Hard Frost (16 page)

   "Quite right, son - in fact it's bloody diabolical," said Frost, warming to his theme.

   Cassidy's mouth opened and closed. He couldn't think of anything else to say and was glad of the distraction when Liz Maud returned, followed by Bill Wells, each bearing a stack of dusty folders which they dumped on Frost's desk.

   "They should be in alphabetical order," explained Wells, 'but they got mixed up when we had the burst tank and the flooding in the old records room."

   "You've always got a bloody excuse," said Frost. "If you had any respect for the job, you'd come in on Christmas Day and sort them out."

   "I'm already due to come in on Christmas Day," said Wells, taking the bait. "Every bleeding Christmas I'm on that rota."

   "So you are," said Frost. "I forgot . . . you should have mentioned it." He split the files into four piles and handed them around. "We're looking for Sidney Snell's file."

   Cassidy's head came up. "Who?" The name had rung a bell.

   "Sidney Snell - Slimy Sid - child molester. Used to pretend he was a doctor."

   Cassidy snapped his fingers. Now he placed him. "He called at the house and told the mother he was from the Health Department. Said the kids had to be vaccinated."

   "Vaccinated?" asked Liz.

   "Yes, sergeant. He was a pervert. Liked sticking needles in little bottoms or little plump arms. It gave him a kick to see them bleed, to hear them cry."

   "He injected the arms and buttocks?" said Liz, still not taking it in.

   "He only had water in the syringe," said Frost. "The object was to make them bleed. He did it to about six or seven kids before we caught him. Prior to that he used to expose himself to mothers with kids in pushchairs

   "We had a couple of complaints this morning," said Wells, 'about a bloke exposing himself to women in the park."

   Liz leant back and snatched up a sheet of typescript from her desk. She waved it angrily at Wells. "I asked you for a list of all known sex offenders against children. This is what you gave me. Why isn't Snell's name on it?"

   "Because he's ancient history," retorted Wells. "This all happened some ten . . . eleven years ago - '

   "Even so -" Liz cut in.

   "If you would kindly let me finish," sniffed Wells. "Snell doesn't live in Denton any more. When he came out of prison about five years ago, he moved up north. Too many parents in Denton had threatened to do him over if they ever saw him back here."

   "Oh!" said Liz, crestfallen. She had really thought Frost was on to something. She transferred her annoyance to him. "Then why are we wasting our time looking for his file?"

   "I've an idea the sod might have sneaked back to Denton," Frost told her. "I think I saw him yesterday."

   "And you didn't think it worth mentioning to anyone?" asked Cassidy sarcastically.

   "I wasn't sure," said Frost, shuffling through his stack of files. "It's been ten years since I last saw him." He looked up as Wells cried, "Bingo!" He held aloft a file and flipped it over to Frost. Frost blew off the dust, then turned the cover so he could see the photograph affixed to the inside. The photograph showed a podgy-faced man in his early thirties scowling at the camera. Frost jabbed it with a nicotine-stained finger. "I was right. It was Snell I saw."

   "Are you sure?" asked Liz, getting excited at the thought of an arrest.

   "I'm positive," said Frost. "It's been ten years, but he's still got the same little piggy eyes."

   "He used to live with his mother," said Wells. "Proper little mummy's boy." He leant over Frost's shoulder and pointed to the address on the file. "Ten years ago it was 39 Parnell Terrace. I don't know if she's still there."

   Liz picked up her handbag and checked that the street map was inside. "I'll go and find out."

   "Hold it!" Now Cassidy sounded excited. He was staring at a typed sheet in the folder. "You've overlooked something, inspector." He held out the arrest sheet.

   "What's that?" asked Frost, quickly skimming through it.

   "Snell used to carry a genuine medical bag around with him when he posed as a doctor."

   "I know," said Frost.

   "Do you remember what was in it?"

   Frost shrugged. "Syringes, bandages, iodine . . ."

   "And a bottle of chloroform," said Cassidy with a smug smirk. He pointed out the entry on the arrest sheet.

   Frost whistled softly. "Bloody hell! You're right. I'd forgotten about that."

   "Chloroform?" asked Liz.

