Hard Frost (9 page)

   "When did you last see him?"

   "Yesterday afternoon. He was fed up being stuck in here on his own, so I gave him the money for the pictures. He went off about half-past two."

   The cinema! Of course, thought Frost. That would be where he bought the hamburger. Probably ate it as he watched the film. "Weren't you worried he hadn't returned home before you left for work?"

   "I had to have my hair done and be fitted for my uniform. I left here just after five. He knows how to work the microwave if he wants anything to eat."

   "How was Dean dressed when he left here?"

   "Black trousers, Jurassic Park T-shirt and a red and white zip-up shell jacket and blue trainers."

   Burton noted the details. Frost showed her a photograph of Bobby Kirby. "Would your son know this boy?"

   She dragged her gaze from the window to look at it. "I don't think he knows anyone yet. He hasn't even started school here. Why do you ask?"

   "It's not important," lied Frost, crushing out his cigarette alongside hers in the glass ashtray. He took a deep breath. Now for the moment of truth. "Do you have a recent photograph of Dean, Mrs. Anderson?"

   "Miss," she corrected, 'not Mrs." She reached for her handbag which hung from the back of her chair. "Taken about three months ago. He's filled out a bit since then."

   Frost looked at it, then passed it to Burton. Burton's eyes flickered, but his expression didn't change as he handed it back. Not the slightest doubt about it. It was the dead boy.

   "How old are you, love?" asked Frost.

   "Twenty-four."

   Twenty-four. She would have had the boy when she was sixteen. "Where's Dean's father?"

   "With his wife back in Birmingham."

   "Does he support the boy?"

   "No. He claims Dean isn't his. I can't even be sure myself."

   "Any friends, or family, who can help you?"

   "No!" She stood up and glared down at him. "Look - I don't want any help. I just want you to find my son."

   Frost stood up and took her hand. "I've got some bad news for you, love," he said.

   She looked at him. "How bad?"

   "Bloody bad," said Frost. "As bad as it bloody well could be."

   She shook her head. "No!"

   "He's dead, love," said Frost. "We found him last night, but we didn't know who he was."

   "No," she whispered. And then she shuddered and tears streamed down her face. "No . . ."

   Frost took her and held her close to him. "You poor cow," he said. "You poor, poor cow . . ."

Chapter 4

A blown-up photograph of eight-year-old Dean Anderson, wearing the red and white zip-up shell jacket and bright yellow Jurassic Park T-shirt he was last seen alive in, grinned down at them from the wall of the murder incident room. It was a skilful combination of two photographs using another eight-year-old boy. Next to it was the enlarged school photograph of the missing Bobby Kirby.

   As Frost breezed in, people swarmed around him with messages. He warded them off with a fried egg sandwich. "I'm having my dinner." He found an empty desk. "Right. What have we got?"

   "No luck with the missing boy, yet," said Burton.

   "I guessed that," said Frost, digging in his pockets for a cigarette for his dessert, "otherwise someone would have told me. What else?"

   "Stacks of phone calls," said PC Lambert, offering him a heap of scribbled messages.

   Frost eyed them with distaste. "You don't expect me to read them, do you? Anything positive?"

   "All of them, if you want to believe the twenty-three people who claim to have seen him. Trouble is, there were a lot of kids just like Bobby out with guys last night. We've had so-called positive identifications all over Denton. We're following them all through."

   Frost took another bite at his sandwich. "Right. Until something definite breaks, we've just got to pin our hopes on one of the search parties finding him. So let's concentrate on the dead kid." He stood up and waved his sandwich at the blow-up. "As most of you know, we've had a positive identification. Dean Anderson. His mother, Joy Anderson, is a single parent, a blackjack dealer and, for the want of a better word, a "hostess" at the Coconut Grove. They've only been in Denton two days. The kid knew no-one here and barely knew his way around the town, although apparently he knew how to get to the cinema." He gave them the details, pausing as the phone rang and Liz answered it.

   "Search party three covering sector two. Nothing found. Now moving to sector three. Denton Woods." She shifted a coloured pin to a new position on the wall map.

