Hard Frost (42 page)

   "Yes, sir. Thank you very much for your help. Our lady sergeant will drive you back." Frost tried to sound as if his mind was on other, more important, matters.

   Mullett waylaid him on his way to the incident room. "Frost!" He sounded angry. Very angry. He had been sitting in his office, the phone in the centre of his desk, ready to ring the Chief Constable with the good news. "The Denton team have done it again, sir," he would announce. "No, no," he would add modestly after the Chief had congratulated him. "I can't claim all the credit." But his speech would remain unspoken. He had seen Finch come and long faces all round but no-one had bothered to tell him what had happened.

   Bloody hell, thought Frost. I was supposed to keep him informed. "Just on my way to see you, sir," he said.

   "You've let Finch go? Do I take it you found nothing?"

   "Not a bleeding thing," said Frost.

   "Nothing at all?" persisted Mullett.

   "That's what "not a bleeding thing" means," said Frost.

   "All this time and effort," snapped Mullett. "All those men - a full Forensic team - all on overtime. Do you know how much this little jaunt has cost?"

   "I neither know, nor care," Frost snapped back. "If there's a cash limit on the amount we must spend to find the kid, then let me know."

   "An expensive success I can accept, Frost, but not an expensive failure." He stamped back to his office.

   Frost joined his dispirited team in the incident room. "All right, so we found nothing, but that doesn't mean we're on the wrong track. Finch is our man." He ignored the scoffing snort from Cassidy. "Take it from me. Finch has got the kid. The only ques ton is, where the hell is he? Can anyone come up with some bright idea, beau se I'm blowedif lean."

   "Assuming Finch is the kidnapper," said Burton, 'why hasn't he come up with a second ransom demand?"

   "He's probably got to work out another way of collecting the money. He's been seen at the collection point once, a second time would be too much of a coincidence even for dim twats like us."

   Lambert raised a hand. "Do you think he's got an accomplice looking after the kid?"

   "No," said Frost. "Finch is a loner. He's in this absolutely on his own. He's got the kid gagged, blindfolded and trussed up somewhere, so how do we find him?"

   "We tail him," suggested Hanlon. "Twenty-four hour surveillance. Let him lead us to the kid."

   "Why should he go to the kid?" asked Frost. "It would be too dangerous."

   "He's got to feed him - see if he is all right. The poor little sod is only seven."

   "Finch is a callous bastard. I don't think he gives a toss about the kid," said Frost.

   "If there's nothing to connect him to the kid and he doesn't lead us to him, then what do we do?" said Liz.

   "We worry ourselves bleeding sick," said Frost. Then he stopped dead. "I think I know where the boy might be."

   "Where?" asked Cassidy, without enthusiasm. Nearly all Frosts bright ideas had fallen flat on their face up to now.

   "I was looking through some invoices and bills in his office. One bill was for the ground rent for the parking of a holiday caravan. A holiday caravan in the autumn . . . what better place?"

   "Worth a look," said Cassidy begrudgingly. "So where is it?"

   Frost spread his palms. "I don't know. I wasn't paying that much attention at the time."

   Cassidy shook his head in exasperation. "So how do we find out, short of asking Finch?"

   "Leave it to me." Frost glanced up at the wall clock. Liz should still be driving Finch back. He snatched up the internal phone and told Control to radio through to her in the car. She was to phone Inspector Frost urgently as soon as she reached the house. He hoped she would twig that this was something he didn't want mentioned over the radio in Finch's hearing.

   The next few minutes crept by as he waited for her to ring back. It was a few minutes to midnight. The phone rang. Liz.

   "Can Finch hear us?" He found himself whispering although there was no need.

   "No. He's in the kitchen feeding the dog."

   "If he asks, tell him it's about a rape case. This is what I want you to do. There's a room upstairs he uses as an office. In the left-hand desk drawer there's a bulldog clip of bills waiting to be paid. One is from a caravan site. I want the address of that site."

   "How do I get it?"

   "Tell him you want to do a Jimmy Riddle - the bathroom's upstairs next to his office. If he offers you a bucket we'll have to think again. Do your best, love. It's bloody important."

