Hard Frost (39 page)

   "Get this fat cow off of me," yelled the man.

   Burton leant down and snapped the cuffs on his wrist. "You're nicked," he said, rather redundantly. Liz stood up, dusting herself down, while Burton hauled the man to his feet and went through his pockets. He found a driving licence and flipped it open, then handed it to Frost.

   "Craig Hudson. Is this you?"

   The man, white-faced, nodded.

   "And is this your car?"

   "Yes - and you'll pay for the damage, you bastard." Then the pain gave him a jab making him hiss through clenched teeth. "That bloody cow - I need a doctor."

   "Play your cards right and she might kiss it better," said Frost, grabbing him by the arm. "Let's go inside and have a talk."

   They marched him back into the house and up a flight of stairs covered in dark green lino. The door to the first-floor flat was wide open and they walked into a largish room, barely furnished with a TV set and a three-piece suite in a faded floral moquette. The floor was littered with empty foil take away food containers and the spicy reek of take away curry battled with marijuana for supremacy. At first they thought the room was empty, but a puff of thick smoke billowed above the back of the settee. Lying full length, a dark-haired girl in her early twenties, eyes half closed and a look of utter euphoria on her face, was dragging at the fat parcel of a hand-rolled joint. She had on a grey sweater which had been rolled up to her neck, exposing gorgeous bare breasts and a flat stomach. Her jeans and black knickers were round her ankles. "I hope we haven't interrupted your meal," murmured Frost politely, his eyes bulging.

   The girl smiled blissfully and offered Frost a drag on her joint.

   "Get yourself covered up," hissed Liz.

   "Leave her," said Frost. There had been too few perks with the job recently. He dragged his eyes away and turned his attention to the man. "Sit!" he commanded. Burton pushed him down into the chair.

   Sounds of a commotion from downstairs, then heavy footsteps and Cassidy came barging in. "Mr. Mullett thought I should be in on this," he announced.

   "Great," said Frost, flatly. Cassidy was Mullett's blue-eyed boy at the moment. Quickly, he filled him in, then got Jordan and Burton to thoroughly search every room in the house. And next they would have to check every house in the street. The boy could be bound and gagged in any of the derelict boarded-up properties. Back to the man. "Where is he?"

   "Who?"

   "Don't sod us about," shouted Cassidy. "You know damn well who we mean. Where is the boy?"

   "Boy? What boy?"

   The girl on the settee had let her cigarette go out and was now humming a little song to herself as her hands rubbed up and down her body. Frost was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the matter in hand.

   "Bobby Kirby," said Cassidy. "Where is he?"

   "Never heard of him," said the man. "Can I have these handcuffs off now, please."

   "When we're ready," said Cassidy.

   "Take them off," said Frost. Hudson wasn't going to try anything now.

   Burton unlocked them, watched by a scowling Cassidy, angry that Frost had undermined him.

   Hudson rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation. "I demand to know what this is about."

   "Shut up!" snarled Cassidy. "I do the bloody demanding, not you."

   Jordan signalled to Frost from the door. He'd done a quick check through the flats in this house. No sign of the kid. He was moving on to the other houses.

   Cassidy was about to interrogate Hudson further when Frost suddenly came out with the stupid question, "Where did you get the take away?"

   Cassidy gaped and stared in disbelief. What the hell did that matter? They were looking for a missing kid, for Pete's sake!

   Seeing Cassidy's annoyance, the man grinned. "The Taj Mahal round the corner. Why - do you want some?"

   "Did you collect it, or was it delivered?"

   "Delivered. What the bloody hell is this about?"

   Frost took Liz to one side. "Nip round the Indian and find out what was delivered."

   She looked at him the same way Cassidy did. "Why?"

   "If they've got the kid here somewhere, I'm hoping they'll feed him. Miss Curry-tits on the settee doesn't look as if she could butter a slice of bread without getting it all over her nipples, so I'm hoping they might have got three meals in from the take away

   Begrudgingly, she acknowledged the sense of this and went out to make her enquiries.

   Cassidy went back to his questioning. "You paid six and a half grand for a car. Where did a scumbag like you get that sort of money?"

   "I had a win on a horse."

