Hard Frost (15 page)

   Frost gaped. "His wife? I thought you were his wife?"

   She shook her head. "He walked out on his real wife over ten years ago. The greedy grasping cow she'd have had me out of the house and on the street before the ropes came off the coffin handles."

   "So he went out, never came back and you did sod all about it?"

   She glared at him defiantly. "I don't think there's any law against that."

   "There's a law against forging cheques," said Frost.

   "I was his common-law wife. I had no money. I don't think any jury's going to convict me on that, do you?"

   Frost tapped his empty cigarette packet on the table. "You might be telling the truth, Mag. Trouble is, you still fit nicely into our frame. We reckon Lemmy came home unexpectedly, found you and little Wayne having it away. There was a fight, you killed him and disposed of the body. You then proceed to lead a life of unlimited dick and luxury."

   She snapped her fingers at PC Collier. "Give me my handbag." She opened it and took out a window envelope which she gave to Frost. "Have a look at that!"

   He unfolded the printed sheet inside. It was a Visa credit card statement made out to Lemmy Hoxton. The amount outstanding was £699.99 covering a purchase from Supertek Discount Warehouses, Denton. He looked at it, then back at her. "So?"

   "Lemmy never let his credit card out of his sight. It was in his wallet which he always kept on him. If he was dead in August, how come he spent "nearly seven hundred quid in October?"

   Frost looked again at the statement. The date against the purchase was 12th October. "Are you saying you didn't buy this?"

   "I didn't have his bloody credit card, so how could I? I reckon whoever killed him took his wallet. Check with the store - they ought to remember who they sold seven hundred quid's worth of stuff to."

   Frost refolded the statement and popped it back into the envelope. "OK, Maggie. I'll check it out."

   He ambled back to the incident room where Arthur Hanlon was putting the finishing touches to a sheaf of schedules which he waved at Frost.

   "Do you want to OK the arrangements for dragging the lakes and canals tomorrow, Jack?"

   Frost shook his head. "No thanks, Arthur. If you did it, I'm sure it's impeccable." He yawned. "I'm going to get my head down for a couple of hours. If any more bodies turn up with limbs or dicks cut off, let Mr. Cassidy handle them."

   He drifted into his office on his way out. Liz Maud's things, following her expulsion from Allen's office, were neatly stacked on the spare desk. He took a cursory glance through his in-tray. More piddling little memos from Mullett and a wad of returns demanding to be filled in. In the middle of his desk Liz had left a list of the jewellery and furs allegedly stolen from Stanfield's house, together with a copy of their claim to the insurance company which suggested they had been robbed of the Crown Jewels. He skimmed through it and put it back on her desk. There were more important things to think about than that at the moment.

   He almost made it to his car. As he was unlocking it Wells charged out, yelling his name and waving a message sheet. "Another kiddy stabbed in his cot, Jack."

   "Give it to Liz Maud," said Frost. "It's her case."

   "She's off duty. Mr. Mullett wants you to deal with it."

   "Me? Why?"

   "You're an inspector. The kid's father is a friend of his."

   "Any friend of Mullett's is an enemy of mine. Tell him you just missed me." But as he spoke he could see the Divisional Commander watching them both from his office window. He heaved a sigh of resignation, took the message sheet from Wells and climbed into his car.

The address was an expensive-looking bungalow with a large garden whose rear boundary backed on to Denton Golf Course. A police car was outside. As he slid in behind it another car skidded to a stop behind him and Liz Maud got out, her hair all over the place. She had heard the call over the radio and driven straight over.

   PC Jordan let them in. They could hear angry voices. "That's the father," explained Jordan. "He's throwing his weight about . . . a real right bastard."

   "Of course he is," agreed Frost. "He's a friend of Mr. Mullett's." Not feeling an immediate desire to go inside to be shouted at, he asked Jordan to tell him what had happened.

   Jordan flipped open his notebook. "Family name is Wilkes. Him and his wife were down the golf club - the annual dinner and dance or something - leaving the nanny to put their four-year-old daughter to bed. Around half-past eleven the nanny hears the kiddy screaming. She tried to get into the nursery, but the door was jammed. Anyway, she managed to give it a kick and burst in. The nursery window was wide open, the kiddy screaming with blood all over her pyjamas. Nanny looked out of the window and saw someone scrambling over the garden fence on to the golf course."

