Hard Frost (52 page)

   Cassidy was only too eager to tell him. "I wouldn't have got myself in this position in the first place."

   "Quite," said Mullett before turning angrily on Frost. "This is all down to you. I absolve myself from all responsibility for this mess."

   "I'll take all the bloody blame if it makes you happy," snarled Frost, 'but what are we going to do about the kid?"

   "I've no authority to do deals," said Mullett. "That's a matter for the Chief Constable."

   "Then ask the flaming Chief Constable." Frost picked up the phone and banged it down in front of the superintendent.

   Mullett looked at the phone as if it was a live bomb, then, steeling himself, stretched out his hand. Then he flinched, anticipating what the Chief Constable would say. He snatched his hand back. "No, Frost. You goi us into this mess. You get us out of it." He strode to the door, then spun round, pointing a finger at the inspector. "I want a result on this, Frost. I want a watertight case against Finch and the boy returned safe and sound. The boy's safety is paramount. I don't care how you do it . . . but stick to the rules."

   "Thanks for sod all," muttered Frost. He stood up and stretched wearily. He'd have to have another word with Finch . . . try a bit of subtlety like threatening to tear his dick off.

   His path was again blocked by Cassidy.

   "Whatever it is, it can wait," said Frost.

   "It can't wait," said Cassidy, 'and it won't take more than a second of your valuable time." He unfolded a small sheet of paper and waved it at Frost. "Something you might recognize."

   Frost bent forward to read it. A car registration number. His stomach tightened. He knew what it was.

   "This," said Cassidy, waving it in front of Frost's face, 'is the registration number of the car that killed my daughter. The BMW, the car you said didn't exist. The car where Tommy Dunn was seen talking to the driver."

   "How did you get it?" asked Frost.

   "Never mind how I got it. You were given this registration number at the time. You conveniently lost it." He pushed his face right up to Frost. "How much did the drunken sod of a driver pay you and Tommy to keep him out of it, you bastard?"

   Frost said nothing.

   "I'm going to trace the driver and I'm having the case reopened," said Cassidy, his face a mask of disgust. "See if your damn medal can get you out of this!"

   "Hold it, Cassidy!" Heads jerked round. Arthur Hanlon, who had been sitting quietly by the radio, was coming over. Normally placid, his face was as flushed and angry as Cassidy's. "You don't know the facts."

   "Facts?" echoed Cassidy. "Frost lied his bloody head off and a drunken pig of a motorist was let free. Those are the facts."

   "If he lied," said Hanlon, pushing between Cassidy and Frost, 'then he did it for you, you bastard."

   "For me? What are you bloody talking about?"

   "How well did you know your daughter?"

   "How well? I was her father, for Christ's sake!"

   Frost tugged atJHanlon's sleeve. "Leave it, Arthur." But he was shaken off.

   "You were her father," said Hanlon, 'but how often did you see her? You were career mad. The job came first, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day - sod your family, you hardly ever went home. You didn't know what she was getting up to."

   "Getting up to? She was fourteen bloody years old. What the hell could she get up to?" shouted Cassidy.

   "What are you daring to say about my daughter?"

   "Your daughter was on drugs. Your lovely, pure, fourteen-year-old daughter was on hard drugs."

   Cassidy's knuckles whitened as he clenched his fists tight. "You're lying!"

   "And to support her habit," continued Hanlon doggedly, 'your fourteen-year-old daughter turned to prostitution."

   "You take that back, you bastard." Cassidy had grabbed the front of Hanlon's jacket.

   For a short man, Hanlon showed unusual strength. He pulled Cassidy's hand away. "What do you think she was doing at the Coconut Grove that night? She was stoned to the eyeballs and plying for trade to pay for her next fix. Tommy Dunn saw her and hustled her out. He put her into his car and was about to drive off when she opened the door and flung herself out, right into the path of an oncoming car. The driver had had a few drinks, but there was no way he could have avoided her."

   Cassidy stared straight ahead as if he wasn't listening, but the muscle on the side of his face was twitching uncontrollably.

