to chase after the man, but quickly realized he was not going to make it in time. To his relief, he saw that Liz had had the foresight to run down the other side of the road, ready to block his path.
'Stop… Police!' she yelled.
'Out of my way, you bitch,' screamed the man, his fists flailing. It wasn't quite clear what happened next. Like a terrier after a rat, Liz darted forward, grabbed the man's arm. Her knee came up, the man yelped with pain and collapsed to the ground, clutching his groin. Before he had time to recover, Liz had him face down and was pinning his arms behind his back. Then Burton and Frost were with her.
'Get this fat cow off of me,' yelled the man.
Burton leant down and snapped the cuffs on his wrist. 'You're nicked,' he said, rather redundantly. Liz stood up, dusting herself down, while Burton hauled the man to his feet and went through his pockets. He found a driving licence and flipped it open, then handed it to Frost.
'Craig Hudson. Is this you?'
The man, white-faced, nodded.
'And is this your car?'
'Yes and you'll pay for the damage, you bastard.' Then the pain gave him a jab making him hiss through clenched teeth. 'That bloody cow — I need a doctor.'
'Play your cards right and she might kiss it better,' said Frost, grabbing him by the arm. 'Let's go inside and have a talk.'
They marched him back into the house and up a flight of stairs covered in dark green lino. The door to the first-floor flat was wide open and they walked into a largish room, barely furnished with a TV set and a three-piece suite in a faded floral moquette. The floor was littered with empty foil take away food containers and the spicy reek of take away curry battled with marijuana for supremacy. At first they thought the room was empty, but a puff of thick smoke billowed above the back of the settee. Lying full length, a dark-haired girl in her early twenties, eyes half closed and a look of utter euphoria on her face, was dragging at the fat parcel of a hand-rolled joint. She had on a grey sweater which had been rolled up to her neck, exposing gorgeous bare breasts and a flat stomach. Her jeans and black knickers were round her ankles. 'I hope we haven't interrupted your meal,' murmured Frost politely, his eyes bulging.
The girl smiled blissfully and offered Frost a drag on her joint.
'Get yourself covered up,' hissed Liz.
'Leave her,' said Frost. There had been too few perks with the job recently. He dragged his eyes away and turned his attention to the man. 'Sit!' he commanded. Burton pushed him down into the chair.
Sounds of a commotion from downstairs, then heavy footsteps and Cassidy came barging in. 'Mr. Mullett thought I should be in on this,' he announced.
'Great,' said Frost, flatly. Cassidy was Mullett's blue-eyed boy at the moment. Quickly, he filled him in, then got Jordan and Burton to thoroughly search every room in the house. And next they would have to check every house in the street. The boy could be bound and gagged in any of the derelict boarded-up properties. Back to the man. 'Where is he?'
'Who?'
'Don't sod us about,' shouted Cassidy. 'You know damn well who we mean. Where is the boy?'
'Boy? What boy?'
The girl on the settee had let her cigarette go out and was now humming a little song to herself as her hands rubbed up and down her body. Frost was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the matter in hand.
'Bobby Kirby,' said Cassidy. 'Where is he?'
'Never heard of him,' said the man. 'Can I have these handcuffs off now, please.'
'When we're ready,' said Cassidy.
'Take them off,' said Frost. Hudson wasn't going to try anything now.
Burton unlocked them, watched by a scowling Cassidy, angry that Frost had undermined him.
Hudson rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation. 'I demand to know what this is about.'
'Shut up!' snarled Cassidy. 'I do the bloody demanding, not you.'
Jordan signalled to Frost from the door. He'd done a quick check through the flats in this house. No sign of the kid. He was moving on to the other houses.
Cassidy was about to interrogate Hudson further when Frost suddenly came out with the stupid question, 'Where did you get the take away
Cassidy gaped and stared in disbelief. What the hell did that matter? They were looking for a missing kid, for Pete's sake!
Seeing Cassidy's annoyance, the man grinned. 'The Taj Mahal round the corner. Why do you want some?'
'Did you collect it, or was it delivered?'
'Delivered. What the bloody hell is this about?'
Frost took Liz to one side. 'Nip round the Indian and find out what was delivered.'
She looked at him the same way Cassidy did. 'Why?'
'If they've got the kid here somewhere, I'm hoping they'll feed him. Miss Curry-tits on the settee doesn't look as if she could butter a slice of bread without getting it all over her nipples, so I'm hoping they might have got three meals in from the take away
Begrudgingly, she acknowledged the sense of this and went out to make her enquiries.
Cassidy went back to his questioning. 'You paid six and a half grand for a car. Where did a scumbag like you get that sort of money?'
'I had a win on a horse.'
'What horse?' barked Cassidy.
Hudson fired the answer straight back. 'Dancing Foam, two o'clock race, yesterday.'
There was a morning paper on the floor by the settee. Frost opened it at the racing page and checked. 'He's right. Dancing Foam won five to one.'
'You see!' smirked Hudson.
'But at five to one,' pointed out Frost, 'you'd have to stake over a thousand quid to win your motor money. To quote my good friend Mr. Cassidy, where did a scumbag like you get a thousand quid?'
'I saved it up.'
'I knew there was a logical explanation,' said Frost.
Burton came into the room triumphantly brandishing the travel bag. 'Look what I found stuffed behind the wardrobe,' he said.
Frost unzipped it. It was packed tight with ten and twenty pound notes. 'Did you save this up as well?'
Hudson stared at it, then jerked his head away. 'Nothing to say,' he mumbled.
'You'd better bloody say something,' snarled Cassidy. 'This money was used to pay the ransom for Bobby Kirby. You're in serious trouble, my friend. So where is the boy?'
'I don't know anything about the boy.' He slumped back in the chair.
Frost leant over him and pointed to the near-naked girl on the settee, who was stroking her breasts with feathery fingers and grinning inanely. 'Take a good look, son. You won't get any more of that if you're doing twenty years in the nick. I'd start answering a few questions if I were you.'
Hudson looked over at the girl, who grinned back at him and wriggled her body provocatively. 'All right. I found that money.'
'Where?'
'Dumped by a rubbish bin, just outside the car-park in the town centre.'
'You're a bloody liar,' yelled Cassidy. 'Where is the boy?'
'How many more times? I don't know anything about the damn kid.'
The girl on the settee had now decided to try and sit up. The effort made her giggle. Frost went over to her and shook her by the shoulders roughly. Her head snapped from side to side and her hair fell all over her eyes. A bonus was her breasts which swayed delightfully from side to side like the head of a questing snake.
Frost found a part of him enjoying the view, the other deeply concerned about the boy. 'Where is he?'
She gaped up at him, trying to focus through wisps of stray hair, her expression one of bemused delight. 'I love it when you get rough …'
