DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

least three weeks and he wasn't there Sunday."
    Frost lit another cigarette. "I knew he was a liar the minute I saw him. You never can trust randy sods - present company excepted, of course."
    "Shall I bring him in, sir?"
    Frost considered, then shook his head. "Let him sweat until tomorrow. I'm more interested in old Mother Wendle. How did she know something was buried here?"
    "She's a clairvoyant, sir."
    "If the lady wasn't here, I'd say 'shit'," snapped Frost. "I don't believe in ghosts and I don't believe in Father Christmas. She knew it was here and I want to know how she knew."
    A crashing and a cursing as the policeman bringing the picks slipped and fell. He limped toward them and shared out the tools, then told the inspector that Control was sending a doctor and an ambulance.
    "A doctor?" said Frost, nearly losing another cigarette. "Oh, yes, we're not supposed to presume death are we? We're so bloody thick we don't know a dead body when we see one. All right lads, get his chest uncovered . . . the doctor might want to use his stethoscope."
    It was hard going, even with the pickaxes, as they had to chip away carefully to avoid disturbing the position of the bones.
    "Who do you think it was, sir?" asked Hazel.
    "Probably some old tramp who crawled here to die years ago. No relatives, no one's missed him, but we're going to have all the bother of trying to find out who he was."
    Hazel tucked her head deeper into her greatcoat collar. "It'll be difficult to discover the cause of death now, sir."
    Frost nodded. "You're right, love. The police surgeon likes a lot more meat on a corpse than we've got here. Which reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time we had to get the body of this fat woman out of the house? She'd died in her bath - stark naked she was and - "
    Clive cut in quickly before another doubtful story was launched. The inspector was forgetting a lady was present.
    "If death was natural causes, sir, who buried him?"
    Something soft fluttered down and wetly kissed the inspector's cheek. It was snowing again. He asked Hazel to return to the van and radio Control to send the marquee used that morning for the dragging party. Then he remembered he hadn't answered Clive's question.
    "Who buried him? No one, I'd say, son - leaves and mould naturally built up over him. No one comes near this part of the woods. It's got an unsavory reputation, like the toilets in the High Street."
    "But surely someone must have come across it," Clive persisted. "I mean . . . a dead body!"
    "We're not nosey down here, you know - not like you lot in London. And don't forget, he'd be stinking to high heaven after a few days - enough to put anyone off who wasn't frightened of the snakes already. People would have thought he was a dead animal and kept clear."
    The earth, loosened by the pickax, was being gently scraped away. A cry from the constable sent Frost running over again. "What do you make of this, sir?"
    Frost made nothing of it. Encircling the wrist was a band of metal to which was fastened a length of steel chain. The other end of the chain buried itself deeply in the rock-hard earth and no amount of pulling would prise it free.
    And then, something even more puzzling. By scraping away the earth, more and more of the arm bone was uncovered, but then, before the elbow was reached, the arm just stopped.
    They didn't have a complete skeleton. Just a hand, part of an arm, and the metal wristband . . . and the chain.
    Frost decided that animals must have dragged the arm away from the rest of the body and his diggers were spread out over a wider area to prospect for the remainder.
    The snow was falling in great white fluffy flakes and would soon cover the excavation. A distant car door slammed and they hoped it was the promised marquee, but the approaching light bobbing along the path was carried by Dr. McKenzie, the little tubby police surgeon.
    "Who's in charge here? Oh - it's you, Inspector Frost. I should have guessed. If you had to find a body in a Godforsaken hole like this, did it have to be during a snowstorm?" He wiped the snow from his glasses and peered down at the excavated arm, then shook his head solemnly. "You've called me too late, I'm afraid . . . a few minutes earlier and I could have saved him."
    "I tried to give it the kiss of life," remarked Frost, dryly, "but it stuck its fingers up my nose. Well, come on Doc - time of death?"
    The doctor licked a flake of snow from his nose. "You know as well as I do,