Fatal Frost Read Online Free PDF

anxious, Simms thought and smiled to himself – he’s worried he’ll be next.
    ‘I can only tell you what I told those other chappies. They have a full list of all the valuables that are gone.’ She ushered them into the living room. ‘Nothing else is missing as far as I can tell. Michael thought his shotgun had been taken but we found it in the boot of the car. And Mr Tibbs has not come back to life,’ she added bitterly.
    ‘Mr Tibbs?’ Waters asked, halting near the chesterfield.
    Mrs Hartley-Jones sighed. ‘My sweet angel.’
    ‘The cat,’ Simms said.
    ‘Yes, my poor cat. What
are
they going to do with him? One of your better-dressed colleagues took him away in a polythene bag!’
    ‘Yes,’ Simms confirmed, ‘to ascertain how he … er … how he passed away.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘We’re still waiting.’ Simms preferred not to enlighten her about the cheese wire.
    ‘Well, can I have him back when your friends have finished prodding him around? He needs to have a proper burial, underneath the sycamore.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Simms uneasily, wondering whether the feline carcass had already been tossed in the incinerator. ‘And where was Mr Tibbs discovered, exactly?’
    ‘Don’t you people communicate?’ Mrs Hartley-Jones said, vexed. ‘It’s most upsetting, having to go through this again. In the fridge, poor dear.’
    ‘The fridge? Of course, yes, I am sorry. I’m sure there’s a note of it somewhere.’ Simms made a play of fiddling with his notepad, knowing the pages to be mostly blank. He’d been far too preoccupied with Waters’ arrival to pay much attention to the incident report from uniform. Focus, Derek, he told himself, you’re CID now. He checked what notes he did have.
    ‘Mind if we look around?’ asked Waters. Simms watched him stride across the room and peer into the cavity of the TV cabinet. With his faded denim jacket, afro and flared jeans he certainly looked out of place in this middle-class suburban home. Mrs Hartley-Jones looked quite perturbed as the big man fingered the severed cables that until recently were attached to a VCR.
    ‘Why cut them?’ Simms asked.
    ‘Save time. There’s a mass of wires: video recorder and all the hi-fi stuff, amp, cassette deck, turntable, speaker cable; he’d be here all night untangling all this stuff at the back of the cabinet. SOCOs come up with anything?’
    ‘No prints – clean as a whistle. So, broadly, it was just the VCR and jewellery that were taken?’
    ‘Yes. And an amplifier, I believe. I don’t know much about the hi-fi. I do hope the video recorder was covered by the insurance. It was terribly expensive.’
    ‘Had it long?’ enquired Waters.
    ‘A couple of weeks! Michael had only just mastered recording off the television. The instructions for these things are so complicated, don’t you find?’
    ‘Can’t afford one on a copper’s salary, unfortunately,’ Simms said. ‘And the jewellery – was there anything specific, an antique or heirloom? Those are sometimes easier to recover.’
    ‘My mother’s engagement and eternity rings. I took some photos of them some time ago, if that’s any use?’
    ‘Yes, please, it all helps.’ Simms asked if they could look around further, although he didn’t expect to find anything. He thought the woman’s manner was vague and disinterested. Apart from concern for the cat she didn’t seem to mind that much. They made for the kitchen, where the thief was thought to have entered through the large, latticed rear window. Each of the three main panels was made up of six smaller panes. One such pane, in the middle of the central panel, had been replaced with a cardboard rectangle.
    ‘Impossible to get a glazier out on bank holiday Monday,’ the woman said.
    ‘So,’ concluded Simms, ‘the thief broke a pane, then reached through and lifted up the lever. Then he climbed in through the window.’
    Mrs Hartley-Jones was nodding, but Waters shook his head, sucking air in