Hard Frost (45 page)

   An enormous dick, thought Frost wearily, slumping down in his chair.

   "The light comes on at all hours of the day and night," added her husband.

   "So?" asked Frost, getting fidgety. This all seemed a waste of time.

   "I've seen him taking food down there," said the woman. "Hot food on a tray."

   "Food?" Now Frost was interested. He sat up straight and gave them his full attention. "Go on."

   "The last couple of days, just before he goes to work and just after he comes home at night, he sticks his head out of the back door checking that no-one's watching, then he scurries off down the garden as fast as he can with a tray of food and he's inside that shed with the doors shut and the curtains drawn."

   "And you reckon he's taking food there for the boy?" asked Frost.

   "Well, he's not feeding his bloody rusty lawn mower," said the man. "And apart from the food, he's taken bedding down there . . . a big heap of bedding, I saw him,"

   Gleefully, Frost rubbed his hands. This was getting more and more promising. "And what does Mr. Younger do for a living?"

   "He's a paramedic . . . drives around in an ambulance treating people for strokes and helping girls who have babies on buses."

   "If you swallow your false teeth, he's the man to call on," added his wife. "There was that woman round the corner - the one who had her womb scraped . . ."

   Frost winced and held up a hand in protest. It was too early in the morning for scraped wombs. "You've actually seen him taking food down to the shed?"

   "Come down to our house now and you can see for yourself," said the man. "He does it half-past eight on the dot."

   Frost checked the time. Quarter past eight. He drummed his fingers on the table with excitement. Bedding, food, drawn curtains, and, as an ambulance driver, Younger would have access to chloroform or ether. Knock out the kid and bung him in the back. Who would suspect an ambulance?

   Frost smiled at the couple. The dislike he had felt when he first met them had almost gone. "Hold on a moment - be right back."

   He raced off to the incident room. "Got a strong lead on the kid. A couple of nosy neighbours reckon he's hidden in a shed in the garden of 20 Fullers Lane." He gave them the details.

   "So it looks as if you were wrong about Finch?" said Liz.

   "Infallibility is not my strong point," answered Frost. "I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again." He moved over to the wall map. "Where the hell is Fullers Lane?"

   Burton showed him.

   "Right." He studied the location. "One car round the front and one round the back ought to do it. Burton - you take the back-up car. Liz, Collier you come with me."

They were in the Masons' bedroom with its cute pictures of puppies on the wall and zip-up pussy cat pyjama cases on both pillows of the bed. Two large windows overlooked the rear gardens and a comfortable chair was already in position at each. Hanging from the back of each chair was a pair of field glasses in a case. Between the chairs was a coffee table holding fruit, snacks and a thermos flask. "The complete nosy bastard's outfit," commented Frost, picturing the Masons, side by side each night, spying on the neighbours through the Terylene curtains, chomping away at their snacks and nudging each other when something tasty clicked into focus. Frost sat in one of the chairs and picked up the field glasses. Liz sat in the other.

   A creaking of stairs and the chinking of crockery as Mr. Mason came in with mugs of tea on a tray and a plate of chocolate digestive biscuits. "Thought you might like this." He peered through the curtains and pointed. "That's the shed, there!"

   At the end of the next garden, a shed about eight feet by six, in creosoted wood with a green felt roof. The drawn, thick red curtains looked incongruous. Frost swung the glasses to the door. It was fitted with a heavy padlock which looked new and far too hefty for a garden shed.

   "How long has that padlock been there?"

   "We saw him putting it up last week," said Mason. "Probably frightened someone will steal his lousy lawn mower that's too good to lend people."

   Frost slowly panned across the window, but nothing at all could be seen through the curtaining.

   "Look out! He'll see you." Mason jerked Frost back, letting the lace curtain drop into place. "He's coming out."

   By pressing his face close to the window pane Frost was able to see the back door of the adjoining house open and a man's head emerge to look furtively around. The man stared up suspiciously at the window of the Masons' bedroom and Frost jerked back. Younger must know what a pair of nosy bastards he had as neighbours. He hesitated, then came out carrying a tray covered with a cloth. He hurried to the shed, unlocked it and was inside in a couple of seconds. The light came on, but the curtains remained drawn.

