DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

boomed like a drum, echoing on and on around the room.
    Webster spun around. The two uniformed men walked straight past the door and out the back entrance to the car park.
    “I don’t think we’re cut out for a life of crime,” said Frost, rubbing his head ruefully as Webster returned to his lookout post. He pushed the filed key into the lock. It clicked home. Carefully, he rotated it. Two more clicks. He turned the handle and pulled: the locker door swung open.
    Shelby’s overcoat swung from a hanger. His street shoes were on the locker floor. Next to the shoes, in a leather case, was an expensive Polaroid instant camera with auto-focus, flash, and delayed action. Frost patted the overcoat pockets. Something bulged. He dived his hand in and pulled out Shelby’s driving gloves. Beginning to think it was all a waste of time, he poked his hand around the back of the overcoat to feel for the metal shelf at the rear of the cabinet. His fingers scrabbled blindly, exploring by touch. Nothing . . . nothing . . . something! A packet of some kind. Of heroin? He pulled it out so he could examine it.
    A plastic wallet secured with an elastic band. He looked inside. Photographs. A wad of coloured photographs taken with the Polaroid and making full use of the flash and the delayed action. Shelby and various women. In various bedrooms. In various positions of the sexual act. Shelby liked to keep permanent records of his conquests.
    A spluttering attempt at a whistle from outside. The door opened. “Someone’s coming,” hissed Webster. With fingers that didn’t seem to want to act quickly, Frost stuffed the photographs back into the wallet. One fell to the floor. He snatched it up, then looked at it again. A bedroom like all the others. Shelby lying on the bed, facing the camera. A woman poised over him, back to camera. Both were naked. There was no way the woman could be identified, but something in the room was familiar.
    No time for further study. Back it went into the wallet, and the rubber band was slipped over. Hastily, even as voices were raised outside, he rammed the wallet back on the shelf and slammed the door shut. It clanged as if hit by a hammer. He hadn’t time to move away from the locker before Johnny Johnson came in. Johnson looked at Frost, looked at the locker then closed the door behind him.
    “What are you up to, Jack?”
    “Nothing,” said Frost, feeling like the window cleaner caught with trousers down by the husband.
    “Mr. Mullett has ordered me to find you and take you by the scruff of the neck to the interview room.”
    “On our way,” said Frost.
    When the inspector had left, the sergeant read the name tag on the locker. He tried the handle. It was locked. Frost was up to something, and Shelby was involved. Right, Jack Frost, he thought. You’ve got some explaining to do.
    “Well?” asked Webster as they quickened their pace to the interview room.
    “Nothing,” replied Frost. “Not a bloody thing.”

Wednesday day shift (4)

    Roger Miller was sprawled on one of the chairs in the interview room, dragging silently at a cigarette. At his solicitor’s suggestion he had discarded his trendy gear and was wearing a quiet grey business suit to present an illusion of soberness and responsibility.
    Next to him, sitting bolt upright, was his solicitor, Gerald Moore, fat, pompous, and humourless, conservatively dressed in black. For the umpteenth time Moore sifted through his briefcase and rearranged the order of his papers.
    Roger pushed himself up from the chair. “I’m not prepared to wait here any longer. I’m going.”
    Gerald Moore raised an eyebrow in mild reproach. “Your father would wish you to stay.” The solicitor returned to his briefcase sifting.
    Roger tore the cigarette from his mouth and hurled it on the floor. He’d been stuck in this miserable little room for nearly two hours. He wasn’t used to people keeping him waiting. Usually he only had to mention that he was Sir Charles Miller’s son and doors were flung open.
    The door of the interview room was flung open, and a dishevelled character in a crumpled suit slouched in, immediately followed by a smartly dressed, younger, bearded man. Obviously a plainclothes man and his prisoner, concluded the solicitor, frowning at the intrusion and wondering if the scruffy prisoner was dangerous. He was about to point out they had come to the wrong room when the criminal dragged a chair over to the table, flopped down opposite