Hard Frost (7 page)

   Progress was slow. Everything up to now was negative. The five boys who were away from school had all been accounted for. The fingerprints on the rubbish bags all came from the shop staff, except for two which were too blurred to provide any positive identification but like the others probably came from a shop assistant. The little Chinese nurse was reported to be very fond of Bobby and wouldn't lift a finger to harm him. A missing boy and a dead boy and no leads to follow on either.

   The phone rang. He looked up hopefully, but it was Mullett asking for a progress report.

   "Tell him it consists of two words," grunted Frost, 'and the second is "all"!"

   "Still following up leads, sir," translated Liz. "We'll let you know as soon as we have something positive." She went back to her wall map.

   Bill Wells came in, grinning all over his face. "Control have just had a phone call from a motorist. Said a naked girl tried to flag him down in Hanger Lane."

   Frost brightened up. Naked girls interested him very much. "Did he pick her up?"

   "No. He couldn't stop. Said he was in a hurry to keep an appointment. He phoned us on his mobile."

   Frost frowned and shook his head in disbelief. "A naked girl and he didn't stop? I'd have stopped if she was only half naked . . . Bloody hell, I'd have stopped if she was fully dressed with one titty hanging out."

   "You're all heart, Jack,"said Wells.

   "Some people say I'm all dick," said Frost, 'but I try not to brag." A snort of disgust from Liz Maud made him pull a face at Wells.

   "I've sent Jordan and Simms to pick her up," said Wells.

   "Some people have all the luck," said Frost.

   Another phone rang. Liz answered it. She listened and her expression changed.

   "What's up?" asked Frost.

   "That naked girl. It's not as funny as you thought it was. She's only fifteen. She was abducted last night by a gang of men. Her parents had to pay a £25,000 ransom to get her back."

   "Shit!" swore Frost. "We've got enough on our flaming plates without this .. He stared at her thoughtfully before reaching a decision. "You can handle this one, love," he said, 'if you don't mind me coming with you."

They went in Liz's car, Frost sitting next to her and Evans, the Scene of Crime officer, in the back seat. It was a white-knuckle drive as she slammed the car in and out of the tight country lanes, trusting to luck there was nothing coming in the opposite direction. Frost sank down low in his seat and tried not to look at the blur of greenery flashing from side to side across the windscreen as she spun the wheel, slammed on the brakes and skidded, narrowly avoiding catastrophe after catastrophe.

   "Left here," he murmured.

   "No - right," said Evans from the back seat.

   She turned right. Up to now, Frost had been wrong with his directions every time and she'd had to slam on the brakes and do a reverse.

   "There it is," said Evans.

   Liz turned the car into a long drive leading to a large, ivy-clad Edwardian house standing alone and surrounded by fields. Frost stared at the house. He'd been here before, but couldn't remember when, or why. A police car was parked just outside the front door. She slowed and parked behind it. Frost and Evans staggered out. PC Jordan came from the house to brief them.

   "Family of three - husband, wife and fifteen-year-old daughter. Husband and wife travelled up to London last night to see a show. They got back home around three in the morning. The house had been ransacked, jewellery and furs valued at £50,000 missing. They found this on the kitchen table." He gave Frost a sheet of A4 white paper which had been slipped inside a transparent folder to preserve any prints. The message had been printed on a bubble jet printer, and read:

   To Mr & Mrs Stanfield

   We have your daughter. If you go to the police we will gang rape her. one of us is HIV positive.

   If you want her returned unharmed you will go to your bank as soon as it opens at 9.30 and withdraw £25,000 in used notes. You will put the money in a small suitcase. As you pass the white gate in Clay lane you will throw the case out of the car into the ditch. You will drive straight home. You will not look back.

   If you do all this and there are no tricks we will release your daughter unharmed. If you try to trick us she won't be worth having when we return her. The enclosed is to show we mean business!

   "This was with it," said Jordan, handing Frost a Polaroid photograph, also in a transparent cover. It showed the girl, kneeling on the floor. A hand of someone out of sight had grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. The other hand held a knife which was pressed against the girl's throat. Her eyes were closed and her mouth sagged open. She was naked.