   Frost nodded. "No evidence that he used it at the time. Apparently he had an uncle who was a doctor. The uncle died and Slimy Sid pinched his bag." He chewed at his thumb as he thought this over. "Chloroform! I can't see our luck running that way, but it would be bloody handy if it was Sidney who stabbed the kids and killed Dean Anderson." He stood up. "I'll drive."

   "Hold on!" Cassidy was buttoning up his jacket. "I'm coming with you." There was no way he was going to miss out on this. "Two more cases solved," he would tell Mullett with studied modesty. "I spotted the reference to chloroform and put two and two together . . ."

   "It doesn't need three of us," said Frost.

   "Sergeant Maud can stay here and look after the administration," said Cassidy.

   Liz was indignant. "This is my case!"

   "The murder of the boy takes precedence," said Cassidy. "You'll be more useful here, helping Sergeant Wells put these files in alphabetical order."

   She looked in mute appeal to Frost who shrugged and went out followed by Cassidy. She picked up a file and hurled it with all her strength against the wall where it fluttered papers all over the place. She looked to Wells for support. Wells's delight at the smug cow's frustration fought with his hatred for Cassidy. His hatred won. "The bastard!" he said.

Cassidy swung the car into Parnell Terrace, pointedly fanning his hand to drive away the smoke from the stale cigarette Frost had found in the torn lining of his jacket. The car crept between a double row of identical and ugly terraced buildings made of preformed concrete. Not a light showed anywhere. The houses stood sullenly silent and an unnatural stillness hovered over the street. Cassidy's heart sank. The street was derelict. Every house was empty and boarded up with contractors' chalked notices saying "Gas Off . . . Electricity Off . . . Water Off . . ."

   "All that's missing is "Piss Off'," said Frost gloomily.

   "What the hell - " began Cassidy.

   "Concrete cancer," explained Frost. "The same as the houses in Rook Street where the fourteen-year-old had her baby." He now remembered the article about it in the local paper. "They've rehoused everybody."

   Muttering audibly about the complete and utter waste of time, Cassidy drove to the end of the road where he could reverse and head back to the station.

   If Frost hadn't been looking up at that precise moment, he would have missed it. A flicker of light from one of the houses as a curtain was twitched back and quickly closed. A brief glimpse of a white face looking down at them.

   "What light from yonder window breaks," whooped Frost, nudging Cassidy and pointing. "There's someone in that house."

   It was the only house in the street where the doors and windows were not boarded up. It was number 39.

   Four empty milk bottles stood in a line on the doorstep, waiting vainly for a milkman who no longer called. Frost jammed his thumb in the bell push and leant his weight on it. A bell inside shrilled edgily. He gave the door a couple of kicks and yelled, "Open up - police!"

   A light clicked on inside and showed dimly through the grimed fanlight over the front door. The sound of someone stumbling down the stairs.

   "Who is it?"

   "The Avon Lady," said Frost. "Come on, Sidney, open up . . . you know damn well who it is."

   A chain clinked and the door opened a fraction so a bleary eye could study the warrant card held out by Cassidy. The chain was unhitched and the door opened wide. A meek-looking man in his early forties, wearing a dressing-gown over red-striped pyjamas, thinning brown hair falling over his eyes, blinked at them. "What is this all about?"

   "Hello, Sidney," beamed Frost. "Long time, no see."

   Snell peered at the inspector. "Sergeant Frost!" He shivered and drew his dressing-gown more tightly around him. "I'd hoped I'd never meet up with you again."

   Frost pulled a face. "I don't seem to endear myself to people, do I?" He stepped into the hall and kicked the door shut behind them. "Can we come in?"

   There was a musty smell to the house. Snell led them to the lounge, a cold room with old, worn furniture. Two battered suitcases and a pile of bulging carrier bags stood on the floor. A picture of Snell as a young boy, in the garden with his mother, stood in the centre of the sideboard. He switched on a two-bar electric fire and motioned them to chairs. "I'm sure, if I wait long enough, you'll tell me what this is all about."

   "We were passing, we saw your light and we knew we'd get a friendly welcome and a fairy cake," said Frost. "But I'm forgetting my manners. How's your mother?"

   Snell's lower lip quivered. "My mother is dead."

