DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

him.”
    “Right, sir,” confirmed Shelby, raising his mug in salute.
    “I want this bastard nailed, right?”
    “You’re not being objective, Jack,” said Wells, wondering why his headache was starting up again. “He might be innocent.”
    “Don’t complicate matters, Bill. I haven’t got time to be objective. Hickman is dead, and Miller is as guilty as hell.” He massaged some life into the scar on his face. “The problem is going to be proving it.”
    He twisted the scarf around his neck and was halfway across the lobby before he remembered to nip back into his office and stuff most of the remaining miniature spirit bottles into his mac pockets.
    “There are a lot of thieving bastards in this station,” he explained. Then he took one of the miniatures and handed it to the sergeant. “Send this down to Wally Peters with my compliments. Tell him to have a good-bye drink to Ben Cornish.”
    Wells exploded. “We don’t give booze to prisoners, Jack. Besides, you know him. One drink and he’ll piddle nonstop all over the cell floor.”
    “Your trouble,” said Frost reprovingly, ‘is that you expect everyone to be too bloody perfect.”

Tuesday night shift (7)

    Roger Miller lived in Halley House, a newly built, multi-storeyed block of expensive service flats. Webster parked the Cortina alongside a public call box on the opposite side of the road and looked out at the towering hulk of Halley House, which loomed ever upward to the night sky. At that hour of the morning the only lights showing came from the entrance hall on the ground floor. “What’s your plan of campaign?” he asked the inspector.
    Frost grunted and shifted in his seat. He didn’t use plans of campaign. His method of working was to close his eyes, lower his head, and charge. “Haven’t given it a thought, son,” he admitted. “We go in, chat him up, and see what happens.”
    “If I were in charge,” said Webster pointedly, indicating that his way was the right way, “I wouldn’t mention the hit-and-run. I’d let him think we were here about his allegedly stolen car.”
    “What’s that supposed to achieve?”
    “It could lull him into a sense of false security. When he’s off his guard, we wham into him about the hit-and-run.”
    “Then he cracks up, breaks down and confesses, like they did in those Perry Mason films?” Frost pursed his lips doubtfully. “I’m afraid not, son. He’ll know what we’ve called for the minute we poke our sticky fingers in his bell push.”
    “How will he know?” demanded Webster.
    “Because you don’t get two CID men calling for a chat at this hour of the morning just because someone’s taken your motor for a walk.” He drummed a little tune on the dashboard with his fingers. “But I can’t think of anything better, so we’ll try it your way. You conduct the interview, I’ll just chip in with the odd remarks as and when the muse grabs me by the privates.”
    “If I’m going to question him, I want to know what sort of person he is,” said Webster, a firm believer in groundwork.
    “His father is stinking rich, a Member of Parliament, and a pompous slimy bastard. Master Roger is exactly the sort of son a pompous slimy bastard deserves. He’s arrogant, he’s nasty, and he gets away with murder because of his old man. And if that didn’t make you hate him enough, he also seems to be able to pull the most fantastic birds with throbbing tits and nipples sticking out like sore thumbs.”
    “Sounds a right little charmer,” grunted Webster, ‘but I reckon I can handle him.”
    Frost unhitched his seat belt and opened the door. “I’m sure you can, my son. But if you feel like giving him a welt, warn me so I can look the other way and swear blind I never saw anything. Come on, let’s get over there.”
    The wind tried to push them back as they raced, head down, across the road. Some sort of down draught caused by the design of the twenty-three-storey block created a whirlwind effect at the base, and they had to fight against it.
    Three marble steps led up to bronze-and-glass doors which were security-locked and could only be opened with a key, or if one of the tenants pressed a release button from his apartment. Frost shook them until they rattled, but they refused to open. Through the plate glass they could see the red-carpeted lobby, the reception desk, and the lift. Beside the main doors was a bank of bell pushes marked with the flat numbers. Miller’s number was