   Frost went cold, remembering an earlier occasion when they were combing the woods, then in deep snow, for a missing girl, eight years old, who was dead when they found her. He uttered a silent prayer that the pattern wouldn't repeat itself with Bobby . . . surely one dead kid was enough? But his prayers were seldom answered these days. He turned back to the photograph. "The first thing to do is see if the mother's story checks out. In the absence of anyone else, she's our sole suspect."

   "What possible motive would she have for killing her own son?" queried Liz.

   "He could have been getting in the way when she brought men home," said Frost. "It puts a man off when he's half-way up a woman's leg and the kid comes in for an ice lolly."

   You callous bastard, thought Liz.

   "It may not be very probable," continued Frost, 'but let's check her out. Did anyone see the boy leave the house at the time she said? Did anyone see her leave for the Coconut Grove? What time did she get there . . . what time did she leave? And we'll need to question her client."

   "They don't usually leave their name and address," Liz pointed out.

   "The Coconut Grove is a gambling club - you've got to be a member. And knowing the way they work, the punter probably paid for her services by credit card so he could clock up some air miles. There'll be no difficulty getting his name and address." He shuffled through his notes. "Someone was going to check with the cinema."

   Jordan elbowed his way through. "I did it. They think they remember seeing Dean yesterday afternoon. They often get kids in the afternoon who have sneaked off from school. The ticket seller thinks she sold him a ticket about three-ish. The tart in the hamburger kiosk says Dean could have been one of the kids who bought food . . . but all kids look alike to her."

   "Right." Frost took a last bite at his sandwich before hurling the crust in the bin. He wiped his fingers on his jacket and lit up the cigarette before sitting down again. "Let's assume he went to the cinema around three and saw the film through. What time would he leave?"

   "Between half-past five and six."

   "By which time it was dark, most of the shops shut and the town looking like a morgue. I reckon he would want to go straight home." He swung his chair round so he was facing the large street map of Denton on the wall. "He doesn't know the area too well, so he takes the main road, not the back doubles."

   "But that wouldn't take him anywhere near Patriot Street where we found the body," said Burton.

   Frost nodded. "You're right, son. So let's try this for a working hypothesis. He's walking home. Some bastard in a car toots his horn and says, "Do you want a lift, sonny?" He gets him in the car, gives him chloroform, kills him, panics and dumps the body. So . . ." He jabbed the wall map. "Let's set up a road block here tonight. Stop all cars. "Were you here this time last night, sir? Did you see anyone give a lift to a kid?" You know the form."

   "I'll lay it on," said Burton, scribbling on a pad.

   "Hold it!" said Frost, spotting a snag. "It's not as simple as that, is it? The kid has only just moved into Denton. He could have been going the wrong bloody way. He stops a bloke. "Excuse me, kind sir, can you tell me how to get to Kenton Street?" "You're miles out of your way, sonny. Hop in, I'll give you a lift - mind that bottle of chloroform and the knife."

   "I'll get Traffic to cover all roads in all directions," said Burton. "It'll mean more overtime. Mr. Mullett won't like that."

   Frost flapped a dismissive hand. "Don't worry. I'll sort old Roughchops out. Next, we'll put out an appeal over the media. Anyone who was in the Curzon Cinema between, say, two and seven, we want to hear from you . . . All calls treated in the utmost secrecy just in case kids playing truant might not want to come forward . . . and say we'll accept reverse charge calls if they don't want to phone from their parents' home." He rubbed some life into his scar. "Anything I haven't thought of, do it anyway."

   "Do we still need to check out all the hamburger outlets?"

   "I think so, son. Forensic are comparing the stomach contents with a sample from the cinema, but until they confirm its the same we'd still better check them out." He stifled a yawn. He hadn't got to bed until the early hours and had then been dragged in at the crack of dawn by flaming Mullett. He realized quite a few of the team looked as if an early night wouldn't go amiss and they were only into the first few hours of the murder investigation. "Split up into two groups - half of you snatch a few hours' sleep, then relieve the others. I don't want you stumbling around like bloody zombies - there's enough useless people in this station as it is." He looked up as Mullett entered and, without changing his expression, said, "Hello, sir, we were just talking about you."

