DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

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    The woman who had seen it happen covered the old man’s bleeding body with blankets as they waited for the ambulance. It was on the scene in exactly four minutes from the time the 999 phone call had been received. The same ambulance and the same two ambulance men who had refused to handle the vomit-sodden body from the toilets. Carefully, they lifted Hickman onto a stretcher and, in a little less than thirty seconds, were on their way to the hospital, speeding past the arriving Charlie Alpha as it turned the corner.
    The area car slid to a halt in front of the call box, its tires just managing to avoid the puddle of blood and the shards of broken headlamp glass. PC Jordan took statements from witnesses while his observer, PC Simms, was sent to find the fallen licence plate. Then someone remembered Hickman’s wife. A woman neighbour went with Simms to wake her and break the news.

    Max Dawson, managing director of Dawson Electronics, the big, modern factory complex on the new Denton Trading Estate, gave a gentle guiding touch to the wheel of his Silver Cloud and turned the car into the private approach road to the house. The car purred as it glided toward the garage. Dawson felt like purring, too. This year’s annual dinner and dance for his staff had been the best ever. His wife, who usually acted like a spoiled brat on such occasions, had behaved herself and had stuck to her promised maximum of four drinks, and all the speeches and presentations had gone off without a hitch.
    He stole a glance at Clare in the seat next to him. For some reason she had been edgy all evening, fiddling with her bag, lighting cigarette after cigarette. But at least she had behaved like a managing director’s wife and not like some slut a lorry driver would pick up. She certainly looked stunning in that low-cut red-and-black evening dress. Too damn low-cut perhaps. He’d noticed the way two of his sales representatives had eyed her and sniggered suggestively to each other. He’d mentally noted their names. He wondered if they’d still be sniggering at the end of the month.
    The outside lights were on to discourage intruders, but the interior of the house was in darkness. The quartz digital clock on the dash pulsated to show the time as 11.31. His young daughter, Karen, spending the night at her friend’s house, would be in bed. Fifteen-year-old Karen, sweet and unsophisticated, who hadn’t inherited any of her mother’s less endearing habits, thank God.
    A touch of the remote control, and the garage door glided upward to receive the Rolls. ‘We’re home,’ he said to Clare, who had her eyes closed.
    Originally an early nineteenth-century farm building, the house had been completely gutted and converted, an undertaking that had cost him nearly ninety thousand pounds, but it had been worth it. On the open market there would be no shortage of buyers at an asking price in excess of a quarter of a million.
    They went into the huge, split-level lounge with its massive natural-stone fireplace, large enough to roast the traditional ox if the log fire had been real. He pressed the ignition button and the living-flame gas jets plopped into life and licked hungrily at the sculptured logs. The instant warmth and the friendly red glow from the flickering flames increased his good humour to the extent that he was only mildly irritated to see that Clare had gone straight to the bar and was pouring herself a drink. Well, at least she had rationed herself at the function, so he’d let this one go by without comment.
    ‘I’ll just give the Taylors a ring to make sure Karen’s all right,’ he told her.
    ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’ his wife snapped.
    A touch of jealousy there, he thought. He’d been noticing it more and more of late.
    Loosening his bow tie, he walked over to the phone and jabbed at the push buttons.
    Debbie’s parents were in bed. It was her father who eventually answered the phone, yawning loudly and at first not taking in what Dawson was saying. ‘No, Max, Karen’s not here. Isn’t she with you?’
    Dawson stared at the phone in disbelief. Had the fool gone mad? ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he shouted. ‘She was going to the cinema with Debbie, then spending the night with you. It was all arranged.’
    ‘I know,’ yawned Taylor. ‘Debbie waited outside the Odeon, but Karen never showed up. We assumed you’d taken her to the dance with you.’
    ‘ You assumed? Why the bloody hell didn’t