DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

it?”
    For a few seconds Frost stared into space. Webster wondered if he had been listening, but then Frost turned and said, “I’ve been bloody stupid, son. I knew I’d missed something.”
    “What?” Webster asked.
    “His carrier bag. That’s where he kept all his worldly possessions - food, odds and ends, his hypodermic. He was never without it. But it wasn’t with his body last night. Whoever killed him took it.”
    He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, then leaned over for the handset and called Johnny Johnson at the station. He wanted to know if Wally Peters was still in the cells.
    “No, thank God,” was the reply. “We kicked him out half an hour ago. Now we’ve got all the windows open, and we’re burning sulphur candles and scratching like mad.”
    “I want him brought in,” ordered Frost. “Get the word out to all units.”
    “Brought in, Jack? Why?”
    “We’ve just come from the post-mortem. Ben Cornish was murdered.”
    “Murdered?” gasped Johnson. “Why would anyone want to murder him?”
    “Probably for the few bits and pieces in his carrier bag,” replied Frost. “It’s missing . . . and Wally was seen lurking about outside those toilets last night. So I want him.”
    “Right,” said Johnny. “Consider it done. By the way, Jack, you won’t be long, will you? Mr. Mullett’s got Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor sitting in his office, all craving an audience with you about the hit-and-run.”
    “Flaming hell!” cried Frost, “I forgot about them. We’re on our way - shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”
    He replaced the handset. “Back to the station, son.” Webster reminded him they hadn’t yet called on Ben Cornish’s family. “Hell,” said Frost wearily, ‘we’ll have to do that first.” As they were on their way to the house, he remembered that he had meant to ask Tom Croll some more questions about the Coconut Grove robbery while they were at the hospital. His finger gave his scar a bashing. There was so much to be done, and he didn’t seem to be getting through any of it.
    Then he saw her. “Stop the car!”
    Webster slammed on the brakes and the car squealed to a halt
    A young girl in school uniform was looking into the window of a dress shop. Frost’s hand was moving toward the door handle when the girl turned and stared directly at him.
    She was blonde, wore glasses, and looked nothing like Karen Dawson.
    “Drive on, son,” said Frost.

Wednesday day shift (3)

    Frost banged the knocker a couple of times. This started a chain reaction of noise from inside the house. A dog barked, setting off a baby’s crying. Footsteps thudded down uncarpeted stairs; a sharp, angry shout followed by a yelp from the dog, then the front door opened.
    “Police,” said Frost. He didn’t have to show his warrant card. Danny Cornish knew him of old.
    Danny didn’t look at all like his brother. Four years younger, stockily built, he had thick black hair and bright red cheeks which betrayed the family’s gypsy origins. His meaty hand was hooked in the collar of a black-and-brown mongrel dog whose immediate ambition seemed to be to sink his teeth into the throats of the two policemen.
    Webster stepped back a couple of paces as the dog’s jaws snapped at air. Frost was looking warily at Danny, whose face reflected the savagery and hatred of the dog and who seemed all too ready to let his hand slip from the collar. The mongrel, almost foaming at the mouth, was getting more and more frantic as its efforts to rip the callers to pieces were frustrated.
    One eye on the mongrel, his foot ready to kick, Frost said, “You’d better let us in, Danny. It’s about your brother.”
    The man cuffed the dog. It stopped barking but, instead, began making menacing noises at the back of its throat, its lip quivering and curling back to expose yellow, pointed teeth.
    “Ben? What’s he done now?”
    “Don’t let the bleeders in.” Behind him, advancing out of the dark of the passage, they could see a young woman, not much more than nineteen. She carried a ten-month-old baby, its squalling almost drowning the snarls from the near-apoplectic dog. This was Jenny, Danny Cornish’s common-law wife, once pretty, now hard-faced, her features twisted with hate.
    His head snapped around to her. “Shove it, for Christ’s sake. And keep that bloody kid quiet!” His angry tone caused the infant to howl even louder, and this, in turn, spurred the mongrel on to