'Send the sod away,' said Frost. 'We're too busy.'
'He says you asked him to come,' insisted Wells. 'He's the claims assessor from Cityrock Insurers.'
Frost snatched his mind away from the kidnapping and on to the furs and jewels dredged from the canal. 'Send him to my office. Tell him to follow his nose he can't miss it.'
Hicks, a jolly little man wearing heavy horn-rimmed glasses, beamed as Frost tipped out the contents of the plastic bag. He held the furs at arm's length, his nose screwing up at the smell, nodded, then let them drop to the ground, more interested in the jewellery. His smile widened as he compared each item with his typewritten list. 'Looks as if it is all here, inspector.'
'Is it worth what they're claiming?'
A firm shake of the head. 'They're claiming 75,000. I'd put it at 35/40,000 top whack.'
'An insurance fiddle?'
Hicks pursed his lips. 'Not a very clever one if it was. We'd have knocked the claim down to something nearer 35,000 which is what the items are worth. They could have sold them for that and there'd have been no need to chuck them in a canal.' He zipped up his briefcase. 'As far as my company is concerned, the stolen items have been recovered and we don't have to pay out. Mr. Stanfield can carry on paying the premiums for his own inflated valuation, but should they be 'stolen' again, we'll settle on the basis of my own figure.'
'What about the money he claims he handed over to get his daughter returned?'
Hicks shrugged. 'If he was insured for such a loss then it wasn't with my company, but I don't think any insurers give cover for money held in a bank.'
Frost drummed the desk with his fingers. He still wasn't convinced this was a genuine robbery and abduction. If it was genuine, why steal stuff then dump it? He thanked Hicks, and steered him in the direction of the street.
Back in the incident room Burton was on the phone. He put his hand over the mouthpiece as Frost entered. 'Forensic were on. The prints check. The finger is from Bobby Kirby.'
Frost grunted his acknowledgement.
'And I've got PC Ridley on the phone. He wants to know what we should do with all the stuff we pulled out of the canal.'
'He shouldn't have to ask,' replied Frost. 'There's a Keep Britain Tidy campaign in force this week. Tell him to chuck it back in the canal.'
Burton relayed the message and hung up. 'All search parties stood down,' he reported.
Frost nodded and walked over to study the photographs of the two boys. 'He intended Dean to be the kidnap victim. He chloroformed him, but the kid died. This didn't put the bastard off, he just looked for someone else and he found Bobby.'
'What made him pick Dean Anderson in the first place?'
Frost took a deep drag at his cigarette then pushed out smoke. 'Any kid would have done that's the clever part. The money is coming from a rich supermarket chain pay up or your customers will know you let a kid die. This bloke is a clever bastard and he's on to a flaming winner.' He dropped his cigarette on the floor and crushed it with his foot. 'Come on, son, let's find out how the rich people live. We're off to see the Supermarket King.'
Mullett stopped them on their way out. He had been told the result of the fingerprinting, but not by Frost as he should have expected.
'Can't stop, super,' grunted Frost, edging past. 'We're on our way to see tricky Dicky.'
A concerned frown from Mullett. With someone as important as Sir Rirchard Cordwell involved, he was wondering if the uncouth Frost was the right person to handle the interview. 'He's a very influential man, Frost, and I understand he can be quite nasty when he likes, so handle him with kid gloves.'
'Don't worry, super,' said Frost, sidling past him towards the door to the car-park. 'I shall treat him with my usual tact.'
Mullett's smile tightened to vanishing point. This was exactly what he feared. 'I think I'd better come with you,' he said.
The Manor House was an imposing edifice, solidly Victorian, forests of chimney pots, standing in extensive grounds and enclosed by a high stone wall thickly coated with ivy. The black, cast-iron gates were firmly closed and a video security camera scrutinized them closely as Burton announced who they were into a microphone. Their credentials established, the gates swung back, closing again immediately they were inside. They coasted up to the main entrance behind a gleaming, pearl grey Rolls-Royce. Frost checked its tax disc and seemed disappointed to find it was current. Up stone steps to the front door where a female secretary hovered and led them directly to Cordwell's study, a large, high-ceilinged room with tall french windows opening out on to a billiard table lawn, a rose garden, and a large fish pool with a weathered stone fountain in the shape of a boy with a dolphin.
CordweU, a thickset, coarse-featured man in his early fifties, was at an antique mahogany desk, its green leather top scarred with cigarette burns. As they entered he was bawling down a white and gold phone and didn't give them a second glance. 'If he's not measuring up, then chuck him out you can find a reason. I'm not carrying bloody passengers.' He banged the phone down, grabbed an enormous cigar from a silver box and lit up with a lighter fashioned from a genuine flintlock pistol, then flapped a hand for Frost and Mullett to sit. Cordwell had started business selling broken biscuits from a barrow in street markets and, by cheating, scheming and doing down his associates, had worked his way up to owning one of the largest cut-price grocery chains in Britain. A grunt and a snap of his fingers signalled the hovering secretary to place a folder in front of him. He slid it across to the two policemen. 'The letter.'
Frost opened the folder. The envelope had been slit open and the letter was fastened to it with a paper clip.
'We asked you not to open it,' he said.
Cordwell gave him a sweet smile. 'Nobody tells me what to do.'
While Frost read the letter, Cordwell was back on the phone tearing some other poor devil off a strip. 'Cancel the bloody order!' he barked. 'I don't care if they have got a binding agreement there's bound to be a bloody loophole somewhere, so cancel it.' As he slammed the phone down he shouted across to his secretary. 'What's that prat's name?' She told him. He scribbled the name on his pad. 'Next lot of redundancies, he's got pole position.'
Frost shut his ears to this as he and Mullett skimmed through the letter. Similar to the others, it read:
Dear Sir Richard Cordwell:
I have the boy Bobby Kirby. The police will confirm this is genuine. For his safe return I require from your company the sum of 250,000 in used notes… no marked money or the boy dies. Be near the public telephone kiosks in the shopping mall outside your Denton store at 8 o'clock tonight with the money and I will phone you with instructions for the han dover Just you no police I'll be checking to make sure. If you do not comply, the boy will die. The press have been informed and the public will know the consequences.
'We'll keep this,' said Frost, closing the folder and daring Cordwell to refuse, but this was agreed to with a wave of the hand.
'Is it genuine?'
'We believe so,' said Mullett.
'Believe so? I'm not sodding about with it if it's a try-on.'
'It's genuine,' said Frost. 'He sent us a tape of the boy.'
Cordwell flicked a long cylinder of ash from his cigar on to the carpet. 'And you reckon he'll carry out his threat to kill him?'
'Yes,' said Frost.
Cordwell beamed. 'Good. You got a photograph of the kid?' Frosj slid one across the desk. Cordwell studied it through a fog of cigar smoke and nodded his approval. 'Nice-looking kid I was afraid he'd be an ugly little bastard with a squint and bad teeth.' He flipped the switch on his intercom. 'Roberts come in!'
A tap on the door and Roberts entered. A lean, mean-looking man in a sharp silver-grey suit. Cordwell showed him the photograph. 'The kidnapped kid,' he grunted.
Roberts looked at it and nodded. 'Nice-looking kid… and a good photograph. Should come up well in half- tone… I think we should go ahead.'
'So do I,' said Cordwell. 'This is what I want you to do.' He barked his orders. 'Check with the parents and see if there are any more photographs the kid as a baby would be nice. Then a press release for tomorrow to all the
