DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

was meant to come off?”
    “I don’t follow you.”
    “They knew what Baskin would do to them if he ever suspected, so they badly wanted an alibi. An alibi that would put Roger miles away. Everyone knows his flash motor. So the girl friend puts on one of Roger’s caps, drives the Jag round and round the old people’s flats, bashing into dustbins, trumpeting away at the horn, making sure no-one could avoid seeing the car. And just in case no-one got the registration number, she chucks the licence plate out of the window for the cops to find. When the police followed it up, Roger would say, “Yes, officer, it was I who caused the public nuisance,” pay his fine and for fifty quid he’s bought himself a cast-iron alibi for the time of the robbery. What went wrong, of course, was the girl knocking down that old man. That sodded everything up. There was no way Roger was going to say he was driving after that.” He sneaked a glance across to Webster to see how this was being received.
    It wasn’t being received too well. Webster immediately saw the flaw in the reasoning. “Very ingenious . . . except for the fact that Miller didn’t owe Baskin any money. He’d settled his debts two days before the robbery.”
    Frost stopped dead in his tracks. “Damn and bloody blast!” he shouted. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
    The door opened and the sergeant from the motor pool walked in. “Been looking for you everywhere, Mr. Frost,” he said. “You borrowed a car from the pool this morning.”
    “Did I?” said Frost, a nasty feeling of more trouble starting to creep up his back.
    “Yes, sir. When that stolen Vauxhall was found you wanted to get over there in a hurry. You told us your assistant was using your own car so you took one from the pool and promised you’d bring it straight back.”
    “We came back in your Cortina,” said Webster.
    Damn! thought Frost. I must have left the flaming pool car down that lane. He patted his pockets for the keys. He didn’t have them. “I must have left them in the ignition,” he admitted sheepishly. “Still, no problem. I’ll nip over and bring it back. I know where it is.”
    “You don’t know where it is, Mr. Frost,” the sergeant told him grimly. “At this moment it’s being hauled up from the bottom of a canal in Lexington. Lexington police have arrested two joyriders.”
    “Bum holes!” said Frost, now feeling very depressed. “I don’t think it’s going to be my day.”

Thursday day shift / night shift

    It wasn’t going to be Webster’s day either. Before he had the chance to explain about his lunch date with Susan, he was dragged by the inspector out through the back way to the car park. Frost was anxious to make himself scarce before Mullett learned about the pool car fiasco.
    First they went to Denton Hospital to interview the seventeen-year-old rape victim, but she could add nothing to the statement she had already given to Susan Harvey. Indeed, she remained convinced it was her boyfriend who had assaulted her, despite the medical evidence to the contrary.
    That chore out of the way, Frost directed Webster to some appalling little back-seat transport cafe where they dined on burnt sausages, greasy chips, and tinned peas. To add insult to injury, Webster had to pay the bill for both of them when Frost realized he hadn’t drawn any cash from the bank. The deepening scowl on Webster’s face was threatening to become a permanent feature.
    Sulkily slinging himself back in the car, the acidic stewed tea and the stale chip fat fermenting in his stomach, Webster asked the inspector where he wanted to go. He just didn’t care anymore, life was one long round of chauffeuring Frost, teetering from one crisis to the next while having to endure his unfunny jokes about beards and whiskers.
    “Denton Woods,” said Frost. “Mr. Mullett is very cross with us because we didn’t search the area for clues last night.”
    “It’ll take more than two of us,” grunted Webster, slamming the car door too hard and wincing as acid indigestion made its first tentative stab.
    “Only if we do it properly,” said Frost cheerfully, leaning back and puffing contentedly at a cigarette. “Not a bad meal, was it?”
    The thin, yellow afternoon sun did little to warm up the woods, and they hunched up inside their coats as they trudged along the path. “You know, son,” said Frost when they squeezed through the bushes and found themselves in the clearing with