   "I'll try."

   "Good girl! Don't forget to pull the chain afterwards - he's a suspicious sod."

   She radioed back from her car in eight minutes. The invoice was for the ground rent of a caravan at the East Seaton Holiday Caravan Park.

   "That's nearly forty miles away!" protested Cassidy.

   "So?" replied Frost. "About an hour's drive. He could get there and back to Denton in good time to take the dog out for a walk." He walked over to the regional map and marked it with his finger. "There it is! Forty miles from Denton, remote and no-one staying there in the autumn. If I wanted to hide a kidnap victim, I couldn't think of a better place."

   Cassidy studied the map. The caravan parking site was tucked away well off the beaten track. "We'll need a search warrant," he said.

   "No time for that," said Frost, already winding his scarf round his neck.

   "Then Mr. Mullett will have to be told."

   "No time for that, either." Mullett would only say no.

   "Seaton is in Felford Division. Shouldn't we let them handle it?" asked Burton.

   It was Cassidy who answered. If the boy was there, no other division was going to steal the glory for finding him. "It's our case," he said firmly.

   "There could be trouble," said Burton, shaking his head doubtfully.

   "Not if we play our cards right," said Frost.

   But Frost rarely played his cards right.

Burton coasted the car up the bumping approach to the caravan site and switched off the lights. A high, chain-link fence enclosed a field, its grass overgrown and sagging with the weight of rain water. Huddling under the shelter of a group of trees to the rear of the site was a line of caravans of all shapes and sizes. The wind rattled the fencing and caused the trees to groan in protest. In this weather the caravan park was a cheerless, desolate place.

   There were four of them, Frost, Burton, Cassidy and Liz. He had considered bringing at least another four in a second car, but Mullett's dire threats about overtime payments decided him against it. In any case, for this clandestine operation, the fewer people involved, the better. "What a dump!" he grunted, holding out his hand for the night glasses. Burton gripped his arm and pointed. A light had come on in one of the caravans. But he'd already seen it.

   He fumbled at the focusing control and panned across the front of the caravan. The curtains were tightly drawn, but a thin crack of light seeped out into the night. He located the door and the number shimmered into focus: 12. It was Finch's caravan. He grinned to the others. "I think our luck's changed."

   The chain link fence was too high for them to scale and the heavy padlock on the main gates refused to yield to any of Frost's skeleton keys, so they watched impatiently as Burton, his face contorted with the effort, clamped the cutters across the chain and squeezed. The jaws bit through the chain and the padlock dropped on the mud. The gate creaked and ploughed a groove in the muddy ground as they pushed it open.

   Crouching low, the long, wet grass slapping at their legs, they squelched past the silent row of dark caravans on to number 12.

   Frost checked to make sure the only exit from the caravan was by the main door, then he mounted its two wooden steps. From inside they could hear a voice babbling, then music. A radio playing. He banged the door with his fist. "Police. Open up!"

   Almost immediately, the light went out and the radio was silenced. "Don't sod us about. We know you are in there." He waited. Silence. He stepped to one side so Burton could smash the glass of the door panel with the heavy duty cutters and slip his hand inside to turn the catch. The door swung open. A stale, empty smell. They stepped gingerly into darkness and silence.

   "Torch!"

   Burton's torch beam sliced through the darkness and picked out a light switch. Frost tried it. It worked, the dim bulb revealing a plastic-topped table that could be folded back and two bunk beds stripped of clothing. There was a lamp and a small mains radio on the table, both connected to an electronic control programmed to come on at different times during the night. Frost pressed the manual button. The lamp lit up and the radio came on. A burglar deterrent.

   The bottom bunk was over a storage area. They opened the doors to reveal bedding and table linen jam-packed. A partitioned section was the kitchen, its oven powered by propane gas. Opposite the cooker was the sink. Frost spun the tap and a jet of rust-coloured water hammered out, bouncing off the sink and splashing everywhere. He quickly turned it off and wiped water from the front of his mac. The carpeting on the floor was sodden. "I don't know why I did that," he said.