   "Good enough for me," grunted Frost. He clicked on his radio and told Burton to hold his position at the rear of the property. He jerked his head to Liz. "Come on. We're going in."

   The woman who opened the door was in her mid-thirties, a hard-faced blonde in an electric blue dress. "Yes?" Her expression changed to anger as Frost and Liz barged past her, Collier following behind. "What the bloody - "

   "Police!" snapped Frost, flashing his warrant card. "We're going to search your premises."

   "You are bloody not." She parked herself in front of Frost, blocking his way, but was yanked off by Liz.

   "Calm down or I'm putting the cuffs on you," she threatened.

   "Cuffs? In my own flaming house? Where's your search warrant?"

   "We don't need a warrant if we believe there's a life in danger," Liz told her.

   "Danger? What bloody danger?"

   "Look after the lady," Frost told Collier. "We're going to take a look in their shed."

   As he and Liz went out to the garden, the blonde yelled after them. "Arrest the, bastard Lock him up. It's nothing to do with me."

   They charged up the garden and burst into the shed. A man was sitting inside eating beans on toast from a tray. A portable radio was playing. As they burst in, he leapt up, sending the tray on his lap clattering to the floor.

   "Police!"yelled Frost.

   "Oh, shit!" said the man.

   Along one wall was a camp bed. Stacked at the rear was a pile of hospital sheets, blankets and medical supplies. There was no-one else.

   "Where's the boy?" demanded Frost.

   "What boy?"

   Frost radioed Burton who scrambled over the rear fence. "Bring him into the house."

   The blonde was at the back door, trying to get past Collier. "Keep that bastard out of my house," she yelled. "I'm having nothing to do with him."

   "Isn't this your husband?" asked Frost.

   "Until I divorce the sod, yes. Until then, he cooks his own meals and has them in the shed and he sleeps in the shed. I am not having him in the house."

   "Why?" Frost added.

   "The bugger's only been having it away with a tart in the back of his ambulance."

   "Once - it happened once," moaned the man.

   "You were only found out bloody once," she snapped back. She turned to Frost. "Do me a favour. Arrest him. Lock him up. Throw away the flaming key."

   "On what charge?"

   "You've seen that stuff in the shed. All the gear he's nicked from the hospital. It's no bloody use to anyone, but he nicks it."

   Frost's shoulders slumped. Another false lead. "You can have this one," he told Liz. "I'm sure the hospital will want to press charges."

   Liz radioed for a van to collect the loot, then marched Younger out to the car. "I suppose it was those two nosy bastards next door who shopped me?" he said, glaring up at their bedroom window where the curtains suddenly twitched and sunlight flashed on the lenses of two pairs of field glasses. "I'll get you, you sods," he yelled. "I'll bloody get you."

"Another false lead, Frost?" said Mullett, striding into Frost's office and pulling a face to show his disapproval of its untidiness. He had the local paper in his hand.

   "Yes, another false lead," agreed Frost, swinging his legs off the desk. Why did the bloody man always have to state the obvious?

   "You probably haven't heard," continued Mullett with a sadistic smirk, "but Cassidy has obtained a confession from the husband in the child-killing case."

   "Yes, I had heard," muttered Frost.

   "The wife killed the children and the husband murdered the wife."

   "Something like that."

   He's jealous, thought Mullett, jealous of Cassidy's success in the face of his own failures. Well, let's twist the knife a little more. "And this clears Snell - the man you refused to arrest?"

   Frost nodded and started patting the layer of papers on his desk to locate his cigarette packet.

   "Cassidy got you off the hook with this one, Frost. You should be eternally grateful."

   "I am," said Frost, lighting up. "Anything else?"

   Mullett frowned. He produced the local paper and dropped it on Frost's desk. He tapped the front page item - "Police Dragging Heels In Search For Little Bobby'. "Have you seen this?"

   Frost picked up the paper. '"Flasher At Pensioners' Tea Party"," he read. He frowned in pretended puzzlement. "Is he a friend of yours, sir?"

