Night frost by R. D. Wingfield

Author:R. D. Wingfield [R. D. Wingfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Policier
ISBN: 9780553571677
Published: 1995-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

Wednesday afternoon shift

Harry Greenway dropped a tea-bag into a mug and drowned it with boiling water from the kettle. He felt uneasy. He didn’t know why. On top of the fridge the portable radio was tuned into the local station where The Beatles were singing ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Greenway pulled a face and switched it off. A miserable, lonely song about death. He wasn’t in the mood for it. He was raising the mug to his mouth when his ears picked up the soft gentle click of a car door being carefully closed. Instantly, his hand shot out to the light switch. From the darkened kitchen he twitched back the curtains.

Two men were walking up the path, one middle-aged and scruffy, the other in his late twenties with the look of a thug. Greenway cupped his hand to the window pane to see better. The older man, a maroon scarf hanging unevenly round his neck had a scar of some kind on his cheek. He didn’t recognize either of them, but they spelled trouble.

A half-hearted knock at the front door which sounded almost too deliberately reassuring. The dog at his feet, a nine-month-old Dobermann, sprang up and started to growl, then to bark. He grabbed its collar and shut it in the lounge where it barked even louder. Another knock, a little stronger this time. Greenway reached for the heavy walking stick he kept on the hall table as he cautiously opened up. The scruffy man was smiling apologetically.

‘Mr Greenway? Sorry to bother you so late, sir. We called earlier, but you were out.’ He held something up. Greenway’s heart faltered and skipped a beat. It was a police warrant card.

‘Police?’ he stammered. God, how had they found out?

‘Routine enquiry,’ purred the man who he noted from the warrant card was Detective Inspector Frost. ‘All right if we come in?’ And without waiting to be asked, they were in the hall.

Routine enquiry? They don’t send detective inspectors on routine enquiries, not even rag-bags like this one. He felt his hands trembling. He forced a smile of unconcern. ‘I was just going to cook my dinner.’

‘This won’t take 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.

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