Winter Frost (61 page)

   
Burton, leaning over his shoulder to study the map, was doubtful. "If he took the road to the factory area he could have gone straight through and out on to the Bath Road at the back and be miles away by now."

   
"He was on the Bath Road to start with, son. If he'd wanted it, he wouldn't have come off it in the first place." Burton was beginning to get on his nerves. Maybe this wouldn't work, but it was all they had. "We're going to have to get people out of bed and search their premises. They're not going to be very pleased. Lie to them if you like and tell them it's a three-year-old kid we're looking for—they might be more helpful than if we said it was a police officer. And if they still refuse to let you in to search, tell them that under the 1997 Police Act you have unlimited powers of entry and if they resist they will be arrested and charged."

   
"What Police Act is that?" Jordan asked.

   
"Any bloody Police Act you like," said Frost. "It doesn't exist. If that doesn't work, knee them one in the groin and go in anyway. I'll carry the can for any come-backs. If you knock and get no reply, smell gas and break in. I want every single property searched."

   
"It could take hours," said Burton.

   
"Then don't hang about," said Frost. He picked up the phone and told Bill Wells to call in the other Divisions. "Of course it's authorized by Mr. Mullett, but whatever you do, don't bloody tell him."

The lorry that passed them was travelling at speed down the wrong side of the road to overtake. Frost's convoy of four cars had turned the bend, just past the point where Vernon found the handbag, and the dead straight stretch of road was ahead of them. Frost watched the rear lights of the lorry dwindle to pinpricks of red, but still clearly visible. Vernon was right.

   
If the cab had stayed on the road, he would have seen its rear lights. It was the lorry driver's lucky night, speeding on the wrong side of the road past four carloads of coppers and getting away with it. Then he blinked. The red lights suddenly disappeared then, after a brief pause, appeared again. He went cold. Shit! He should have realized. As the map showed, the road went dead straight, but it also went up and down. Was that why Vernon didn't see the cab? Perhaps it hadn't turned off one of the three side roads he was going to search after all. It could have taken any of the many other side roads further ahead. He shot a quick look at Burton who was driving the car, but he hadn't given the lorry more than a passing glance. Frost's brain churned. They didn't have enough men to search all the possible side lanes. Right or wrong, he'd have to stick to his original plan and concentrate on the three nearest, but all the optimism he had when they set out had now evaporated.

   
They parked on a piece of scrubland and huddled round the inspector, coat collars up, getting drenched in the heavy, thudding rain. Even the weather was conspiring against him.

   
The area they were to search was bleak and remote with isolated ramshackle houses and bungalows, some empty and decaying, a few smallholdings and a couple of farms struggling to survive. In the distance, silhouetted against the night sky, they could see the house where old Nelly Aldridge lived with her idiot son. Not much point searching there but just to be thorough they'd give it a going-over after everywhere else had been covered.

   
"We look everywhere, houses, barns, sheds, the lot. When you've searched, radio Sergeant Hanlon and he'll tick it off on the map to make sure we don't miss anywhere. Start with the most likely—places with a good access for a car. He's going to have to drive his victim right up to the door not drag her half a mile up a hill. Off you go, and good luck!"

   
Frost, accompanied by PC Collier, began a search of some deserted farm buildings, all rusting corrugated iron, rancid hay and oily puddles. He had a feeling of having been here before, then remembered he had—when they were searching for the missing Vicky Stuart. Rain trickling down his neck, he shone his torch through a shattered window—broken floorboards, rotting rubbish and the scurrying and squealing of rats. He moved away. He couldn't see their killer bringing his victims here.

   
His radio called him. PC Collier from the rear of the farmhouse reoporting signs that someone had been in there recently. Collier met him outside and took him into a room, pointing out a dirty mattress, some empty bottles and cans, and the remains of a fire in the grate. Frost shook his head. "Some tramp's been using it. Have you checked upstairs?"

