It was a very warm spring day in Peckham. Everyone was busy in the market and Derek Trotter was busy trying to sell shampoo to a whole of group of customers.
"All right, gather around. Don't crowd me. This shampoo here won't just make your hair smell like a bunch of lavenders or cherry blossoms," Del said. "It won't just make your hair grow longer, it'll make hair that you lost on your head come back. In a week, you can have hair like a mammoth, while still smelling like roses. A rose-smelling mammoth."
His customers laughed.
"You don't believe me, do you?" Del said. "Well, can I have a volunteer? Come on, let's have a volunteer to true that I'm not telling porkies." Then he saw a short man approached. "Ah, thank you, young sir."
"No, no, I wasn't volunteering," the man protested. "My brother Randy pushed me."
"Go on, Shorty," his brother Randy said. "You hair smells like a horse stable that hasn't been cleaned out in weeks."
Del sniffed Shorty's hair. "Phew! No, you hair doesn't smell like that, Shorty. It smells like a septic tank that hasn't been cleaned out in years." He had to laugh and so did the customers, except poor Shorty. Then he got on with his demonstration.
Del's younger brother Rodney was behind the stall looking after the shampoo.
"How's it going, Dave?"
Rodney knew who it was before he turned to face him. "All right, Trig?"
"Pretty nippy day, ain't it?" Trigger said.
"Nippy? It's twenty eight degrees today!"
"Really? I'm covered in liquid. I thought ice was melting on my face."
"Trig, that's not melting ice on your face. It's sweat."
"Sweat. But I ain't been to the gym today. It's a complicated world, ain't it, Dave?"
Rodney was about to point out to Trigger how wrong he was but the road sweeper continued with his job. Then Rodney looked ahead and he thought he saw someone with a grey moustache in a suit and a hat walking around the market. He was asking the other sellers a lot of questions. He thought he could be a police inspector as he was behaving like one. He didn't know what illegal things Del bought this time but he had a strong hunch this guy was after him. By the time he reached his older brother, Shorty had a Mount Everest of shampoo on top of his head.
"See? Smell his hair. Now doesn't it smell like a bunch of nice-smelling flowers? No, not a bunch. A whole florist shop. You keep this up for three weeks and you could be mistaken for Bigfoot." Then Del's shoulder was tapped. "What is it, Rodney? I was able to do the part where – "
"Del, I've seen someone who I think is an old bill," Rodney said.
"Where?" Del tried to see who Rodney was pointing at. "I can't see no copper uniform."
"No, it's a detective," Rodney said. "You see that guy wearing the short hat? Has a grey moustache? The one that looks like you?"
"Looks like me? If all this is a joke, Rodney, I'm gonna drown you in this shampoo-ooo-oo…" When Del looked again, he saw that someone that looked like him with a grey moustache. It was the hat made him think he was a detective.
He returned to the customers and told them to clear off while Rodney repacked the shampoo bottles in their suitcases.
"Can I go home now?" Shorty asked.
"How much are those bottles?" Randy asked. "Shorty will buy ten of them for me." And he walked off before Shorty could protest.
Del slammed ten shampoo bottles into Shorty's hands. "That will be thirty pounds."
"Thirty pounds?" Shorty tried to get his wallet out and while holding the shampoo bottles, but they flew out of his hands and so did his two ten pound notes.
"That's all the money I have, I swear," Shorty said.
"Well, you're short of…"
"Del, he's approaching us," Rodney warned.
Del saw he was right and then turned back to Shorty. "…nothing. Enjoy your shampoo."
Shorty picked up his wallet, his shampoo bottles and scrammed. The Trotters were about to leave themselves when…
"Excuse me, gentlemen."
They turned around to see the gentleman with the hat had caught up to them.
"Sorry, sir, we're finished for the day," Del said.
"At half ten in the morning?" the man asked. "You must be really early birds. Inspector Frost. I just want to ask you some questions before you go home and have your lunch."
"What can we help you with, Inspector?" Rodney asked.
"I'm on a big case, as big as your case over there." Frost had to laugh. Rodney had to laugh as well. Del was the only who couldn't see the funny side.
"Anyway, I'm trying to find some propane gas bottles that were nicked and dangerous of leaking," Frost said. "You wouldn't know anything about them would you, would you?"
That got Del worried as he was the one who made a deal to buy those dangerous illegal gas bottles and already sold them. "No, Inspector. I don't know who did. Le thé est prêt, as the French say."
Rodney couldn't believe what Del said in French and in front of an inspector. Then there was a loud explosion at the end of the street.
"That could be them gas bottles," Rodney said.
After Frost turned around to run to the explosion, the Trotters ran in the other direction.
It didn't take Frost ten minutes to arrest the men who exploded the gas bottles. They were two bunglers in crime called Victor and Hugo. Frost cuffed them to a solid pipe, locked their parrot Interpol in a small cage and waited for the police to arrest them.
"Why did you light those gas bottles up, you moron?" Victor yelled at his younger brother.
"You said, 'Let's make like fire', so I lit them up to make fire," Hugo replied.
"I didn't mean it like that, you idiot!" Victor snapped. "They're not the only things you blew up. You also blew up one hundred pounds on them."
"But you told me to get them," Hugo protested back.
Frost tried to shut them up with a warning, but their bickering was louder and stronger. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long as Mullett and the rest of the police arrived. They escorted Victor and Hugo to the police cats.
"Frost, we got an attack at Porterhouse Blue," Mullett told him. "I need you to investigate."
"By myself?" Frost asked.
"No, you will be working with Detective Inspector Roy Slater." Mullett turned around. "And here he is."
Frost saw a man arrive.
"Detective Frost, I presume? I'm your new partner, DI Roy Slater. You couldn't get a better one."
Frost wasn't impressed with him at first sight, but discovering he had an arrogant personality really put him off.
When the Trotters got back to the flat, they found their Uncle Albert sitting on the floor with his eyes closed.
"What are you doing down there, you lazy old git?" Del asked.
Albert opened his eyes. "I was mediating."
"Mediating? You look like you're doing a number two."
"When did you ever mediate?" Rodney asked.
"When I was in the navy. It helped me reduce stress and now helps me with my brandy diet."
Del looked at the counter. "Is that why there are three brandy glasses on the counter?"
Uncle Albert looked ahead and saw the three glasses on the drinks counter. He quickly got up and ran to them.
"This is just what we need today, Rodney," Del muttered. "Rough customers, only twenty pounds earned and now we come here to sort out this old git."
"You call this stress?" Albert said.
"Well, what would you call stress?" Rodney demanded.
"During the war…"
"You just had to ask, didn't you, you plonker?" Del said.
"During the war, I was sailing around the Pacific Ocean and – "
Then the phone rang.
"Your ship sunk like all the others you've been one?" Del said as he made his way to the phone. "Yeah, great story, Unc." He answered it. "Hello? Trotter's Independent Traders. How can we help you? Hmm, yeah. Really? No problem. My partner and I will gather the stuff and we will deliver them to tomorrow. Bonjour." He put the phone down.
"What's the latest job?" Rodney asked.
"It's a delivery to Doncaster at a shop called Arkwright's," Del said. "Come on, let's gather the stuff."
"What are we delivering to them?"
"The fruit and vegetables and meat that we haven't been sold off for a while."
That shocked Rodney. "You mean all of them food that's been out of date for two months? Del, we can't sell – "
"Oh, shut up, you tart, and come help me!" Del snapped.
Rodney sighed as he followed his older brother.