DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

with the neighbours.”
    “And where is your good lady, sir?” Frost was wondering if it would be possible to light a cigarette without causing a towering inferno with the sheets of newspaper.
    “She went to Darlington on Tuesday to look after her sick mother. The poor old dear is eighty-seven and can’t do a thing for herself - can’t even get to the toilet. My sister-in-law usually looks after her, but she had to go into hospital with her varicose veins.”
    Frost cut in quickly before they got the entire family medical history. “I see, sir. Thank you.”
    “She’s not due back until tomorrow,” said Price, ‘but she was away when the man broke in, so she wouldn’t be able to help you. Is it all right if I patch up the back door where he broke in? She’ll be furious when she sees the damage.”
    “Perhaps my hairy colleague and I could take a look at it first, sir.”
    They tramped over more newspaper, past skirting boards glistening with newly applied white paint, as he took them into a small utility room. The room housed a large chest freezer and the gas and electricity meters. On the far wall was the back door, which opened on to the garden. This was the door the intruder had forced. As the lock was now useless, the door was bolted top and bottom to keep it shut. Price unbolted and opened up. The back garden was similar to Mrs. Shadbolt’s, but overgrown and minus the gnomes.
    Frost stepped outside and filled his lungs with fresh air to get the taste of paint out of his mouth. He and Webster examined the door. The jamb was crushed and splintered where it had been jemmied open.
    “He was determined to get in, wasn’t he, sir?” muttered the inspector, straightening up. “Was anything taken? Are all your tins of paint accounted for?”
    “The constable kindly went through the house with me. Everything was intact. We haven’t really got anything worth stealing, but he might have thought the previous occupants were still here. They had lots of expensive silver, I believe.”
    “That’s probably the answer!” Frost exclaimed delightedly. “You should have been in the force, Mr. Price.”
    Price blinked and beamed his pleasure, then a shrill whistle screamed from the kitchen. “The kettle! Would you like some tea?”
    “Love some,” said Frost. “Be with you in a second.”
    As soon as Price had retired to kitchen, Frost scratched his chin thoughtfully and advanced on the chest freezer. “Had a case once, son. This bloke strangled his wife and buried her under the floorboards, telling the neighbours she had gone to visit her sick mother. When the body started to niff a bit, and the Airwick was fighting a losing battle, he dumped her in the freezer and started painting the house so the smell of paint would mask everything else . . .”
    Webster groaned. “Surely you’re not suggesting . . . ?”
    “I bet you tuppence she’s in the freezer.” He flung up the lid, looked inside, then let it thump down again. “Tuppence I owe you.” Something tucked down between the back of the freezer and the wall caught his eye. He leaned across to peer into the dark space. “Something down there, son. Give us a hand to shift this thing.”
    What on earth is the prat up to now? Webster struggled to ease the fully loaded freezer away from the wall. At last there was room for Frost to poke his arm down. It emerged clutching a pair of rusted garden shears, the wooden handles missing.
    “Hooray!” exclaimed Webster sarcastically.
    “I’m doing my Sherlock Holmes stuff and you’re taking the piss,” reproved Frost. He held the shears to the light. “See these small splinters of wood stuck on the blades? They’re off that door. This is what our burglar used as a jemmy, my son.”
    Webster took the shears and offered them to the door jamb. “You could be right,” he admitted grudgingly.
    “Don’t strain yourself,” muttered Frost. He carried the shears out to the garden, his head bent, searching. With a cry of triumph he pointed to a shear-shaped indentation in the earth of a flower bed that ran along the fence. “And this is where our burglar got it from.”
    “So?” said Webster.
    “So,” Frost continued patiently, ‘he didn’t bring it with him. Not a very well-equipped burglar, was he? Didn’t have anything on him to open a door, so he had to use an old, rusty pair of shears that just happened to be in the garden. And wasn’t he lucky finding them in the dark?”
    “Tea’s