long, sir,’ said Frost.
Hearing strange voices, the dog was barking and frantically scratching at the lounge door.
Greenway smiled. ‘I’d better put Spike outside. He can get quite nasty with strangers.’ They stood well back as he opened the lounge door and grabbed the Dobermann’s collar as it leapt out. ‘Find yourselves seats,’ he called, dragging the snarling dog past them and into the kitchen.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Frost, giving the dog a wide berth and following Gilmore into the lounge, a grotty room with a well-worn and sagging three-piece suite and old newspapers heaped on every chair. The settee had been dragged in front of the television set, at the side of which a waste bin overflowed with empty lager cans. Frost strode around, prodding, poking.
‘Look at this!’ Gilmore was holding up a girlie magazine with a picture of a busty blonde dressed in school uniform on the front cover.
But Frost was beginning to feel uneasy. ‘He’s taking a bloody long time putting that dog out . . . Shit!’ He spat out the expletive at the growl of an engine starting up outside. Twice in the same flaming day! ‘The bastard’s done a runner!’
They dashed to the back door where a snarling Dobermann barred their way. Back along the passage and out the front door, just in time to see the rear lights of a delivery van disappearing into the dark.
Back in the car, bumping and jolting in hot pursuit, Frost fumed and castigated himself for letting the sod walk out so easily. Why hadn’t he taken more men and posted someone at the back? If Greenway got away, he’d never hear the last of it from Mullett. ‘Faster, son,’ he urged Gilmore as the red rear-lights ahead shrunk to pinpricks.
‘This car’s not in the best of condition,’ Gilmore retorted as the Cortina shook and shuddered in protest at the unaccustomed increased speed. A warning light on the oil gauge kept flashing and there was a hot metal burning smell. ‘Hadn’t you better radio Control for some back-up?’
Frost hesitated. Of course they needed back-up, but he was hoping they could get by without the station knowing what a twat he had made of himself. A teeth-setting grinding noise from the engine made up his mind. He radioed for help.
‘Do you mean to say,’ howled Mullett, snatching the microphone from Sergeant Wells, ‘that you just let him drive off?’ He had been hovering in Control, awaiting confirmation of a successful arrest.
‘Just get me back-up – over and out,’ muttered Frost, banging down the handset, aware that he had only delayed a Grade A bollocking from his superintendent. ‘Where’s the bugger gone?’ The red lights had vanished. ‘Look out,’ he screamed as a dark shape loomed up in front of the windscreen.
Gilmore jammed on the brakes. The tyres screeched and the car slewed to a halt, throwing Frost heavily against Gilmore who almost lost control of the wheel. They had pulled up within inches of Greenway’s delivery van.
‘What’s the silly bugger playing at?’ asked Frost, all fingers and thumbs as he tried to release his seat belt. He was answered by Greenway blurring into vision at the side of the Cortina, swinging what they later realized was a long-handled sledge-hammer. A clanging thud which shook the car and nearly deafened them, then a splintering and shattering as the windscreen crazed into an opaque honeycombed sheet. When Frost finally managed to release the seat belt and leap from the car he was just in time to see the rear lights of the van dwindling into the distance.
‘Shit!’ yelled Frost yet again, after they had knocked out enough of the shivered windscreen to see where they were going. They limped off after Greenway, eyes streaming, faces stinging from the ice-hard punch of cold gritty air. Control had advised them that area car Hotel Tango was on its way to afford them assistance.
But they had lost too much time. The road was dead straight ahead and the van was nowhere to be seen. Turning his head to one side for protection against the slip-stream, Frost groped for the handset. ‘We’ve lost him, I think. Last seen heading towards the motorway.’
‘Hotel Tango receiving,’ replied Simms. ‘We are in position by motorway exit. Will block.’
‘Bully for you, Hotel Tango,’ said Frost, turning up his coat collar and sinking low in his seat to try and escape the worst of the slip-stream. He attempted to light a cigarette but the match died in its battle against the