   "What horse?" barked Cassidy.

   Hudson fired the answer straight back. "Dancing Foam, two o'clock race, yesterday."

   There was a morning paper on the floor by the settee. Frost opened it at the racing page and checked. "He's right. Dancing Foam won five to one."

   "You see!" smirked Hudson.

   "But at five to one," pointed out Frost, 'you'd have to stake over a thousand quid to win your motor money. To quote my good friend Mr. Cassidy, where did a scumbag like you get a thousand quid?"

   "I saved it up."

   "I knew there was a logical explanation," said Frost.

   Burton came into the room triumphantly brandishing the travel bag. "Look what I found stuffed behind the wardrobe," he said.

   Frost unzipped it. It was packed tight with ten and twenty pound notes. "Did you save this up as well?"

   Hudson stared at it, then jerked his head away. "Nothing to say," he mumbled.

   "You'd better bloody say something," snarled Cassidy. "This money was used to pay the ransom for Bobby Kirby. You're in serious trouble, my friend. So where is the boy?"

   "I don't know anything about the boy." He slumped back in the chair.

   Frost leant over him and pointed to the near-naked girl on the settee, who was stroking her breasts with feathery fingers and grinning inanely. "Take a good look, son. You won't get any more of that if you're doing twenty years in the nick. I'd start answering a few questions if I were you."

   Hudson looked over at the girl, who grinned back at him and wriggled her body provocatively. "All right. I found that money."

   "Where?"

   "Dumped by a rubbish bin, just outside the car-park in the town centre."

   "You're a bloody liar," yelled Cassidy. "Where is the boy?"

   "How many more times? I don't know anything about the damn kid."

   The girl on the settee had now decided to try and sit up. The effort made her giggle. Frost went over to her and shook her by the shoulders roughly. Her head snapped from side to side and her hair fell all over her eyes. A bonus was her breasts which swayed delightfully from side to side like the head of a questing snake.

   Frost found a part of him enjoying the view, the other deeply concerned about the boy. "Where is he?"

   She gaped up at him, trying to focus through wisps of stray hair, her expression one of bemused delight. "I love it when you get rough . . ."

   "I haven't started getting rough yet," snapped Frost. "Where is the kid?"

   "I haven't got a kid," she giggled. "I'm on the pill."

   Frost let her drop. This was useless. He beckoned Burton over. "Get SOCO and Forensic . . . and tell Sergeant Wells I need a lot more men down here." He turned to Cassidy. "Take Hudson and Miss Curry-belly down to the station and try and get them to tell us where the kid is. I'll follow on as soon as we've got things organized here."

   Blankets from the bedroom were draped over the girl and she was hustled out with Hudson.

   Frost smoked and watched and tried not to get in anyone's way as he waited for Forensic and SOCO. "Go over every inch of this place," he told them. "We want to know if the kid has been here." Slamming of car doors outside as more men arrived. He went down to meet them. "Search every building in the street. Search every flat, every basement, occupied or not kick in doors if necessary, I'll carry the can if anyone complains." He waited while Burton organized them into search groups, then drove back to the station.

Hudson, in the white one-piece boiler suit they had forced him to put on while his clothes were taken away for forensic examination, sat in the interview room rubbing his wrists and his groin. If he ever met up with that cow of a policewoman on a dark night . . . He stared moodily at the uniformed officer leaning against the green-painted walls. "How much longer?"

   The officer shrugged.

   "Where's Cindy, my girlfriend?"

   Again the officer shrugged.

   "Can I have a fag?"

   "I don't smoke," said the officer, sounding pleased he was able to deny this to the prisoner.

   Hudson looked up as Cassidy, followed by Detective Sergeant Hanlon, came in. "About bloody time."

   Cassidy gave the prisoner his long, hard stare and waited for Hanlon to load up the cassette recorder. "My name is Cassidy, Acting Detective Inspector Cassidy. Also present is Detective Sergeant Hanlon. Where is the boy?"

   "You don't bloody listen, do you? Watch my lips I know nothing about no boy."

   "You demanded a ransom. You paid for a Honda Accord vehicle with part of that ransom money."

   "I told you, I found it!"

