DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

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