R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"We couldn't send twenty men even if we wanted to, sir," replied Frost. "At the moment, all we have got is eight men covering the whole of Denton. The rest have been out all day from early this morning, searching for a missing boy. They only stopped when it was too dark to continue. They are now getting some sleep and will be out again early tomorrow morning."

The man wasn't interested in facts and figures. "Someone's going around stabbing babies," he yelled. "Get some more police in…"

Frost held up his hands in mock surrender. "Let's calm it down, shall we, sir? You want him caught, we want to catch him. We won't achieve that by yelling at each other. You and your wife were out when it happened, so let's have a word with the nanny. She, at least, saw him."

Frost had imagined the nanny to be a grey-haired little old lady in a nurse's uniform, reeking of wintergreen, and was pleasantly surprised when a strapping Swedish blonde in her late teens came in carrying the sleeping child wrapped in a blanket.

"Flaming hell," he whispered to Liz. "She can breast feed me any time she likes!"

Liz pretended not to hear and hoped the family hadn't heard either. Frost had a genius for tasteless jokes at the wrong time.

"Helga's English is not too good," said the man.

I bet she knows how to say, "Yes please," thought Frost. He smiled encouragingly. "So you heard a noise, Helga, and you ran to the nursery?"

She nodded, eyes glowing at the chance to recount her adventure. "I hear Zoe cry. I run to nursery, but door is jammed. I kick and it opens. There is blood on Zoe. I look out of window and there is man climbing fence into golf field."

"Can you describe him?" asked Liz, pen poised.

"No. Too dark. Too far. I phone Mr. Wilkes at golf place."

"That's right," nodded Wilkes. "I called the police from there and we came straight over."

"If it was too dark and too far, could it have been a woman?" asked Frost.

Her eyes widened in astonishment at such a question "Would a woman do such a thing to a little child?"

"They want equality with men," said Frost. "How bad was Zoe hurt? Did you call a doctor?"

"Three little stab marks on her bottom," said Helga. "I put on sticking plaster." She pulled down the child's pyjama trousers to show them the plastered wound. It didn't look too serious and the sleeping child hardly stirred.

"I shudder to think what that pervert might have done if Helga hadn't disturbed him," said Wilkes. He turned to his wife. "First thing tomorrow security bars on all these windows."

"It will make it look like a prison," she objected.

"I don't give a damn. Until these plods catch him I'm taking no chances."

Frost ignored the 'plod' jibe. "These aren't the pyjamas she was wearing in bed?"

"No. They had blood. I changed."

"Perhaps you'd get them for me," smiled Frost.

She returned in a few minutes after putting the child back to bed. She held a small bundle of Care Bear pyjamas. Her breasts bounced delightfully as she crossed the room and Frost wished he could think of more things for her to bring back. He took them and held them up. There were blobs of blood on the bottoms corresponding to the stab wounds. He examined them closer. The cloth was intact no sign of tear marks made by the knife point. "When you got into the bedroom, were these trousers pulled down?"

She shook her head and her blonde hair shimmered from side to side. "No. Bedclothes pulled back. Zoe lying on her face, but pyjamas not pulled down."

Frost smiled his thanks. "I see." He passed the pyjamas to Liz. "We'll take these with us if you don't mind." He stood up. "We'll see ourselves out."

"And that is it?" demanded Wilkes. "You're not going to search the area?"

"For what?" asked Frost. "For a man whose description we haven't got?"

"So what are you going to do?"

"We've got a few promising leads, sir. We'll follow them up and let you know."

"I'd like to remind you that I'm a personal friend of

Police Superintendent Mullett," said Wilkes.

"Don't worry, sir," said Frost. "We won't hold that against you."

Outside the house he said to Liz, "Those other kids that were stabbed… were their wounds the same as this one little jab marks?"

"Yes," replied Liz.

"I thought they were stabbed slashed?"

"No," said Liz. "It's all in my report on your desk."

"You know I don't read bloody reports," said Frost. "Were any of the others stabbed in the buttocks?"

"Two in the buttocks, one on the upper leg and three on the upper arm."

Frost opened his car door and slid into the driver's seat. "And did he ever stab them through their clothes?"

She thought for a while. "No. He pulled the nightdress or the pyjamas away and jabbed their bare flesh."

"This little girl tonight…" He was rifling through the dashboard compartments hoping to find the treasure trove of a cigarette end. "The bloke must have pulled down the elasticated bottom of those pyjamas while he stabbed her, then let it zip back." To his delight he found a sizeable butt which he poked into his mouth, frowning at the heavy nicotine staining of his fingers.

"Is all this significant?" asked Liz, straightening up, her back aching from bending to talk to him in the car.

"It could be," said Frost. "Follow me back to the station as quick as you can."

A fuming Acting Detective Inspector Cassidy was hovering in the corridor outside his office when they returned. "A word, please, inspector," he snapped, marching into Allen's office and waiting for Frost to follow.

"Sure," called Frost, going into his own office and waiting for Cassidy to join him there. After a couple of minutes of waiting, Cassidy twigged what had happened and barged in. "You will excuse us, please, sergeant," he barked at Liz.

"Chase Bill Wells up on those files, would you, love," smiled Frost. When she had gone he spun his chair round. "What's up now?"

"I was in the middle of questioning Maggie Hoxton about the death of her husband. I take a break and when I come back, what do I find? I find that you have had the nerve to carry on questioning her on evidence that was not made available to me."

"You weren't there," replied Frost.

"But that doesn't give you the right to take over my case, to question my suspect, to use my evidence."

"Sorry, son," said Frost. "I never seem to have time for the niceties. You're right. It is your case and I won't interfere again."

Cassidy sank down into the spare chair. He had expected Frost to bluster and had intended hauling him before Mullett, but the man's contrite apology had thrown him completely off balance. "It's not good enough," he said weakly.

"Quite right, son in fact it's bloody diabolical," said Frost, warming to his theme.

Cassidy's mouth opened and closed. He couldn't think of anything else to say and was glad of the distraction when Liz Maud returned, followed by Bill Wells, each bearing a stack of dusty folders which they dumped on Frost's desk.

"They should be in alphabetical order," explained Wells, 'but they got mixed up when we had the burst tank and the flooding in the old records room."

"You've always got a bloody excuse," said Frost. "If you had any respect for the job, you'd come in on Christmas Day and sort them out."

"I'm already due to come in on Christmas Day," said Wells, taking the bait. "Every bleeding Christmas I'm on that rota."

"So you are," said Frost. "I forgot… you should have mentioned it." He split the files into four piles and handed them around. "We're looking for Sidney Snell's file."

Cassidy's head came up. "Who?" The name had rung a bell.

"Sidney Snell Slimy Sid child molester. Used to pretend he was a doctor."

Cassidy snapped his fingers. Now he placed him. "He called at the house and told the mother he was from the Health Department. Said the kids had to be vaccinated."