Hard Frost

by R D Wingfield

  Harry Baskin, dark and swarthy and in his late thirties, looked up from his desk with a frown. "Can't you bloody well read?" Then he saw who it was and he gave a deep sigh. "What the hell do you want?"

  Frost dragged out a chair and sat down. He pointed a thumb to his companion. "You remember Mr. Cassidy?"

  For a moment Baskin looked startled, but quickly composed himself. "Mr. Cassidy! I heard you were back in Denton." He waved a hand. "Sit down."

  But Cassidy had moved to the window behind Baskin, a window that overlooked the road running past the club. He stared out at the cars that sped past, on to the straight section of the road before it curved towards Denton. He spoke, almost to himself. "That's where it happened."

  Baskin shot a glance across to Frost, whose face remained impassive. "It was a long time ago, Mr. Cassidy."

  IOI

  "Was it one of the drunken bastards from your club who was at the wheel, Harry?"

  "We've had all this out before, Mr. Cassidy. The driver didn't stop. We don't know who he was." He swivelled his chair to face Frost. "Is this what you've come to talk to me about ancient bloody history?"

  "We're here to talk about Joy Anderson," said Frost.

  "The new girl! If I had known she had a bloody son, I never would have employed her."

  "She hasn't got a son any more, Harry," said Frost. "He's dead."

  Baskin spread his palms, the chunky gold cuff-links on his wrists clanking as he did so. "Tell me about it!" he moaned. "Bloody fine advert for the club, isn't it... have your blackjack cards dealt by a girl whose son was murdered. It puts a damper on the bloody place. I'm not a hard man, Mr. Frost, but I'm getting shot of her."

  "No, you're not, Harry," snapped Frost. "The poor cow has suffered enough without losing her job as well."

  "All right." He tried to sound reasonable. "She can stay away for a few days I might even pay her but when she comes back she'd better not go around with a long bloody face. We need to keep the punters happy."

  "Of course you do, Harry so we want to know the name of the punter she kept happy last night."

  "As I told the other copper, people who come to this club have a right to privacy. Whatever arrangement the gentleman made with Joy Anderson after she left the club is a matter entirely for him."

  Frost gave a sweet smile. "Let me put it plainly, Harry. People come to your club for a gamble and a bit of the other and you are happy to provide both so long as they pay. Most of the girls who work for you are known prostitutes. You take at least hah0 of what they earn on the side, probably more if the client pays by credit card. You also provide the girls' flats at exorbitant rents. So what say I nominate you as Pimp Of The Year and charge you with living off immoral earnings?"

  Baskin's face flushed a dark red. "This is a respectable club. I could have you up for defamation of character .. . but if it will help you catch the boy's killer .. He scribbled something on a pad and tore off the sheet. "There's his name and address now piss off!"

  Frost glanced at the note, then stuffed it into his mac pocket. "Thanks, Harry. I knew I could appeal to your better nature." He stood up and looked over to Cassidy. "Ready?"

  Cassidy was still staring out of the window and seemed to have taken no interest in Frost's conversation with Baskin. He frowned as if dragged out of a reverie. "What?"

  "Let's go."

  "Sure." One last look out of the window. "Sure."

  Joy Anderson's client lived in Lexington. Frost radioed through to Lexington Division to send someone round to question him. They had barely got inside the station when Arthur Hanlon came running up to them, beaming all over his face and falsely raising Frost's hopes that the boy had been found. "You were right about the body in the bunker, Jack. We've matched his prints we know who he is."

  "Are you going to tell me his name, Arthur, or do I get three guesses?"

  "He's Lemmy Hoxton."

  Hanlon offered the form sheet to Frost. Frost didn't take it. He stared at Hanlon open-mouthed. Lemmy! The bloated balloon of the putrefying face swirled in front of him as he tried to compare it with the living Lemmy Hoxton, a vicious and habitual petty criminal he had arrested many times. "We won't try too hard on this one," said Frost. "Whoever killed him deserves a medal." He fumbled for a cigarette.

  "He's been dead over two months and his wife hasn't reported him missing?" observed Cassidy.

