R. Wingfield - Hard Frost

Frost opened and closed closet doors aimlessly and dug through pockets of clothing swinging from hangers. From the back bedroom he stared through the rain-shimmering windows to the garden, an enormous rain puddle making the lawn a lake. In the distance, a few smears of lights flickered intermittently as the poor sods in the search teams floundered about in the woods. He wondered if the little boy was under cover. A mental picture of the seven-year-old, bound, gagged, probably with masking tape over his eyes, made him shudder. And they were nowhere near to finding where he was.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Liz was rummaging through drawers that had already been thoroughly searched. "I wish I knew what we were looking for," she said.

"You and me both, love," he muttered, pulling open a drawer next to the sink. It held cutlery and a bread board. He took out the board and a long, razor-sharp carving knife and wondered if this was what Finch had used to cut off the finger for the ransom demand. The board, well grooved with knife cuts, had been scrubbed white. He dropped them back, nudging shut the drawer.

Burton came in, dusting himself down. He had been up in the loft, crawling behind water tanks. "We did a thorough job on the search first time," he said. "I don't see how they missed anything."

Frost stared into space. "It was right at the start," he said. "Right at the start. We banged at the door." He looked at Liz. "Then what?"

She frowned as she tried to remember. "We knocked… he opened the door… we all charged in."

Frost chewed his knuckle. There was something else. But what? "We knocked. Finch was already in the hall. He said, "Who is it?" I said, "Police" and then…" He snapped his fingers in triumph. "I've got it. He said, "Just a minute." He made us wait before he opened the door… only a few seconds, but he made us wait… Why?" He hurried out into the hall, Liz and Burton following. A pile of letters stood on the hall table awaiting the return of the holiday-makers; some of them, the ones that looked like bills, Finch had opened. He checked through the envelopes carefully, then pulled the table away from the wall in case anything had been jammed behind it. Nothing.

A door under the stairs led to the cellar, but there hadn't been time for Finch to nip down there. The only other things in the hall were the clothes hanging from the coat rack.

"Did we go through the pockets?"

"Yes," said Liz.

"The women's clothes as well as the men's?"

"We went through them all," said Liz. "Nothing there that shouldn't be there."

"Unless his dick was hanging out and he tucked it away before coming to the door, I reckon he hid something." He looked again at the clothes on the rack. "Let's go through these. Take everything out of the pockets and check the lining."

The pile of odds and ends from the pockets mounted. Old receipts, bus tickets, scribbled shopping lists… "What's this?" Frost had found something in the inside pocket of a woman's grey and white woollen coat. A black plastic credit card holder.

"Her credit cards," said Burton. "I checked them earlier."

Frost was about to add it to the heap when an impulse made him look inside. He smiled grimly at Burton. "You didn't check it thoroughly enough, my son." He showed him the credit cards inside. They were all in the name of H. A. Finch.

Burton stared, shamefaced. "I don't know how I missed that."

"It doesn't matter, son," said Frost. "If you had found it earlier we wouldn't have attached any importance to it." He went through it. "So why was Finch so anxious to hide this?" Tucked in the end pocket were two Visa receipts. The first was for Finch's shopping the previous day at the supermarket. But the other bore today's date… "Hatter's Garage, River Road, Denton… Petrol 12.74'.

He phoned the garage. "Can you tell me what time this receipt was issued?"

"Some time this evening," said the garage man. "Latish."

"Can't you be more precise… it's important."

"If you can give me the registration number, I might be able to pinpoint it precisely. We've got a security video camera running all the time… too many people driving off without paying."

Burton was sent off to get the number. Frost relayed it.

"Just a minute." The sound of the phone being put down… noises off while the man dealt with a customer, then the clicking of controls as the video was wound back Hello… Is it a Renault?"

"Yes."

"Ten twenty-three this evening."

"Thanks," said Frost. "Don't erase that tape. We're on our way now to pick it up."

It took just over twenty minutes to reach the garage, where they sat in the manager's office as the garage man loaded up the tape. "We get all sorts of things recorded on these," he said chattily. "Caught a bloke doing a number two behind the Derv pump last week. Want to see it?"

"No thanks," said Frost. "It might be me."

"There you go!" The man found the approximate place and pressed the play button. Black and white images of single shots jerked across the screen like old silent films. The man pressed the pause button and there, quivering on the screen, was Finch using the pump. Frost rose from his chair and almost pressed his nose on the screen as he studied the car. If he was hoping to see the missing boy grinning out of a window, he was disappointed. The running time was shown on the corner of each frame. Finch arrived at ten twenty-three and left at ten twenty-seven. They commandeered the tape.

"So what does it all mean?" asked Liz when they were back in the car.

"He hid the receipt," said Frost, 'which means he didn't want us to know he'd bought petrol here. Why not? Because he had Bobby Kirby in the boot. Finch was taking him to where he was going to hide him."

"And where was that?" asked Liz.

"Definitely not in the woods," replied Frost. "There's plenty of filling stations he would have passed going there. Hatter's Garage is in the opposite direction."

"He could have gone on to the woods afterwards," said Burton.

"So why go to great lengths to hide the petrol receipt? No, son. All those poor sods falling over each other searching the woods and running up our overtime bill have been wasting their time. The kid isn't there."

"Then where is he?" asked Liz.

Frost sighed. "All we can do is guess. The road past the filling station leads straight down to the river."

Liz paled. "You believe he's dumped the boy in the river?"

"Alive or dead, I reckon that's where he is." He told Burton to drive down there while he fished his radio out of the glove compartment. "Frost to Control… over."

"We've been trying to get hold of you, inspector," said Lambert. "Message from Mr. Mullett. He wants to see you in his office right away."

"Message for Mr. Mullett," said Frost. "Tell him to get stuffed. This is urgent. Contact the search team in the woods. Tell them to stop immediately and get over to the top of River Road bloody quickly. I'll meet them there. And try and rustle up a couple of frogmen. We could be fishing for a body."

"Right," said Lambert. "Mr. Cassidy wants a word."

A rustle as Cassidy took over the microphone. "What's happening?"

Frost gave him the details. "I'm getting a team over to search the river area in case he's still alive."

"I'm on my way," said Cassidy. If there was a chance of a successful outcome to this case with the boy still alive, he wanted to be part of the winning team.

"Great," said Frost, trying to sound enthusiastic. "The more the merrier."

The river, some twenty feet across at this point, was little more than an open sewer, receiving the effluent from the various factories on the far side who found it cheaper to pay fines than conform to the stringent requirements of the Rivers Authority. Its surface was usually a sluggish mass of discoloured foam and oil-rainbowed scum, but the heavy rain of the past few days had made it overflow the sluice gates and now the flow was galloping past.