'What about those bushes there?' Cassidy pointed.
Frost gave them a glance, then shook his head. There was too much open ground between them. 'This is as good a place as any.'
The call light on the receiver flashed. Burton turned the volume down and listened. Charlie Baker reporting in. Cordwell had made one stop on the way back at a phone box. As he approached it, it rang. He spoke briefly, then drove straight home.
'The kidnapper wanting confirmation the drop had been made,' said Frost. 'He must have phoned from a call box. Where's the nearest one from here?'
'The one in Forest Row,' said Burton.
'If that was the one he used, he should be here in less than ten minutes,' said Frost to Burton. 'Get back to your car and wait and be ready to tail him after he collects the money.'
'He might not have used that one,' objected Cassidy. 'He might have a mobile phone. For all we know he could be standing in those trees over there, watching.'
'If he had a mobile phone and was standing in those trees,' said Frost, 'he'd have seen Cordwell drop the money and wouldn't have needed to make the phone call.' He nodded Burton on his way.
Burton hurried off while Frost panned the area through the night glasses to see if he could spot anyone watching them. A radio call from Burton. He was back in his car awaiting further instructions.
Frost consulted his wrist-watch. Nine forty-six. His clothes were sodden and rain was beating down on them. Too wet to smoke and nothing to do but to wait.
They waited.
Twelve
Cassidy wriggled and tried to make himself comfortable on the soaking wet grass. 'How long do you think we'll have to wait?'
'Not too long,' muttered Frost, scanning the far ground through the night glasses. 'There's too much money just lying around. He won't want to risk anyone else finding it.'
'Car coming,' reported Burton over the radio.
They held their breath and waited. But it sped past. And so did the next.
A lull in the traffic and Frost went back to his surveillance of the bleak-looking area. It was tricky using the night glasses and he hadn't got the hang of them. Every now and then his view would be completely obscured as a large bush or tree trunk took up the entire field of vision. He swung back to the bushes where the money was hidden.
A clap of thunder and the heavens opened, rain drumming on the ground so they had to shout to hear each other. Cassidy wiped stinging rain from his eyes and brushed back dripping wet hair. 'Bloody weather,' he snarled.
'It's perfect,' said Frost. 'No-one but kidnappers and prats of policemen would be out in this. Whoever turns up has got to be our man.' Again he raised the glasses and focused on some trees eighty yards or so away. Just before the downpour, he thought he had seen something move. The stair rods of rain were making it difficult to see anything and he was just convincing himself he was mistaken when… Yes, there it was. He nudged Cassidy. 'I spy, with my little eye, something that looks like a motor.'
'Where?' hissed Cassidy, straining his eyes into the blurred darkness.
Frost handed him the glasses and pointed. 'Behind the trees.'
Cassidy panned carefully. He located the trees and… yes. Frost was right. Half hidden… a car. He locked on to it, holding his breath and bracing himself to steady the night glasses. A Ford Escort. The glasses gave everything a green tinge, but it was a light colour
… cream, brown or grey, perhaps. 'I see it. Its lights are out.'
'Most of the cars that come down here turn their lights out,' grunted Frost. 'They only turn them on if the girl can't find her knickers afterwards. Can you see anyone inside?'
Cassidy stared hard, trying to penetrate the curtain of blurring rain. 'No.'
'Let me have a go.' Frost took the glasses.
'Shall we pick him up?'
'No,' said Frost. 'Until he collects up the money, we've nothing on him… Hello.. He steadied the glasses and started to chuckle.
'What is it?' hissed Cassidy.
'You'd better see this.'
Cassidy snatched the glasses, then he snorted with disgust. The car was bouncing up and down on its springs and the windows were well steamed up.
'Not our kidnapper, I'm afraid,' said Frost ruefully. Then he remembered a poem he'd seen on a lavatory wall once and began to recite:
'You could tell he was a master, In the art of love. First the slight withdrawal Then the mighty shove.'
Cassidy snorted his disgust. Hadn't Frost got any damn taste? They were trying to catch the killer of a child, for Pete's sake!
The car gave a sudden lurch. 'Flaming heck,' said Frost with admiration. 'That was a mighty shove all right. I bet that brought the colour to her cheeks.'
'Bloody animals!' snarled Cassidy.
But Frost was lost in recollection. 'I used to come here and behave like a bloody animal… Long time ago of course…' It was when he was in his teens, young and lusty… Who was that dark girl… the little goer. What was her name…? And then he remembered. Flaming heck, how could he have forgotten! It was his wife. Long before they were married. She was a little doll in those days… bouncy, little figure, jet black hair, snub nose, and she thought the world of him… that showed how long ago it was! A time, before all the rows, when everything marvelous was going to happen. When they made plans about getting married, about him joining the police force and rising in the ranks to chief superintendent. It all came back… that night… that summer night when it was so hot you could have trampled through the grass in the nude at midnight and not feel cold. That was when it happened for the first time… when he undressed her and… Someone was shaking his arm. 'Frost!'
'Eh?' It wasn't a summer night any more. It was peeing with rain and he was wet and cold. Cassidy was shaking his arm and pointing back to the road. 'What did you say?'
'Another car coming.'
All they could see at first were the headlights shining blearily through the rain. Then the car. A dark blue Austin Metro.
'He's slowing down,' said Cassidy in excitement. 'He's stopped… the bugger's stopped.'
Frost squinted through the glasses. He could just about make out the figure at the wheel. There didn't appear to be anyone else in the car, which splashed to a stop, almost dead in line with the clump of bushes where the money was hidden.
'It's him!' hissed Frost. 'It's bloody got to be him.'
For some minutes the car just stood there, engine ticking, lights on. Then the lights went out, the engine was switched off and the only sound was the drumming rain.
'Keep down,' hissed Frost, tugging at Cassidy who was raising his head to get a better view.
They waited. Frost was able to wriggle through the long grass and pick out the registration number through the binoculars. Cassidy whispered it into the radio for Control to check. The reply came back in seconds. The registered owner was a Henry Finch, 2 Lincoln Road, Denton. It hadn't been reported stolen and nothing was known about the owner.
Frost grabbed the radio. 'The kidnapper would be a prat driving his own car. The owner might not realize his motor's gone. Phone Finch and ask where his car is. If he says it's parked in the street outside, then we know this one's been nicked. If there's no answer, send an area car round to his house to nose around. If Finch is the kidnapper the kid might be in the house. Get cracking.'
'Will do,' acknowledged Control. 'Don't switch off — Mr. Mullett wants a word.'
