DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

door, Ridley looked in. “You said something about a drink, Mr. Frost?”
    “More than a drink Frost told him, pouring out a quadruple shot of whisky’ - a party, a celebration. We’re going to arrest an MP’s son tonight. Help yourself to nosh.”
    Ridley thanked him and took his drink and a ham sandwich back to the control room.
    “Plenty more when you’ve finished that,” called Frost, biting into a sausage roll and coating both himself and the desk in a snowstorm of flaky pastry crumbs. The phone on his desk rang. “Shut up,” he ordered. “We’re having a party.” It rang on and on until he shook it free of food crumbs and picked it up. “Frost . . . OK, put them through.” He listened. “Thanks for telling me. Good night.” He fumbled the phone back on the rest. “That was the hospital, Bill. The hit-and-run victim just died.”
    Wells stood up. “You’d better phone Mullett, Jack. This could be dynamite.”
    Frost waved him back into the chair, then refilled the sergeant’s mug. “Sod Mullett, Bill. I want to handle this my way.” He went to the door and yelled for Webster to come in. “Put your coat on, son, we’re going walkies. We’ve got to arrest a piece of puke called Miller.”
    “Miller?” said Webster, as he unhooked his coat from the rack. “You don’t mean Roger Miller?”
    “What do you know about Roger Miller?” asked Wells.
    “I saw the name on a car-theft report on Collier’s desk. When he went off he left a lot of his work unfinished, as I expect you know, Sergeant.”
    Wells didn’t know. He hadn’t checked. “I’ve only got one pair of hands. I can’t do every bloody thing.”
    Frost put his mug down very carefully and gave Webster his full attention. “Let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me that there’s an unprocessed car-theft report on Collier’s desk, that Roger bloody Miller phoned us earlier this evening reporting his Jag had been nicked?”
    Webster nodded.
    “It’s not my fault, Jack,” protested Wells, “I didn’t have time to look on his desk. Mr. Allen had no right to take Collier away.”
    “Never mind whose fault it was,” said Frost. “What time did Miller phone in?”
    Webster went out, returning with the report in his hand. “Eleven twenty-four,” he said.
    Frost sighed with relief. The old boy was run over at 10:58. “He runs someone down, then he reports his car was stolen. Did he really think we’d fall for that?”
    “Do you mind telling me what this is all about?” requested Webster.
    Frost stood up and shrugged on his mac. “It was Roger Miller’s car that knocked that old boy down.”
    “I see,” said Webster.
    Slinging the scarf round his neck, Frost yelled for Ridley to contact PC Shelby on the radio.
    “Dave Shelby has just come in,” Ridley shouted back. “He’s in the locker room.”
    Frost dashed down the corridor and into the locker room. Shelby, busy ramming something into his locker, whirled around with a start. “You frightened the life out of me, Mr. Frost,” he said, quickly slamming his locker door and turning the key.
    Hello, thought Frost, what are you up to now, my lad? When he had time, he’d check. “Got a job for you, Shelby. See me in my office - now.”
    Back in the office, Wells, fighting hard against the effects of the three brimming mugfuls of Scotch, was insisting that Mullett would have to be told about the MP’s son. “Let me arrest him first, then tell him,” replied Frost.
    “Mr. Mullett won’t like that,” said Wells.
    “I don’t really believe I was put on this earth just to make Mr. Mullett happy,” replied Frost. Shelby walked in, and his eyes lit up when he saw the drinks and the food.
    “Grab a sandwich and get this inside you,” said the inspector, draining his mug and filling it up for the constable. “Don’t sip it, swig it you’re going straight out again. The hit-and-run victim is dead. Do you know if any of the witnesses could identify the driver?”
    Shelby bit into a sandwich. “No, sir. All they saw was the car roaring off.”
    “We’ve checked the registration,” Frost told him. “The motor belongs to Roger Miller, the MP’s son, and he’s trying to kid us his motor was stolen and he wasn’t driving.” He pushed the car-theft report into Shelby’s hand. “I want all these details checked, double-checked and then checked again, right? We’re dealing with a slippery sod, and I want to be one jump ahead of