neck like a noose. He turned to Gilmore and held out a nicotine-stained hand. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Jack Frost.’
Gilmore shook the proffered hand, his mind racing. A detective inspector! This rag-bag was a detective inspector? A joke, surely? But no-one seemed to be laughing. ‘You’ll be working with me,’ continued Frost.
Now that just had to be a joke. He waved his itinerary. ‘I’ve been assigned to Mr Allen.’
‘All been changed – Allen’s got the pox,’ said Frost.
‘He’s down with flu,’ corrected the station sergeant. ‘Half the damn station’s down with it, most of the others are on sick leave following Friday’s punch-up and the rest of us silly sods are dragged in on their rest day and working double shifts.’ The internal phone buzzed.
‘If it’s Mullett . . .’ said Frost, backing towards the exit doors.
It wasn’t Mullett. It was Control for the inspector. ‘The Comptons – the couple receiving the hate mail. They’ve had a fire – someone’s tried to burn their summer house down.’
‘On my way,’ said Frost, banging down the phone. He jerked his head at Gilmore. ‘Come on, son. If you like rigid nipples you’re in for a treat – the lady of the house is a cracker.’
‘But I’m supposed to report to the Divisional Commander,’ Gilmore protested.
‘You can do that when we get back.’
The internal phone rang. This time it was Mullett.
Frost grabbed Gilmore’s arm and hurried him out into the rain.
Frost’s old Ford Cortina was tucked out of sight, round the corner from the station car-park where, hopefully, Mullett wouldn’t spot it. While Gilmore waited in the pouring rain which was finding its way through his new raincoat, Frost cleared the junk from the passenger seat, including two mud-encrusted wellington boots which he tossed into the back of the car. ‘In you get, son.’
Gilmore scrubbed pointedly at the seat with his handkerchief before risking its contact with his brand new suit. His head nearly hit the windscreen as Frost suddenly slammed the car into gear and they were away.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, hastily clicking the buckle of his seat belt as the car squealed into Market Square, shooting up spray as it ploughed through an unexpectedly deep puddle.
‘A little village called Lexing – about four miles outside Denton.’ A blur of shops zipped past then the engine was labouring and coughing as it clawed up a steep hill and there was a smell of burning oil. Frost sniffed and frowned. ‘Do you know anything about engines, son?’
‘No,’ said Gilmore, firmly. There was no way he was going to mess up his new suit poking under the bonnet of Frost’s filthy car. They were now passing a heavily wooded area, with sagging, rain-heavy bushes.
Frost jerked a thumb. ‘Denton Woods. Right over the far side is where that schoolgirl went missing. She was doing a newspaper round, but never finished it. Her bike and her undelivered papers turned up in a ditch, but no trace of the kid.’
‘Had there been trouble at home? Could she have run away?’
‘Don’t know, son. It was Mr Allen’s case until he conveniently got the bloody flu. Now I’m lumbered. We’ll have to start reading through the file when we get back.’ He scratched a match down the dashboard and lit up, then remembered he hadn’t told Gilmore about the case they were driving to. ‘Married couple, in their mid-twenties, live in a converted windmill. Some joker’s been frightening the life out of them.’
‘How?’ Gilmore asked.
‘Lots of charming ways. Sending fake obituary notices – tombstone catalogues and things like that. They even had an undertaker call on them last week to collect the husband’s body. His poor cow of a wife went into hysterics.’
The car was now jolting and squelching down a muddied lane and the smell of burning oil was getting stronger. Frost wound down the window to let in some air, then pointed. ‘There it is!’ Looming up before them, imperfectly seen through the Cortina’s mud-grimed windscreen, was a genuine old wooden windmill, its sails removed, and painted a smart designer black and white.
Gilmore leant forward and craned his neck to take it all in. He was impressed. ‘That must have cost a few bob?’
Frost nodded. ‘Rumour has it that the Comptons paid close on a quarter of a million for the place. With the slump in the housing market it’s worth a lot less now.’
The car scrunched up the gravel driveway which led to a white-framed, black front door outside which a police car was already