Frost at Christmas (17 page)

   Frost frowned. What new chap? Oh - of course, young Barnard. He'd sent him to talk to Mrs. Uphill about the £2000. There were so many things on his mind. There was the bank door business. That worried him. And the old tramp's dying. Then he had to meet Sandy Lane in the pub for a drink. And there was something else. It was important. He should keep notes, but then he'd forget to look at them. Blimey, yes! Old Mother Wendle, the witch of the woods. He had to ask her to get the spirits to tell him where the kid was. Now he'd remembered what it was, he felt happier. But first, let's see what young Barnard had got from the juicy Mrs. Uphill, the best thirty quid's worth east of Suez.

   He trotted down the stone corridor to his office. Somewhere an outer door had been left open and a blast of cold air roared along the passage. He glanced through a window. Still no let-up in the snow, the sky was black, with plenty to come down. Barely twelve o'clock, and every light in the place was on.

   Frost read the note again.

   I HAVE GOT YOUR DAUGHTER TRACEY UPHILL IF YOU WANT TO SEE HER ALIVE GET PS2000 IN USED FIVE-POUND NOTES AND WAIT BY YOUR PHONE FOR INSTRUCTIONS TELL THE POLICE AND I KILL HER.

   It had arrived at Mrs. Uphill's with the first postal delivery. The postmark on the cheap brown envelope showed it had been collected from the main Denton post office in the Market Square at 6:15 the night before. Inside was a sheet of paper which could have been a page torn from a child's exercise book. The writing was in laboriously printed block capitals written with a smudgy ballpoint pen. At first Mrs. Uphill had denied its existence--TELL THE POLICE AND I KILL HER--but Clive had convinced her that she must co-operate. "Don't worry, Mrs. Uphill. Just leave everything to us."

   Frost took the page carefully by the edges and held it to the light, looking for a watermark. He dropped the sheet on to his desk.

   "No watermark, son - not that it would mean anything to me if there was one." He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms in a yawn. "Better get it over to Forensic. They'll be able to tell us when the paper was made, the precise location of the pulping mill, when the tree was chopped down, and the exact chemical composition of the ball-point ink. Then they'll put their findings in a twenty-page report which some poor sod will have to read, but they won't be the slightest help in telling us who wrote the bloody thing."

   Clive slid the envelope and letter into a large transparent pocket and made out a requisition for a forensic report.

   A brisk knock at the door and Mullett entered, his gleaming tailor-made uniform shaming Frost's office into looking even drabber.

   "I hear through the grapevine there's a ransom note, Inspector."

   "I was just about to bring it in to you, sir," said Frost, who had had no intention of so doing.

   The glasses were pushed on the nose and Mullett read the note through the transparent cover. "Better get this over to Forensic."

   "Good idea," said Frost. "Would you do that, son?"

   Mullett looked for a chair to sit on, but they were both stacked with unreplaced files. Typical . . . absolutely typical. "What's your next move, Inspector?"

   "I'm having her phone wired so we can listen in to her calls - so if you're one of her regulars, sir, I'd lay off for a while."

   Mullett's face tightened. He didn't think that the least bit funny.

   "Hmm . . . I suppose you can't make firm plans until you know the arrangements the kidnapper requires for the hand-over of the money. Now this note . . . do you think it's genuine? Do you think he's really got the girl?"

   "I think it's genuine," said Clive, and Mullett beamed in his direction.

   "So do I." Then, remembering Frost hadn't answered, "Inspector . . . ?"

   Frost pulled a face. "I'm probably wrong - I usually am - but if she was kidnapped on Sunday, then why the hell did he wait until Monday night before posting his ransom note?"

   "The kidnapper may not have had any envelopes and had to wait until Monday to buy them," suggested Clive.

   "My thoughts exactly," agreed Mullett. "He may not have had any stamps, either."

   "Or a ballpoint pen," added Frost.

   Not sure if this was sarcasm or not, Mullett gave a wintry smile and left.

   "Stupid bastard," snorted Frost as the door closed. "Send it to Forensic! What did he think we were going to do with it - wipe our arses on it? Well, nip it along to the post room, son, then get the chap in Control to send a civilian technician over to bug her phone. Tell them to send .someone who hasn't got three tenners to spare. I want a quick and thorough job. And then get back here - we're meeting Sandy in the pub for lunch.''

