DI Jack Frost 02 - A Touch of Frost

fired at, the street is empty. The minute he’s gone they’re standing eight deep on the pavement.”
    The shop door opened and Webster, with the other uniformed man, returned to report that they hadn’t come up with a single witness who had seen anything other than a red, or a blue, or a black car roaring off in the distance.Plenty of people said they had heard the gunshot but thought it was a car backfiring.
    “If it was an atom bomb going off, they’d say it was a car backfiring,” muttered Glickman.
    Frost’s cigarettes were passed around again, and soon the little shop was thickly hazed with smoke. “One thing for sure,” said Frost, ‘whoever did this was either a small-time crook or a first-timer.”
    “How do you make that out?” asked Webster.
    “Well,” said Frost, adding a salvo of smoke rings to the already murky atmosphere, ‘if you go in for armed robbery it’s a minimum of seven years, for starters. So why risk seven years robbing a little shithouse like this when, for the same risk, you could rob a bank or a decent jeweller?”
    “Thank you very much, Mr. Frost,” said Glickman, sounding offended.
    “My pleasure,” replied Frost. “Secondly, he didn’t saw off the barrel as any self-respecting gunman would do. This means he couldn’t keep the gun concealed in a deep pocket. He’d either have to tuck it inside his coat as he crossed from the car to the shop or blatantly wave it about. Finally, what does he do when he gets in here? He dashes in, sweeps odds and ends of Mickey Mouse jewellery into a dustbin sack and is out again in seconds. He could have taken his time and nicked all sorts of things of value, but he was in too much of a hurry. Why?” Like a schoolmaster, he looked around for an answer.
    “Because he was bloody scared?” suggested Sutton.
    Frost nodded his agreement. “Exactly what I think, young Sutton. It was all so amateurish.”
    “It wasn’t amateurish the way he fired that gun at me,” objected Glickman. “He missed me by inches.”
    “Thirty-six bloody inches,” said Frost. He pushed himself off the counter and wandered behind it to the till. “I suppose he didn’t touch the takings?” He pressed the No Sale key and the drawer shot open.
    “Only the jewellery,” said Glickman, craning his neck to keep an eye on Frost. Some policemen had very sticky fingers.
    The till drawer held about seventy pounds. Not rich pickings, but it would have increased the gunman’s haul by about ten percent. Frost was pushing the drawer shut when he saw the small envelope tucked behind the bank notes. He had seen envelopes like that before. Exactly like that. Taken from a drug addict, newly purchased from a pusher and full of heroin.
    Sammy Glickman had been mixed up with a lot of shady dealings in the past, but never with drugs. Frost pulled the envelope out. It was far too heavy for heroin. The flap was sealed. He stuck a finger beneath it and ripped it open, then tipped the contents into his palm. Gold. Gold coins. Five golden sovereigns each bearing the head of Queen Victoria.
    “I’m waiting to hear the ding of the till drawer being closed,” called the pawnbroker anxiously, finding it difficult to see what Frost was up to through the thickening smoke screen. Frost obliged him and firmly closed the drawer with a satisfying ding. But he didn’t put the sovereigns back. He walked back around the counter and held out his hand.
    “What are these, Sammy?”
    The eyes behind the thick lenses blinked furiously as they focused on the coins. “I buy all sorts of precious metal . . . coins, lockets, gold teeth. You can see the sign outside . . Best Prices Paid . . . there’s no crime in it.”
    “I didn’t say there was, Sammy.”
    Webster craned his neck so he could see what the inspector had found. At first he didn’t realize what the coins were. They looked small and insignificant, not much bigger than a new penny. Then he saw the George-and-Dragon pattern on the reverse. Of course! The stolen Queen Victoria sovereigns. “Where did you get these?” he demanded.
    The pawnbroker wriggled in his chair. “I’ve been robbed, I’m wounded, I’m in a state of shock. I demand to go to hospital.”
    “Where did you get them?” repeated Webster.
    “I bought them this morning. It’s all legitimate.”
    If it’s legitimate, then why are you looking so bloody guilty? thought Frost to himself happily. “Who did you buy them from, Sammy?”
    “A young bloke