt, just before the junction with Market Square. ‘Via Woolies. I’m out of pick ’n’ mix.’

‘Not really the time, Jack,’ mumbled Hanlon crossly.

‘I want to come,’ Julie shrilled from the back. ‘If I’m going to be stuck in a police station all day, I’ll need some sweets.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Frost, climbing out, his plan to entice Julie away from her grandmother working like a treat. ‘Come on, then. I’ll pick, you can mix.’ He stood on the slippery, wet cobbles, gathering his mac tightly around him, waiting for Julie to extract herself from the cramped rear of the car. There was a freshness to the damp, cold air. It was going to pelt down again any moment. ‘Grandma, want anything?’ he said, lowering his gaze.

‘A pardon for my son?’ Joan Dixon said.

‘Depends how he can help us,’ Frost called over his shoulder as he and Julie headed round the corner towards the Woolies entrance on Market Square.

‘Hurry up,’ he heard Hanlon shout from the car.

‘So what’s your dad, your real dad, like?’ Frost asked the girl.

‘He’s all right, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He’s not that old, but it’s like he doesn’t know anything about anything. And he wears these horrible clothes.’

Frost caught her heavily made-up eyes looking him up and down.

‘I suppose they’re not that horrible,’ she added quickly. ‘Just not very, you know, modern.’

‘He’s been away a long time, hasn’t he? Like he’s stuck in a time-warp?’ Frost had never remotely cared about what he wore, as long as it didn’t reek of curry. It was Mary who took issue with his attire.

‘Now, Dad,’ Julie continued, more than happy to dawdle along, ‘well, whatever he is now, my mum’s husband, the bastard … anyway, he like wears what he thinks are these cool leather jackets and jeans and stuff. But he looks like a right tosser.’

He does now, all right, thought Frost, in a station cell.

‘Loads of my friends fancy him, though.’ She paused, peered hesitantly left and right, a gawky, less than innocent look on her face. ‘He’s a right sleazeball. Been shagging the woman who lives opposite us, too. Poor Mum.’ Her bottom lip quivered and she looked up at Frost. ‘I want to see my mum. She’s OK really … she’s not that badly hurt, is she?’

‘She’ll be all right, I expect, given some time,’ said Frost, pushing on one of Woolies’ double doors. ‘We’ll make sure you see her later. Why don’t you get her something in Woolies to cheer her up? I’ll lend you ten bob.’

But the door wouldn’t give. Locked? Frost put his face to the glass. No one inside, yet the lights were on. He could see a couple of shopping baskets, half full, in the middle of one aisle. He checked his watch. Very strange. Then a badly parked van, just yards away, caught his eye.

‘Who’s looking after my cat, then?’ Julie said. Frost turned from the van and looked at her blankly, confused.

‘If Mum is in hospital and you’ve got Steve,’ continued Julie, ‘who’s feeding Toyah?’

DC Sue Clarke stepped away from the Escort and walked the few yards to the end of Queen Street. Squinting, she looked across the square. It was hard to make out much in the damp gloom, except the white van illegally parked outside Bennington’s, half on the pavement, and which was blocking the view to the entrances to the shops on that side of the square, including Boots and Woolies – long cleared, she presumed.

Wells was nowhere to be seen. Neither, damn him, was PC Derek Simms.

Light playing on the van made her think for a second that she was seeing movement, shadows beyond, but as the first fat drops of rain began to fall she turned back towards the Escort, which she’d purposefully parked at an angle right across Queen Street.

She reached the vehicle just as Mullett’s Rover pulled out of Opie Street and came roaring towards her, headlights flashing. She looked around for Wells again, but he must have been taking the long route back, checking the barriers and police tape and that uniform were all in place.

She was impressed with how quickly everything had come together – thanks to Wells’s organizational skills, and her own, for that matter. But she didn’t like being put on the spot. The boss made her nervous.

Mullett brought the car screeching to a stop, then leapt out, hat in one hand, a map in the other. ‘All clear, is it? Everyone back?’

‘I think so, sir.’ Clarke gazed at Mullett’s new executive saloon. There was a large dent in the off-side wing.

‘What are you looking at?’ Mullett said.

‘Your car, sir,’ said Clarke. ‘An accident?’

‘DC Clarke’ – Mullett looked at his watch – ‘a bomb is about to go off. Let’s concentrate on saving lives.’

