R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

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…?"