   
Collier nodded. "Nothing. The rain's pouring in through the roof."

   Frost wrinkled his nose. The tramp had been using the corner of the room as his toilet. "Hardly a love nest, is it, son? More like a sewage worker's beano site. Let's get out of here . . . and mind where you tread."

   
As they were leaving, a radio call from Jordan: "At a house now, Inspector. We've been hammering at the door. A dog's barking inside, but no-one answers."

   
"Kick it in," Frost told him. "I reckon there's drugs on the premises."

   
And then reports started coming in thick and fast, all negative, intensifying his doubts that they were looking in the wrong area, but, right or wrong, he was committed.

   
His radio called him again. Yet another negative report. He poked a cigarette in his mouth and surveyed the area. Through a solid curtain of rain lights from dozens of torches bobbed in the dark. Anyone looking out would know the police were in the vicinity, but they couldn't search blind. The cigarette was sodden and wouldn't light. As he hurled it away another radio call, this time from Burton, sounding excited: "Might be on to something Inspector. I'm at a bungalow at the foot of the rise, talking to a Mrs. Jessop. She reckons she often hears a car, very late at night, coming from that smallholding on the top of the hill."

   
"What does she mean by 'very late'? Some of these old dears go to bed at six."

   
"She doesn't sleep well. Says the car wakes her up as it goes past her place. About two o'clockish or thereabouts, she says."

   
"Did she hear it tonight?"

   
"No, she took a sleeping tablet, but she's definite about the other nights. Do you want to talk to her?"

   
"No time for that, son. We go straight to the smallholding. Meet me outside." He radioed for Morgan and Jordan to join him. They followed him up the steep hill. No chance of a stealthy approach. The whine of their engines straining up the steep rutted slope would waken the dead.

   
The smallholding was a collection of ramshackle structures around a two-storeyed house. Outside the main building a black car was parked and a light gleamed through curtains from a downstairs room. Surveying it, Frost felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This was it. This was bloody it.

   
As they squelched to a halt by the front door, Frost clambered out and ran over to the car, a black Ford, the windows wound down and the driver's door wide open. He stuck his nose inside and sniffed for traces of the pungent perfume Liz had been wearing. All he could smell was carbolic disinfectant. He checked the number plates. Not the ones Taffy had noted, but too much to expect the false plates still to be there. He rejoined the others and pounded at the front door with his fist. They waited. Nothing. Frost gave the door handle a tentative turn and, to his surprise, the door swung open. Collier was sent round to the back, while Frost and the other three entered the house.

   
They stepped into a long passage. Frost jerked a thumb to Burton and Jordan. "Upstairs." He and Morgan followed the passage to a large, stone-flagged kitchen where a cream-coloured Aga stove belted out heat. A long wooden-topped table was laid out for breakfast with bowls and cups. In front of the Aga a grey and black tabby cat in a wicker cat basket gave them bemused looks while her six tiny kittens, eyes still not open, suckled noisily. A peaceful, innocent domestic scene.

   
"I think we're on the wrong track, guv," said Morgan.

   
"You can be a bastard and still like animals," said Frost, although his frail certainty was now wavering. "Hitler had a dog and Mullett's got a cat." He opened the back door to let Collier in, then they checked all the downstairs rooms. All neat and tidy. Footsteps from above as Burton and Jordan returned.

   
"Nothing," reported Burton. "One double bed, but it hasn't been slept in."

   
"So where are the people who live here?" asked Frost. "Let's try the outbuildings."

   
They split up, Morgan and Frost going to a wooden-walled structure with a corrugated iron roof. Pitch dark inside, but over the drumming of the rain they could hear rustling. Someone was inside. Frost fumbled round the door frame and found a light switch. Some twenty cats in cages blinked angrily at him. His heart did a somersault and he shivered, but not from the cold. Deja vu again. Cats, and that smell!

   
Old Martha Wendle's cottage all those years ago when eight-year-old Tracey Uphill went missing.

