Detective Inspector Jack Frost knelt down beside the tiny body. "Who did this to you sonny?", he asked, his face tight with compassion. "What dirty bastard did this?" The boy was eight years old, bound and gagged and stripped naked. He had been dead for some seven or eight hours. Frost should have been on holiday. He had sneaked back into the station late at night to help himself to some of Commander Mullet's cigarettes and this case had been dumped on him as no other officers were available. And then another boy is reported missing. The ransom demand: $250,000 or the boy dies like the first.