A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  As the car drew to a halt, the woman took a couple of impulsive steps towards them. Then a man appeared at her shoulder and put an arm round her. Together they waited while the police officers approached, George hanging back slightly to let Bob Lucas take the lead. He could use the time Lucas was taking for the introductions to note his first impressions of Alison Carter’s mother and stepfather.

  Ruth Hawkin looked at least ten years older than his Anne, which would put her in her late thirties.

  He reckoned she was about five feet three, with the sturdy build of a woman used to hard work. Her mid-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, which emphasized the drawn look around grey-blue eyes that showed signs of recent weeping. Her skin looked weather-beaten but her pursed lips showed faint traces of lipstick in their cracks. She wore an obviously hand-knitted twin set in a blue heather mixture over a pleated grey tweed skirt. Her legs were encased in ribbed woollen stockings, her feet shod sensibly in ankle boots with a zip up the front. It was hard to square what he was seeing with Peter Grundy’s description of Ruth as a good-looking woman. George would not have looked twice at her in a bus queue except for her obvious distress, which showed in the tightness of her body, arms crossed defensively across her chest. He assumed it had also drained her attractiveness from her. The man standing behind her seemed far more at ease. The hand that wasn’t lightly touching his wife’s shoulder was thrust casually into the pocket of a dark-brown cardigan with suede leather facings. He wore grey flannel trousers whose turn-ups flopped over well-worn leather slippers. Philip Hawkin hadn’t been out knocking on village doors with his wife, George noted.

  Hawkin was as handsome as his wife was ordinary. A couple of inches under six feet, he had straight dark hair swept back from a widow’s peak, lightly brilliantined to hold it in place. His face reminded George of a shield, with a broad, square forehead tapering to a pointed chin. Straight brows over dark-brown eyes were like an heraldic device; a slender nose seemed to point to a mouth shaped so that it appeared always to be on the point of a smile.

  AH of this George itemized and filed away in his memory. Bob Lucas was still speaking. ‘So if we could come in and take some details, we can get a clearer picture of what’s happened.’ He paused expectantly. Hawkin spoke for the first time, his voice unmistakably alien to the Derbyshire Peaks.

  ‘Of course, of course. Come inside, officers. I’m sure she’s going to turn up safe and well, but it doesn’t hurt to follow the procedures, does it?’ He dropped his hand to the small of Ruth’s back and steered her back into the house. She seemed numb, certainly incapable of taking any initiative.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve been dragged out on such a cold night,’ Hawkin added smoothly as he crossed the room.

  George followed Lucas and Grundy across the threshold and into a farmhouse kitchen. The floors were stone flagged, the walls rough stone brightened with a coat of white distemper that had discoloured unevenly, depending on its proximity to the wood-burning stove and the electric cooker. A dresser and several cupboards of differing heights painted hospital green ranged round the walls, and a pair of deep stone sinks were set under the windows that looked out towards the end of the dale. Another pair of windows gave a view of the village green, the phone box bright against the darkness. Various pans and kitchen implements hung from the black beams that crossed the room a few feet apart. It smelled of smoke, cabbage and animal fat.

  Without waiting for anyone else, Hawkin sat down immediately in a carving chair at the head of a scrubbed wooden table. ‘Make the men some tea, Ruth,’ he said.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, sir,’ George interjected as the woman lifted a kettle off the stove. ‘But I’d rather we pressed on. Where it’s a matter of a missing child, we try not to waste any time. Mrs Hawkin, if you could sit down and tell us what you know.’

  Ruth glanced at Hawkin as if seeking his permission. His eyebrows twitched upwards, but he nodded acquiescence. She pulled out a chair and sank into it, folding her arms on the table in front of her. George sat down opposite her, with Lucas beside him. Grundy unbuttoned his overcoat and lowered himself into the carver at the opposite end to Hawkin. He took his pocketbook from his tunic and flipped it open. Licking the end of his pencil, he looked up expectantly.

  ‘How old is Alison, Mrs Hawkin?’ George asked gently.

  The woman cleared her throat. ‘Thirteen past. Her birthday’s in March.’

  Her voice cracked, as if something inside her were splintering.

