DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

Prologue

    The 999 call came through just before midnight. An elderly man, voice trembling, barely audible. He sounded terrified.
    "Police?" My name is Powell, Mead Cottage, Exley Road. For God's sake get someone here quickly. There's an intruder in my house. I . . ."A gasp. The voice broke off then rose to a scream. "No . . . please . . . no . . ." Confused sounds. The line went dead.
    Despite the heavy snow an area car was at the scene within three minutes and was still slithering to a halt as the two constables, Evans and Howe, raced out. Lights were on at the cottage and a single line of footprints crept through the snow to an open downstairs window at the back. There were no returning footprints. The intruder was still inside.
    The two men split up, Evans to pound at the front door while Howe took up position at the rear of the cottage, ready to pounce if they flushed their man out.
    As Howe approached the open window he saw movement inside. He tensed, ready to spring, as the dark shape of a man leaned out. But it was his colleague, white-faced and shaken. "An ambulance. Get a bloody ambulance."
    Inside the tiny room, with snow blowing through the open window, Powell, the householder, an elderly man in a dressing gown, sat slumped on the settee, a walking stick resting against his knees. He seemed unaware of what was happening, mumbling tonelessly to himself, over and over, "I had to do it. He would have killed me. I had to do it."
    The room was in violent disarray, with chairs upturned, papers scattered, the phone ripped from the wall. And on the floor, barely alive, the crumpled figure of a man with a terrible head wound and Evans on his knees trying to stem the flow of blood. Evans looked up as Howe entered. "The bastard shot him," he said.
    Powell was still holding the Luger and didn't resist as Howe took it from him and carefully reset the safety catch. "It was him or me," he droned.
    "What the hell do you mean?" snarled Evans. "He's a police officer. You've shot a police officer!" A police officer? Howe bent down to look at the face.
    At first he didn't recognise him. The face was old, tired, gray and dying. Then Howe saw the scarf . . . the familiar, tatty, maroon-colored scarf, now discolored and sodden with blood. It was hardly believable, but the man on the floor - the intruder - was Frost . . . Detective Inspector Jack Frost.
    "He broke in," said Powell. "He tried to kill me." He pushed himself up and, with the aid of the walking stick, painfully hobbled over to the window and pointed. "Look!"
    The wood round the catch was splintered where it had been forced open with a knife. The knife was on the floor. Frost's knife. Outside, the snow was filling in all traces of the footprints. Frost's footprints. And Frost's skeleton keys dangled from the bureau lock.
    The two policemen looked at each other. It just didn't make sense. Detective Inspector Frost had done some pretty stupid things in his time, but this . . . ?
    How the hell did it happen?
    It was a long story. It had all started four days earlier when Joan Uphill, a prostitute, failed to meet her eight-year-old daughter from Sunday school.

SUNDAY

SUNDAY (1)

    Ten days to Christmas on a bitter December afternoon, a few minutes past four o'clock. Outside the house, day had prematurely aged into night and a grim, snow-heralding wind prowled the streets, but inside, behind heavy, drawn burgundy curtains, the bedroom was stifling. The three bars of an electric fire glared at the bed where two naked figures lay side by side.
    "Was it good?" she asked mechanically.
    "Very good," he answered, staring at the ceiling. He didn't look at her. He never looked at her afterward.
    Each week the man had seemed more violent in his love-making, pummeling, pounding, clawing. He hurt her. But he appeared indifferent enough now as he swung his legs to the floor and reached for his clothes, his back modestly toward her as he dressed.
    Usually so punctual, today he had arrived half an hour late. By now she should be outside the Sunday school waiting for Tracey. She willed him to hurry, watching with silent impatience as his clumsy fingers fumbled at his buttons. Was he being deliberately slow? He knew that she had to meet Tracey and that it wasn't safe for the child to come home alone in the dark. The Sunday school was only at the end of the street, but there had been that scare with the man trying to lure children into his car last summer.
    At last, trousered and