DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

his chair suddenly hard. He stood and stretched wearily, then looked out of the window. It was snowing again. He flicked ash into the wastepaper basket.
    "What was that? Control?"
    All eyes swiveled to Clive. They saw him nod, then ease the phone from his ear. "Charlie Alpha, sir - nothing to report."
    "Then tell them not to be so bloody efficient. I'm not interested in nothing!"
    The minute hand on the hall clock clunked round to the next division.
    The warning buzzer sounded in the inspector's brain.
    "Something's gone wrong. She should have reached there by now."
    Martin tried to reassure him. "You can't walk very quickly in this snow, Jack - especially in high heels."
    "She won't give a sod about high heels," snapped Frost. "She'd run to get her kid back . . . she'd run:" He paced up and down, kicking at imaginary balls. The minute hand on the wall clock clunked relentlessly on.
    "She's had time to walk all the way to bloody Bath and back by now. Are you sure those two bright herberts are waiting at the right phone box?"
    Barnard relayed the query to Control and then reported the reply back to Frost. Charlie Alpha two was waiting in a side road near the phone box by the antique shop. They could see some way down the Bath Road. There was no sign of Mrs. Uphill.
    Frost phoned her house again. It was just possible she had returned for something. Brr . . . brr . . . The speaker relayed the sad, lonely sound a phone makes when it isn't going to be answered. He thumped the receiver down. "I remember phoning a girl onc . . ."
    But the anecdote was left untold. The hairy face of the station sergeant poked round the door.
    "Excuse me butting in, Inspector, but you've got Charlie Alpha two standing by on the Bath Road, haven't you?"
    "Yes, Johnnie - why?"
    "We've just had a motorist phone in. He's found a woman unconscious at the side of the road. We've sent for an ambulance, but Charlie Alpha could be there in a couple of seconds and I'd like them to get some details."
    The silence was electric. Everyone in the room was thinking . . . fearing . . . the same thing.
    "Yes - tell Control it's all right, and say that Charlie Alpha has got to wait for me. Come on, son!" He flew out of the room with Barnard hard on his heels. Clive prided himself on his fitness but had a job keeping up with the older man charging across the car park in the snow. By the time Clive had reached the car, Frost had already started up the engine, but he moved to let his detective constable take the wheel.
    "Which way, sir?"
    "Just follow that ambulance."
    The flashing blue light led them through the darkness like a frantic Pied Piper, hurling round corners, ignoring traffic signals. And then, ahead, another flashing blue light. Charlie Alpha. They skidded to a snow-spraying halt, just avoiding running into the back of the ambulance whose brakes were better than Frost's. A police constable, bending over a shape on the ground covered by a police greatcoat, straightened up as the ambulance men ran over with their stretcher and thick red blanket. They moved so quickly, they were sliding the laden stretcher into the back of the ambulance before Frost and Barnard could reach them. The Inspector yelled for them to stop and pulled the blanket from the face. It was Mrs. Uphill. Eyes closed, face chalk white, looking about fifteen years old.
    "How is she?"
    "She's had a nasty wallop on the head. Don't think the skull's fractured, though. Lucky that chap found her, otherwise she could have frozen to death."
    The man, wearing a sheepskin motoring coat, was leaning against a yellow Escort and was being questioned by a policeman.
    The rear doors of the ambulance clunked shut and its flashing blue light dwindled to a pinprick along the straight-as-a-die Bath Road.
    Clive bent and picked something from the ground. It was Mrs. Uphill's handbag. Frost opened it and flashed his torch inside. The usual female brickabrack, but the change purse that should have been there was missing. Clive was detailed to search the vicinity for the £2000 in the carrier bag, not that Frost had any hopes it would be found.
    The man in the sheepskin coat had just finished giving details to the police constable as Frost sauntered over and introduced himself.
    "You didn't see anything then, sir?" Frost asked the man when the constable had filled him in.
    "No. I just saw her lying there - my headlights picked her out. I thought she'd been knocked down by a hit-and-run. I phoned and waited