R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"They all look the same to us maybe our kids all look the same to them. Perhaps she got the wrong kid." Even as he said it, it sounded weak. "Just check her out, son. It'll give us something to do. We've got no other leads at the moment."

A disgruntled Bill Wells grabbed Frost as soon as he entered the station. "If you want me to do anything for you, Jack, like organize a search party, do me the courtesy of talking to me direct. I'm not having that stuck-up tart telling me what to do."

"Sorry," said Frost, knowing how prickly Wells could be. "Have one of Mullett's fags and we'll say no more about it." Wells took one and let the inspector light it for him. He was still not mollified.

"And where is the good lady in question?" asked Frost.

"Lording it up in the murder incident room."

Frost nodded and breezed off down the corridor. "I'll give her your love," he called.

He sailed into the incident room. Liz had done a good job gel ling it organized, and under way. The fax machine in the corner was chirping away, spewing out yards of messages; two uniformed men were taking calls and another phone was ringing on an unoccupied desk. As Burton followed Frost in, she yelled, "Answer that phone."

Sullenly, Burton snatched it up. Like Wells, he wasn't happy taking orders from a woman.

"Be with you in a minute," she called to Frost, putting down her phone and galloping over to the fax machine. She skimmed through the messages, shook her head in disappointment and dumped them in an already full wire basket. She was annoyed. "We fax all forces asking if they've had a boy answering our description reported missing and they send us details of every missing boy they've got on their books whether he fits our description or not. Some have even sent details of missing girls!"

"Anything remotely like our boy?"

She pulled a fax from the pile. "Just this seven-year-old, Duncan Ford, reported missing this afternoon from Scotland."

Frost took the fax. "Last seen in Montrose just after four thirty," he read. "Well, unless Concorde has changed its route, we can rule him out." He gave her the Polaroid shots taken at the mortuary. "Fax these around." Then he remembered the photograph of Bobby the mother had given him. "You'd better send this out as well."

As she busied herself at the fax machine, he riffled through the heap of faxes received, then pushed the tray away. His gut feeling told him that the murdered child came from Denton and they were wasting their time enquiring elsewhere. When Liz came back he asked her about her child stabber.

"We've had four cases over the past week," she told him. "He breaks into the house, usually through a window, and stabs the kids while they sleep… just cuts their flesh. I think he gets a sexual kick out of seeing blood."

"Do you think he'd get a bigger sexual kick cutting off a finger?" She shuddered as he told her about the dead boy and of Drysdale's findings. "Let Mr. Allen know tomorrow and tell him his company is requested at the post-mortem, 10 a.m." top hat, white tie and tails." He yawned. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning. "I'm off home." A wave to everyone. "See you next week."

As he left, she was yelling for one of the PCs to start checking through the rubbish bags stacked in the car park to see if the dead boy's clothes had been dumped inside.

"Bossy little cow, isn't she?" whispered Frost to Burton.

"Too bleeding bossy," muttered the DC.

"Still," added Frost, "I wouldn't kick her out of bed on a frosty night."

Burton sniffed derisively. "I wouldn't have her in my bed in the first place."

It wasn't until he got home and the front door slammed behind him that he suddenly remembered Shirley. Shirley, who had been on holiday with him and who was going away again with him in the morning. He had left her in the house while he went off to the station to nick some fags from Mullett's goody box. Bloody hell! He had told her he would only be a couple of minutes and that was nearly five hours ago.

She wasn't in the living-room. He looked hopefully in the bedroom. The unmade bed was empty. Sod it! He snatched up the phone and dialled her number. The engaged tone. She had left the phone off the hook. Sod, sod and double sod. He considered driving round to her place, but was too damn tired. What a bloody fine holiday this was turning out to be. Piddling with rain all the time he was away, a murder case, a post-mortem and a solitary bed. He undressed, letting his clothes fall on the floor by the bed, then flopped down on the mattress.

He slept soundly until seven thirty when the insistent ringing of the phone brought him reluctantly to the surface. It could only be Shirley. But at this time? He lifted the phone.

"Frost," he mumbled, sounding very contrite.

It wasn't Shirley. It was the station. Mullett wanted him to report there right away.

"Tell the silly sod I'm on holiday," said Frost.

"The silly sod knows that," answered Bill Wells. "But he still wants to see you and he's in a real right mood."

Frost's heart nose-dived. "He's not been counting his bloody fags, has he?"

It was ten past eight and still dark as he turned the Ford into the car-park at the rear of the station. Usually half empty at this time of the morning, it was now jam-packed with alien vehicles of all kinds. Bobby Kirby was obviously still missing and the search party was assembling. Every available officer had been called in to help, including off-duty personnel and officers who could be spared from neighbouring divisions. All very efficiently organized. Frost was glad it wasn't his case. Organization and efficiency weren't his strong point. He'd have made a complete sod-up of it all.

As he bumped along, looking for somewhere to leave the Ford, a stray dog in the kennels started to bark and was answered by suppressed whining from the dog-handler's van over in the far corner. Space was at a premium, but he managed a clumsy double-park which effectively boxed in Mullett's blue Jaguar.

In the lobby, a weary-looking Sergeant Bill Wells, who should have gone off duty at six, was directing a group of constables from Thorrington Division up to the canteen where the main briefing was to take place. "Follow the smell of stewed tea and burnt bacon you can't miss it," called Frost.

Wells beckoned Frost over, his eyes glinting as they always did when he had an item of tasty gossip to impart. "Did you hear what happened last night?"

"You got your leg over with Liz Maud?" suggested Frost.

"She should be so lucky!" snorted Wells. He leant across the desk. "That booze-up that Mullett and Allen attended. It was some sort of senior police do top brass from all divisions were there."

"My invite must have been lost in the post," said Frost.

"Anyway," continued Wells, 'meting to the meaty bit, 'my information is, they sunk a lot more booze than was good for them and they were all well over the limit. Chief Inspector Formby from Greenford Division was giving four of them a lift back. He was in no fit state to drive, but that didn't stop him. Just outside the hotel car-park there's a lamp post. Formby wraps the car round it and turns it over."

Frost beamed. "I like happy endings."

"It's even happier," continued Wells. "They're all in Felstead Hospital with broken arms and ribs Formby's leg is broken as well."

"Serves the bastard right," said Frost. "If he had an inch of common decency he'd have given Allen and Mullett a lift as well and broken both their bloody legs."

Two more uniformed men swept in. Wells steered them up the stairs to the canteen, then leant over to Frost, lowering his voice. "Here's the best bit, Jack. The ambulance was called and the Traffic boys turn up anxious to breathalyse the driver the car just stunk of malt whisky."

"Bloody hell," said Frost. "I'd give up my pension for the chance to breathalyse a sod like Formby."