R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"Well, you know where I am," she said, helping him on with his mac and brushing cigarette ash from the collar.

But as the front door closed behind him, she knew he wouldn't be back.

The kidnapper call was a hoax. The caller was blind drunk and was being egged on by his equally drunk mate. They were both brought back to the station and charged with wasting police time.

A disappointed Frost drove back home and tried to get some sleep, but Kitty's black coffee kept him awake until just before the alarm went off.

He arrived at the station early, anxious to check progress and then get well out of the way before Mullett arrived. Liz had beaten him to it and was already at her desk, hunched up over a stack of reports and a complicated-looking form which she was meticulously filling in. The office smouldered with her resentment.

Frost peeked over her shoulder. She was doing the quarterly crime clear-up rate statistical return. "I thought Mr. Cassidy was doing this?"

"No," she snapped. "I've been ordered to do them."

Frost rasped a match down the front of the filing cabinet. He offered a cigarette to Liz, who refused. "Too much to hope the boy's been returned?"

"I wouldn't know I'm only the clerical assistant." She fanned away the smoke which was drifting over her figures.

He thought he'd better take a chance and give Cordwell a ring in case the kidnapper had made contact, but at that hour of the morning, all he got was the answer phone He hung up, frowned and then yelled, "The answer phone Of course the bloody answer-phone!"

"Eh?" said Liz tetchily. She'd hoped that by coming in early she could get the return done without interruption.

"The answer phone repeated Frost. "Something's been bugging me about Graver's alibi and I've just realized what it was."

"Oh yes?" she said, flatly. He should be telling Cassidy, not her. She was only fit to fill in forms. "Don't forget we're going to see the woman in the cottage this morning."

"What woman?" frowned Frost.

"Primrose Cottage where Lemmy Hoxton was supposed to have pulled his last job."

"Later," said Frost, impatiently. "One case at a time. You spoke to their boss about his phone call to the store that night, didn't you? What did he say?"

She paused, pen hovering over a column of figures, and sighed. How many more times was he going to go over the same ground? She put the pen down and checked her notebook. "He spoke to Mark Grover just before midnight, which was round about the time his wife was killed and round about the time the neighbours heard the sounds of a quarrel." She snapped the notebook shut and went back to the return where she was trying to transfer some of Frost's figures to the main sheet. "Is this a three or a five?"

Frost squinted at it and shook his head. "Could be either. Does it really matter?"

Another sigh. Frost's figures were probably spurious anyway, so what the hell did it matter. She made it a five.

"The point is," Frost continued stubbornly, 'on the night the kids were killed I asked young Collier to phone the store to check with the security guard. But all he got was the answer phone The phones are switched off at night. So how could their boss phone them?"

Liz tapped her teeth with her pen. "But why should he he?"

"I thought we might go and ask him."

She looked down at the mass of papers on her desk, most of them with Frost's scrawled, indecipherable and mainly fictitious figures, and decided anything was better than this. She reached for her coat. "Why not?"

Frank Maltby, the owner of Denton Shopfitters, was not at home. His wife told them he was over at Bonley's department store supervising the counter fittings. Which is where they found him, a pugnacious little man with a loud voice, standing in the centre of acres of brand new red and blue carpeting which had been laid by Grover and Collard on the night the children were killed. Workmen on piece rates were hammering and sawing. Liz showed her warrant card while Frost was still digging down in his pocket amongst the cigarette ends for his.

Maltby scowled. "Now what?" His face went angry and he yelled over Frost's shoulder at a workman wielding a saw. "Mind what you're doing that's solid bloody mahogany you're ruining, not plywood." Back to Frost. "What is it now?"

Frost had to shout over the clatter of the hammering. "Just checking. Are you sure you phoned Mark Grover just before midnight?"

"Of course I'm sure. I told the tart the lady — her!" He jabbed a thumb at Liz.

"Well," yelled Frost, 'in spite of what you told the tart, the lady, her, we seem to have a problem."

"And what's that?"

"The store switchboard shuts down at eight and all calls go to the answer phone

Maltby gave a smug smile. "I didn't use the store's line. I called him on his mobile phone."

"His mobile phone?" echoed Liz in dismay. "I assumed you used the normal phone."

"Then you assumed wrong, darling, didn't you?"

"You told me he was definitely at the store."

"And so he was. Where else would he be?"

"Any bloody where he liked," said Frost. "He could have been having it away in bed with the tart, the lady, her, or he could have been back at home."

"Well, he wasn't, smart-arse. He was here working."

"And how can you be so bloody positive?"

"Because he bloody told me, that's why. Now if you'll excuse me, some of us have got work to do."

"All right," said Liz defensively as they walked back to the car. "It no longer proves he was at the store, but that doesn't mean he wasn't. We've got two other people who confirm he was there."

"You're too negative," said Frost. "He started off with three people supporting his alibi, and now there's only two. Let's go and see the night security guard."

They heard the radio squawking away as they neared the car. It was Cassidy at his smuggest. "Thought you'd like to know, inspector, I've got the case all tied up. Snell has confessed."

At first Frost couldn't take it in and stared at the handset in disbelief. "Confessed?"

"Coughed the lot the mother and the kids. Said it all happened in a haze he didn't know what came over him." There was a long pause. Frost, so sure Snell didn't do it, so bloody sure, couldn't think of a thing to say. "Are you still there?" asked Cassidy.

"Yes," said Frost hastily. "Sorry. Congratulations… good work." He did his utmost to sound sincere, but knew he hadn't succeeded. A rustling over the speaker as someone else took the microphone. It was Mullett.

"Whatever you are doing, Frost, I want you here, now — no excuses."

Frost switched off. "The bugger's confessed," he told Liz, still unable to believe it. "Which rather tends to shoot my theory that the father did it right up the arse."

She felt sorry for him. "You spotted an inconsistency that no-one else did, inspector… even Mr. Cassidy. You checked it out."

He flashed her a wry grin. "For a tart, a woman, a what's it, you're not at all bad, sergeant. Ah well, it's bollock-chewing time, folks. Back to the ranch."

Mullett was waiting for him and managed a quick jab with his finger at the chair just before Frost decided to sit anyway.

"Two things, Frost. The press have somehow got hold of the fact that you suspected Snell before the killings but did nothing about it. They're clamouring for a statement. Secondly, I've had Sir Richard Cordwell on the phone. May I take it you have not yet been in touch with him?"

"Not yet," said Frost.

"Not yet?" echoed Mullett in a tone of exaggerated disbelief. "You're telling me that you haven't even phoned to ask if, by some remote chance after last night's fiasco, the kidnapper had kept his side of the bargain?"

"I'm sure Sir Richard would have told us if he had," replied Frost.