  ‘And had there been any trouble between you?’

  ‘Steady on, Inspector,’ Hawkin protested. ‘What do you mean, trouble? What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, sir,’ George said. ‘But Alison’s at a difficult age, and sometimes young girls get things out of all proportion. A perfectly normal ticking-off can feel like the end of the world to them. I’m trying to establish whether there are any grounds for supposing Alison might have run away.’

  Hawkin leaned back in his seat with a frown. He reached behind him, tipping the chair back on two legs. He grabbed a packet of Embassy and a small chrome lighter from the dresser and proceeded to light a cigarette without offering the packet to anyone else. ‘Of course she’s run away,’ he said, a smile softening the hard line of his eyebrows. ‘That’s what teenagers do. They do it to get you worried, to get their own back for some imagined slight. You know what I mean,’ he continued with a man-of-the-world air that included the police officers. ‘Christmas is coming. I remember one year I went missing for hours. I thought my mum would be so glad to see me back home safe that I’d be able to talk her into buying me a bike for Christmas.’ His smile turned rueful. ‘All I got was a sore backside. Mark my words, Inspector, she’ll turn up before morning, expecting the fatted calf.’

  ‘She’s not like that, Phil,’ Ruth said plaintively. ‘I’m telling you, something’s happened to her. She wouldn’t worry us like this.’

  ‘What happened this afternoon, Mrs Hawkin?’ George asked, taking out his own cigarettes and offering them to her. With a tight nod of gratitude, she took one, her work-reddened fingers trembling. Before he could get his matches out, Hawkin had leaned across to light it. George lit his own cigarette and waited while she composed herself to respond. ‘The school bus drops Alison and two of her cousins at the road end about quarter past four. Somebody from the village always goes up and picks them up, so she gets in about the half-hour. She came in at the usual time. I was here in the kitchen, peeling vegetables for the tea. She gave me a kiss and said she were off out with the dog. I said did she not want a cup of tea first, but she said she’d been shut in all day and she wanted a run with the dog. She often did that. She hated being indoors all day.’ Ambushed by the memory, Ruth faltered then stopped. ‘Did you see her, Mr Hawkin?’

  George asked, more to give Ruth a break than because he cared about the answer.

  ‘No. I was in my darkroom. I lose all sense of time when I’m in there.’

  ‘I hadn’t realized you were a photographer,’ George said, noticing Grundy shift in his seat.

  ‘Photography, Inspector, is my first love. When I was a lowly civil servant, before I inherited this place from my uncle, it was never more than a hobby. Now, I’ve got my own darkroom, and this last year, I’ve become semi-professional. Some portraiture, of course, but mostly landscapes. Some of my picture postcards are on sale in Buxton. The Derbyshire light has a remarkable clarity.’

  Hawkin’s smile was dazzling this time.

  ‘I see,’ George said, wondering at a man who could think about the quality of light when his stepdaughter was missing on a freezing December night. ‘So you had no idea that Alison had come in and gone out?’

  ‘No, I heard nothing.’

  ‘Mrs Hawkin, was Alison in the habit of visiting anyone when she went out with the dog? A neighbour? You mentioned cousins that she goes to school with.’

  Ruth shook her head. ‘No. She’d just go up through the fi
elds to the coppice then back. In summer, she’d go further, up through the woodland to where the Scarlaston rises. There’s a fold in the hills, you can hardly see it till you’re on it, but you can cut through there, along the river bank, into Denderdale. But she’d never go that far of a winter’s night.’ She sighed. ‘Besides, I’ve been right round the village. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of her since she crossed the fields.’

  ‘What about the dog?’ Grundy asked. ‘Has the dog come back?’ It was a countryman’s question, George thought. He’d have got there eventually, but not as fast as Grundy.

  Ruth shook her head. ‘She’s not. But if Alison had had an accident, Shep wouldn’t have left her.

  She’d have barked, but she wouldn’t have left her. A night like tonight, you’d hear Shep anywhere in the dale. You’ve been out there. Did you hear her?’

  ‘That’s why I wondered,’ Grundy said. ‘The silence.’

