'No right,' said Evans from the back seat.
She turned right. Up to now, Frost had been wrong with his directions every time and she'd had to slam on the brakes and do a reverse.
'There it is,' said Evans.
Liz turned the car into a long drive leading to a large, ivy-clad Edwardian house standing alone and surrounded by fields. Frost stared at the house. He'd been here before, but couldn't remember when, or why. A police car was parked just outside the front door. She slowed and parked behind it. Frost and Evans staggered out. PC Jordan came from the house to brief them.
'Family of three husband, wife and fifteen-year-old daughter. Husband and wife travelled up to London last night to see a show. They got back home around three in the morning. The house had been ransacked, jewellery and furs valued at 50,000 missing. They found this on the kitchen table.' He gave Frost a sheet of A4 white paper which had been slipped inside a transparent folder to preserve any prints. The message had been printed on a bubble jet printer, and read: to mr amp; mrs stan field we have your daughter. if you go to the police we will gang rape her. one of us is hiv positive. if you want her returned unharmed you will go to your bank as soon as it opens at 9.30 and withdraw 25,000 in used notes. you will put the money in a small suitcase. as you pass the white gate in clay lane you will throw the case out of the car into the ditch. you will drive straight home. you will not look back. if you do all this and there are no tricks we will release your daughter unharmed. if you try to trick us she won't be worth having when we return her. the enclosed is to show we mean business!
'This was with it,' said Jordan, handing Frost a Polaroid photograph, also in a transparent cover. It showed the girl, kneeling on the floor. A hand of someone out of sight had grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. The other hand held a knife which was pressed against the girl's throat. Her eyes were closed and her mouth sagged open. She was naked.
'They ripped her nightdress off with a knife,' said Jordan.
'I usually use my teeth,' grunted Frost, passing the photo and the message to Liz.
'The family are in the lounge with Simms,' Jordan told him. 'Do you want to see them?'
'Show me round the house first,' said Frost, hoping it might jog his memory as to when he was here before. 'How did the gang get in?'
'Through the back door I'll show you.'
Jordan walked them down a side path to the rear of the property where a small patio with tub bed plants backed on to the lawn. The back door had one of its glass panels smashed. The gang had punched a hole in the glass, reached in and turned the key which had been conveniently left in the lock.
Frost squinted through the smashed pane. 'Stupid bastards! They install an expensive, six lever mortice lock, then they leave the flaming key in it.' He waited as Evans, his hand gloved, opened the door for them. They stepped over broken glass on the mat, into the kitchen, Evans staying behind to dust the door for prints. A pine wood table had been laid the night before with cups and cereal bowls for a breakfast that had not been eaten. Frost picked up the cereal packet. 'All Bran nature's laxative. I bet no-one needed that this morning.' Jordan laughed, but Liz didn't find it funny. 'How many of them were there?'
'Four, we think,' said Jordan, taking them through a door leading to the hall. 'The first thing they did was to turn the electricty off at the mains.' He opened a small cupboard door under the stairs and revealed electricity and gas meters, side by side, with the central heating control box just below.
Frost frowned. 'Why did they do that?'
'So the girl couldn't call the police. She had a phone in her bedroom it was one of those cordless models. If the electricity is off, they don't function.'
'I thought they were battery powered,' said Liz.
'The handsets are, but most base units are mains powered without electricity they just don't work,' Jordan told her.
'I thought they only didn't work when I dropped the bleeding things on the floor,' said Frost, checking the clock on the central heating timer with his watch. It was only a couple of minutes slow. 'It wasn't switched off for long, then?'
'Once they got the girl, they switched the power back on. They needed the electric light so they could ransack the rooms.'
Evans rejoined them, shaking his head sadly. 'No-one leaves fingerprints any more.'
'Crooks today have no consideration for the police,' said Frost. He still couldn't remember why he had been in the house. 'Let's see the girl's bedroom.'
A typical teenager's room. Posters on the wall advertising past pop concerts and a large one saying 'Save The Whale'. A black ash wall unit held a hi-fi system with two tiny Wharfdale speakers and a 10-inch colour TV set. The room had been turned over. Drawers gaped, their contents strewn all over the floor. Frost's nose twitched. The girl's perfume lingered. A bit sexy for a fifteen-year-old, and so were the pair of scanty briefs he bent and picked up. He showed them to Liz. 'You'd have a job stuffing your hankie up the leg of these.'
Jordan grinned, but Liz stared stonily. The man was an ignorant pig.
Frost flicked the briefs across the room and they butterflyed delicately down to the carpet. 'What was taken from here, Jordan?'
'The girl's too upset to check, but her mother doesn't think anything is missing.' He pointed to a heap of chunky beads, bangles and necklaces tipped out on the floor. 'It's all junk, not worth pinching.'
'I'm surprised they didn't take that little telly,' said Frost. 'I wouldn't mind having that myself.'
'They were after bigger fish,' said Jordan. 'Jewels and furs from the parents' room. I'll show you.'
The main bedroom was a bigger shambles than the girl's, with drawers dragged open and clothes strewn about apparently just for the hell of making a mess. On the big double bed the contents of a drawer had been tipped out underwear, perfume bottles, cosmetics, in an untidy heap. 'The jewel box was in that drawer,' said
Jordan. 'They took the lot, box as well… fifty thousand quid's worth, they claim including the fur coats from the wardrobe.' He nodded towards the far wall where the sliding door of the woman's wardrobe was open, showing a jumble of coats and dresses on the floor and empty hangers swinging above.
Frost picked his way through the mess on the floor to take a closer look. 'Why did they drag all these dresses off?' he asked. 'They could have got to the furs without doing that.'
'Some people get a kick out of leaving things in a mess,' said Liz.
Frost grunted. It could be the answer. He peered through the large picture window which overlooked the garden and the fields and the winding lane which was the only access to the house. Some more houses in the far distance, but not a soul to be seen. He was fumbling for his cigarettes when a man's voice bellowed from downstairs.
'When you've finished sodding about up there, what about talking to us or aren't the victims important any more?'
He went to the landing and looked down. An angry-looking man was glaring up at them. Robert Stanfield, early fifties, sallow complexion and a tight, thin little mouth.
Frost frowned. He'd seen Stanfield before… in this house, but still couldn't recall the circumstances. He clattered down the stairs, followed by Liz and Jordan, Evans staying behind to photograph and check for prints. Then it all came back to him. He smiled broadly. 'We meet again, Mr. Stanfield.'
The man's eyes crawled over Frost's face. A brief flicker of apprehension, then a thin, scornful smile. 'Ah yes the arson attack. Let's hope you are more successful this time, inspector. In here…' He jerked his head to direct them into the lounge.
PC Dave Simms, sitting by the door, jumped up as Frost entered. It was a large and comfortable room with a recently lit log fire crackling in the grate. Wide casement windows gave a view across the garden. In the corner stood a large screen television set on a stand, beneath it a video recorder, its clock, not yet reset, flickering on and off showing there had been a break in the current.
Stanfield hurled himself into an armchair by the fire and swilled down a glass of whisky which had been perched on the arm. Opposite him, in a settee drawn close to the fire, sat his wife and his daughter. His wife, Margie Stanfield, dark-haired, in her early forties, wearing a red and black satin housecoat, was flashily attractive. Frost couldn't remember seeing her before. But it was the girl, Carol, PC Simms's greatcoat draped around her, who held Frost's attention. She looked much older than her fifteen years. Her dark brown hair was long and flowing and uncombed, giving her a wild, untamed appearance. She kept her head down, but her eyes, narrow like her father's,