   "She was killed instantly. Nothing could bring her back, but Jack Frost wanted to spare your feelings. He didn't want the facts to come out in court, so he let the driver go. Then he got the doctor at the hospital to do a very cursory post-mortem, ignoring the drugs abuse, the sexual activity, the disease. He wanted you to have the pure fourteen-year-old daughter you had always boasted about, so he lied and he covered up."

   Cassidy stared blankly and shook his head as if it would shake away everything he had heard. He turned to Frost. "He's lying, isn't he?" Then back to Hanlon. "You're lying! The old pals act. Everyone cover up for everyone else . . . just like Mullett and his mates lied when Chief Inspector Formby wrapped his car round that lamp post."

   He walked to the door. "Sod you all!" he yelled, almost in tears. A flutter of paper as he tore up the registration number and hurled it to the floor. "Sod you all!"

   The door swung shut behind him.

   "I wish you hadn't done that, Arthur," said Frost. "But thanks, anyway." He poked a cigarette in his mouth and tried to think. What was he going to do before Cassidy sounded off? Oh yes. Have another word with Finch.

   Liz looked tired and washed out so he sent her home. "Burton will drive you," he said. Burton seemed pleased at this. He kicked the door of the interview room shut. Just him and Finch.

   "No deal," he said tersely.

   Finch shrugged. "A pity, but I gave you a chance."

   Frost scraped a chair across the brown linoleum and sat down. "I might be able to get the court to go lenient with you. The first boy's death wasn't intended and you co-operated in letting us recover Bobby. You could be out in five years."

   "According to my consultant, I haven't got five years," said Finch. "Any prison term, no matter how short, would be a life sentence, so you've got no carrots to offer me."

   "Tell us where he is," said Frost.

   "Only the kidnapper would know that," replied Finch.

   Frost stood up. "I'll make you a promise," he said. "Whether we find that boy alive, or dead, or never, I'm going to nail you. I hope your consultant is right, because you are going to die in prison,"

   He called for a uniformed constable to take Finch back to the cell. Fine bleeding words, he told himself, but how the hell am I going to do it?

Frost helped himself to a mug of tea from Bill Wells's thermos flask, then paid for it by having to listen to the sergeant's moans about the way Mullett kept blocking his chances of promotion and kept putting him down for duty on Christmas Day. He was only half listening. The kid was out there somewhere in the cold, torrential rain, and teams of men were looking for him. He was toying with the idea of driving over there to help, if only to be doing something constructive, but knew he'd just be getting in the way. He looked up as Burton returned from driving Liz back to her digs.

   "Get your leg over, son?" he asked.

   Burton grinned. "Never had the nerve to ask her."

   "Did you hear about the bus conductress who married a bus driver?" asked Frost. "On their wedding night she stripped off and said, "Room for one on top." When he'd finished he said, "But you didn't tell me there was room for five standing inside." He cackled the loudest at his own joke, then stopped abruptly. It didn't seem right to be laughing while that poor little sod . . . He wryly recalled the empty threat he had made to Finch. Well, there was no way he was going to find the kid, drinking tea and telling dirty jokes. He swilled down the dregs and banged down the mug. "Come on, son," he said to Burton. "Let's go for a drive."

   He sometimes thought better in the car so he lay back in his seat, smoking, eyes half closed, letting Burton drive through the stair rods of rain. The little buzzer in his brain started to sound off again. The house. There was something that had puzzled him when they went into the house in Wrights Lane. But what the hell was it?

   "What happened when we banged on the door to get in there, son?" he asked Burton.

   Burton couldn't help. "You sent me and Jordan round the back."

   Frost leant back and gazed up at the roof of the car for inspiration, but none came. "Drive me to her digs," he told Burton. "I want to talk to Liz."

   "She'll be in bed," said Burton.

   "Then she can get out of it again," said Frost. "I've got to talk to her."

He banged on the door and kept his thumb jammed in the bell push. At last a light came on in an upstairs window, then the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. Bolts slid back and there was Liz, an unfastened dressing-gown over her nightdress, a police truncheon swinging menacingly in her hand.

   "Bloody hell!" gawped Frost. This was a transformed Liz. Her hair, usually screwed back tightly, was now free-flowing down her back. It was gorgeous hair and she had a lot of it.

