"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 exami
nation. 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.
"The women's clothes as well as the men's?"
"We went through them all," said Liz. "Nothing there that shouldn't be there."
"Unless his dick was hanging out and he tucked it away before coming to the door, I reckon he hid something." He looked again at the clothes on the rack. "Let's go through these. Take everything out of the pockets and check the lining."
The pile of odds and ends from the pockets mounted. Old receipts, bus tickets, scribbled shopping lists . . . "What's this?" Frost had found something in the inside pocket of a woman's grey and white woollen coat. A black plastic credit card holder.
"Her credit cards," said Burton. "I checked them earlier."
Frost was about to add it to the heap when an impulse made him look inside. He smiled grimly at Burton. "You didn't check it thoroughly enough, my son." He showed him the credit cards inside. They were all in the name of H. A. Finch.
Burton stared, shamefaced. "I don't know how I missed that."
"It doesn't matter, son," said Frost. "If you had found it earlier we wouldn't have attached any importance to it." He went through it. "So why was Finch so anxious to hide this?" Tucked in the end pocket were two Visa receipts. The first was for Finch's shopping the previous day at the supermarket. But the other bore today's date . . . Hatter's Garage, River Road, Denton . . . Petrol £12.74.
He phoned the garage. "Can you tell me what time this receipt was issued?"
"Some time this evening," said the garage man. "Latish."
"Can't you be more precise . . . it's important."
"If you can give me the registration number, I might be able to pinpoint it precisely. We've got a security video camera running all the time . . . too many people driving off without paying."
Burton was sent off to get the number. Frost relayed it.
"Just a minute." The sound of the phone being put down . . . noises off while the man dealt with a customer, then the clicking of controls as the video was wound back Hello . . . Is it a Renault?"
"Yes."
"Ten twenty-three this evening."
"Thanks," said Frost. "Don't erase that tape. We're on our way now to pick it up."
It took just over twenty minutes to reach the garage, where they sat in the manager's office as the garage man loaded up the tape. "We get all sorts of things recorded on these," he said chattily. "Caught a bloke doing a number two behind the Derv pump last week. Want to see it?"
"No thanks," said Frost. "It might be me."
"There you go!" The man found the approximate place and pressed the play button. Black and white images of single shots jerked across the screen like old silent films. The man pressed the pause button and there, quivering on the screen, was Finch using the pump. Frost rose from his chair and almost pressed his nose on the screen as he studied the car. If he was hoping to see the missing boy grinning out of a window, he was disappointed. The running time was shown on the corner of each frame. Finch arrived at ten twenty-three and left at ten twenty-seven. They commandeered the tape.
"So what does it all mean?" asked Liz when they were back in the car.
"He hid the receipt," said Frost, 'which means he didn't want us to know he'd bought petrol here. Why not? Because he had Bobby Kirby in the boot. Finch was taking him to where he was going to hide him."
"And where was that?" asked Liz.
"Definitely not in the woods," replied Frost. "There's plenty of filling stations he would have passed going there. Hatter's Garage is in the opposite direction."
"He could have gone on to the woods afterwards," said Burton.
"So why go to great lengths to hide the petrol receipt? No, son. All those poor sods falling over each other searching the woods and running up our overtime bill have been wasting their time. The kid isn't there."
"Then where is he?" asked Liz.
Frost sighed. "All we can do is guess. The road past the filling station leads straight down to the river."
Liz paled. "You believe he's dumped the boy in the river?"
"Alive or dead, I reckon that's where he is." He told Burton to drive down there while he fished his radio out of the glove compartment. "Frost to Control . . . over."
"We've been trying to get hold of you, inspector," said Lambert. "Message from Mr. Mullett. He wants to see you in his office right away."
"Message for Mr. Mullett," said Frost. "Tell him to get stuffed. This is urgent. Contact the search team in the woods. Tell them to stop immediately and get over to the top of River Road bloody quickly. I'll meet them there. And try and rustle up a couple of frogmen. We could be fishing for a body."
"Right," said Lambert. "Mr. Cassidy wants a word."
A rustle as Cassidy took over the microphone. "What's happening?"
Frost gave him the details. "I'm getting a team over to search the river area in case he's still alive."
"I'm on my way," said Cassidy. If there was a chance of a successful outcome to this case with the boy still alive, he wanted to be part of the winning team.
"Great," said Frost, trying to sound enthusiastic. "The more the merrier."
The river, some twenty feet across at this point, was little more than an open sewer, receiving the effluent from the various factories on the far side who found it cheaper to pay fines than conform to the stringent requirements of the Rivers Authority. Its surface was usually a sluggish mass of discoloured foam and oil-rainbowed scum, but the heavy rain of the past few days had made it overflow the sluice gates and now the flow was galloping past.
The road ran alongside t
he river for about a quarter of a mile and it was in this section that Frost intended to concentrate his search. He stood, watching the boiling river, drenched to the skin, while Burton and Liz, heads down, almost blinded by the torrential rain, looked for places where a tiny body might be concealed. He shouted Bobby's name in the forlorn hope the boy might be able to answer him, but all he could hear was the machine gun bullets of rain making snapping noises, almost like the crackling twig sound of a forest fire, as they pock-marked the river.
Headlights reflected off the water and he turned to see cars approaching. The search parties from the woods. From the first car, Arthur Hanlon, his hair plastered and dripping, squelched over to Frost. He eyed the current tearing past carrying broken branches and floating debris. "Don't like the look of that, Jack,"
Frost nodded gloomily. "All it needs is bleeding Lilian Gish on an ice floe."
"You reckon Bobby's somewhere near here?" Hanlon had to shout over the noise of rushing water.
"Yet another one of my inspired guesses," said Frost. "If he's dead," he hurled a stone into the water, 'he'll be on the bottom, sharing a sack with some bricks."
He went over with Hanlon to the members of the search party, most of them still sitting inside their cars, not wanting to get any wetter or colder until they had to. All of them looked tired and dispirited, but they climbed out of the cars to huddle round him. "Isn't this better than being stuck inside a stuffy office?" he asked, which produced a few laughs. "All right. I've sodded you about up to now, but this has got to be our best lead yet. I know you're tired and fed up and hate my guts, but the poor little sod we're looking for is seven years old, shit-scared and could die if we don't find him quickly. Search everywhere, even the most unlikely places. If you're not sure, search again. So good luck."
Hanlon split them into groups and directed them to various search areas while Frost made his way back to the bank. More voices and car door slammings. The mobile lighting unit and the frogmen. Hanlon sent a couple of men over to help them unload their gear and get the lights set up.
Frost 4 - Hard Frost Page 40
