A sub-heading read: "Echo of PS20,000 Bank Robbery", followed by another, "Spirit Medium Leads Police To Mysterious Woodland Grave". Then there was a photograph of Frost, cupid-lipped with a bit more hair than now, captioned, "Detective Inspector Frost, G.C., who is in charge of the case."
"That picture looks as if I've been dug up after thirty-two years," said Frost.
The rest of the front page was filled with a greatly enlarged full-face photograph of a sad-looking man with receding hair, aged about thirty-five. The caption said, simply, "Timothy Fawcus."
Frost frowned. "Fawcus?" he asked. The name nagged a memory.
"It's his skeleton," explained Sandy.
"Then tell him to come and claim it, we don't want it." He opened the page for more clues, but the inside was blank and unprinted. Then something clicked. Timothy Fawcus! Of course. He spun round to Clive and explained. "This was 1951, son-before you were born. I'd just joined the Force. Eighteen, I was, sturdy of back and randy as hell-and you had to fight for it in those days, it didn't come crawling round to your flat waiting for you." The blood rushed to Clive's face. How the hell did Frost know?
"Fawcus was a cashier at Bennington's Bank and the case chained to his wrist held PS20,000. When he went missing, all leave was stopped for the search. We looked everywhere… and he was buried in Dead Man's Hollow all the time." He tapped his scar. "I wonder if they'll dig up Tracey's skeleton in thirty-odd years' time."
Sandy leaned forward. "You reckon she's dead, then Jack?"
Frost nodded toward the tall window where outside a cutting wind screamed and hurled flurries of snow against the glass. "What do you reckon?" And then he was back again in the distant past. "Remember the chap in charge of the Fawcus case, Sandy? Inspector Bottomley, as fat as a pig with an enormous gut; he had to have his trousers specially built."
"What happened with Fawcus?" asked Clive.
It was a simple story. On the twenty-sixth of July, 1951, Fawcus left Denton in the bank's pool car, driven by a junior clerk, Rupert Garwood-their destination, Bennington's Exley branch, some seven miles away-to deliver PS20,000, locked in a case chained to Fawcus's wrist. The car never arrived at its destination. It was found later that afternoon in a side road well away from the route it should have taken. The junior clerk, Garwood, was slumped across the wheel, unconscious from a savage head injury which left him with no memory of what had happened. Fawcus and the PS20,000 were never seen again.
"I got my first byline on that case," said Sandy, proudly. "It made the London dailies."
"Poor old Fawcus," said Frost, "wrongly accused for all those years and all the time he was decently dead and buried. He had a family, didn't he?"
"A wife," answered the reporter. "Don't know what happened to her, though. Er… how was he killed?"
"Shot," Frost tapped his forehead, "through the brain."
Sandy's hand streaked to his internal phone and he jabbed the button marked "Printing Room". "Mac-Sandy here. Hold everything. We're going to tear down the front page. The police say Fawcus was shot." He dropped the phone and fidgeted, obviously anxious to usher them out and get cracking.
"You've given me quite a scoop, Jack."
"You know me," said Frost modestly, "one cheap curry and you've bought my soul. Come on, son."
"Hold on, Jack. The money-it was gone, I suppose?"
Frost smiled sweetly. "Dumb as we are, Sandy boy, if we'd found PS20,000 in the case, we might just about have worked out who he was for ourselves." He went to grab the door handle, but the door retreated as a studious young reporter entered.
"Sorry to butt in, Mr. Lane, but the bank manager refuses to make a statement, and 1 can't get a reply from Garwood's house."
Frost braked sharply. "Garwood? You mean Rupert Garwood, the kid who was driving the car?"
"Yes," replied Sandy. "He's back at Denton again, didn't you know? He's Assistant Manager at Bennington's Bank."