"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.

  She looked as if all hope had been drained out of her. "I don't care too much about the jewellery. It's the medals. He was so proud of them."

  "I know," said Frost. The last decoration had been awarded posthumously. A tracer bullet had penetrated the fuel tank and the heat-warped canopy had jammed. He screamed to his death in the blast furnace of a burning Spitfire, crashing to merciful oblivion in a field in Kent on a blazing hot summer's day in August 1940.

  "How long before you catch the man who stole them?"

  "Can't really say, love. We're following several leads." More lies. He didn't have a bleeding clue! "I'll be in touch as soon as we have anything." Which would probably be bloody never! "Sorry I haven't better news."

  "I'm sure you're doing your best," she said.

  He walked her to the door and watched her hobble across the road, fumbling for her bus pass. She realized she was being watched and turned to give him a wave.

  He slouched back to his office and screwed up the two niggling memos from Mullett he found lurking in his in-tray. Staring through the dirty grime of his window he wished it would hail or snow or pee with rain, anything to match his mood. But the sun glinted off the grime. He couldn't even get that right.

  Liz poked her head around the door. "Ready, inspector?"

  "Yes," he nodded. "I'm ready."

  They took Frost's car and he cowered down in the passenger seat as Liz did her Monaco Grand Prix stuff. The thin sun zipped backwards and forwards across the windscreen like a typewriter carriage as she hurled the car down the zigzagging lanes. Away to the left, flying past, he could see the distant figures of one of the search parties spread out across a field. Liz screamed the car round a tight corner, shooting him forward as she suddenly slammed on the brakes. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she snarled. She had almost run into a cluster of cars parked in the lane. Over on the right another search party was clambering up a steep hill.

  "Half a mo!" Frost fumbled to get his seat belt off and slipped out of the car. Just ahead, on the grass verge, Detective Sergeant Arthur Hanlon, in charge of the search team, was bending to tie up his shoelace. His back was to Frost, his tight trousers providing a target the inspector was never able to resist. Frost's stubby finger shot forward, hitting its target with unerring accuracy. "How's that for centre, Arthur?" he cried, triumphantly.

  With a yelp of outrage, Hanlon sprang up abruptly, indignation evaporating as he recognized Frost. "You sod, Jack. No matter where I am, I've only got to bend over and you appear!"

  "Fatal attraction, Arthur. The moving finger pokes, and when it pokes, moves on." He squinted up at the men now disappearing over the top of the hill. "Where are you going to search now?"

  "Those old bungalows behind the hill." This was a site long abandoned and the huddle of decaying, pre-war jerry-built shacks were now mainly roofless and little more than shells. The area should have been cleared and flattened years ago when the last residents were re housed but the Council had better ways to spend its money. "What's your gut feeling about our chances of finding him alive?" asked Hanlon.

  "Don't ask, Arthur. It would only depress you." He took one last look at the straggle of men disappearing over the top of the hill. "If we don't find him by tonight we'll start dragging the river and the canal tomorrow." A brief nod to Hanlon and he returned to the car.

  Carol Stanfield was now dressed in tight jeans and an even tighter grey woollen sweater. Her hair had been brushed back over her shoulders and as she passed close to Frost she smelled just like the blanket. Her mother and father were still sitting on opposite sides of the fire. Stanfield looked up with irritation. "More questions? We've told you everything. Now go out and catch the bastards."

  Frost plonked himself down on the settee and loosened his scarf. The heat in the room was oppressive. "We've found something." He pulled the blanket from the plastic carrier bag he was holding and offered it to the mother. "Did it come from here?"

  She examined it with a frown. "It could be ours."

  "It is ours," said the girl from the far side of the room. She was staring out of the window, her back to them. "They took it from the bed."

  "You never mentioned it," said Frost.

  She shrugged. "They wrapped it round me in the van."

  "Bloody nice of them," said Frost.

  "It was freezing in there. I was naked."

  "It was a darn sight colder outside the van, but they took it off when they booted you out."

  "I expect it fell off."

  "Then it would have been in the road. We found it on the grass verge."

  "Then they probably chucked it out as they were driving off."

  "You must have seen it," said Frost.

  Her father's head snapped up. "If she had seen it, she would have wrapped it around her, instead of standing there starkers, freezing to death."

  "But how could you miss it?" insisted Frost. "It was lying there in the open." He was hoping to catch her out. Hoping she would say, "It wasn't in the open, I hid it behind the hedge," but before the girl could answer her mother had chimed in. "It couldn't have been all that obvious. Your policemen didn't see it this morning."

  "Silly me!" said Frost, forcing a smile as he pushed himself up out of the settee. He stuffed the blanket back into the carrier bag. "We'll hang on to this for a while — let our Forensic people give it a going over."

  He held his feelings in check until they were back in the car. "The scheming bastards. They went back to recover the blanket and realized we had found it."

  "There's always the possibility they're telling the truth," said Liz, spinning the car into a reverse turn.

  "No way," said Frost, wincing at the thought of the rubber they were leaving in the road. "There was no robbery and no abduction. I want it tied up quickly. We've got more important things to do than sod about with this."

  They were passing a small isolated house when, suddenly, she slammed on the brakes. His head hit the windscreen. He had forgotten to put the seat belt on. "What the hell…?"

  "Sorry," she said, getting out of the car. "That house. There was no reply this morning when I knocked to ask about the van. Someone's in now."

  "Oh the non-existent bleeding van loaded up with naked tart," said Frost, rubbing the bump on his forehead. "Well, make it quick."

  He watched her walk up the path and knock on the door. An elderly man answered.

  "Control to Mr. Frost."

  He picked up the handset. "Frost.. He listened. It wasn't good news.

  Liz was scribbling down the details the old man was giving her when the car horn blasted out repeatedly. She tried to ignore it, but it went on and on. Frost was waving frantically and yelling for her to return. Muttering apologies to the old boy, she raced back to the car. What was up now?

  Frost, now in the driving seat, had the passenger door open for her. "Get in," he yelled, and the car was away even before she had the door shut.

  "Why did you drag me away?" she protested. "I was getting details. The old boy saw the non-existent van going towards the Stanfield house late last night. Even gave me the colour light brown."

  Frost skidded the car round a tight bend and removed several inches of hedge in the process. "I've had Control on the radio. Arthur Hanlon's search party those old bungalows. They've found a body."

  Liz went cold. The boy?"

  "Life's not that bleeding simple," snorted Frost. "It's not a boy it's a man, probably a dosser. It never rains flaming bodies, it pours!"

  The car wheezed its way up the steep gradient of Denton Hills, its engine making unhappy noises and giving off the smell of burning oil. They were behind the woods in a barren section of the district. Years ago a sprawl of pre-war bungalows and weekend shanties had occupied the area, their dwellers living in primitive conditions without mains drainage or electricity. These substandard dwellings were deemed unfit for human occupation and some twenty years earlier the Council had re housed the occupants and compulsorily acquired the land for a building project for which it had long since given up trying to raise the money. The empty properties were quickly vandalized and opened up to the weather and were now of no interest, even to the local tearaways. Roofless, windows smashed, doors torn off their hinges, the flimsy buildings cowered under the wind and weather. The whole area was overgrown with vegetation and stunk of damp, rot and decay.

 

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