DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

corridors, past wards illuminated only by the night sister’s desk lamp, past a group of anxious relatives talking to the little Asian doctor, who was shaking his head sadly “Another body on its way,” said Frost past abandoned oxygen cylinders and trollies piled high with red hospital blankets.
    It was as they approached the turnoff that would lead them to the exit that the nurse screamed.
    They ran, Frost panting, out of breath, well behind the constable.
    “There!” yelled Webster.
    Ahead, a nurse, white-faced, stumbled toward them in blind panic. She looked up, mouth open, ready to scream again when she saw the two strange men hurtling toward her. Webster was the first to reach her. He waved his warrant card. “It’s all right, Nurse, we’re police officers. What happened?”
    Too terrified to speak, she looked from Webster to Frost, her mouth working, then, still trembling she pointed back to the open door of a storeroom. At last she was able to speak. “A man in there. I went to get some clean sheets. He was horrible . . .”
    “Let’s take a look,” said Webster, moving cautiously into the dark of the storeroom and groping for the light switch. The fluorescent tubes seemed to resent being woken up at such an unearthly hour, but finally, with a half-hearted crackle, they flashed and flooded out cold, blue light.
    Inside the large room were racks of wooden shelving, all neatly stacked with folded blankets, bed linen, rubber sheets, and pillows. No sign of a lecherous intruder. Webster walked around inside. “Can’t see anyone,” he said to the nurse, who was hovering anxiously by the door.
    Braver now that she had company, she joined him, her head turning from side to side, looking, wanting to prove that she hadn’t imagined it. “There was someone here,” she insisted.
    Frost wandered in after them, his nose twitching. “There’s a hell of a stink in here . . .” He sniffed again, his eyes slowly scanning the racks, missing nothing. “I spy with my little eye . . . someone on the top rack . . . there!”
    Webster followed his finger but couldn’t see anything. He grasped the wooden supports and shook the racks as if he were shaking apples from a tree. “Come on, you bugger. Down you get or I’ll drag you down.”
    A heap of blankets on the top shelf heaved, then slithered to the floor. A dirty brown overcoat struggled out, then two red-rimmed eyes peered down at them. Webster turned his head away in disgust as the smell wafted down to hit him in the face.
    “I wasn’t doing no harm,” whined the man.
    “No harm?” cried Frost, “You’re stinking the place out.”
    “What are you after drugs?” demanded Webster as the old man, a tramp in his mid-sixties, climbed stiffly down.
    Short and stooped, he had tiny, red-rimmed, deepset eyes; his face was greasy and black and grey with stubble. His nose, large and route-mapped with tiny red veins, cried out for the urgent attention of a handkerchief. Matted hair flopped over the dirt-stiffened collar of the brown overcoat, which had been made many years ago for someone much bigger. His hands, the nails chipped and black, reached up to the top shelf for a bulging brown carrier bag which he clutched protectively to his chest.
    Frost identified him from the very first sniff. “Blimey, Wally, hasn’t the hospital got enough germs of its own without you bringing yours in as well?”
    “I’m an old man, Mr. Frost. Just looking for a place to rest my poor head for the night.” A dewdrop shimmered at the end of his nose. He gave a juicy sniff, which temporarily delayed its further descent.
    “So you rested your poor head against the window of the nurses’ bedroom?”
    “I didn’t know there was anyone in there . . . honest. I just happened to look in as she happened to look out our eyes sort of met.”
    “Sounds like something out of True Romance ,” said Frost. “So if you weren’t after an eyeful of naked nurse, what were you after? And what have you got in that bag?”
    He reached out for it, but Wally shrank back, clutching the bag as tightly as he could. With difficulty, Frost managed to prise it from the tramp’s greasy grasp and looked inside. Scraps of clothes, bits of food and a three-quarters-full wine bottle. “I hope you haven’t stolen someone’s specimen,” said Frost, pulling out the cork and cautiously sniffing the contents. “It’s either me ths or the stuff they pickle human organs in. Is this what you’ve