R. Wingfield - Winter Frost

Frost, accompanied by PC Collier, began a search of some deserted farm buildings, all rusting corrugated iron, rancid hay and oily puddles. He had a feeling of having been here before, then remembered he had — when they were searching for the missing Vicky Stuart. Rain trickling down his neck, he shone his torch through a shattered window — broken floorboards, rotting rubbish and the scurrying and squealing of rats. He moved away. He couldn't see their killer bringing his victims here.

His radio called him. PC Collier from the rear of the farmhouse reoporting signs that someone had been in there recently. Collier met him outside and took him into a room, pointing out a dirty mattress, some empty bottles and cans, and the remains of a fire in the grate. Frost shook his head. 'Some tramp's been using it. Have you checked upstairs?'

Collier nodded. 'Nothing. The rain's pouring in through the roof.'

Frost wrinkled his nose. The tramp had been using the corner of the room as his toilet. 'Hardly a love nest, is it, son? More like a sewage worker's beano site. Let's get out of here… and mind where you tread.'

As they were leaving, a radio call from Jordan: 'At a house now, Inspector. We've been hammering at the door. A dog's barking inside, but no-one answers.'

'Kick it in,' Frost told him. 'I reckon there's drugs on the premises.'

And then reports started coming in thick and fast, all negative, intensifying his doubts that they were looking in the wrong area, but, right or wrong, he was committed.

His radio called him again. Yet another negative report. He poked a cigarette in his mouth and surveyed the area. Through a solid curtain of rain lights from dozens of torches bobbed in the dark. Anyone looking out would know the police were in the vicinity, but they couldn't search blind. The cigarette was sodden and wouldn't light. As he hurled it away another radio call, this time from Burton, sounding excited: 'Might be on to something Inspector. I'm at a bungalow at the foot of the rise, talking to a Mrs Jessop. She reckons she often hears a car, very late at night, coming from that smallholding on the top of the hill.'

'What does she mean by "very late"? Some of these old dears go to bed at six.'

'She doesn't sleep well. Says the car wakes her up as it goes past her place. About two o'clockish or thereabouts, she says.'

'Did she hear it tonight?'

'No, she took a sleeping tablet, but she's definite about the other nights. Do you want to talk to her?'

'No time for that, son. We go straight to the smallholding. Meet me outside.' He radioed for Morgan and Jordan to join him. They followed him up the steep hill. No chance of a stealthy approach. The whine of their engines straining up the steep rutted slope would waken the dead.

The smallholding was a collection of ramshackle structures around a two-storeyed house. Outside the main building a black car was parked and a light gleamed through curtains from a downstairs room. Surveying it, Frost felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This was it. This was bloody it.

As they squelched to a halt by the front door, Frost clambered out and ran over to the car, a black Ford, the windows wound down and the driver's door wide open. He stuck his nose inside and sniffed for traces of the pungent perfume Liz had been wearing. All he could smell was carbolic disinfectant. He checked the number plates. Not the ones Taffy had noted, but too much to expect the false plates still to be there. He rejoined the others and pounded at the front door with his fist. They waited. Nothing. Frost gave the door handle a tentative turn and, to his surprise, the door swung open. Collier was sent round to the back, while Frost and the other three entered the house.

They stepped into a long passage. Frost jerked a thumb to Burton and Jordan. 'Upstairs.' He and Morgan followed the passage to a large, stone-flagged kitchen where a cream-coloured Aga stove belted out heat. A long wooden-topped table was laid out for breakfast with bowls and cups. In front of the Aga a grey and black tabby cat in a wicker cat basket gave them bemused looks while her six tiny kittens, eyes still not open, suckled noisily. A peaceful, innocent domestic scene.

'I think we're on the wrong track, guv,' said Morgan.

'You can be a bastard and still like animals,' said Frost, although his frail certainty was now wavering. 'Hitler had a dog and Mullett's got a cat.' He opened the back door to let Collier in, then they checked all the downstairs rooms. All neat and tidy. Footsteps from above as Burton and Jordan returned.

'Nothing,' reported Burton. 'One double bed, but it hasn't been slept in.'

'So where are the people who live here?' asked Frost. 'Let's try the outbuildings.'

They split up, Morgan and Frost going to a wooden-walled structure with a corrugated iron roof. Pitch dark inside, but over the drumming of the rain they could hear rustling. Someone was inside. Frost fumbled round the door frame and found a light switch. Some twenty cats in cages blinked angrily at him. His heart did a somersault and he shivered, but not from the cold. Deja vu again. Cats, and that smell!

Old Martha Wendle's cottage all those years ago when eight-year-old Tracey Uphill went missing.

'You all right, guv?' asked Morgan.

'Yes,' lied Frost, shaking off the memory. Tracey was dead when they found her.

A quick look round. Metal cupboards filled with tins of cat food and bags of cat litter. Nothing else.

On to the next building, a windowless barn-like structure. Frost stiffened and held up a finger for silence. The murmur of voices from inside. Carefully, he turned the door handle and gently opened the door. Inside, about half-way down, a hurricane lamp lit up two figures wearing oilskins, their backs to him. They were bending over something on the straw-lined floor, something whimpering in pain. He charged towards them. 'Stay where you are. Police!'

A squeal of alarm as they spun round. Two women looking terrified. Both were in their mid-fifties, one quite fat with uncombed dark hair, the other thin and sharp-featured.

'Police!' said Frost again, trying to find his warrant card. Morgan got his out first and flashed it in front of their faces. They blinked at it, not understanding.

Another whimper from the floor. Frost pushed them aside. On a bed of straw, a red setter, body heaving and shaking, tongue lolling, whites of eyes showing.

'She's in labour,' the thin woman explained. 'There's a blockage there, or something. We're very worried about her.' She blinked again at the warrant card. 'But why are you here?'

Frost quickly explained about Liz. 'We're searching everywhere in this area.'

The two women seemed genuinely concerned. 'How dreadful,' exclaimed the fat woman. 'She can't be here, Inspector. We've been up all night with the dog and we'd have heard a car. But please search anywhere you like — anywhere.' The dog whimpered again. 'We've got to get the vet,' said the thin woman. 'Can one of your policemen carry her to the house?'

Frost nodded to Morgan who bent and gently humped up the dog. As soon as the two women had left Frost called the rest of his team over. 'I've got one of my feelings. Get some more men in and give this place a right going-over. She could be alive, she could be dead, so look everywhere.' Burton and Collier were detailed to accompany him back to the house. I'll keep Little and Large talking while you search every nook and cranny.'

He slumped down in the chair alongside the Aga, the dog, eyes closed, panting heavily, in a basket at his feet. He ruffled its fur and watched the thin woman ring the vet's emergency number on a mobile phone, letting the Aga bake dry his sodden clothes.

'He's out on another call, Mavis, a calving, but he'll phone back when he's finished so we can take Jessie straight to his surgery. He thinks he'll have to do a Caesarean.'