   "They ripped her nightdress off with a knife," said Jordan.

   "I usually use my teeth," grunted Frost, passing the photo and the message to Liz.

   "The family are in the lounge with Simms," Jordan told him. "Do you want to see them?"

   "Show me round the house first," said Frost, hoping it might jog his memory as to when he was here before. "How did the gang get in?"

   "Through the back door - I'll show you."

   Jordan walked them down a side path to the rear of the property where a small patio with tub bed plants backed on to the lawn. The back door had one of its glass panels smashed. The gang had punched a hole in the glass, reached in and turned the key which had been conveniently left in the lock.

   Frost squinted through the smashed pane. "Stupid bastards! They install an expensive, six lever mortice lock, then they leave the flaming key in it." He waited as Evans, his hand gloved, opened the door for them. They stepped over broken glass on the mat, into the kitchen, Evans staying behind to dust the door for prints. A pine wood table had been laid the night before with cups and cereal bowls for a breakfast that had not been eaten. Frost picked up the cereal packet. "All Bran - nature's laxative. I bet no-one needed that this morning." Jordan laughed, but Liz didn't find it funny. "How many of them were there?"

   "Four, we think," said Jordan, taking them through a door leading to the hall. "The first thing they did was to turn the electricty off at the mains." He opened a small cupboard door under the stairs and revealed electricity and gas meters, side by side, with the central heating control box just below.

   Frost frowned. "Why did they do that?"

   "So the girl couldn't call the police. She had a phone in her bedroom it was one of those cordless models. If the electricity is off, they don't function."

   "I thought they were battery powered," said Liz.

   "The handsets are, but most base units are mains powered - without electricity they just don't work," Jordan told her.

   "I thought they only didn't work when I dropped the bleeding things on the floor," said Frost, checking the clock on the central heating timer with his watch. It was only a couple of minutes slow. "It wasn't switched off for long, then?"

   "Once they got the girl, they switched the power back on. They needed the electric light so they could ransack the rooms."

   Evans rejoined them, shaking his head sadly. "No-one leaves fingerprints any more."

   "Crooks today have no consideration for the police," said Frost. He still couldn't remember why he had been in the house. "Let's see the girl's bedroom."

   A typical teenager's room. Posters on the wall advertising past pop concerts and a large one saying "Save The Whale'. A black ash wall unit held a hi-fi system with two tiny Wharfdale speakers and a 10-inch colour TV set. The room had been turned over. Drawers gaped, their contents strewn all over the floor. Frost's nose twitched. The girl's perfume lingered. A bit sexy for a fifteen-year-old, and so were the pair of scanty briefs he bent and picked up. He showed them to Liz. "You'd have a job stuffing your hankie up the leg of these."

   Jordan grinned, but Liz stared stonily. The man was an ignorant pig.

   Frost flicked the briefs across the room and they butterflyed delicately down to the carpet. "What was taken from here, Jordan?"

   "The girl's too upset to check, but her mother doesn't think anything is missing." He pointed to a heap of chunky beads, bangles and necklaces tipped out on the floor. "It's all junk, not worth pinching."

   "I'm surprised they didn't take that little telly," said Frost. "I wouldn't mind having that myself."

   "They were after bigger fish," said Jordan. "Jewels and furs from the parents' room. I'll show you."

   The main bedroom was a bigger shambles than the girl's, with drawers dragged open and clothes strewn about apparently just for the hell of making a mess. On the big double bed the contents of a drawer had been tipped out - underwear, perfume bottles, cosmetics, in an untidy heap. "The jewel box was in that drawer," said Jordan. "They took the lot, box as well - fifty thousand quid's worth they claim - including the fur coats from the wardrobe." He nodded towards the far wall where the sliding door of the woman's wardrobe was open, showing a jumble of coats and dresses on the floor and empty hangers swinging above.

   Frost picked his way through the mess on the floor to take a closer look. "Why did they drag all these dresses off?" he asked. "They could have got to the furs without doing that."

   "Some people get a kick out of leaving things in a mess," said Liz.

