R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

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 amp; mrs stan field 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