   "How's the little girl?" asked Liz.

   "No real damage, thank God. She's gone back to sleep now, I think." He frowned his disapproval at the angry shouting still coming from the other room. "Assuming she can sleep through that damn row."

   "Show me where he got in," said Frost. Jordan led them round the back of the bungalow, past the patio windows of the lounge where they could see the father striding up and down and yelling at PC Simms. He glared at them as they quickly scuttled past.

   The end casement window was wide open and outside it the SOCman was closing up his case of equipment. He shook his head to Frost. "No prints other than the mother's and the nanny's."

   "You're bloody useless," said Frost, looking through to the nursery which was decorated in pink and white. A pink and white wooden chair lay on its side in front of the open door. The matching pink and white bed by the wall was empty. "Where's the kiddy now?"

   "In the nanny's room."

   Frost turned to look across the garden to the golf course. "She saw him clambering over that rear fence?" It wasn't a very high fence.

   He swung his leg over the sill and dropped into the nursery. Liz and Jordan followed. "He wouldn't have to be much of an athlete to get in here, would he?" muttered Frost as he padded over to the bed. He looked at the circus motif counterpane. One of the grinning, white faces of a clown was freckled with tiny drops of blood. Frost peered at it closely, then nodded. He had seen enough. "I can't put it off any longer - let's go and talk to Mr. Mullett's mate."

   The mother, an ash blonde in her mid-thirties, wearing a low-cut emerald green evening dress, was sitting hunched by the electric wall fire. Her husband, dark-haired, with a trim black moustache, wore a white dinner jacket and a black bow tie. His face was flushed and he spun round angrily as they entered. "It's too damn late now. He's miles away. If you'd have got here sooner instead of sitting on your fat arses doing nothing, you might have stood a chance of catching him."

   Frost dropped uninvited into a vacant chair and beamed up at him. "I would hardly describe my lady colleague as having a fat arse, sir - it's smaller than yours."

   The man's face darkened. "Don't come that tone with me, inspector. Some perverted maniac has broken into my house and stabbed my four-year-old daughter. Instead of sending twenty men to surround and search the place, we get two men in a car. It's pathetic . . . bloody pathetic'

   "We couldn't send twenty men even if we wanted to, sir," replied Frost. "At the moment, all we have got is eight men covering the whole of Denton. The rest have been out all day from early this morning, searching for a missing boy. They only stopped when it was too dark to continue. They are now getting some sleep and will be out again early tomorrow morning."

   The man wasn't interested in facts and figures. "Someone's going around stabbing babies," he yelled. "Get some more police in . . ."

   Frost held up his hands in mock surrender. "Let's calm it down, shall we, sir? You want him caught, we want to catch him. We won't achieve that by yelling at each other. You and your wife were out when it happened, so let's have a word with the nanny. She, at least, saw him."

   Frost had imagined the nanny to be a grey-haired little old lady in a nurse's uniform, reeking of wintergreen, and was pleasantly surprised when a strapping Swedish blonde in her late teens came in carrying the sleeping child wrapped in a blanket.

   "Flaming hell," he whispered to Liz. "She can breast feed me any time she likes!"

   Liz pretended not to hear and hoped the family hadn't heard either. Frost had a genius for tasteless jokes at the wrong time.

   "Helga's English is not too good," said the man.

   I bet she knows how to say, "Yes please," thought Frost. He smiled encouragingly. "So you heard a noise, Helga, and you ran to the nursery?"

   She nodded, eyes glowing at the chance to recount her adventure. "I hear Zoe cry. I run to nursery, but door is jammed. I kick and it opens. There is blood on Zoe. I look out of window and there is man climbing fence into golf field."

   "Can you describe him?" asked Liz, pen poised.

   "No. Too dark. Too far. I phone Mr. Wilkes at golf place."

   "That's right," nodded Wilkes. "I called the police from there and we came straight over."

   "If it was too dark and too far, could it have been a woman?" asked Frost.

   Her eyes widened in astonishment at such a question "Would a woman do such a thing to a little child?"