   "It doesn't look as if anyone's here," observed Liz, rather redundantly.

   "I was beginning to come to that conclusion myself," sighed Frost. "Let's get the hell out of here."

   "What about the broken door glass?" asked Cassidy.

   "It was already broken when we got here," said Frost. "Bloody kids!" It had been a long day. A fruitless day. He wanted to get home and put an end to it and hope that the morning would bring something marginally better.

   He switched off the light and closed the door behind them as they descended the wooden steps. Then he stopped dead, a finger to his lips. "I heard something," he whispered.

   A rustling in the grass. Someone moving about. Burton's head turned from left to right, trying to locate the source, then he nudged Frost and pointed. "There!"

   A dark shape loomed, then another. A white, blinding glare as torches were shone straight into their eyes.

   "Hold it! None of you move. Police!"

   "Oh shit!" groaned Frost.

Mullett was almost foaming at the mouth. "You went into another division's area and you neither sought my permission, nor did you have the common courtesy to let them know!"

   "I forgot," said Frost, edging towards the door. He was too tired and fed up to think of a decent excuse and, in any case, this sort of escapade was excusable only if it produced results. They had been dragged off to Seaton station by the uniformed men who ignored all their protests, but luckily their Station Sergeant recognized Frost. "Why didn't you let us know, Jack? We've had a spate of break-ins on those caravans, so when someone phoned to report four suspicious-looking thugs creeping about and we find the padlock cut off . . ."

   "I have been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, phoned personally by the Seaton Divisional Commander," continued Mullett. "He was absolutely furious - and justifiably so. Fortunately he is a personal friend of mine, so I apologized profusely on your behalf."

   "Good," grunted Frost, reaching for the door handle. "No harm done, then."

   "No harm done?" Mullett's voice had soared to a screech. He pointed to a chair. "Sit!" He was getting his second wind. "You've done lasting harm, Frost. There are certain basic procedures, procedures that even the rawest recruit would automatically follow. You do not leave your own division without telling me. You do not enter another division without permission and you do not break into other people's property without a search warrant."

   "I was sure the kid was there. There wasn't time to get a warrant."

   "There was plenty of time. You just couldn't be bothered. In my division you do things by the book - understand?"

   "Yes, I'll bear it in mind," said Frost vaguely. His mind was elsewhere and he was only giving the superintendent a small part of his attention. He stood up.

   "And what is worse, you dragged Cassidy along with you, giving him the impression you had my permission."

   Frost's lips tightened. Cassidy knew what the score was and had obviously got his own version of events in first. "That was unforgivable of me, sir," he said flatly.

   Mullett glared. He never knew how to take it when Frost agreed with him. The sooner he could find a way of replacing him with Cassidy, the better. "There are going to be some changes in this division," he warned grimly.

   Frost visibly brightened up at this. "They're not moving you on, are they, sir? It's not fair, you're doing your best . . ."

   "No, Frost," snapped Mullett icily. "They are not moving me on."

   "Oh!" Frost tried not to sound disappointed, but didn't succeed. He pushed himself up from the chair. "Well, if there's nothing else . . ."

   Mullett sighed. What was the point? "No, inspector. There is nothing else." The man was impossible, but this strengthened his resolve. Frost would have to be transferred.

Frost climbed into his car, his mind churning over the events in the caravan park. Something in the caravan had flashed the briefest, subliminal message . . . something important. He yawned. Whatever it was, it would have to wait. Three o'clock in the morning and he was deadbeat. Sod everything.

   He dug into his pocket for a cigarette. The packet was empty. Panic broke in as he searched deep into every pocket and scrabbled through the glove compartment. The ashtray held only ash. Sod it. He couldn't get through the night without a cigarette and the knowledge that he didn't have any made the craving almost unbearable. No shops open in Denton at this hour of the morning. Nothing else for it then. He spun the wheel and took a detour.

She hadn't been able to sleep and was in bed reading when she heard the car draw up outside. She picked up the bedside clock. Sixteen minutes past three in the morning. Footsteps up the path, then the ringing of her door bell. She slipped on her dressing-gown and cautiously made her way down the stairs.