  "Probably couldn't believe her bloody luck," said Frost. He sighed. "But you're right. She's got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Let's pay her a visit."

  The house was a semi-detached, two-storeyed dwelling, its front garden asp halted over to provide parking space for Lemmy's metallic bronze Toyota which was still parked there. The place was in darkness and all the curtains were drawn. It looked empty, but Frost thumbed the door bell anyway and waited. Nothing. He tried again, egged on by Cassidy's impatient shuffling of his feet, implying that if he rang it, the door would open. Still no reply. Frost lifted the letter-box flap and squinted through. All dark inside. Then he stiffened. He could have sworn he heard a door at the back of the house quietly click shut.

  "Let's take a look round the back."

  They went down the side of the house to the rear garden. Frost stopped abruptly and flapped his hand at Cassidy for silence. He pointed. Cassidy peered into the darkness. Movement. There was someone clambering over the rear wall into the garden, someone who didn't want to be seen. They watched as the figure darted across the lawn, then darkness swallowed him. The sound of a sash window being cautiously raised and closed.

  "A flaming burglar!" moaned Frost. "Just what we bloody need!" He sent Cassidy round to the front door to guard that escape route while he tiptoed across the straggling grass of the lawn, probably last cut by Lemmy some three months ago. A small patio of chequer-board paving stones led to the back door, which he tried; it was locked. Further along was a small window. The curtains were only partially drawn and he was able to flash his torch beam through to show a small utility room with a washing machine and a dish washer.

  To his relief, the window slid up easily. He squeezed through, closing it carefully behind him and turning the catch to stop the intruder from getting out again that way. A door to the right took him into the darkened hall. A rustling sound. He froze. The sound was coming from a door to his left. He tiptoed over and pressed his ear tight against it. More rustling. Someone moving stealthily. He padded across to the front door to let Cassidy in, his finger to his lips as he pointed to the room. Cassidy nodded, eyes aglow, all eager for action. Frost reached for the handle, turned it silently, and gingerly inched the door open. The room was in pitch darkness but the radiator had been going full blast and it was hot and stuffy and ... his nose twitched. Sweat. The strong smell of male sweat.

  His hand slid down the wall trying to locate the light switch. Got it. He shifted his grip on the torch to use it as a club, if necessary. A sudden cry. A woman in pain. He pressed the switch.

  A large, candy-striped settee was in the middle of the room and on it, two naked figures, blinking at the light, were frantically trying to disentangle themselves. The woman, reddish hair, freckle-flecked body, all buttocks and floppy breasts, was in her early fifties. The man .. . no, not a man ... a youth, fifteen, sixteen at the most, probably younger, had pushed himself free of the woman and charged at Frost with a knife.

  All confusion. The woman screaming, "No, Wayne!" and Cassidy yelling "Police!" while seeming to be rooted to the spot, and Frost belting the knife arm with his heavy torch, and the youth shouting obscenities.

  Cassidy froze. He couldn't move. He could just watch .. It was the knife. The cold steel of the knife that jabbed and jabbed .. . He suddenly realized he was terrified of being stabbed again ... or was it that he wanted to see Frost get hurt? Frost, the bastard who had fouled up the investigation into his daughter's death. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to move, but before he could do anything Frost's knee came up sharply and the youth dropped the knife with a screa
m of pain and fell to the ground, hugging his groin.

  Quickly, Frost pocketed the knife, then turned to the woman who was struggling to cover her nakedness with a dressing-gown. She scowled at him. "Don't look, you dirty bastard!"

  "Dirty bastard!" echoed Cassidy. "That's rich, coming from you, Maggie. We've just caught you having sex with an under-age kid."

  "He's not under age. He's sixteen."

  "Inches, perhaps, but not years," said Frost, looking down at the speechless youth who was still rocking in agony. "Cover yourself up, son, you're making me feel inadequate."

  The boy crawled over to the settee and began to pull on a pair of faded jeans, wincing as he did so.

  "You've no right to come barging in here," said Maggie Hoxton.

