DI Jack Frost 01 - Frost At Christmas

Foolproof burglar alarms went off by accident and truculent motorists swaggered in flourishing certificates of insurance which they'd been ordered to produce after that little accident last night. Houses were robbed, old ladies mugged . . . the same as any other day.
    Station Sergeant Johnnie Johnson was cold. The gap under the swing doors invited the wind to roar across the lobby and the damn radiator, which wasn't much good at the best of times, had developed an air lock that no amount of kicking could shift. The phone on the inquiry desk rang. It was Superintendent Mullett, the Denton Divisional Commander, flapping as usual.
    "Yes, sir," soothed Johnson, "it's all laid on. I'm sending a car to meet him . . . No, sir, it's very quiet, as it happens. Must be the cold weather."
    The cold weather! Say what you like about the cold--he stamped his feet to move the blood around his toes--but it certainly kept the crime figures down. Criminals were no respecters of the Sabbath, but even the most hardened villain preferred the comforts of his own fireside on nights like this.
    He decided to let the lobby run itself for a couple of minutes and thudded across to Control.
    "We got anyone picking up that new chap? The old man's just phoned."
    The controller consulted his duty sheet. "Able Baker four's doing it, Sarge . . . But how come we're giving the red carpet treatment to a lousy detective-bloody-constable?"
    "Because," explained the sergeant, "the new detective-bloody-constable just happens to be the nephew of the Chief-bloody-Constable . . . and our Divisional Commander knows on which side his bread is buttered."
    He lingered. It was warmer in Control than out in that windswept lobby. "Anything happening?"
    "No, Sarge . . . it's quiet . . . bloody quiet. . . must be the weather."
    The phone in the lobby rang, but there was no need for Johnson to race out to answer it. P.C. Lambert was back from his tea break. The call was from a woman whose daughter hadn't returned home from Sunday school.

    The 3:45 down train from London slackened speed as it took the final bend before the run in to Denton Station. The carriage lurched and a crumpled Sunday paper fell from Clive Barnard's lap. He scrubbed at the condensation and tried to peer through the window, but met the murky gaze of his own reflection, a young man of twenty-three, fair-haired, with a nose that looked as if it had been broken and badly set.
    A fellow passenger tapped him on the knee. "Just coming in to Denton."
    Clive nodded his thanks and dragged his suitcase down from the rack, the case he'd packed at the last minute that very morning in glorious London, over seventy miles away. Wasn't it just his lousy rotten luck to be posted to this fleabag of a town, and so near to Christmas?
    He'd seen the place once before, but once was enough. Denton itself was a pleasant little market town with Georgian houses and cobbles, but the iron hand of progress had sorted it out for special treatment. Denton was designated as a proposed "New Town" and was being enlarged, modernized, redeveloped, and ruined. Already acres of its surrounding farm land and woods had been cleared, and half of the new development completed. New, clean and Efficient houses had been built, and hard-faced money-grubbing newlyweds imported to fill them, then factories had been erected to enable the hard-faced newly-weds to slave away at monotonous jobs to pay the rent, the hire purchase on the deep-freeze and color telly, and the cost of running the car to take them to the factory . . .
    So far the improving hand of progress hadn't transformed the old market town, but it was not a reprieve, just a stay of execution. The planners were leaving that tasty titbit on their plates until the last.
    Denton Police Station was in the old town and it was to the police station that Detective Constable Clive Barnard, his brand-new warrant card nestling in his wallet, was to report for duty at nine o'clock sharp Monday morning.
    No one else got out at Denton Station, and the carriage door had no sooner closed behind him than the train, eager to get away, rumbled off to more exciting venues. Clive watched its lights disappear and felt bitter, deep-seated resentment toward it for abandoning him to this miserable place on a chill and friendless Sunday evening.
    A yawning ticket collector held out a hand for Clive's ticket, not bothering to lift his eyes from the pages of the Sunday Mirror. Clive humped his case to the