R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

She glared at him. "If- and I'm not admitting anything if I had it off with kids, they were all over age."

"Did they come with their dick in one hand and their birth certificate in the other?" asked Frost.

Cassidy scowled. This was a serious murder enquiry and he could do without Frost's infantile jokes. "He caught you at it once, didn't he, Maggie? The kid only just got out of the house in time. Lemmy beat the living daylights out of you."

"Ah right so he caught me at it. So bloody what?"

"He finds you with a kid and he beats you up, but when you tell Lemmy you've heard he's having it off with another woman, he meekly legs it away, not even bothering to take his motor."

"Yes." She thrust her chin out defiantly at Cassidy. "That's exactly what happened."

"Get some drawers on, Maggie," said Frost. "We'll continue this down at the nick." When she went upstairs to dress, he asked Cassidy about the boy. "Is he under age?"

"He says he's sixteen."

"We'll check him out when we get to the station."

"I'll do the questioning," said Cassidy. It was a statement, not a request.

"This is Arthur Hanlon's case," said Frost.

"Hanlon is only a sergeant."

Frost shrugged. What the hell… Arthur would be only too pleased to get shot of it. "Sure… take the case over."

Cassidy smiled his satisfaction. Maggie's story was so weak, he was sure he could get a confession out of her without any trouble. Nice to be able to go in to Mullett and say, with the right touch of diffidence, "I've cleared this one up, sir."

"We'd better get a team over to search the house," said Frost. "If she killed Lemmy there might be the odd drop of blood or bits of finger knocking about she forgot to wipe up."

He had just finished radioing instructions through to Control when Bill Wells took over the microphone. "Jack you're just round the corner from the old Rook Street housing estate?"

"Is that so?" grunted Frost. "I was wondering where I was."

"That missing girl Judy Gleeson. Just had a phone call. Bloke wouldn't give his name, but reckons he saw a man dragging a young girl into one of those derelict houses in Rock Street."

"Which house? The street's full of them."

"That's all he told us, then he hung up."

"Bless his bleeding heart," said Frost. "It won't take us more than four or five hours to search through the lot. I'll need help."

"Wonder Woman and Burton are on the way." "I'll meet them on the corner," said Frost.

The Rook Street estate had been built in the early fifties using a new French method of construction which involved preformed concrete slabs and metal binding rods. It was cheap and quick. The finished estate looked like a prison block, but people desperate for housing were pleased to have anything. Over the years serious faults began to develop.

It transpired that the wrong mix of cement had been used in the construction. The concrete slabs started disintegrating and the metal binding rods corroded and crumbled, making the structures highly dangerous. Experts said there was no economical cure, so the properties were condemned and the tenants re housed

The street was now a double row of decaying properties with damp-blackened concrete and the doors and windows boarded up with 18mm block board held in place by six-inch nails. An empty, miserable street, exuding the damp musty aroma of desolation.

Slowly, Burton drove down the road with Frost and Liz flashing torches on the houses as they passed them, looking for signs of forced entry. Nothing. All doors and windows appeared firmly sealed. "I suppose we checked this place when we were looking for the boy?" Frost asked.

"One of the first places we looked," said Burton. "But I think they only checked that the doors and windows were still boarded up."

"Better do it thoroughly tomorrow," said Frost. "Let's take a look round the back that's where I'd break in."

As they climbed out of the car, the wind kicked ancient sheets of newspapers across the road in front of them and dribbled an empty tin can along the kerb.

A high wooden fence protected the rear area. Frost clambered over it, hissing with annoyance as his mac no caught on a nail and tore. He leant over to help Liz, but she ignored him, insisting on climbing over on her own and then offering her hand to Burton who was making heavy weather of it. They thudded down into a junk-littered jungle that once was a garden. The harsh moonlight shone on a row of boarded up windows and doors, all looking secure and untouched. Scrambling over dividing fences, they checked each house carefully.

They found the point of entry in the third house they examined, where the boarding had been newly wrenched away from a downstairs window. Frost signalled for Burton to go round to the front in case anyone attempted to get out that way, then swung over the sill and dropped inside. Liz followed. The intense darkness of the boarded-up house seemed to swallow up the light from Liz's torch as they padded across bare floorboards. A door swung ajar. Frost pushed it gently, then flapped his hand for the torch to be extinguished. Floorboards creaking above. Someone was moving about upstairs.

A muffled voice. Then a scream. A long, chilling, almost animal-like scream of pain.

"Come on!" yelled Frost.

They rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. A crack of orange seeped out weakly from under a door on the landing. They charged through it, into a room, its windows boarded, the darkness eased only by a candle stuck on the mantelpiece. In the flickering light they could just make out the back of a man bending over someone on the floor. A girl. A young girl. The room still echoed from her screaming.

At their entry, the man swung round, candlelight glinting off the knife in his hand.

Shit! thought Frost. Not another bloody knife!

He advanced gingerly, jerking back as the knife blade slashed the air, just missing him. The man's eyes were wild. He didn't seem to be in control of himself. "Keep back or I'll rip you open…"

"Drop it." Liz had managed to work her way behind him and had grabbed the knife arm. Furiously, he tried to shake her off, but she hung on with bulldog tenacity and forced the arm back. "Drop the knife or I'll break your arm." With a howl of rage he again tried to shake her off. A sickening cracking sound and a shriek of pain, then a clatter as the knife dropped to the ground. Frost, for the second time that day, scooped it up.

"Leave him alone, you bitch," screamed the girl from the floor.

"Police," announced Frost, flashing his warrant card. "Are you all right, love?"

The girl was lying on the floor covered with a couple of coats. Her face was glistening with sweat and her lip was bleeding where she had bitten it.

A yelp of pain from the man as Liz snapped handcuffs on his wrists. "You've broken my bloody arm."

Frost ignored him. He was more concerned with the girl. "What did he do to you, love?"

Her lips moved as if she was going to answer, then her eyes widened and she opened her mouth and shrieked, arching her back, almost shaking off the coats that covered her.

Frost yelled to Liz, "Get an ambulance." As she radioed through, he bent over and pulled the coats from the girl, then his jaw sagged. "Shit!.. She's having a bloody baby!"

Liz stood frozen to the spot, still gripping her handcuffed prisoner. The girl was now in convulsions, sweating and shaking from the pain and the terror at what was happening to her fourteen-year-old body. Her head thrashed from side to side as convulsion after convulsion racked her.

Frost moved back. He felt helpless. He didn't know what to do. He didn't even want to stay in the same room. He beckoned to Liz. "Help her!"

Liz's face drained of colour. She went as white as

Frost. "I don't know anything about having babies."