   "They want equality with men," said Frost. "How bad was Zoe hurt? Did you call a doctor?"

   "Three little stab marks on her bottom," said Helga. "I put on sticking plaster." She pulled down the child's pyjama trousers to show them the plastered wound. It didn't look too serious and the sleeping child hardly stirred.

   "I shudder to think what that pervert might have done if Helga hadn't disturbed him," said Wilkes. He turned to his wife. "First thing tomorrow - security bars on all these windows."

   "It will make it look like a prison," she objected.

   "I don't give a damn. Until these plods catch him I'm taking no chances."

   Frost ignored the 'plod' jibe. "These aren't the pyjamas she was wearing in bed?"

   "No. They had blood. I changed."

   "Perhaps you'd get them for me," smiled Frost.

   She returned in a few minutes after putting the child back to bed. She held a small bundle of Care Bear pyjamas. Her breasts bounced delightfully as she crossed the room and Frost wished he could think of more things for her to bring back. He took them and held them up. There were blobs of blood on the bottoms corresponding to the stab wounds. He examined them closer. The cloth was intact - no sign of tear marks made by the knife point. "When you got into the bedroom, were these trousers pulled down?"

   She shook her head and her blonde hair shimmered from side to side. "No. Bedclothes pulled back. Zoe lying on her face, but pyjamas not pulled down."

   Frost smiled his thanks. "I see." He passed the pyjamas to Liz. "We'll take these with us if you don't mind." He stood up. "We'll see ourselves out."

   "And that is it?" demanded Wilkes. "You're not going to search the area?"

   "For what?" asked Frost. "For a man whose description we haven't got?"

   "So what are you going to do?"

   "We've got a few promising leads, sir. We'll follow them up and let you know."

   "I'd like to remind you that I'm a personal friend of Police Superintendent Mullett," said Wilkes.

   "Don't worry, sir," said Frost. "We won't hold that against you."

   Outside the house he said to Liz, "Those other kids that were stabbed . . . were their wounds the same as this one - little jab marks?"

   "Yes," replied Liz.

   "I thought they were stabbed - slashed?"

   "No," said Liz. "It's all in my report - on your desk."

   "You know I don't read bloody reports," said Frost. "Were any of the others stabbed in the buttocks?"

   "Two in the buttocks, one on the upper leg and three on the upper arm."

   Frost opened his car door and slid into the driver's seat. "And did he ever stab them through their clothes?"

   She thought for a while. "No. He pulled the nightdress or the pyjamas away and jabbed their bare flesh."

   "This little girl tonight . . ." He was rifling through the dashboard compartments hoping to find the treasure trove of a cigarette end. "The bloke must have pulled down the elasticated bottom of those pyjamas while he stabbed her, then let it zip back." To his delight he found a sizeable butt which he poked into his mouth, frowning at the heavy nicotine staining of his fingers.

   "Is all this significant?" asked Liz, straightening up, her back aching from bending to talk to him in the car.

   "It could be," said Frost. "Follow me back to the station as quick as you can."

A fuming Acting Detective Inspector Cassidy was hovering in the corridor outside his office when they returned. "A word, please, inspector," he snapped, marching into Allen's office and waiting for Frost to follow.

   "Sure," called Frost, going into his own office and waiting for Cassidy to join him there. After a couple of minutes of waiting, Cassidy twigged what had happened and barged in. "You will excuse us, please, sergeant," he barked at Liz.

   "Chase Bill Wells up on those files, would you, love," smiled Frost. When she had gone he spun his chair round. "What's up now?"

   "I was in the middle of questioning Maggie Hoxton about the death of her husband. I take a break and when I come back, what do I find? I find that you have had the nerve to carry on questioning her on evidence that was not made available to me."

   "You weren't there," replied Frost.

   "But that doesn't give you the right to take over my case, to question my suspect, to use my evidence."

   "Sorry, son," said Frost. "I never seem to have time for the niceties. You're right. It is your case and I won't interfere again."

   Cassidy sank down into the spare chair. He had expected Frost to bluster and had intended hauling him before Mullett, but the man's contrite apology had thrown him completely off balance. "It's not good enough," he said weakly.