  ‘Can you give us a description of what Alison was wearing?’ asked the ever-practical Lucas.

  ‘She had on a navy-blue duffel coat over her school uniform.’

  ‘Peak Girls’ High?’ Lucas asked.

  Ruth nodded. ‘Black blazer, maroon cardie, white shirt, black and maroon tie and maroon skirt.

  She’s wearing black woolly tights and black sheepskin boots that come up to mid-calf. You don’t run away in your school uniform,’ she burst out passionately, tears welling up in her eyes. She brushed them away angrily with the back of her hand. ‘Why are we sitting here like it was Sunday teatime? Why aren’t you out looking for her?’

  George nodded. ‘We’re going to, Mrs Hawkin. But we needed to get the details straight so that we don’t waste our efforts. How tall is Alison?’

  ‘She’s near on my height now. Five foot two, three, something like that. She’s slim built, just starting to look like a young woman.’

  ‘Have you got a recent photograph of Alison that we can show our officers?’ George asked.

  Hawkin pushed his chair back, the legs shrieking on the stone flags.

  He pulled open the drawer of the kitchen table and took out a handful of five-by-three prints. ‘I took these in the summer. About four months ago.’ He leaned across and spread them out in front of George. The face that looked up at him from five coloured head-and-shoulders portraits was not one he’d forget in a hurry.

  Nobody had warned him that she was beautiful. He felt his breath catch in his throat as he looked down at Alison. Collar-length hair the colour of set honey framed an oval face sprinkled with pale freckles. Her blue eyes had an almost. Slavic set to them, set wide apart on either side of a neat, straight nose. Her mouth was generous, her smile etching a single dimple in her left cheek. The only imperfection was a slanting scar that sliced through her right eyebrow, leaving a thin white line through the dark hairs. In each shot, her pose varied slightly, but her candid smile never altered.

  He glanced up at Ruth, whose face had imperceptibly softened at the sight of her daughter’s face.

  Now he could see what had attracted Hawkin’s eye to the farmer’s widow. Without the strain that had stripped gentleness from Ruth’s face, her beauty was as obvious as her daughter’s. With the ghost of a smile touching her lips, it was hard to imagine he’d believed her plain.

  ‘She’s a lovely girl,’ George murmured. He got to his feet, picking up the photographs. ‘I’d like to hang on to these for the time being.’ Hawkin nodded. ‘Sergeant, if I could have a word outside?’

  The two men stepped from the warm kitchen into the icy night air. As he closed the door behind them, George heard Ruth say in a defeated voice, ‘I’ll make tea now.’

  ‘What do you think?’ George asked. He didn’t need Lucas’s confirmation to know that this was serious, but if he assumed authority now over the uniformed man, it was tantamount to saying he thought the girl had been murdered or seriously assaulted. And in spite of his growing conviction that that was what had happened, he had a superstitious dread that acting as if it were so might just make it so.

  ‘I think we should get the dog handler out fast as you like, sir. She could have had a fall. She could be lying injured. If she’s been hit in a rock fall, the dog could have been killed.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got four extra uniformed officers on duty at the Kennedy memorial service. If we’re quick, we can catch them before they go off duty and get them out here as well as every man we can spare.’ Lucas reached past him to open the door. ‘I’ll need to use their phone. No point in trying the 26 radio here. You’d get better reception down the bottom of Markham Main pit shaft.’

  ‘OK, Sergeant. You organize what you can by way of a search party. I’m going to call in DS Clough and DC Cragg. They can make a start on a door-to-door in the village, see if we can narrow down who saw her last and where.’ George felt a faint fluttering in his stomach, like first-night nerves. Of course, that’s exactly what it was. If his fears were right, he was standing on the threshold of the first major case he’d been entirely responsible for. He’d be judged by this for the rest of his career. If he didn’t uncover what had happened to Alison Carter, it would be an albatross round his neck for ever.

