R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"Why do you think the boy is here, inspector?"

"Because you are here, Mr. Finch." He took a cigarette from the packet and lit up.

Finch grabbed at a heavy glass ashtray and pushed it over to him. "This smacks of harassment. I have already told you I know nothing about the boy. You have nothing to suggest otherwise, yet I am constantly having to put up with this cavalier treatment."

"Where is he?" asked Frost.

"I wish I knew," said Finch. "The poor little mite, away from his parents…"

An urgent call from upstairs. "Sir here!"

Burton had found something. Frost shot a glance across to Finch, who remained impassive and was carefully blowing flakes of cigarette ash from the polished top of the table.

"In here, sir." Burton was waiting on the landing outside a grey-painted door. "Put your cigarette out, please." Frost, puzzled, did as the DC requested. He exhaled smoke which Burton fanned away before opening the door a fraction, pushing Frost in, then quickly closing it behind them both.

They were in a small bedroom at the back of the house. An oak wardrobe, a small matching dressing-table and a single bed which was pushed tight against the wall. The bed had been stripped down to the ticking on the mattress and pillows. A smell of wet wool from the carpet which had been shampooed recently and was still slightly damp.

"Take a sniff, sir," said Burton.

Frost sniffed. "Polish? Carpet shampoo?"

Burton looked disappointed. "Nothing else?"

Frost tried again, then frowned. A sickly, sweet smell. Very faint, but it was there. "Chloroform?"

Burton nodded in agreement. "That's what I think."

"The kid's been in this room," said Frost. "On that bed!" He lowered his nose to the mattress and sniffed, but could detect nothing. He went to the door, opened it briefly and called for Liz to bring Finch up.

Finch came in and stood in the middle of the bedroom. "Smell anything?" Frost asked him.

With a cocky smile, Finch took a deep breath, his nose twitching delicately as if he was savouring the bouquet of a rare wine. "Furniture polish… carpet shampoo…?" he suggested. His nose wrinkled in distaste. "And stale tobacco smoke which I imagine is coming from you. May I open the window?"

"No," snapped Frost. He gave a tentative sniff, but by now the dying linger of the anaesthetic had expired. "We could smell chloroform!"

Finch gave a knowing smirk and shook his head. "Dry cleaning fluid. There was a stain on the carpet the dog. I cleaned it off and shampooed it." He bent over and peered. "It's completely gone now."

Frost pointed to the stripped bed. "Where's the bedding?"

"In the washing machine. The dog again he was sick over the pillow."

Liz was told to dash down to the kitchen and rescue the bedding from the washing machine in the hope Forensic could do their stuff on it.

"Inspector!" Jordan calling from below. It sounded important. Frost scuttled down the stairs, two at a time, hoping and praying that it was something that would wipe the supercilious smile from Finch's face. Under the stairs an open door led to steps to the cellar. Jordan was calling from there.

A large cellar, its floor of flagstones, the bare brick walls white-washed. An unshaded 75-watt bulb swung in a holder, flickering grotesque shadows on the walls, along which ran metal shelving stacked high with cardboard boxes, bottles, carboys, drums, stock left over from when Finch's friend sold his chemist shop.

"I found this," said Jordan, handing the inspector a large bottle in blue, fluted glass with a label that read "Trichloromethane CHCI3 Chloroform'.

Frost held it up to the light. It was about a third full. Removing the stopper, he lifted it to his nose. Not white spirit this time. Definitely chloroform. He nodded grimly, then looked down at the floor, stamping his foot down on the flagstones, pointing out a couple that appeared loose. Where better to bury a body? "Have them up, son. All of them… especially the ones that don't look as if they have been moved."

Back up the cellar steps, squeezing tight against the wall to get out of the way of the Forensic team who were crawling everywhere. Harding didn't look very optimistic even when he told him about the chloroform. "You'd expect to find it amongst a chemist's stock. It doesn't really prove anything."

"How's the search going?" Frost asked.

"He seems to have made sure there's nothing for us to find. This place has been scrubbed, sponged, polished and vacuumed. The vacuum cleaner is a wet and dry model, so it's had water through it which has removed nearly all traces of dust and fibre."

"What about the bedding from the washing machine?"

"We'll have a go at it over the lab, but I reckon it's been too well washed to yield anything."

"The kid was here," said Frost firmly. "I'm pretty certain he was here up to a couple of hours ago."

"Would he have had the run of the place?" asked Harding.

"Hardly," replied Frost. "I reckon the poor little sod was trussed like a chicken on that bed."

Harding shrugged. "Then he wouldn't have left much trace in the rest of the house, would he?"

"Inspector!" Liz, this time calling him from the landing. Another bloody clue that would probably lead nowhere. Harding followed up the stairs. She took them into a small box room which had been converted to an office. It was very similar to the one in Finch's house. A small desk had been jammed up against one wall. On the desk was an IBM 286 PC connected to a printer. Liz pointed. "A twenty-four pin dot matrix printer, the same type as the one used for the ransom demand."

Frost grinned with delight. "Then we've got him." He turned to Harding. "Can we prove the ransom note was written on this machine?"

Harding swiftly disillusioned him. "All we can say is that the note was printed on a machine of the same type. There is no way we can prove this was the actual machine used."

Yet again Frost was deflated. "There must be some way."

"I don't think so." Harding sat himself down at the desk and peered at the printer. It was a Star 24–10, some five years old. "There's no typeface, only little pins."

"The ribbon," suggested Frost. "Wouldn't it leave an imprint on the ribbon?"

Harding sniffed his doubts. "The ribbons are a continuous loop. They go round and round with subsequent letters printed on top of earlier ones. It would be almost impossible to separate them out."

"Try anyway," said Frost.

Harding lifted the printer cover. "If it was a fairly new ribbon I suppose there might be a chance." He took out the cassette and examined it, before shaking his head and passing it across to Frost. "Out of luck again, inspector. It's too damn new. It hasn't been used. The old one has been replaced. As I said, your Mr. Finch is determined not to give us anything to go on."

Frost thudded down the stairs with the cassette and held it aloft. "We're looking for a used printer ribbon, just like this one. Check waste bins, rubbish bags, dustbin sacks. We've got to find it." But he knew Finch was too damn clever to replace the ribbon without making sure there was no way they could get at the old one.

In the living-room Finch was sitting, watching the proceedings with a cynical smile, a smile which said, all too clearly, There's no way you dumb policemen are going to find anything that would incriminate me.

"We found chloroform downstairs," said Frost.

"That's hardly surprising. My friend used to run a chemist shop. Old stock, I imagine."

"Chloroform was used on the first boy."

"So you said." He looked at Frost in mock reproach. "You are surely not suggesting my friend had anything to do with it? I think you will find he was in Spain at the time."

"You seem to be finding this all very amusing, Mr. Finch. A boy of seven kidnapped, mutilated, frightened… a boy who might even be dead."