   "My sincere condolences," said Frost, remembering that this was the old cow who used to provide Sidney with watertight alibis all those years ago.

   Snell knuckled his eyes. "On the generous assumption that you are being sincere, I thank you." He sighed. "It's hard coming to terms with it."

   "Sudden, was it?" asked Frost.

   Snell shook his head. "She'd been in hospital for nearly two months. Three weeks ago they phoned me to say she was dying. I came straight away. She died half an hour before I got there." He covered his face with his hands. "We never said goodbye."

   "Three weeks ago? And you've been in Denton ever since?"

   He nodded. "Don't worry. I'm not staying. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. The Council are tearing this entire street down."

   "That's a bit drastic, just to make you move on," said Frost.

   Snell ignored him. "Mother was the stumbling block. She wouldn't leave. As soon as they heard she was dead - she wasn't even buried - the Council slapped a demolition order on the place. I'm disposing of her effects, not that she had much, and I go back to Newcastle tomorrow." He nodded towards the suitcases and carrier bags. "So you needn't concern yourself with what I might do."

   "It's not a question of what you
might
do," said Cassidy, deciding it was about time to make his presence felt. "It's a question of what you've already done."

   Snell stared at Cassidy, his eyes blinking in puzzlement. "Perhaps you'd kindly explain yourself."

   "The day after you returned to Denton, we had complaints of a man exposing himself to mothers and children. Isn't that what you used to do?"

   "Coincidence."

   "Coincidence has a long arm, but a very short dick," chipped in Frost. "Two of the mothers said it was the smallest they had ever seen, which immediately made us think of you."

   Snell flushed brick red. "Now you are being insulting."

   "And then," continued Cassidy, raising his voice to let Frost know he was doing the questioning, 'we had instances of children being stabbed in the arms and buttocks, just as you did when you pretended to be a doctor."

   Snell slowly stood up, trembling with outrage. "I committed my crime ten years ago. I was caught and I was punished. I've learnt my lesson." He turned to Frost. "They don't like child molesters in prison."

   "Not too keen on them myself," said Frost.

   "I got beaten up - buckets of filth thrown over me. I'm not going to risk that again."

   "Where were you this morning - around half-past eight?" asked Cassidy.

   "In here, sorting out mother's things."

   "And where were you earlier tonight from about ten o'clock onwards?"

   "In here. I never went out."

   "Got a girlfriend, have you?" asked Frost.

   "No."

   "Boyfriend?"

   "No."

   "So if you're not sticking pins in little kids, hearing them cry, watching the blood spurt out of chubby little arms and bottoms, what do you do for kicks?"

   With a disdainful smile, Snell opened the sideboard drawer and took out a bible which he waved in the inspector's face. "Nothing you would understand, Mr. Frost, but I get my kicks, as you call them, from the Good Book. I'm a born again Christian."

   "It wasn't your bible you were waggling at those women this morning," said Frost. "It was your little winkle."

   "How many times do I have to tell you I never went out this morning . . . I'll swear to it on the bible if you like."

   "I bet you would, you bastard!" snarled Cassidy.

   Snell glowered. "I don't have to put up with this harassment. You haven't got anyone for these crimes, so you're trying to fit me up, even though I've gone straight for the past ten years."

   Cassidy pulled two photographs from his inside pocket. The first was of the missing boy. He handed it to Snell. "Where did you pick him up?"

   As Snell studied it, Frost watched him closely, noting an expression of puzzlement followed by relief. If you're acting, you're bloody good, he thought.

   "I've never seen him before."

   "Then what about him?" Snell took the photograph of the dead boy, but his eyes were on Frost who had got up from the chair and was now mooching about the room, pulling open drawers, rummaging inside. "Do you have a search warrant? "he called.

   Frost flashed a beaming smile. "Of course not, Sidney. This is just a courtesy call."

   "The photograph," snapped Cassidy, tapping it with his finger.

   Snell gave it hardly a glance before returning it. "Never seen him before."

   "He was chloroformed," said Cassidy.

   "So?"

   "There was chloroform in the medical bag you used to carry around with you."

   "Was there? If there was, I never used it and that was ten years ago. I've taken my punishment and I've turned to the Lord. If he can forgive me, why can't you?"