A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  George stood up and gestured towards the door. ‘You’re free to leave whenever you want, Mr Lomas. However, we will need to speak to you again.’

  Clough rose and walked round to George’s side as Charlie stalked angrily out of the door, all raw-boned clumsiness and outrage. ‘He’s not got the gumption,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ George said. The two men walked out in Charlie’s wake, pausing on the threshold as the youth set off down the Scardale road.

  George stared after Charlie, wondering. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be heading home now. I’ll be back before first light in the morning. You’re in charge, at least of CID, till then.’

  Clough laughed. It seemed to die in a puff of white breath in the oppressive night air. The and Cragg, sir, eh? That’ll give the villains something to think about. Was there any line of inquiry in particular you wanted us to pursue?’

  ‘Whoever took Alison must have got her out of the dale somehow,’ George said, almost thinking aloud. ‘He couldn’t have carried her for long, not a normally developed thirteen-year-old girl. If he took her down the Scarlaston valley into Denderdale, he’d have had to hike about four miles before he got to a road. But if he brought her up here to the Longnor road, it’s probably only about a mile and a half as the crow flies. Why don’t you and Cragg do a door-to-door in Longnor this evening, see if anybody noticed a vehicle parked by the side of the road near the Scardale turn?’

  ‘Right you are, sir. I’ll just find DC Cragg and we’ll get to it.’ George returned to the incident room and arranged for the tracker dogs to work Denderdale the following morning, spent half an hour in Buxton Police Station filling out requisition forms for the forensic lab on the evidence from the spinney and Alison’s hairbrush, then finally set off for home.

  The villagers would just have to wait till tomorrow.

  9

  Thursday, 12th December 1963. 8.06PM

  George couldn’t remember ever closing his front door with a greater sense of relief. Before he could even take off his hat, the door to the living room opened and Anne was there, taking the three short steps into his arms. ‘It’s great to be home,’ he sighed, drinking in the musky smell of her hair, conscious too that he’d not washed since the previous morning. ‘You work too hard,’ she scolded gently. ‘You’ll do nobody any favours if you work yourself into the ground. Come on through, there’s a fire on and it won’t take me five minutes to warm up the casserole.’ She moved back from his embrace and looked critically at him. ‘You look worn out. It’s a hot bath and bed for you as soon as you’ve finished your tea.’

  ‘I’d rather have the bath first, if the water’s hot.’

  ‘And so you shall. I’ve had the immersion on. I was going to have a bath myself, but you’d better take the water. You get yourself undressed and I’ll run the bath.’ She shooed him upstairs ahead of her. Half an hour later, he was in his dressing gown at the kitchen table, wolfing down a generous helping of beef and carrot stew accompanied by a plate of bread and butter. ‘Sorry there’s no spuds,’ Anne apologized. ‘I thought bread and butter would be quicker and I knew you’d need something as soon as you got in. You never eat properly when you’re working.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he grunted through a mouthful of food.

  ‘Have you found her, then, your missing girl? Is that why you’re home?’

  The food in his mouth seemed to congeal into an indigestible lump. George forced it down his gullet. It felt like swallowing a hairball the size of a golf ball. ‘No,’ he said, staring down at his plate. ‘And I don’t think she’ll be alive when we do.’

  Anne’s face paled. ‘But that’s awful, George. How can you be sure?’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘I can’t be sure. But we know she didn’t go off of her own free will. Don’t ask me how, but we know. She’s not from the kind of family where she’d be kidnapped for a ransom. And people who steal children generally don’t keep them alive for long. So my guess is she’s already dead.

  And if she’s not, she will be before we can find her, because we’ve got absolutely nothing to go on.

  The villagers act like we’re the enemy instead of on their side, and the landscape is so difficult to search properly it feels like even that’s conspiring against us.’ He pushed his plate away and reached for Anne’s cigarettes. ‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘How can her mother begin to cope with it?’

  ‘She’s a strong woman, Ruth Hawkin. I suppose if you grow up in a place where life is as hard as it is in Scardale, you learn to bend rather than break. But I don’t know how she’s holding together.

  She lost her first husband in a farming accident seven years ago, and now this. The new husband’s not a lot of use either. One of those selfish beggars who see everything in terms of how it’s going to affect them.’

  ‘What? You mean a man?’ Anne teased.

  ‘Very funny. I’m not like that. I don’t expect my tea on the table when I walk through the door, you know. You don’t have to wait on me.’

  ‘You’d soon get fed up if it wasn’t.’