   Frost grunted. It could be the answer. He peered through the large picture window which overlooked the garden and the fields and the winding lane which was the only access to the house. Some more houses in the far distance, but not a soul to be seen. He was fumbling for his cigarettes when a man's voice bellowed from downstairs.

   "When you've finished sodding about up there, what about talking to us - or aren't the victims important any more?"

   He went to the landing and looked down. An angry-looking man was glaring up at them. Robert Stanfield, early fifties, sallow complexion and a tight, thin little mouth.

   Frost frowned. He'd seen Stanfield before . . . in this house, but still couldn't recall the circumstances. He clattered down the stairs, followed by Liz and Jordan, Evans staying behind to photograph and check for prints. Then it all came back to him. He smiled broadly. "We meet again, Mr. Stanfield."

   The man's eyes crawled over Frost's face. A brief flicker of apprehension, then a thin, scornful smile. "Ah yes - the arson attack. Let's hope you are more successful this time, inspector. In here . . ." He jerked his head to direct them into the lounge.

   PC Dave Simms, sitting by the door, jumped up as Frost entered. It was a large and comfortable room with a recently lit log fire crackling in the grate. Wide casement windows gave a view across the garden. In the corner stood a large screen television set on a stand, beneath it a video recorder, its clock, not yet reset, flickering on and off showing there had been a break in the current.

   Stanfield hurled himself into an armchair by the fire and swilled down a glass of whisky which had been perched on the arm. Opposite him, in a settee drawn close to the fire, sat his wife and his daughter. His wife, Margie Stanfield, dark-haired, in her early forties, wearing a red and black satin housecoat, was flashily attractive. Frost couldn't remember seeing her before. But it was the girl, Carol, PC Simms's greatcoat draped around her, who held Frost's attention. She looked much older than her fifteen years. Her dark brown hair was long and flowing and uncombed, giving her a wild, untamed appearance. She kept her head down, but her eyes, narrow like her father's, were watching Frost suspiciously and reminded him of a cornered animal with nothing to lose and ready to fight back.

   Somehow I don't trust you, my love, thought Frost as he gave her his warm and friendly smile.

   "I want you to get these bastards," said Stanfield. "They've stolen my wife's jewellery and fur coats, they've subjected my daughter to hours of terror and they've blackmailed me into giving them £25,000."

   "Not your day, sir, was it?" said Frost.

   Stanfield opened his mouth to reply when he noticed Liz Maud who had followed Frost in. "Who the hell is she?"

   Liz took the warrant card from her handbag and handed it to him. He looked at it and gave a contemptuous sneer as he handed it back. "A bloody woman sergeant! I'm not being fobbed off with second best, am I?"

   "No," said Frost. "I'm second best - she's class. And it's her case." Stanfield's snort showed what he thought of this. He hadn't invited them to sit down, so Frost dragged the other armchair over to the fire and offered it to Liz while he sat on the arm. "Ask the gentleman your questions, sergeant."

   She opened her notebook. "Tell me everything that happened."

   "I've already told that police officer." Stanfield nodded at Simms. "He wrote it all down."

   "We can't read his writing," said Frost. "So tell it again."

   "My wife and I went up to London to see a show -
The Phantom of the Opera
."

   "Just you and your wife?" interrupted Liz. "Not your daughter?"

   "As she was bloody abducted while we were away, it's obvious we didn't take her."

   "I know you didn't take her," said Liz through clenched teeth. "I'm wondering why."

   "If I'd booked the tickets myself, I obviously would have included Carol. Friends of ours had two tickets but found they couldn't go, so they passed them on to us. Satisfied, darling?"

   She gritted her teeth at the 'darling' and nodded.

   "We left just after four yesterday afternoon, drove up to London, saw the show, had a meal, and came home."

   "What time did you arrive back?"

   "A little after three in the morning. I parked the car, Margie went upstairs to switch on the electric blanket and found the bedroom had been ransacked."

   "Perfume, make-up, dresses, just thrown anywhere," said his wife. "I screamed for Robert. He charged up and made for Carol's room to see if she was all right."

   "The bastards had got her," said Stanfield. "My first thought was to phone the police, but I couldn't find the cordless phone - it should have been by Carol's bed."