DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

- I’m out cold.”
    “Balls!” snapped Frost. “That little tap you got wouldn’t have knocked out a four-year-old.”
    Croll chewed his lower lip and his eyes sized up the hairy thug. “All right, Mr. Frost. I’ll tell you the truth.”
    “Good,” beamed Frost, motioning for Webster to change roles from heavy to shorthand writer.
    “It was like I told you before, Mr. Frost, right up to the time where I got the signal to open the door. I opens it and there’s this geyser wearing a Stan Laurel face mask and holding a cosh of some sort. He clouts me round the nut, but I reckon he hadn’t done it before, because he didn’t hit me very hard. Anyway, I figured that if I didn’t drop down unconscious, he’d welt me a damn sight harder the second time, so I fakes it and down I go. I lies there, dead still, until he’s grabbed the money and gone.”
    “So when he’d gone, why didn’t you start banging and yelling?” asked Frost.
    “I was going to, honest. Then I suddenly thought what Mr. Baskin might do to me if he found out I’d been faking and hadn’t put up a fight. So I thought I’d better carry on faking. I didn’t even yell when Mr. Baskin booted me in the ribs.”
    Frost puffed out the tiniest stream of smoke through compressed lips. “So tell me about Stan Laurel. Describe him.”
    Croll gave a noncommittal shrug. “Medium height, medium build. I hardly saw him.” His nostrils twitched as the smoke from the inspector’s cigarette wafted over. “I couldn’t half do with a fag, Mr. Frost.”
    “You’ll have a lighted fag stuck right up your arse if you can’t come up with a better description than that, Tommy boy,” said Frost.
    Blinking hard, Croll gulped as he tried to think of something that would satisfy the inspector. “Well, he stunk of scent . . . after-shave, I suppose . . . and he had these poncey shoes on.”
    Frost caught his breath. “What sort of shoes?”
    “Expensive shoes. You could see the quality - they must have cost a packet. As I lay on the floor he stood near me, his shoes inches away from my face. I know them off by heart. Sort of brown and cream with a woven pattern.”
    The inspector stretched his arms out above his head, then massaged the back of his neck. “You might have helped us there, Tommy.” He heaved himself up from the chair. “You might have helped us a lot. Now, we can either lock you up or set you free and let Mr. Baskin know where you are. What do you prefer?”
    “Locked up, Mr. Frost.”
    “Well,” smiled Frost as if bestowing a great kindness, ‘as a favour to you.” He shook some cigarettes from his packet and pushed them over, then he called in the uniformed man and asked him to lock up the prisoner. That done, he flopped back into the chair, clasped the back of his neck with his interlocked fingers, and purred contentedly at the ceiling.
    “Have I missed something?” asked Webster.
    A beam from Frost. “I’ve got a feeling in my water, son. One of my hunches.”
    “Amaze me with it,” Webster said without enthusiasm.
    “Fancy shoes, son. Brown-and-cream fancy shoes. Roger Miller has got a wardrobe full of them; we saw them when we had that little nose around his flat.”
    “Thousands of people have got brown-and-cream shoes,” said Webster as he sneaked a look at his watch. He wanted to be in the canteen for lunch at the same time as Susan Harvey and was hoping that this bumbling half-wit of an inspector wouldn’t detain him much longer.
    But Frost had no intention of being hurried. “Try this out for a scenario, son. Roger is in Baskin’s ribs for a lot of money. He knows Baskin will get very nasty if he isn’t paid.”
    “We’ve been through all this,” sighed Webster.
    “That was when I thought Baskin had nicked Roger’s motor. Just hear me out,” insisted Frost. “Roger hasn’t got the money to settle his gambling debt, so he gets the bright idea of stealing it from Harry Baskin. He gets his girl friend with the mole on her bum to help - she’s got all the inside gen and she’s the one who phones pretending to be the nurse, while Roger, in his Stan Laurel mask, does the dirty deed.”
    “It’s a possible theory,” sniffed Webster, patently unimpressed and more concerned with getting this stupid conversation over and done with.
    “I haven’t finished, son.” Frost stood up and began to pace about the room. “I’ve always worried about the way that licence plate came off the Jag. But what if it