DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

and finding plenty. The car slowed down. He looked through the window to see the orange sodium lights of the ring road. He nodded for Webster to stop and let off Burton and Collier, who would approach the stakeout area from this direction, while he and Webster would drive on and approach it by another route. They didn’t want the rapist to see a gang of men all walking up the same side path.
    "Control your bloody temper, son,” said Frost when they were alone in the car. “You’ll end up hitting someone.”
    Yes, you for a start, thought Webster, coasting the Cortina into a lay-by and tucking it tight against a hedge. He made one last appeal to the inspector. “Call this damn thing off before it’s too late. It’s never going to work.”
    “I think it will, son,” said Frost, unclicking his safety belt.
    “Then you’re a bigger bloody fool than I took you for,” said Webster, throwing caution to the winds. “You haven’t got the start of a decent plan, and you haven’t got anything like enough men, and there’s no backup in case things go wrong. Susan could be beaten up, attacked, raped, and we wouldn’t be anywhere near her. It’s the height of criminal stupidity.”
    It was Frost’s turn to lose his cool. He thrust his face very close to Webster’s. “Listen to me, you mouthy sod. Susan Harvey isn’t just your bit of crumpet on the side. She also happens to be a bloody good police officer. She knows the score. We all do. And of course there are risks. The public expects us to take risks - that’s why they chuck petrol bombs at us and kick us in the face at football matches. If by taking risks Susan can help us catch the bastard who’s been raping seventeen-year-old kids, then I reckon it’s all worthwhile, even if it puts in jeopardy your chances of knocking her off in bed tonight. So shut your bleeding mouth, son, because your constant whining is getting on my bloody nerves.”
    Frost flung open the car door and stamped out, leaving the constable fuming. Webster fought to regain control, then locked the passenger door and climbed out after the inspector. Perhaps Frost was right. Perhaps he was being overly protective about Susan. But that didn’t make this threadbare decoy operation any the safer.
    A gentle wind was ruffling the tops of the trees, which seemed to twitch and shrug off its advances. But it was a cold wind. Frost looked up at the sky. Black, the moon obscured by clouds. And the woods were dark and heavy with menace.
    Frost shivered, but not from the cold. He suddenly had a feeling that things were going to go wrong. Webster was right. He hadn’t enough men, the planning was half-baked, and it was dangerous. If Webster hadn’t been so smart-arsed about it, Frost might have listened to him, but that scowling, sneering face and waggling beard just increased his stubbornness.
    It was darker than Frost had expected. Not too bad when they stuck to the main path, where some of the glow from the sodium lamps filtered through, but as soon as they branched off and plunged deeper into the woods, where trees and shrubs pressed in on each side of them, they had to slow down and almost feel their way through. They needed a torch but daren’t risk drawing attention to themselves at this stage.
    A torch! Frost clicked his radio on. “Frost to van. Is sexy Sue there?”
    “Sexy Sue here,” came the reply, her voice sounding childlike and breathless through the loudspeaker, almost like the young Marilyn Monroe’s.
    “Take a torch with you, Sue. You’ll be able to find your way about better, and if our chum is lurking it will help draw him to you.”
    Pleased with himself for having thought of this, he now felt better disposed toward Webster, who was sulkily stamping alongside him. “We’re going to get him tonight, son. I know it.”
    “I hope so,” grunted Webster without conviction. He didn’t share Frost’s enthusiasm for the torch ploy. With Susan flashing the torch, the rapist could keep his distance. He would be able to see her without being seen by her.
    “I think this is where we turn off,” whispered Frost, his eyes screwed up as he tried to penetrate the darkness. “This is where the seventeen-year-old was attacked last night.” Frost, then Webster, squeezed through the gap in the bushes to reach their pre-selected stakeout stations between two subsidiary paths. First Frost settled down in his position, leaning up against the rough bark of some sort of tree,