  George conceded with a shrug and a smile. ‘You’re probably right. Us men get used to you women taking care of us. But if our child ever went missing, I don’t think I’d be demanding my tea before my wife went out looking for her.’

  ‘He did that?’

  ‘According to one witness.’ He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’

  ‘Who am I going to tell? The only people I know here are other copper’s wives. And they’ve not exactly taken me to their bosom. The ones my age are all lower ranks’ wives so they don’t trust me, especially since I’m a qualified teacher and none of them have ever done anything more challenging than working in a shop or an office. And the officers’ wives are all older than me and treat me like I’m a silly girl. So you can be sure I’m not going to be gossiping about your case, George,’ Anne said with an edge of acerbity.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not been easy for you to make new friends here.’

  He reached out to grip her hand in his.

  ‘I don’t know how I’d go on if I lost a child.’ Almost unconsciously, her free hand slipped to her stomach.

  George’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ he asked sharply.

  Anne’s fair skin flushed scarlet. ‘I don’t know, George. It’s just that…well, my monthly visitor’s overdue. A week overdue. So…I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to say anything till I was sure, what with it being a missing child case you’re on. But yes, I think I might be expecting.’ A slow smile spread across George’s face as her words sank in. ‘Really? I’m going to be a dad?’

  ‘It could be a false alarm. But I’ve never been late before.’ She looked almost apprehensive.

  George jumped to his feet and swung her out of her chair, spinning her around in a whirl of joy.

  ‘It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.’ They staggered to a halt and he kissed her hard and passionately. ‘I love you, Mrs Bennett.’

  ‘And I love you too, Mr Bennett.’

  He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. A child. His child. All he had to do now was figure out how to manage what had been beyond every parent since Adam and Eve: how to keep it safe. Up to that point, Alison Carter had been an important case to Detective Inspector George Bennett. Now it had symbolic importance. Now it was a crusade.

  In Scardale, the mood was as brooding as the limestone crags surrounding the dale. Charlie Lomas’s experience at the hands of the police had flashed round the village as fast as the news of Alison’s disappearance. While the women checked anxiously and regularly that their children were all in bed asleep, the men had congregated in the kitchen of Bankside Cottage, where Ruth and her daughter had lived until her marriage to Hawkin.

  Terry Lomas, Charlie’s father, chewed the stem of his pipe and grumbled about the police.

  ‘They’ve got no right to treat our Charlie like a criminal,’ he said.
<
br />   Charlie’s older brother John scowled. ‘They’ve got no idea what’s happened to our Alison. They’re just making an example of Charlie so it looks like they’re doing something.’

  ‘They’re not going to let it go at that, though, are they?’ Charlie’s uncle Robert said. ‘They’ll go through us one by one if they get no change out of Charlie. That Bennett bloke, he’s got a bee in his bonnet about Alison, you can tell.’

  ‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Ray Carter chipped in. ‘It means he’s going to do a proper job.

  He’s not going to settle till he’s got an answer.’

  ‘That’s fine if it’s the right answer,’ Terry said. ‘Aye,’ Robert said pensively. ‘But how do we make sure he doesn’t get distracted from what he should be doing because he’s too busy persecuting the likes of young Charlie? The lad’s not tough, we all know that. They’ll be putting words in his mouth. For all we know, if they can’t get the right man, they’ll decide to have Charlie anyway and to hell with it.’

  ‘There’s two roads we can go,’ Jack Lomas said. ‘We can stonewall them. Tell them nothing, except what we need to to cover Charlie’s back all ways. They’ll soon realize they’ll have to find another scapegoat then. Or we can bend over backwards to help them.

  Maybe that way they’ll realize that looking at the people who cared about our Alison isn’t going to find the lass or whoever took her.’

  There was a long silence in the kitchen, punctuated by Terry sucking on his pipe. Eventually, old Robert Lomas spoke. ‘Happen we can do both.’

  Without George, the work went on. The searchers had given up for the day, but in the incident room, uniformed officers made plans for the following day. Already, they had accepted offers from the local Territorial Army volunteers and the RAF cadets to join the hunt at the weekend. Nobody was voicing their thoughts, but everyone was pessimistic. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t cover every inch of Derbyshire if they had to. Up in Longnor, Clough and Cragg were awash with tea but starved of leads. They’d agreed to call it a night at half past nine, a farming community being earlier abed than the townies in Buxton. Just before close of play, Clough struck lucky. An elderly couple had been coming home from Christmas shopping in Leek and they’d noticed a Land Rover parked on the grass at the side of the Methodist Chapel. ‘Just before five, it was,’ the husband said definitely.