At that moment PC Baker came jogging into the street from the square. ‘There appears to be a car parked in Gentlemen’s Walk,’ he said, gasping for breath.

‘Gentlemen’s Walk? But that’s a pedestrian street,’ said Mullett. ‘What the devil is a car doing there? Disabled car, is it?’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Who’s manning the Walk? Blocked off right back by the Wells Road, I hope. Certainly don’t want a bunch of pensioners ambling into this.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Clarke. She couldn’t think clearly. ‘PC Miller?’

‘Well you, Constable,’ Mullett said, glaring at PC Baker, ‘go all the way round, and come back down from the far end.’ As Baker sprinted off, Mullett said, ‘I don’t suppose the bomb squad’s here yet?’

‘No, haven’t seen them,’ said Clarke, her confidence quickly ebbing away. What could she do to rescue the situation, to impress Mullett?

‘Where’s the fire brigade?’ Mullett scanned the distance.

‘They’re still on their way, too,’ said Clarke, ‘One of the unit’s been dealing with a car on fire on the Southern Housing Estate.’

‘Jesus Christ, where are we, Belfast? Another torching?’

‘Don’t know yet,’ said Clarke.

‘Either way they’ve got more than one truck, haven’t they? This is farcical. I’ll be having words with the fire chief about this.’ Mullett marched up the road, towards Market Square, shouting, ‘It’s not every day you get a bomb in the centre of Denton.’

Clarke followed close behind, though the sound of a car reversing at speed made her look over her shoulder just in time to catch the rear of a dark-blue saloon disappearing down Lower Goat Lane, the narrow street running along the back of the Fortress Building Society. She thought that part of town had been roped off.

‘The cat?’ I’m sure he’s fine,’ Frost said, thinking about the van.

‘She better be. Toyah’s a girl. Don’t you know anything?’

‘Yes, yes, but I don’t know what that old banger’s doing there,’ Frost said to Julie, walking just a bit further on and thumping the side of the white Transit van, parked half on the pavement, half on the road, right in front of Bennington’s Bank. They’d been about to head back to Gentlemen’s Walk and the Cortina, but Frost couldn’t let this go, being such a stickler for legal parking himself.

Walking round to the front of the van, he immediately noticed that the tax disc was three months out of date. The condition the van was in made him doubt it would pass an MOT.

‘Dad used to sell vans,’ said Julie. ‘My
old
dad … before he got into sports cars. He loved them, the nutter. I think that that was where, you know, he and my mum …’

Frost wasn’t listening. He was trying the passenger door. Locked. He zipped round the bonnet and out on to the road to try the driver’s door. Locked also. Looking inside, he was struck by how empty and clean the cab was, given the age and state of the vehicle. No sign of any papers, sweet wrappers, fag packets, crumpled drink cans, the usual rubbish. He came back round on to the pavement, where Julie was idly looking at her wet boots.

‘Sorry about the sweets,’ he said. ‘There’ll be something at the station – we’ve got this brand-new trolley service. Hang on a sec.’ He walked to the rear of the van, tried the handle, pulling hard. It made an odd sound. No, the noise was coming from somewhere else. Was it shouting?

Frost gave the rear door one last tug and, to his surprise, it opened with a creak. What the hell, he thought, and clambered inside. Hunch or not, something was just not right about this van.

The load area was empty except for, towards the front, a large cardboard box. Stooping, Frost made his way forwards.

Wells had joined Mullett and Clarke on the corner of Foundling Lane and Market Square; they had just walked round from the end of Queen Street. Now Mullett watched as Wells put the megaphone to his lips, for a third time, trying to get the attention of that imbecile Detective Sergeant Frost, who’d suddenly appeared by the suspect vehicle. What’s more, he wasn’t alone.

‘FROST!’ echoed deeply around the square, despite the now hammering rain. ‘Clear the area. Clear the area. Immediately.’

‘What the hell is that man playing at?’ said Mullett, peering into the dim distance as Wells’s amplified voice finally died away. ‘It’s no time to be a hero. And who’s that girl? He’s putting her life in terrible danger.’

‘Gosh, I believe that’s Julie Hudson,’ said Clarke excitedly. ‘They must have found her.’

‘And found their way into the middle of a supposedly secured area,’ said Mullett, looking at his watch, the seconds ticking away. ‘Another appalling breach of procedure!’

‘Frost’s timing has always been awful,’ said Wells.