   As he waited for the detective constable to return he tidied up the latest batch of papers that had landed on his desk. There was a file Inspector Allen had been working on concerning a series of thefts at a local electronics factory. He'd have to look at that some time. Then he found a note in his own hand scribbled on the back of an old envelope. It said "Check Aunt - Tea". He wasted the rest of the time until dive's return puzzling out what the hell it meant, finally giving up as a bad job.

"I've ordered the lunch," said Sandy. "Now what do you want to drink - whiskey?"

   "You'd better make it beers," answered the inspector, "we haven't got any information for you."

   The beers came with the curry. It wasn't very good curry, doubtful chunks of gristle in a violent yellow sauce, bedded down on gray rice.

   "I'm paying," said Sandy.

   "I should hope so," said Frost, eyeing his plate with grave suspicion.

   The reporter slipped in his leading question. "I understand Mrs. Uphill drew a packet out of her bank today."

   Clive fired a glance at the inspector. How the hell did Sandy know that? Frost didn't bat an eyelid; he chewed solidly on a lump of rubbery meat.

   "If this is chicken curry, I've got one of the claws," he announced gloomily.

   "Come off it, Jack, " persisted the reporter. "Give me a break. I've spent my entire expense allowance on this lunch. We haven't got the resources of the big London dailies you know."

   Frost pushed his plate away and rinsed the taste down with beer. "Did I tell you the joke about the bloke who drank the spittoon for a bet?"

   "Yes - what delightful bloody table talk you've got.

   Now come on, Jack. She drew out two thousand quid - why?"

   "Ask your mate in the bank," said Frost, lighting a cigarette. "I'm sorry, Sandy, as soon as there's anything I can give you, you'll have it. You don't deserve it for such a stinking lunch, but you might find something interesting in tomorrow's Magistrate's Court. Mickey Hoskins. He touched up some female in the pictures and she gave him a different sort of thrill from what he expected by stubbing her fag out on his hand."

   Sandy brightened up and scribbled a note in his diary. "A crumb, but acceptable."

   Frost sipped his beer. "I wish our canteen tea was as warm as this." Then he put his glass down and nudged Sandy. "The bird in the leopard-skin coat - don't look round so obviously - at the bar."

   The reporter swiveled his eyes. "Cynthia Collard," he whispered and Frost nodded in confirmation. Clive eased his head round to see who they were taking so much interest in.

   She had the dark olive skin of a brunette, but her hair was bleached blonde. Thick makeup couldn't conceal the dark rings under the eyes or the pinched lines around the mouth and nose. Now in her late hard-faced thirties, she must have been demurely pretty once, but now cold predatory eyes scoured the room as she sat cross-legged on the barstool, a cheap imitation leopard-skin coat cloaked over her shoulders. An overweight mustached man in the corner read the invitation in her glance and beckoned her to join him. She sauntered over with a smug smile.

   "Still on the game, then?" said Frost. "I can remember Cynthia when she was free . . . and liberal. A real goer, she was. Never gave the impression she was doing you a favor, like some of the local moggies."

   "That was a long time ago, Jack. She wants cash in advance, now." The reporter drained his glass and looked at his watch.

   Cynthia and the man went out, arm in arm.

   "I hope she's got change for a quid," said Frost.

Martha Wendle's cottage was in the black heart of the woods and could only be reached by a footpath. If this meant she received few callers, then she shed no tears. There was a private road riddled with potholes that gave direct access, but it was barred to the public by barbed-wire-lined gates secured by padlocks and strong chains and was only used when Martha ventured out in her battered old Morris Minor.

   So Frost and Clive parked on the outskirts and trudged, heads down, along the winding footpath barely discernible through the thick snow. Wind roared in their ears and when they strayed from the path, they found themselves knee deep in cold clamminess. A long, miserable, stumbling journey, which was broken at intervals by Frost yelling "Sod the Chief Constable" into the wind.

   The path forked and Frost waited for Clive, who was lagging, to catch up. "We go left," he yelled. "The other way leads to Dead Man's Hollow."

   "Dead Man's what?" Clive shouted back.

