DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

Both ends seem to be in working order. Give him a shake, son.”
    Webster’s gentle shake was about ten on the Richter scale. Croll snorted, choked in mid snore then jerked his eyes open, flicking them from side to side as he tried to identify the shapes looming over him in the dark. He groped for the bedside lamp, blinking in surprise as he switched it on.
    “Hello, Tommy,” said Frost, his voice generously laced with insincere concern. “How are you?” He scraped a chair across to the bed and sat down.
    “Mr. Frost!” Croll fumbled under the pillow for his wristwatch. “It’s quarter past four in the morning!”
    “I know,” agreed Frost. “As soon as they told me you were in here, I dropped everything to come and see how you were. You’re a hero, Tommy, a bloody hero.”
    “Hero?” echoed Croll uneasily. He never knew how to take the inspector.
    “The way you fought like a tiger to try and stop Mr. Baskin’s money being nicked. How’s the poor head?”
    Croll touched the sticking plaster and winced. “Terrible, Mr. Frost. Stabbing pains - like red-hot knives.”
    Frost nodded sympathetically and stared down the ward. The two nurses had managed to calm the patient and were now straightening and smoothing the bedclothes. “Tell us what happened, Tommy.”
    “Not a lot to tell, Mr. Frost. It was all over so quickly.”
    “That’s what my girl friends used to say, Tommy.”
    Croll forced a grin. Frost always made him feel uneasy. And he wished the inspector would tell him who the bearded bloke hovering in the background was. He had such a miserable face, he looked like an undertaker. “It was like this: Bert went to fetch the car, like always, and I locked myself in. After about five minutes I get the signal. Naturally I think it’s Bert.”
    “Naturally,” agreed Frost.
    “I unbolts and flings open the door so he can come in when, wham, I’m welted a real right crack round the ear hole.”
    “Did you see who hit you?” the bearded bloke asked.
    “No, I didn’t but I sodding-well felt him,” replied Croll, his hand again tenderly touching the sticking plaster. “It knocked me out cold. The next thing I know, I’m in here with this roaring great headache. I can stand pain, Mr. Frost, but this is just as though my skull was split open.”
    “I saw a bloke with his skull split open once,” said Frost. “A bus had gone right over his head a double-decker, full of passengers - even eight standing on the lower deck. You could hear this scrunching and this squelching and then blood and brains squirted out all over the place. His eyes popped right out of their sockets. We found them in the gutter. I had a job eating my dinner that day.” He switched on a smile as he recalled the nostalgic moment, then abruptly switched it off. “What did you do with the money, Tom?”
    Croll, still shuddering from the description of the bus victim, was knocked off balance by Frost’s sudden change of direction. “Money? What money, Mr. Frost?”
    “The 5,132 quid you and Bert Harris pinched,” said the bearded one.
    “May I drop dead if I’m not telling the truth, Mr. Frost - " Croll began, his hand on his heart, but Frost cut in before he tempted fate further.
    “It had to be an inside job, Tommy. Whoever did it had to know the arrangements and the signal for tonight. Only three people knew: Mr. Baskin, Bert, and you . . .”
    Croll’s head sunk back on the pillow, his eyes showing how hurt he was. “That’s a wicked thing to suggest, Mr. Frost. Look at me wounded in the line of duty. I nearly had my head smashed in.”
    “But it wasn’t smashed in enough,” explained Frost patiently. “If your brains had been splattered all over Mr. Baskin’s floor and halfway up his wall, well, I might believe you, but as it is . . .”
    And before Croll realized what he was up to, Frost’s hand had snaked out and ripped the sticking plaster from his forehead. Croll yelled and clapped a hand over his wound, but Frost had already seen it.
    “A waste of bloody sticking plaster, Tommy. I’ve seen love bites from toothless women cause deeper wounds than that.”
    “I’m injured internally, Mr. Frost,” said Croll, putting a finger to his forehead to see if he was bleeding. “It don’t show on the outside.”
    More activity in the ward. The Asian doctor, who seemed to be the only doctor on duty in the entire hospital, flapped in and made for the patient who had called out. Frost now saw that the