R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

"I don't find it remotely amusing, inspector. What I do find amusing although I suppose "pathetic" is the right word is that you should be wasting your time here… all these men… all these resources." He stared at Frost. "Can you tell me one thing, one single thing, you've found that proves I had anything to do with it… just one…?" He gave a superior smile that made Frost fight hard to control the urge to smash his face in. "You can't, because there isn't anything."

"We'll find it," said Frost, trying to believe it himself. He jerked his head at Liz and told her to take Finch to the station. "We'll question him again there."

Clanging noises echoing from the cellar drew him down the stairs to investigate. Jordan and Collier, both sweating profusely, were levering up flagstones. It was a tiring job. The flagstones were big and heavy, needing all their efforts to lift and move without crushing their fingers. Two stacks of removed flagstones stood in one corner. A large rectangle of earth was exposed. Dry earth, untouched since the floor was laid. Jordan wiped sweat from his brow. "Nothing yet, inspector."

Frost went over to the stacks. The flags were nearly three inches thick. He thought for a second. "Pack it in — forget it. If it's taking two of you to lift one of them, he could never had done it on his own." The smug look on Finch's face had convinced him they could tear the place apart and not find anything. They would have to look elsewhere. But where… where?

When he went back into the lounge to check progress, one of the Forensic team going over the upholstery with a hand-held vacuum cleaner kept moving him on from wherever he tried to settle. He took the hint he was in the way and yelled that he was going back to the station.

He was standing in the shelter of the porch, turning up his mac collar ready for the plunge through the rain to his car, when he noticed the garage door was slightly ajar. It had already been searched, but on impulse he splashed across and went inside. A chocolate brown Renault took up most of the space. He squeezed through and checked the boot in the remote hope that the original searcher had been as slapdash as he usually was and that he would find Bobby curled up, fast asleep, happy to be rescued. All the boot yielded was a spare tyre, some tools, a metal petrol can and a towing rope. He flashed his torch to the ceiling and the beam caught a shelf high up on the wall. On the shelf were a couple of bulging blue plastic bags which didn't look as if anyone had had them down to check. He reached up and managed to grab the corner of one bag. He tugged, then a bit harder. The entire shelf tipped up and the bags slithered off and thudded to the ground, bouncing off his head on the way. Hitting the cement floor, they burst open, spewing out tins of summing foods which rolled and clattered everywhere, and packs of cotton wool. More junk from the chemist's shop.

He rubbed his head ruefully, then booted one of the tins to relieve his feelings. It rolled underneath the car. He dropped on his hands and knees to retrieve it and it was then he noticed there was mud in the tread of the tyres. Fresh mud, still wet. Finch had been out in the car, very recently, and then must have dried off the body work to disguise the fact. Frost stood up. The kid. Finch ri used the car to move the kid. That was why he was so smug and unconcerned when they were searching the house.

He yelled for Harding, who was annoyed at having to run through the rain and glared at Frost with his hair streaming and his jacket soaking. Frost indicated the mud and asked if there was any way of determining where it came from… "Some little six-inch square of Denton which had this unique type of mud, found nowhere else in the universe?"

Harding squatted and studied it, then he stood up. "I can tell you exactly where this came from, inspector." He pointed. "From the lane just outside the front gate. Wherever he went, he picked that up on the way back but I don't suppose that is much help."

"About as good as the sort of help Forensic have been giving me all bloody day," snarled Frost, plunging out through the heavy curtain of rain back to the house. He went to the bedroom. The smell of chloroform had completely gone. He wondered how long it would have lingered. He was guessing that Finch had chloroformed and removed Bobby not too long before the police turned up. Burton came in to join him. He told the DC of his theory.

"You're saying that wherever he took the kid, it isn't very far away from here?" said Burton.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," said Frost. "Otherwise we wouldn't still have been able to smell chloroform." He went to the window and looked out. The wind was blowing the rain almost horizontal. A few dotted lights of houses could be seen, but beyond them, just visible, was the dark, sprawling mass of Denton Woods. The woods! That had to be it. That's where the boy was. "He's dumped the kid in the woods, somewhere," said Frost.

Burton joined him at the window. The woods stretched on and on. "If you're right, he could be anywhere."

"I know," said Frost.

"We'll have to wait until morning," said Burton. "We'll never find him in the dark in this weather."

"By the morning the poor little sod could be dead," said

Frost. He tugged his radio from his pocket and called Mullett.

Mullett wanted an almost cast-iron guarantee from Frost that they would find the boy before he agreed to authorize a full-scale search party.

Frost gave it to him.

"Two hours," added Mullett, quickly checking the balance of the overtime account. "If they haven't found anything in two hours, call it off."

"Of course, sir said Frost.

In the interview room Finch had been reunited with the dog, which was stretched out on the floor at his feet. "Where did you go in the Renault?" demanded Frost.

"Out to the lane and back. I wanted to check if it was functioning all right. If so, I would drive back home in it, if not, I would call a cab."

"And?"

"It spluttered a bit water in the carburettor, I think — so I decided I would take a cab when the time came. I didn't anticipate you would kindly provide me with transport."

"Why did you dry the car off to conceal the fact you had been out in it?"

Finch waggled a reproving finger. "You attribute the basest motives to me, inspector. It is my friend's car. When I borrow things, I return them in the state in which I receive them. The car was clean when I drove out. I made certain it would be clean when my friend returns from Spain tomorrow." He smiled. "Satisfied?"

Frost concealed his irritation. The bastard had a glib answer to everything, all delivered with that snide, unconcealed smile which showed his satisfaction in putting one over on the police. "You took the kid to the woods, didn't you?"

Finch raised his eyebrows in mocking query. "Did I? That's news to me."

"We've got teams with dogs searching the woods now," said Frost. "It won't be so bloody funny when we find him."

"I hope you do find him," said Finch, 'but if you think I put him there, you are wasting your time."

Frost saw no point in pushing it further. "Interview suspended." He marched out to his office. Forensic must have turned something up by now, something that would wipe the smile off the face of this smug bastard.

He pulled the phone towards him, then hesitated. If they had anything they would have been through to him. He stared moodily at the rain. cascading down the window, blurring the view of the car-park.

The phone rang. He grabbed it. It wasn't Forensic, it was Arthur Hanlon.

"Radio message from Johnnie Johnson," reported Hanlon. Johnson was leading the search team in Denton Woods. "He says it's absolutely hopeless. The dogs are useless in this weather, the team can hardly see a hand in front of their faces and they're slithering and sliding all over the place. Unless we can pin-point a precise search area, they want to pack it in."