DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

and his solicitor. I specifically told you they were coming. I specifically asked you to be present . . .”
    Frost wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. He hated Mullett’s bawlings out. He always had such difficulty keeping a straight face. As Mullett burbled on, Frost spotted a pencilled note on his desk telling him that Mrs.Clare Dawson wanted to speak to him about her missing daughter. His hand was reaching out for the phone when he realized that Mullett was still in full flow, so he adjusted his face to a contrite expression and tried to form a mental picture of the luscious Clare Dawson, all warm, creamy, and bouncy in a topless bikini, her sensuous lips parted, her tongue flicking over them . . . A strange silence. He switched his ears back on. Mullett had stopped speaking and was leaning back, ready to receive Frost’s grovelling apologies.
    “Sorry, Super, but something more important turned up.”
    Mullett’s mouth opened, poised to demand what could possibly be more important than a summons from one’s Divisional Commander, when Frost continued.
    “That stiff I found last night . . ."
    “The tramp?” asked Mullett. “In the public convenience?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust, his expression indicating that he held Frost personally responsible for the fact that the body had been found in such unsavoury surroundings.
    Frost nodded. “It now looks as if he was murdered. The autopsy shows he was beaten up and his stomach jumped on while he was on the floor. You should have seen his internal organs. The doc reckons his liver had exploded.”
    The mental picture of an exploded liver made Mullett shudder. This case was getting more and more unsavoury by the minute. He gritted his teeth and listened as Frost filled him in on the details, including a graphic, stomach-churning description of the human offal floating in the specimen jars. When, thankfully, Frost had finished, he was forced to admit that, under police rules, a murder inquiry took priority over everything else.
    Frost offered a little prayer of thanks to Ben Cornish for getting himself murdered and saving him from a grade A bollocking. But Mullett wasn’t going down without a fight.
    “What I don’t understand, Inspector, is why none of these facts emerged last night. It’s now more than twelve hours since the body was found, and we have no photographs of the body, no forensic examination of the surroundings, and only now is a search being made for the missing carrier bag. The question I have to ask myself is whether you are competent to be trusted with a murder inquiry, even one as hopeless as this.”
    “The body was blocking the urinal drain,” Frost explained patiently, “The place was flooded. When you’re up to your armpits in cold wee you’re inclined not to be as thorough as you might be. To add to the fun, he’d spewed up all over himself.” As proof, he heaved the polythene bag of clothes under Mullett’s nose.
    “All right, all right,” pleaded Mullett, queasily waving the white flag. “We’ll talk about it later.”
    The internal phone rang. Frost answered it, then handed it to the Commander. “Your secretary.”
    Miss Smith reminding him that Sir Charles was getting restless.
    “Make some more coffee,” said Mullett. “We’re on our way.” Then he saw Frost’s shoes. Scuffed, unpolished, and water-stained from the previous night’s adventures. If there had been time he would have insisted that Frost repolish them and give his suit a thorough brushing. But there wasn’t time. Sir Charles would have to take him, crumpled suit, unpolished shoes, warts, and all. But he made Frost put the polythene bag down.

    The cleaners hadn’t found time to clean up the briefing room because Mullett had commandeered them for his own office, which now sparkled and gleamed and reeked of polish. Added to this was the rich smell of cigar smoke.
    Sir Charles Miller, MP, buffed and gleaming from good living, sat in one of the blue moquette armchairs, which were reserved exclusively for important visitors, and glowered at his watch. He seemed singularly unimpressed with the nondescript scruff that the grinning-like-an-idiot Mullett introduced as Detective Inspector Frost. If this piece of rubbish was the best they had to offer . . .
    “Sorry I’m late, Sir Charles,” breezed Frost. “I was held up on a murder inquiry.”
    “A murder inquiry?” exclaimed the MP, leaning forward with interest. “How