R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"Don't worry. I'll tip Newcastle CID the wink. They can do all the work and when they nab him, he'll confess to our crimes as well."

"And they'll get the credit."

Frost shrugged. Credit didn't interest him.

"I'd like to put on record that I disagree utterly with what you have done."

Frost shrugged. "If you like, son. It's a free country." He yawned. "Take me home, would you."

Cassidy drove in frigid silence to Frost's house.

Frost yawned again. "I shall go off to sleep the minute my head hits the pillow. You're in charge. Don't wake me unless it's bloody urgent."

He was woken at three o'clock in the morning by the insistent ringing of his phone and someone banging at his front door.

It was bloody urgent.

Two o'clock in the morning and cold. Bitterly cold. The moon glared down from a cloudless sky on to a frost-rimmed landscape where a raw, cutting wind moaned and punched the side of the dark green Ford transit van as it turned the corner into Cresswell Street and drew up outside a small bungalow. The man sitting next to the driver climbed out and went to the back of the van. This was Mark Grover, twenty-six years old, married with three children, a fourth on the way. He opened the rear doors and took out his metal tool box. Closing the doors, he banged on the side of the van. Without looking back the driver acknowledged with a grunt and a curt wave as he drove off. Grover watched its rear lights disappear as it rounded the corner, then, humping the heavy tool box, he turned towards the house.

He shivered. It wasn't just the cold. He had the uneasy feeling that someone was watching him. He stared up and down the street. Moon shadows rippled across the pavement as the wind shook the trees, but no sign of anyone.

The front gate was swinging back and forth, creaking in the wind. He frowned, trying to remember. He was sure he had closed it when he had left earlier that night to go to work. He hurried up the path, tugging the front door key from his trouser pocket. But he didn't have to use it. The front door also was swinging ajar. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

He stepped into the dark of the hall, and was fumbling for the light switch when a loud crash made him drop the tool case and spin round. The front door had slammed shut behind him. A strong blast of wind hit him in the face. A door or a window at the back of the house must be open somewhere. He hurried along the passage to the kitchen. There it was. The back door to the rear garden was wide open. He looked outside. Crystals of frost on bushes glinted in the moonlight. The gate in the wall leading to the path running along the rear of the properties seemed to be firmly closed. He closed the back door and turned the key in the lock. Then he saw that the piece of plywood he had nailed over the broken door pane was loose. The nails had been wrenched out of the woodwork. Someone had broken into the house.

He ran into the passage and called his wife's name. He flung open their bedroom door. She wasn't there. Across the passage to the children's room. He opened the door. He listened… Silence. An awful silence. Steeling himself, he clicked on the light.

The woman in the house opposite couldn't sleep. Another one of her blinding migraine headaches. She lay in bed, biting her lip against the pain, then flung back the bedclothes and went to the window where she stared out into the empty street which was almost as bright as day under the moon. Headlights. Then the transit van pulled up. She watched Mark Grover get out and walk to his front door while her mind debated whether to take a second sleeping tablet. Lights came on in the bungalow. She had often watched the children playing on the front lawn. Beautiful children, but noisy. Their mother didn't seem able to control them.

She checked the time. Five past two. Another six hours of tossing and turning. She went to the bedside cabinet and shook out two more sleeping tablets, swilling them down with a glass of water.

A piercing, animal-like wail of agony drew her back to the window. The man came stumbling from the bungalow. He was carrying something in his arms. Good God! It was a child, its arms flopping limply. He must have taken leave of his senses to bring it out in the bitter cold.

Grover was yelling and shouting. She couldn't make out what he was saying, it was incoherent and he seemed to be crying. Lights came on in other houses and windows were raised. The woman in number 25 shouted angrily for Grover to stop that bloody row before he woke up her kids.

Someone phoned the police and complained about the noise. A yawning Bill Wells sent a car across to investigate.

Frost staggered down to the phone and yelled to the police motor cyclist who was banging at the front door that he would be there in a minute.

Bill Wells on the phone. He sounded grim. "Nasty one for you, Jack. Three kids killed in their cots and the mother's gone missing."

Frost slumped down in the chair by the phone. "How old were the kids?"

"The eldest was three, the youngest a few months."

"Bloody hell," said Frost. "Bloody, bloody hell."

Most of the houses now had lights showing and curtains were twitching back as curious neighbours watched the comings and goings. A few, wearing dressing-gowns, were clustered at front gates, talking in hushed, disbelieving voices and shaking their heads sadly. One neighbour who ventured across the road was abruptly turned back by the police. "Please keep to the other side, madam. Nothing to see here."

The line of vehicles parked opposite the bungalow were filled with duffle-coated reporters and photographers with flashy Japanese cameras fitted with enormous telescopic lenses. Standing apart from the representatives of the big London dailies was Sandy Lane, Chief Reporter of the Denton Echo, his ears timed to what the big boys were saying, but hoping to use his local knowledge to talk to the people who mattered. This was a big story which he could sell to London with a by-line, although it would be too late for the morning editions.

The man in the BBC Television van, an early arrival on the scene and able to park almost directly opposite the murder house, drained his cup of thermos coffee and mounted his video camera on his shoulder to film the arrival of Detective Inspector Frost. He panned the approach of the Ford as it coughed exhaust and jerked to a halt behind the police cars. He focused sharply on the figure at the wheel wearing a none too clean mac with a maroon scarf, then zoomed in to show him climbing wearily out and surveying the murder house which had lights blazing from every room.

Outside the front door Mike Packer, the young PC who had found the body of eight-year-old Dean Anderson, moved to one side to let the inspector pass. "Sergeant Hanlon is inside, sir."

Frost looked back at the knots of people outside the other houses. "Don't waste time here, son. Go and knock on doors… talk to people … Most of the street are up anyway. It'll save time in the morning." Relieved to be doing something useful, Packer hurried off.

The duty police doctor, anxious to get away, was waiting for him in the hall which had its grey carpeting covered with plastic sheeting. From a far door came the heart-rending moan of a man in the depths of despair. "The father," explained the doctor. "He's in shock. I've given him a mild sedative but he needs to go to hospital. The ambulance should be here shortly."

"Can I talk to him?"

"I don't advise it. He'll be out cold soon, anyway."

Frost nodded as if he accepted this, but he intended to question the father as soon as the doctor had departed. The children?"

"Asphyxiated, probably by a pillow being held over their faces. They've been dead two to three hours. You'll need a pathologist."