  "We rang your bell, but got no reply," explained Frost. "We saw super-dick climbing through your back window and thought you had burglars."

  "We've got nosy flaming neighbours. Tongues would start wagging if he came in the front door." . "And his dick started wagging when he came in through the back." Frost turned to the youth, who was dragging a red T-shirt over his head. "So what was the idea of the knife, sonny boy protecting your gran?"

  "She's not me gran," mumbled the boy.

  "She's bloody old enough to be."

  "I thought you were her husband. He's supposed to be a mad sod."

  Frost nodded. "He'd have broken you in two, sonny. You wouldn't have left here with all the bits you came in with." He told Cassidy to take the boy into the other room and question him so he could talk to the woman on her own.

  "Well, Maggie?"

  She looked worried. "I've done nothing wrong. He's my toy boy."

  "I know," said Frost. "I saw you toying with his dick." He parked himself in the armchair and loosened his scarf. "I didn't come about him. It's about Lemmy."

  "Oh?" She tried to sound unconcerned, but her nervousness showed. She wouldn't look at Frost as she dug down in the dressing-gown pocket and found a cigarette then crossed to the mantelpiece for her lighter, keeping her back to him.

  Frost was watching her every movement. He wished he could see her face. "Lemmy's dead, Maggie."

  Her back stiffened. For a brief second the lighter paused an inch from her cigarette then, hand shaking, she lit up and turned slowly to face him. "Dead?"

  He nodded. "He's been dead for three months."

  She sat in the other chair, facing him, and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. "How did it happen?"

  "Someone smashed his skull in."

  She gave the tiniest twitch of a shrug. "Oh dear."

  "I must say, you're bearing up bravely to your sad loss, Maggie."

  She snorted a sarcastic laugh. "If you're waiting for me to break down and cry, don't hold your bloody breath. Lemmy was a bastard, a vicious, sadistic bastard and if he's dead, I'm glad .. . I'm over the moon."

  "When did you see him last?"

  Her brow furrowed in thought. "Beginning of August. We had a row and he walked out." She flicked cigarette ash towards the fireplace and seemed unconcerned when it fell short on to the carpet. A woman after my own heart, thought Frost.

  "Lemmy walked out .. . just like that? Leaving his house... his car?"

  "Yes."

  "I find that very hard to believe, Maggie. What was this row about theological matters?"

  "He'd been seeing another woman."

  "What's her name?"

  "I don't know her name Lily, I think."

  Behind Frost the door opened and closed as Cassidy came back in.

  "Where does Lily live?"

  "I don't know her address. Someone said he'd been knocking about with another woman. I questioned him about it, we had a row and he walked out."

  "I've got a better suggestion," said Cassidy, walking across the room and standing over her. "Lemmy couldn't satisfy you so you started paying young kids to have it away. Lemmy came home early one day and caught you at it. There was a fight and you killed him."

  Maggie was up on her feet, shouting at him. "That's a bloody lie!"

  "Is it?" smirked Cassidy. "I've been talking to your toy boy in the other room. All the kids round here know about you and your depraved habits. You pay them ten quid a time, don't you? It's been going on for months -even when Lemmy was still alive."

  She glared at him. "If- and I'm not admitting anything if I had it off with kids, they were all over age."

  "Did they come with their dick in one hand and their birth certificate in the other?" asked Frost.

  Cassidy scowled. This was a serious murder enquiry and he could do without Frost's infantile jokes. "He caught you at it once, didn't he, Maggie? The kid only just got out of the house in time. Lemmy beat the living daylights out of you."

  "AH right so he caught me at it. So bloody what?"

  "He finds you with a kid and he beats you up, but when you tell Lemmy you've heard he's having it off with another woman, he meekly legs it away, not even bothering to take his motor."

  "Yes." She thrust her chin out defiantly at Cassidy. "That's exactly what happened."

  "Get some drawers on, Maggie," said Frost. "We'll continue this down at the nick." When she went upstairs to dress, he asked Cassidy about the boy. "Is he under age?"

  "He says he's sixteen."