  3

  Wednesday, 11th December 1963. 9.07PM

  The dog’s breath swirled and hung in the night air as if it had a life of its own. The Alsatian sat calmly on its haunches, ears pricked, alert eyes scanning Scardale village green. PC Dusty Miller, the dog handler, stood by his charge, one hand absently fingering the short tan and brindle hair between its ears. ‘Prince'll need some clothes and shoes belonging to the lass,’ he told Sergeant Lucas. ‘The more she’s worn them, the better. We can manage without, but it’d help the dog.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Mrs Hawkin,’ George interjected before Lucas could assign anyone to the task. It wasn’t that he thought a uniformed officer would be deficient in tact; he simply wanted another chance to observe Alison Carter’s mother and her husband. He walked into the warm fug of the kitchen, where Hawkin was still sitting at the table, still smoking. Now he had a cup of tea in front of him, as did the WPC who sat at the other end of the table. They both looked up as he entered. Hawkin raised his eyebrows in a question. George shook his head. Hawkin pursed his lips and rubbed a hand over his eyes. George was pleased to see the man finally showing some signs of concern for his stepdaughter’s fate. That Alison might be in real danger seemed finally to have penetrated his self-absorption.

  Ruth Hawkin was at the sink, her hands among the suds in the washing-up bowl. But she wasn’t doing the dishes. She was motionless, staring intently into the unbroken dark of the night. The moonlight barely penetrated the area behind the house; this far down the valley, the tall limestone reefs were close enough to cut off most of it. There was nothing beyond the window but a faint, dark outline against the grey-white of the cliffs. An outbuilding of some sort, George guessed. He wondered if it had been searched yet. He cleared his throat. ‘Mrs Hawkin…’

  Slowly, she turned. Even in the brief time they’d been in Scardale, she seemed to have aged, the skin tightening across her cheekbones and her eyes sinking back into her head. ‘Yes?’

  ‘We need some of Alison’s clothes. To help the tracker dog.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll fetch something.’

  ‘The dog handler suggested some shoes, and something she’s worn a few times. A jumper or a coat, I suppose.’

  Ruth walked out of the room with the automatic step of the sleepwalker.

  ‘I wonder if I could use your phone again,’ George asked.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Hawkin said, waving his hand towards the hallway. George followed Ruth through the door and made for the table where the old–fashioned black Bakelite phone squatted on a piecrust table next to a wedding photograph of a radiant Ruth with her new husband. If Hawkin hadn’t been so handsomely unmistakable, George doubted he would have identified the bride.

  As soon as he closed the door behind him, he felt icy coldness grip him. If the girl was
used to living in temperatures like this, she’d stand a better chance outside, he thought. He could see Ruth Hawkin disappear round the turn in the stairs as he lifted the receiver and began to dial. Four rings, then it was picked up. ‘Buxton four-two-two,’ the familiar voice said, instantly soothing his anxieties.

  ‘Anne, it’s me. I’ve had to go out to Scardale on a case. A missing girl.’

  ‘The poor parents,’ Anne said instantly. ‘And poor you, having that to deal with on a night like this.’

  ‘It’s the girl I’m worried about. Obviously, I’m going to be late. In fact, depending on what happens, I might not be back at all tonight.’

  ‘You push yourself too hard, George. It’s bad for you, you know. If you’re not back by bedtime, I’ll make up some sandwiches and leave them in the fridge so there’s something for you to eat. They’d better be gone by the time I get up,’ she added, her scolding only half teasing. If Ruth Hawkin hadn’t reappeared on the stairs, he’d have told Anne how much he loved the way she cared about him. Instead, he simply said, ‘Thanks. I’ll be in touch when I can,’ and replaced the receiver. He moved to the foot of the stairs to meet Ruth who was clutching a small bundle to her chest. ‘We’re doing all we can,’ he said, knowing it was inadequate.

  ‘I know,’ she said. She opened her arms to reveal a pair of slippers and a crumpled flannelette pyjama jacket. ‘Will you give these to the dog man?’

  George took the clothes, noting with a stab of nameless emotion how pathetic the circumstances had rendered the blue velveteen slippers and the pink sprigged jacket. Holding them gingerly, to avoid contamination with his scent, George walked back through the kitchen and out into the night air. Wordlessly, he handed the items to Miller and watched while the dog handler spoke soft words of command to Prince, offering the garments to its long nose.