   Mullett banged his finger on the correct news item. He knew Frost was just trying to be aggravating. "That is what I mean, Frost. Police dragging their heels. Not the sort of thing I want to read about my division. So what is the position on the kidnapping?"

   Frost rubbed his face wearily. "After Cordwell's magnanimous offer, we're being flooded out with more sightings and leads from the public who hadn't said a word before the reward was offered. We're following them all through, but I don't expect they will lead anywhere."

   "We can't waste time or money or manpower on false leads," said Mullett, 'but if it transpires we ignored one that would have led us to the boy . . ." A typical Mullett instruction making sure he was covered whatever happened.

   "And I'm going to have Finch followed," said Frost.

   "Finch? You've gone over every inch of his house, his caravan, his car . . . you've found nothing."

   "He's our man." Even as he said it, he had his doubts. Earlier today he was damn sure Younger was the kidnapper. He took a drag at the cigarette. "He'd better be our man . . . he's all we've bloody got."

   "And what do you hope to achieve by following him?"

   "I'm hoping he'll lead us to the kid."

   "And if he doesn't?"

   "Then we're in trouble."

   "You will be in trouble," said Mullett grimly. "Make no mistake about it, inspector. You will be in serious trouble." He made no attempt to suppress his smile of satisfaction as he turned and marched out of the office.

   "When am I never in trouble?" sighed Frost, swinging his feet up on the desk again.

Liz Maud led Harold Younger out of the charge room and walked him to the main entrance. He had been charged and released on police bail and was free to return to his shed at the bottom of the garden. He had been warned that if he tried to make trouble with his neighbours his bail would be revoked.

   Harold Younger was a toe-rag. He thought he was God's gift to women. He kept calling her sweetheart and in the car on the way to the station had slyly rested his hand on her knee. She had given him a sweet, encouraging smile, then stubbed her cigarette out on the back of his hand. He had sucked the burn and sworn at her, but didn't try anything else.

   She ushered him out of the door, then returned to the incident room. Liz was not very happy. Cassidy, the same rank as her in spite of his temporary promotion, was tidying up on a murder investigation, while she was stuck with the petty theft of items from the hospital storeroom.

   She found Frost in the incident room, seated at a desk, holding the phone away from his ear while a stream of angry abuse buzzed and crackled into empty air. When the noise stopped, he put the phone back to his ear. "I appreciate your concern, Mr. Stanfield. The enquiries into the abduction of your daughter are proceeding. I have every hope we will be able to make an early arrest." More angry buzzing, so he put the phone down on the desk and n't up a cigarette, then when it went quiet, picked the phone up again. "Got to go now, sir . . . urgent call." He hung up and swung round to Liz. "That was Mr. Stanfield. He read in the paper how we're dragging our heels over the kidnapping and intends telling the paper how we're dragging our heels over his daughter's abduction." He stood up and stretched. "So I suppose we had better do something about it. Let's find out how . . ." He clicked his fingers. "What was his name - the one with the pigtail?"

   "Ian Grafton?" suggested Liz.

   "Yes . . . how an out-of-work layabout can afford an expensive hi-fi."

   "We were going to call on those two women at Primrose Cottage," Liz reminded him.

   "Primrose Cottage?" frowned Frost, trying to recall what it was about.

   "Lemmy Hoxton. They lived in the area where he was found."

   "Oh, flip, yes." He had completely forgotten about that case. Too much happening at once. He couldn't keep up with it.

   Jordan came in with PC Collier trailing behind. "You wanted to see us, inspector?"

   "Did I?" asked Frost. "What the hell for?" Then he remembered. "Finch . . . I've promoted him to my number one suspect in the kidnapping case again." Noting their surprise, he added, "All right - so he's my only bleeding suspect. I want him tailed. I'm hoping he'll lead us to where the kid is, but for Pete's sake don't let him know you're following him. If he suspects anything he'll probably sit tight, stay indoors and let the kid die of starvation. You can call on other cars to help if necessary."

   He sat down again at the desk, then realized Liz was still standing there. "Primose Cottage?" she said.

   "No." He shook his head. "Lemmy's been dead for months, another couple of hours won't make any difference. We'll go and see Ian Grafton."