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incidents, and probably many more unreported, Mullett had decided there was little point in wasting time sending experienced police officers to the scene of the crime. There would be nothing to see but an irate householder and an empty drawer, vase, purse or tea caddy where the money had been. Instead, a form was provided so the householder could fill in details of the breakin. The forms were then cursorily examined, filed, and usually forgotten. Jack Frost was nominally in charge of the breakin investigations, and his file of burglary report forms was growing thicker each day. The accumulated figures made the division’s unsolved crimes return look incurably sick.
    Another roar of laughter from upstairs. The Chief Constable must have told his unfunny joke and Mullett’s pants’ would be wet from uncontrolled giggling. Frost stared at the ceiling sadly, then brightened up. Surely Mullett and the Chief Constable wouldn’t stick it out right to the bitter end. As soon as they’d left, he’d be up there, and would he make up for lost time! He ambled over to the desk and offered Wells a cigarette.
    “Ta, Jack.” Wells flinched back as the flame from Frost’s gas lighter seared his nose. “You’ll never guess what Mullett’s latest is: He reckons the lobby wants brightening up. He only wants vases of bleeding flowers all over the place.”
    Frost was only half listening. For some reason the face of Ben Cornish swam up in his mind, the dead eyes reproaching him for something he had overlooked. Then he realized he hadn’t told Wells who the body in the toilet was.
    “Ben Cornish? Oh no!” Wells slumped down in his chair. Cornish was one of his regulars, nothing too serious public nuisance, drunk and disorderly . . . but lately he had been on drugs. Hard drugs. “He was only in here a couple of days ago, stinking of meths and as thin as a bloody rake. I gave him a quid to get something to eat.”
    “I doubt if he bought food with it, Bill. I don’t think he’s eaten properly for weeks. When I saw him tonight he looked like a Belsen camp victim on hunger strike. I reckon the jar of his stomach contents tomorrow will be absolutely empty. Whatever he bought with your quid was squirted straight into his arm with a rusty syringe.”
    “I bet his mother took it badly.”
    Frost smacked his forehead with his palm. “Damn and bloody blast . . . I knew there was something I’d forgotten to do. I’ll have to nip round there. Any chance of some tea first?”
    “Shouldn’t be long, Jack,” said Wells, adding with a note of smug triumph, “Webster’s making it.”
    Frost stepped back in amazement. “How did you get him to do that?”
    “Simple. I gave him an order. Why shouldn’t he make it? He’s only a bloody constable.”
    “He may be just a bloody constable now,” said Frost, “but he used to be an inspector, and half the time he thinks he still is one.”
    The subject of their conversation, Detective Constable Martin Webster, twenty-seven, bearded, was in the washroom filling the battered kettle from the hot tap for speed. He banged six fairly clean mugs onto a tin tray and slurped in the milk from a cardboard carton.
    Is this what he had come to? A flaming tea boy? Six months ago he had been an inspector. Detective Inspector Martin Webster, wonder boy of Braybridge Division. Braybridge was a large town some forty-three miles from Denton.
    Shipping him to this dump called Denton was part of his punishment, just in case being demoted wasn’t enough, and the cherry on the cake was being saddled with that stupid, sloppy, bumbling oaf Jack Frost, who wouldn’t have been tolerated as a constable in Braybridge, let alone an inspector. How did a clown like Frost make the rank? Someone had tried to tell him that the man had won a medal, but he wasn’t swallowing that . . . not unless they handed out medals for sheer incompetence. Police Superintendent Mullett, the Divisional Commander, seemed to dislike