   "Dead Man's Hollow." He jerked his thumb in the direction of a gloomy depression overhung with diseased-looking trees crouching under the weight of the snow on their maimed branches. "I don't know what its official name is, but it's been called that ever since I was a kid. None of us would go near it. It's all puffy with fungus in the summer and the adders are supposed to be enormous."

   They turned their backs on the depression and breasted the wind until the path plunged sharply and veered right and Old Wood Cottage sprang into view. Clive had expected to see something out of Walt Disney's
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
with latticed windows and a thatched roof, but the main building material used for Martha Wendle's home was rusty corrugated iron.

   Frost hammered his fist on the front door. Creakings and pattering from within. The door was opened a suspicious chink and two black eyes surveyed them. Then a talon pulled the door open farther.

   "I've been expecting you. Come on in."

   She had raven black hair, jet beads for eyes, a hooked nose, and a jutting chin that gave her a crescent-like profile. A couple of centuries before and she would have screamed and crackled on top of a roaring fire, together with her cat and her broomstick.

   The smell hit them as soon as they stepped inside the door.

   Frost sniffed delicately. "Do you keep cats, Miss Wendle?"

   There were dozens of them, dirty mangy strays.

   "Any cat is welcome here," she said, taking them into her living room where hostile green eyes glimmered in dark recesses.

   "Please sit down."

   A fat, dribbling cat was snuffling in its sleep on Frost's chair, but he knocked it to the floor with a swift cuff and was seated before the animal realized it had been deposed. Clive's chair was cat-less, but the cushion bore evidence of recent occupation. He sat very gingerly on the extreme edge.

   "I expect the spirits have told you what it's about, Miss Wendle - the missing girl."

   The fat cat staged a counterattack. It leaped up to Frost's lap and, under the pretext of settling down, sunk the length of its claws into his thigh. With a barely perceptible short-arm jab, he sent it flying to the floor where it spat at him.

   "Your men have already been here and I've told them I haven't seen her, Inspector."

   "You may not have seen her, Miss Wendle, but with the special powers you keep telling us about in your lovely and frequent letters, we thought you could find out where we should look."

   Her eyes glittered. "You've mocked me in the past, why should I help you now?"

   Frost stood up and rearranged his scarf. "Fair enough. My fault for sticking up for you, I suppose. Our Chief Constable reckons you're a fake and I had to fight him like mad to put you to the test, but if you can't do it . . ."

   "Sit down." The dribbling cat had returned and he sat down on top of it. It squealed and flew off unaided. Martha Wendle split a coal on the fire with a crack of the poker. "What you ask is dangerous. If the spirits want to tell me, they will. To seek what they wish to withhold could be . . . unpleasant. It will be on your head, but I will try."

   She lifted a heavy oak table and carried it without effort to a spot between the two men. She turned down the wick of the old-fashioned brass oil-lamp which was the room's only illumination. A coal shifted on the fire and seemed to smother the flames and the room went dark and very cold. Hard green emeralds stared and tongues rasped on fur.

   Miss Wendle sat between the two men at the table and took one each of their hands in a tight crushing grip, her nails chewing into their flesh.

   In the darkness the sound of wheezing, rasping breath, deep and rhythmic, and strange sobbing noises. The breathing shallowed and quickened. Outside, the wind clanged the corrugated iron and something blew over and clattered. And, suddenly, silence . . . no wind . . . no scuffling of cats . . . not even the sound of breathing. The voice didn't come from the woman whose nails were burning points of pain on their skin. It came from . . . from the air.

   "It's cold . . . grave . . . snow . . . so cold . . . skull . . . bones . . . so . . . so . . . so cold."

   All right, dear, thought Frost, we'll let you know - next please.

   The breathing returned, deeper, more frenzied, like the climax of love-making.

   "Buried . . . unmarked grave . . . snow . . . death . . . death The voice was so unearthly, Clive felt the hairs on the back of his neck stir and rise.

   "Where are you buried?" This from Frost.

  "Woods . . ."

   Frost stiffened. "Where in the woods?"

   More breathing, slower, shallower. He repeated the question. "Where in the woods?"

   "Hollow . . . in front of tree . . . Hollow . . . Dead Man's Hollow."