  "We'll check him out when we get to the station."

  "I'll do the questioning," said Cassidy. It was a statement, not a request.

  "This is Arthur Hanlon's case," said Frost.

  "Hanlon is only a sergeant."

  Frost shrugged. What the hell .. . Arthur would be only too pleased to get shot of it. "Sure .. . take the case over."

  Cassidy smiled his satisfaction. Maggie's story was so weak, he was sure he could get a confession out of her without any trouble. Nice to be able to go in to Mullett and say, with the right touch of diffidence, "I've cleared this one up, sir."

  "We'd better get a team over to search the house," said Frost. "If she killed Lemmy there might be the odd drop of blood or bits of finger knocking about she forgot to wipe up."

  He had just finished radioing instructions through to Control when Bill Wells took over the microphone. "Jack you're just round the corner from the old Rook Street housing estate?"

  "Is that so?" grunted Frost. "I was wondering where I was."

  "That missing girl Judy Gleeson. Just had a phone call. Bloke wouldn't give his name, but reckons he saw a man dragging a young girl into one of those derelict houses in Rock Street."

  "Which house? The street's full of them."

  "That's all he told us, then he hung up."

  "Bless his bleeding heart," said Frost. "It won't take us more than four or five hours to search through the lot. I'll need help."

  "Wonder Woman and Burton are on the way." "I'll meet them on the corner," said Frost.

  The Rook Street estate had been built in the early fifties using a new French method of construction which involved preformed concrete slabs and metal binding rods. It was cheap and quick. The finished estate looked like a prison block, but people desperate for housing were pleased to have anything. Over the years serious faults began to develop.

  It transpired that the wrong mix of cement had been used in the construction. The concrete slabs started disintegrating and the metal binding rods corroded and crumbled, making the structures highly dangerous. Experts said there was no economical cure, so the properties were condemned and the tenants re housed

  The street was now a double row of decaying properties with damp-blackened concrete and the doors and windows boarded up with 18mm block board held in place by six-inch nails. An empty, miserable street, exuding the damp musty aroma of desolation.

  Slowly, Burton drove down the road with Frost and Liz flashing torches on the houses as they passed them, looking for signs of forced entry. Nothing. All doors and windows appeared firmly sealed. "I suppose we checked this place when we were looking for the boy?" Frost asked.

  "One of the first places we looked," said Burton.
"But I think they only checked that the doors and windows were still boarded up."

  "Better do it thoroughly tomorrow," said Frost. "Let's take a look round the back that's where I'd break in."

  As they climbed out of the car, the wind kicked ancient sheets of newspapers across the road in front of them and dribbled an empty tin can along the kerb.

  A high wooden fence protected the rear area. Frost clambered over it, hissing with annoyance as his mac no caught on a nail and tore. He leant over to help Liz, but she ignored him, insisting on climbing over on her own and then offering her hand to Burton who was making heavy weather of it. They thudded down into a junk-littered jungle that once was a garden. The harsh moonlight shone on a row of boarded up windows and doors, all looking secure and untouched. Scrambling over dividing fences, they checked each house carefully.

  They found the point of entry in the third house they examined, where the boarding had been newly wrenched away from a downstairs window. Frost signalled for Burton to go round to the front in case anyone attempted to get out that way, then swung over the sill and dropped inside. Liz followed. The intense darkness of the boarded-up house seemed to swallow up the light from Liz's torch as they padded across bare floorboards. A door swung ajar. Frost pushed it gently, then flapped his hand for the torch to be extinguished. Floorboards creaking above. Someone was moving about upstairs.

  A muffled voice. Then a scream. A long, chilling, almost animal-like scream of pain.

  "Come on!" yelled Frost.

  They rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. A crack of orange seeped out weakly from under a door on the landing. They charged through it, into a room, its windows boarded, the darkness eased only by a candle stuck on the mantelpiece. In the flickering light they could just make out the back of a man bending over someone on the floor. A girl. A young girl. The room still echoed from her screaming.

  At their entry, the man swung round, candlelight glinting off the knife in his hand.