DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

sleep no longer. When he opened his eyes the sky was dawn-streaked. “Where are we?” he asked.
    “Nearly there,” she told him. “I’m taking a shortcut.”
    The shortcut was a narrow lane joining two side roads. A short, bumpy ride.
    “Look out!” cried Webster. Something loomed up in front of them.
    The headlights had picked out a car. A car parked bang in the middle of the lane, no lights showing. They could have run straight into it.
    Carefully, Sue manoeuvred the Cortina to squeeze past. Webster twisted his head to look back. The lunatic who parked it so dangerously deserved to be booked. Then his heart sank.
    The car was a red Vauxhall Cavalier.
    The registration number was CBZ2303.
    “Oh no!” croaked Webster in disbelief.
    “What’s up?” asked Sue.
    “Every bloody thing is up,” he said despairingly as he reached for the handset. He called Denton Control to report he had found Stan Eustace’s getaway car.

Thursday day shift

    Webster sat in the car with Sue and waited. Within twenty-five minutes Detective Inspector Allen had arrived on the scene. He must have been asleep in bed when the call came through, but in those twenty-five minutes he had managed to shower, shave, and put on a freshly pressed suit. He looked immaculate. By contrast, Detective Sergeant Ingram, sour and crumpled at his side, looked as if he hadn’t slept properly for a week, which tended to underline the whispered rumours of his marital troubles. He looked even more sour when Allen doled out a few begrudging crumbs of praise to Webster.
    “Well done, Constable. Good piece of observation.”
    The obligatory acknowledgement over, Allen and Ingram approached the Vauxhall and sniffed gingerly around, looking but not touching. Webster had hoped he and Sue would now be allowed to drive off and get to bed but Allen didn’t seem ready to dismiss them yet.
    Allen was standing on tiptoe to see over the hedge that bordered the lane. Behind it was a field of tall grass, heavy with early-morning dew. He dragged back his cuff to consult his watch. If he could do it in twenty-five minutes, what was holding up the forensic team?
    Then the brittle early-morning quiet was shattered as carloads of hastily summonsed off-duty men and the team from Forensic arrived. Soon the area swarmed with men crawling over every inch of the Vauxhall and its surroundings. The car was dusted for prints inside and out, the interior was given microscopic scrutiny for traces of blood and tissue, and then the seat covers and carpets were removed and vacuumed to retrieve clinging hairs and fibres.
    Other men were on their hands and knees, noses almost grazing the road surface as they looked for anything the murderer might have dropped. It was still dark, but the area was floodlit. The first success was the finding of a small patch of oil a few yards up the lane, indicating that another car had recently been parked on that spot for some time. More than likely this car was the backup that Stan Eustace transferred into after he had dumped the Cavalier. Judging from the amount of oil leakage, the other car must have been an old banger.
    One team was given the task of knocking on the door of every house in the vicinity to ask if anyone had seen a car parked in the lane during the previous day, or if they had seen the Vauxhall drive up.
    “I know it’s early and most of the householders are going to be tucked up in bed,” said Allen, addressing the team, ‘but that is their hard luck. Today they are all going to see the dawn break for a change. How you wake them, I don’t particularly care. Just do it. And if anyone complains that their beauty sleep is more important than finding the murderer of a police officer, let them write to the Chief Constable. Most important, I want you to make sure you speak to everybody in the house, not just the poor sod who staggers downstairs to open the door. Now off you go.”
    Another two men went with Ingram to search the section of the field near the hedge. It wasn’t expected to yield anything but Allen, unlike Detective Inspector Jack Frost, always did things thoroughly.
    Webster tried to catch the inspector’s eye to ask permission to leave, but Allen had marched straight past and was at the Vauxhall to talk to the two men dusting it for prints. “Anything yet?”
    One of them looked up from his work and shook his head. “Not a damn thing so far, Inspector. It’s been wiped clean.”
    As Allen turned away, Webster