   Mullett smiled and nodded to the team, wondering why some of them seemed to have difficulty in keeping their faces straight. A surreptitious peek to check that his zip wasn't open. "A quick word, inspector."

   "Be with you in a tick, sir." Back to the team. "One last thing. On no account must we let anyone know that the poor little sod had his finger hacked off. We'll soon be swamped out with phone calls from weirdos and cranks confessing they killed him. Most of them will be time-wasters, but if anyone mentions a missing finger we jump on the bastard."

   They clattered out. Liz answered another phone call from a search party reporting negative results. She re sited a yellow pin on the wall map. Mullett took Frost's arm and moved away from her. This was to be confidential. "Any progress?"

   "Everyone's sweating their guts out, but nothing definite achieved so far," grunted Frost.

   "It would be helpful if we could get this tied up very quickly, Frost. With all the overtime involved, the cost of these searches is astronomical. I take it we do need all these men from other divisions? The cost goes on our account, you know, not theirs."

   "Tough!" said Frost. "And yes, we do need them all. If we want to find him alive, we need to find him quickly. It's bleeding cold out there . . . you probably noticed it as you staggered out of the boozer last night."

   Mullett's face reddened. That was something he didn't want to be reminded about. "Do you think you will find him today?"

   "I'm not a bleeding fortune teller."

   "I can cover the overtime from our budget for another eight hours. After that, I'll have to go to County, cap in hand."

   You can go with your dick in your hand for all I care, thought Frost, but aloud he said, "It'll take as long as it takes. I can't hurry it." He felt this was not a good moment to tell the superintendent about the extra overtime needed for Traffic tonight. He yawned again as another wave of tiredness washed over him. "And when are we going to get a replacement for Inspector Allen?"

   Liz Maud, hovering in the background, pricked up her ears. This was what she was anxious to know. As Mullett turned his head in her direction, she pretended to be engrossed in the contents of a folder.

   Mullett lowered his voice. "I'll have news on a replacement for Mr. Allen very shortly. I'm only waiting for confirmation from County." He gave Liz a thin smile as he went out. She beamed back, reading the secret message in his smile. She knew that the temporary promotion was hers. Frost had come over to her. She closed the folder. "Yes, inspector?"

   "Your abduction case. It might be a good idea to chat up the girl again." He told her about finding the blanket.

   "And you're suggesting it was all a fake? She wasn't abducted? There was no robbery?"

   He nodded. "The titty-grabbing bad guys knew too much . . . where the meter cupboard was, that there was only a cordless phone upstairs. They knew the parents would be away and they knew they wouldn't be back until well after midnight."

   Liz shrugged. "There are ways they could have found that out."

   "The ransom was £25,000. Do you know how much Stanfield had in his current account? I phoned the bank and they told me - £25,000, give or take a few quid. If the gang had asked for more, he couldn't have paid it."

   "It still doesn't prove anything," she said stubbornly. "What father would put his daughter through all that for an insurance fiddle?"

   "A father called Robert Stanfield," said Frost. "Get tidied up here and we'll go and pay them another visit."

He was on his way to his office to see what junk Mullett had dumped in his in-tray when Bill Wells called him. "Lady to see you, inspector." He nodded in the direction of a small woman in her mid-seventies in a faded brown coat, who rose wearily from the hard bench in the waiting area and shuffled over. "It's me again, Mr. Frost," she said apologetically.

   "Who the hell is she?" whispered Frost, always worried when people asked for him by name. He rarely forgot a criminal face, but members of the public were just not recorded in his mental filing system. But before Wells could reply, she had shuffled across to him. "Have you managed to get them back yet?"

   Then he remembered. The robberies - the con man who wangled his way into people's houses by pretending to work for the Water Board. This old dear had had her jewellery stolen, plus her late husband's war medals. Her husband had been an R.A.F pilot during the Battle of Britain and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal amongst other decorations. Frost tried not to meet her eye as he shook his head. "No luck yet, love - but we're still trying." Why was he lying to the poor old girl? He'd dropped that case months ago.