   She had scrubbed off her make-up and her skin looked fresh and dewy. Her flimsy nightdress didn't conceal very much. "What do you want?" she hissed to the dark shape standing in the doorway.

   I'd love to tell you, thought Frost. "It's me, Liz. Sorry it's so late." He told her what was worrying him.

   Liz shook her head. "We knocked at the door, Finch let us in and then we searched the house."

   "All right, love," he said. "You go back to bed. I'm going to take another look around that house."

   "Wait," she said. "I'm coming with you."

   He waited in the car with Burton, who wanted all the tantalizing detail.

   "She had a dressing-gown on," said Frost, embroidering the facts to suit his audience. "Nothing on underneath . . . she must sleep in the nude . . . and it kept flapping open."

   "Flaming heck!" breathed Burton.

   "And her Bristols," he added. "Wow . . . I've never seen such nipples."

   "Tell me, tell me!" pleaded Burton.

   "Have you ever seen ripe, Royal Sovereign strawberries, warm from the sun with the dew still on them?" said Frost, getting excited at his own fantasy.

   "No, but I can imagine it," said Burton, wriggling in his eat.

   "Well . . . !" His expression changed abruptly. "Look out, she's coming." Burton leant back and opened the door for her.

   Liz sat in the back seat. Burton kept eyeing her with renewed interest. She certainly looked different with her hair hanging loosely. As they paused at the traffic lights he turned and gave her a smile. "You look smashing with your hair like that."

   "Keep your eyes on the road, constable," she said icily.

The house was unguarded. With the search party out in force they didn't have enough men for that luxury. They went inside with Frost mooching from room to room, not knowing what the hell he was doing there or what he was looking for. Fingerprint powder was everywhere, but the only prints found were those of Finch and a few of the householder and his wife which had survived Finch's vigorous polishing and cleaning operation. In the bathroom and the kitchen, the sink traps had been removed and the contents taken away by Forensic for examination. The couple returning from Spain were going to have a shock when they arrived home tomorrow.

   Frost opened and closed closet doors aimlessly and dug through pockets of clothing swinging from hangers. From the back bedroom he stared through the rain-shimmering windows to the garden, an enormous rain puddle making the lawn a lake. In the distance, a few smears of lights flickered intermittently as the poor sods in the search teams floundered about in the woods. He wondered if the little boy was under cover. A mental picture of the seven-year-old, bound, gagged, probably with masking tape over his eyes, made him shudder. And they were nowhere near to finding where he was.

   Downstairs, in the kitchen, Liz was rummaging through drawers that had already been thoroughly searched. "I wish I knew what we were looking for," she said.

   "You and me both, love," he muttered, pulling open a drawer next to the sink. It held cutlery and a bread board. He took out the board and a long, razor-sharp carving knife and wondered if this was what Finch had used to cut off the finger for the ransom demand. The board, well grooved with knife cuts, had been scrubbed white. He dropped them back, nudging shut the drawer.

   Burton came in, dusting himself down. He had been up in the loft, crawling behind water tanks. "We did a thorough job on the search first time," he said. "I don't see how they missed anything."

   Frost stared into space. "It was right at the start," he said. "Right at the start. We banged at the door." He looked at Liz. "Then what?"

   She frowned as she tried to remember. "We knocked . . . he opened the door . . . we all charged in."

   Frost chewed his knuckle. There was something else. But what? "We knocked. Finch was already in the hall. He said, "Who is it?" I said, "Police" and then . . ." He snapped his fingers in triumph. "I've got it. He said, "Just a minute." He made us wait before he opened the door . . . only a few seconds, but he made us wait . . . Why?" He hurried out into the hall, Liz and Burton following. A pile of letters stood on the hall table awaiting the return of the holiday-makers; some of them, the ones that looked like bills, Finch had opened. He checked through the envelopes carefully, then pulled the table away from the wall in case anything had been jammed behind it. Nothing.

   A door under the stairs led to the cellar, but there hadn't been time for Finch to nip down there. The only other things in the hall were the clothes hanging from the coat rack.

   "Did we go through the pockets?"

   "Yes," said Liz.