Mullett gave him a damning look. ‘I don’t care about Frost, but that poor girl’s life is not going to be sacrificed because of incompetence in my division, whoever’s responsible.’ Mullett paused, sized up the square once more, checked his watch. It was always a little fast. ‘No use standing there, bellowing into that stupid thing,’ he said, setting off at a trot, but soon increasing his pace to something resembling a sprint.

Yet before Mullett had even got halfway across the square he was overtaken by DC Clarke, going like the clappers. We really haven’t been making full use of her, he couldn’t help thinking.

Clarke reached the van first, stopping briefly by the girl, and then climbing into the back.

Mullett reached the van with Bill Wells closing in fast behind.

The girl, standing on the pavement in an extraordinarily tiny skirt, but with great big boots, and with a most bizarre hairdo, gave Mullett a startled look, then said dismissively, ‘They’re in the van.’ As if Mullett didn’t know.

Wells, behind him, gasping for breath, said, ‘I’ll get her away. I’ll get her away.’

‘Don’t you come anywhere near me,’ the girl warned him.

‘Don’t think it’s necessary, Wells,’ said Mullett, who was by the back of the van, peering in.

‘Look at this, Sue,’ Frost was saying, as he retrieved a pink, bald mannequin’s head from the box.

Clarke was holding a life-size plastic arm. ‘Do you think they go together?’

‘Hello, Super,’ said Frost, at last seeing Mullett, ‘found some illegally parked body parts.’

‘Nothing in here’s going to blow up,’ said Clarke, clearly trying to adopt a serious tone and edging out of the van.

‘A hoax,’ said Mullett. He was almost disappointed. ‘A bloody hoax.’ Apart from everything else his car had been pranged rushing here –
I could have been killed
. He stood back, replaced his cap squarely, and surveyed the all but empty Market Square. Suddenly the green army bomb-disposal van appeared on Queen Street, its antiquated siren clanking away.

‘Super, sir,’ Wells beckoned excitedly, leaving the girl, his radio glued to his ear. Mullett couldn’t make out what the station sergeant was now saying into the device, with the bomb-disposal van making a hell of a racket and its driver hooting frantically for Clarke’s Escort to be moved out of the way.

‘Yes, Wells?’ Mullett said dejectedly.

‘Control’s on the line: we’re getting reports that the Fortress has just been hit.’

‘The building society?’ said Mullett. ‘I didn’t hear an explosion. Whose fault is this – did we have the wrong location?’

‘Not blown up, sir,’ said Wells. ‘Robbed, by an armed gang. They’ve been cleaned out.’

Wednesday (4)

‘Exceptional times call for exceptional measures,’ said Mullett. He surveyed the packed briefing room. Every department, from the drug squad to Records, had been summoned. He’d sent Miss Smith round the building, twice. It was early afternoon, but some progress had already been made.

‘You’ll be pleased to know that the Anti-Terrorist Branch are sending down a chap called DCI Patterson, because of the nature of the hoax, and County are sending over Assistant Chief Constable Winslow. Both will be seconded here for as long as it’s necessary.’

Mullett was livid. The last thing he wanted was beady-eyed Winslow breathing down his neck, and this fellow Patterson – whoever the hell he was – sniffing around. It wasn’t as if anyone had been killed. There hadn’t even been a bomb to defuse.

This raid on the Fortress Building Society happening right behind their backs – obviously using the bomb scare as a diversion – was another matter.

Mullett pointed to the incident board, and a large-scale map of Market Square and the surrounding streets. Various photographs had also been pinned up around the map: the rear of the Fortress, the Fortress’s car park, three shots of Lower Goat Lane – where DC Clarke might have spotted the getaway car reversing at speed – views of the white van, the artist’s impressions of the gang that had hit Rimmington and Wallop.

Standing out was the picture of a black leather mask, with two tiny holes for the eyes, a beaky extension for the nose, and a zip where the mouth should be. The raiders had all been wearing similar masks.

Mullett began, ‘This is what we know, so far.’ He paused almost immediately. With so many assembled bodies, the squeaking of the new chairs was driving him to distraction. He’d have to ask Miss Smith to contact the supplier, discreetly of course. He didn’t want to be seen to have procured sub-standard furniture.

Where was he? He turned to the board and back to the floor. ‘The gang used a most effective diversion tactic, the bomb scare. And we haven’t ruled out the possibility that the torching of a car on the Southern Housing Estate was also connected.’

‘Rule it out, sir,’ came a voice from the far-left corner. It was Frost.