   
"You all right, guv?" asked Morgan.

   
"Yes," lied Frost, shaking off the memory. Tracey was dead when they found her.

   
A quick look round. Metal cupboards filled with tins of cat food and bags of cat litter. Nothing else.

   
On to the next building, a windowless barn-like structure. Frost stiffened and held up a finger for silence. The murmur of voices from inside. Carefully, he turned the door handle and gently opened the door. Inside, about half-way down, a hurricane lamp lit up two figures wearing oilskins, their backs to him. They were bending over something on the straw-lined floor, something whimpering in pain. He charged towards them. "Stay where you are. Police!"

   
A squeal of alarm as they spun round. Two women looking terrified. Both were in their mid-fifties, one quite fat with uncombed dark hair, the other thin and sharp-featured.

   
"Police!" said Frost again, trying to find his warrant card. Morgan got his out first and flashed it in front of their faces. They blinked at it, not understanding.

   
Another whimper from the floor. Frost pushed them aside. On a bed of straw, a red setter, body heaving and shaking, tongue lolling, whites of eyes showing.

   
"She's in labour," the thin woman explained. "There's a blockage there, or something. We're very worried about her." She blinked again at the warrant card. "But why are you here?"

   
Frost quickly explained about Liz. "We're searching everywhere in this area."

   
The two women seemed genuinely concerned. "How dreadful," exclaimed the fat woman. "She can't be here, Inspector. We've been up all night with the dog and we'd have heard a car. But please search anywhere you like—anywhere." The dog whimpered again. "We've got to get the vet," said the thin woman. "Can one of your policemen carry her to the house?"

   
Frost nodded to Morgan who bent and gently humped up the dog. As soon as the two women had left Frost called the rest of his team over. "I've got one of my feelings. Get some more men in and give this place a right going-over. She could be alive, she could be dead, so look everywhere." Burton and Collier were detailed to accompany him back to the house. "I'll keep Little and Large talking while you search every nook and cranny."

He slumped down in the chair alongside the Aga, the dog, eyes closed, panting heavily, in a basket at his feet. He ruffled its fur and watched the thin woman ring the vet's emergency number on a mobile phone, letting the Aga bake dry his sodden clothes.

   
"He's out on another call, Mavis, a calving, but he'll phone back when he's finished so we can take Jessie straight to his surgery. He thinks he'll have to do a Caesarean."

   
Mavis, the fat one, looked worried. "I hope the calving doesn't take long, Lily." She shuffled over to the sink and filled a brown enamel kettle, stepping carefully over the cat's basket to plonk it on the Aga. "Would you like a cup of tea, Inspector?"

   
"If you twist my arm," yawned Frost, loosening his scarf. The heat was making him sleepy. He nodded at the mobile. "Aren't you on the phone?"

   
"The phone company quoted over a thousand pounds to run a line up here and the electricity people wanted double," Lily told him. "We haven't got that sort of money, so it has to be the mobile."

   
"We look after cats for the Cats' Defence League," added her companion. "So a phone is vital." She frowned at the noise of dragged furniture coming from above. "You surely don't think she is in this house?"

   
"Not really," smiled Frost. "But we have to search everywhere, just to be thorough." They each took one of his offered cigarettes. He lit up. "One of your neighbours mentioned she often hears your car late at night."

   
"Oh dear," said Mavis, sounding very concerned. "I hope we don't wake her up. We're always having to dash off to the vet's. Animals seem to have a habit of being taken ill in the middle of the night." She slurped milk into the cups, the cigarette dangling from her lips. Frost's eyes narrowed. He had seen her somewhere before. She bent and poured milk into the cat's saucer. The cat eyed it blearily and decided she would leave it until later.

   
"All the doors and windows of your car were wide open as we drove up," said Frost.

   
Mavis smiled and nodded. "One of the cats made a mess inside it. I'm hoping the smell has gone by now."