R.D. Wingfield - Jack Frost 2 A Touch of Frost

A Touch of Frost

R. D. Wingfield

Back Cover:

A FUNNY, FRANTIC, UTTERLY REFRESHING BREW Sunday Telegraph

Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleagues leaving party. But first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a Denton public lavatory and then, when Frost attempts to join the revels later on, the nubile daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing.

Sleepy Denton has never known anything like the crime wave which now

threatens to submerge it. A robbery occurs at the towns notorious

strip joint, the Coconut Grove, the pampered son of a local MP is

suspected of a hit-and-run offence and, to top it all, a multiple

rapist is on the loose. Frost is reeling under the strain, his

paperwork is still in arrears and now, more than ever,

his self-righteous colleagues would love to see him sacked. But the manic Frost manages to assure his superior that all is under control. Now he has only to convince himself...

WHAT IMPRESSES MOST IS THE EXTRAORDINARILY

VIVID INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE POLICE CHARACTERS.

FROST HIMSELF IS SPLENDIDLY DRAWN

The Times

Also by R.D. Wingfield:

HARD FROST: FROST AT CHRISTMAS: NIGHT FROST published by Corgi Books

ISBN 0-552-14555-6

UK 6.99

9 780552 145558 >

Cover photograph by Peter Sherrard

Also by R. D. Wingfield

FROST AT CHRISTMAS

NIGHT FROST

HARD FROST

WINTER FROST

and published by Corgi Books

A TOUCH OF FROST

R.D. Wingfield

CORGI BOOKS

WRATH & ARTS

A TOUCH OF FROST A CORGI BOOK : 0 552 14555 6

Originally published in Great Britain by Constable & Co. Ltd

PRINTING HISTORY

Constable edition published 1990 Corgi edition published 1992

13 15 17 19 20 18 16 14 12 Copyright R. D.Wingfield 1987

The right of R. D. Wingfield to be identified as the author of this

work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77

and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Condition of Sale

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in 10pt Plantin by Phoenix Typesetting, Burley-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire.

Corgi Books are published byTransworld Publishers,

61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA,

a division of The Random House Group Ltd,

in Australia by Random House Australia (Pty) Ltd,

20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney, NSW 2061, Australia,

in New Zealand by Random House New Zealand Ltd,

18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand and in South Africa by Random House (Pty) Ltd, Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire.

Tuesday Night Shift (1)

A cold, clear autumn night with a sharp wind shaking trees. The man in the shadows was trembling. The pa of his rubber-gloved hands were moist, and warm sv trickled down his face under the mask. Soon he would able to see her. To touch her. She wouldnt see him, in the black of the moon shadow. She wouldnt know was there until it was too late.

At first he thought it was a police trap. A girl, a young girl, in

school uniform, walking all alone in Denton Wo at eleven oclock at

night. But how could the police know hed be here? The other attacks

had taken place miles away. And how could the police know it was the

re young girls who turned him on. The police knew nothing. He was too

smart for them. Far too smart. They ] questioned him. They had cleared him. They had thanked him for his co-operation.

Even so, he hadnt taken any chances. Only fools took chances. As always, he had carefully reconnoitred area. Nothing. Nobody. For miles around there was one but him, and the girl. The girl! In that school uniform. Wearing those dark thick stockings. She could be much more than fifteen ... a schoolgirl, young and innocent, unaware of her developing body ... just like girl in the book, the book he had hidden away in bedroom.

What was that?

He stood stock still, ears straining, his heartbeats booming in the screaming silence. He had heard something.

Something moving. He tensed, ready to tear off the mask and run. It was only the mask that could give him away. Without it the police had nothing. No leads, no clues, nothing. Even if they brought him face to face with his victims, they couldnt identify him. The first they knew of his presence was the sudden suffocating blackness as the cloth went over their heads, and then the pressure of his fingers on their throats, squeezing, choking. One of the girls ... the second, or was it the third? ... had managed to tear the cloth from her face. But all she saw of him, before his fists pounded her into unconsciousness, was the mask. The black hood that completely covered his hair, his face, his neck. The newspapers had dubbed him the Hooded Terror. Tomorrows headlines would read Hooded Terror Strikes Again. Schoolgirl Latest Victim. He liked reading about himself in the papers. It made him feel important.

He slid deeper back into the shadows, his body tensed, his ears tuned. The sound again. A rustling, a snapping of twigs. His hand crept up to the mask as he listened, trying to make out what it was. Then a snuffling and grunting as something blundered through the undergrowth. Something small. An animal of some kind. A badger, perhaps, but definitely not human. He relaxed and eased forward. He could smell his own sweat, his excitement. Soon he would hear her.

Such a shame he would have to hurt this one. She was so young, so innocent. How wonderful if she submitted without protest, her eyes wide open and wondering. At first terrified, but gradually, as she experienced the new delights, the unbelievable sensations he was offering, she moaned, as if in pain, gasping with pleasure, drawing him on ... the way the girl in his book reacted the very first time it happened to her. She was a schoolgirl, too.

His ear caught another sound. The dry whisper of fallen leaves on the narrow path scuffed by quick, nervous footsteps.

It was her. The girl. Again he held his breath. Stood stock still and tensed ...

Ready to spring.

Police Constable David Shelby, twenty-five, married with two young children, shivered and stamped his feet as the wind, cutting down the deserted back street, found an empty lager can and rattled it across the cobbled road. He checked his watch. Twelve minutes past eleven. He wondered who the station would send, hoping it wouldnt be Detective Inspector Allen; but whoever it was, he wished he would come soon. He had far better things to do tonight than stand guard over a dead body.

Above his head an enamel sign, hanging from a wrought-iron frame like a gibbeted body, creaked as it swung to and fro in the wind. The wording on the sign read Gentlemen, with an arrow pointing downwards. Behind Shelby a broken metal grille sagged, no longer fit to perform its function of denying entry to the worn, brass-edged stone steps which descended to the dank darkness of the underground public convenience, built by the Works Department of Denton Borough Council in 1897 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

The sound of a car approaching. Headlights flared as a mud-splattered, dark blue Ford Cortina rumbled over the cobbles, coming to an uncertain halt behind Shelbys patrol car. The door opened and a scruffy-looking individual wearing a dirty mac draped with an equally dirty maroon scarf, clambered out. In his late forties, he had a weather-beaten face flecked with freckles, his balding head fringed with light-brown fluffy hair. Shelby smiled, relieved that the station had sent the easygoing Detective Inspector Frost and not that sarcastic swine Allen, who treated the uniformed branch with contempt and who was bound to ask some probing questions. It would be a lot easier with Jack Frost.

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