   "You are lying."

   "Prove it!"

   "Where's the kid?"

   "I don't know anything about any kid . . ."

Frost waited impatiently in his office for the result of the search, a cigarette smouldering away in a disgusting-looking ashtray, piled high with grey ash. Liz had phoned through to report that the Indian take away had delivered a meal for two, not three. If they had the kid, surely they would feed him . . . or perhaps the kid was dead, so they didn't have to. Hudson wasn't intelligent enough to have organized the kidnap. Perhaps someone else was behind it . . . the girl? She was still in no state to be interviewed, so it was up to Cassidy to try and get something from the man.

   "Any news?"

   It was flaming Mullett in his smart, TV interview uniform. He'd been sticking his head round the door every five minutes.

   "Nothing yet," Frost told him.

   Mullett scowled as if the lack of progress was Frost's fault. "I want a quick result on this one."

   "I believe you have mentioned it, sir," muttered Frost. The phone rang. He snatched it up. Burton calling from the flat. "Forensic have crawled over every inch of the place. Not a damn thing to link Hudson with the kidnapping - apart from the ransom money, of course."

   "And how is the search of the other properties going?"

   "No joy so far. A couple of people have refused permission to let us in to their premises."

   "Sod their permission. Go in anyway. We can always apologize afterwards." He hung up. Mullett pretended not to have heard Frost's instructions so he could absolve himself from any involvement in the event of a comeback.

   Frost glanced at his watch. What the hell was Cassidy playing at? He'd been questioning Hudson for well over an hour. A clatter of footsteps down the corridor and Cassidy came in, looking angry and frustrated.

   "I can't get anywhere with him. He denies any knowledge of the kidnapping and repeats over and over again that he found the bag of money dumped in the car park."

   "Why don't we set up an identity parade - get Finch to identify him?" Mullett suggested.

   "I'd prefer to avoid that if possible," replied Frost. "Finch has already identified the wrong man. His defence would pull any subsequent identification to shreds . . . and the silly sod could well pick out another flaming look-alike."

   "What have Forensic turned up?" asked Mullett.

   "Slightly less than sod all." Frost picked up his ashtray and emptied it into the waste bin. "Right. Back to Hudson. We forget the niceties and scare the shit out of the bastard."

   "Wait," called Mullett. "We don't want any of your famous short-cuts and corner cutting, Frost things that won't stand up in a court. The important thing is to secure a conviction."

   "No," said Frost. "The important thing is to find the kid . . . and that's what I intend to do."

   "I'm warning you," said Mullett. "If we lose a conviction because of your underhand methods . . ."

   "If my underhand methods result in us finding the kid, then we'll get a conviction anyway. Don't worry, sir, I'll be taking all the blame if things go wrong." He knew he'd get the blame anyway.

   "On your own head be it," said Mullett as Frost brushed past him on his way to the interview room. "If this blows up in your face I shall deny all knowledge of this conversation."

   Cassidy gave a sympathetic smile to Mullett as he followed Frost out, his smile saying, "I'm with you all the way, sir, if things go wrong . . ." But if they went right, he was determined to grab his share of the glory.

   "Now what?" asked Hudson as Frost entered the interview room with Cassidy.

   Frost dropped into the chair opposite him and banged a folder on the table. Cassidy had the cassette ready to insert into the machine, but Frost stopped him. "I don't want this recorded." He smiled sweetly at Hudson. "Where is Bobby Kirby?"

   "I'm not wasting my breath answering this same question any more. For the last time, I know nothing about no kid."

   "Right," said Frost. "I haven't got time to sod about." He swung round to the uniformed man. "Would you wait outside, please, constable."

   The constable hesitated, but did what he was told, closing the door firmly behind him.

   Frost beamed at Hudson. "Isn't this cosy? Just the three of us."

   Hudson's eyes flickered apprehensively between the two detectives. "What's going on?"

   Frost beamed at him and pulled two photographs from the folder. He slid them across to Hudson.

   "Recognize them?"

   Hudson gave them a half-hearted glance. "No."

   "That's funny," said Frost, as he tapped the photograph of Bobby Kirby. "This is the boy you kidnapped."