  ‘What made you notice it?’ Clough asked.

  ‘We attend the chapel,’ he said. ‘Normally, it’s only the minister who parks there. The rest of us leave our cars on the verge. Anybody local knows that.’

  ‘Do you think the driver parked off the road to avoid being noticed?’

  ‘I suppose so. He wasn’t to know that was the one parking place that would make him conspicuous, was he?’

  Clough nodded. ‘Did you see the driver?’

  Both shook their heads. ‘It was dark,’ the wife pointed out. ‘It didn’t have any lights on. And we were past it in moments.’

  ‘Was there anything you did notice about the Land Rover? Was it long wheelbase or short wheelbase? What colour was it? Was it a fixed top or a canvas one? Any letters or numbers from the registration?’ Clough probed.

  Again, they shook their heads dubiously. ‘We weren’t paying much attention, to be honest,’ the husband said. ‘We were talking about the fatstock show. Chap from Longnor took one of the top prizes and we’d been invited to join him for a drink in Leek. I think half the village was going to be there. But we decided to come home. My wife wanted to get the decorations up.’

  Clough glanced around at the home-made paper chains and the artificial Christmas tree complete with its pathetic string of fairy lights and a garland of tinsel that looked as if the dog had been chewing it since Christmas past. ‘I can see why,’ he said, deadpan. ‘I always like to get them done the day of the fatstock show,’ the woman said proudly. ‘Then we feel like Christmas is coming, don’t we. Father?’

  ‘We do, Doris, yes. So you see, Sergeant, our minds weren’t really on the Land Rover at all.’

  Clough got to his feet and smiled. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘At least you noticed it was there. That’s more than anybody else in the village did.’

  ‘Too busy celebrating Alee Grundy’s heifers,’ the man said sagely. Clough thanked them again and left, rendezvousing with Cragg in the local pub. He’d never believed that the rule about not drinking on duty need be strictly applied, especially on night shift. Like high-grade oil to an engine, a couple of drinks always made his mind run more smoothly. Over a pint of Marston’s Pedigree, he told Cragg what he’d heard.

  ‘That’s great,’ Cragg enthused. ‘Professor'll like that.’ Clough pulled a face. ‘Up to a point. He’ll like the fact we’ve got a pair of witnesses who saw a Land Rover parked where locals knew not to park. He’ll like the fact that this unusual piece of parking happened around the same time Alison disappeared.’ Then Clough explained what he thought George wouldn’t like.

  ‘Bugger,’ Cragg said.

  ‘Aye.’ Clough took two inches off his pint in a single swallow. ‘Bugger.’

  10

  Friday, 13th December 1963. 5.35AM

  George walked into Buxton Police Station through the front office to find a uniformed constable attaching festive bells of honeycomb paper to the wall with drawing pins. ‘Very jolly,’ he grunted.

  ‘Sergeant Lucas here?’

  ‘You might just catch him, sir. He said he was going to the canteen for a bacon sandwich. First break he’s had all night, sir.’

  ‘The red bell’s higher than the green one,’

  George said on his way out.

  The PC glared at the door as it swung shut.

  George found Bob Lucas munching a bacon sandwich and staring glumly at the morning papers.

  ‘Seen this, sir?’ he greeted him, pushing the Daily News across the table. George picked it up and began to read.

  Daily News, Friday, 13th December 1963, p.5

  MISSING GIRL: IS THERE A LINK?

  Dogs in manhunt for Alison—By Daily News Reporter

  Police yesterday refused to rule out a link between missing schoolgirl Alison Carter, 13, and two similar disappearances less than thirty miles away within the last six months.

  There are striking similarities between the three cases, and detectives spoke privately of the need to consider whether a joint task force should be set up among the three police forces investigating the cases. The latest manhunt centres round Alison Carter, who vanished from the remote Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale on Wednesday. She had taken her collie, Shep, for a walk after school, but when she failed to return home, her mother, Mrs Ruth Hawkin, alerted local police at Buxton.

  A search led by tracker dogs failed to find any trace of the girl, although her dog was discovered unharmed in nearby woods.

  Her mystery disappearance comes less than three weeks after 12-year-old John Kilbride went missing in Ashton-under-Lyne. He was last seen in the town’s market at teatime. Lancashire police have so far failed to come up with a single positive sighting of him since.

  Pauline Reade, 16, was going to a dance when she left her family home in Wiles-street, Gorton, Manchester in July. But she never arrived and, as with John and Alison, police have no idea what happened to her.

  A senior Derbyshire police officer said: ‘At this point, we rule nothing out and nothing in. We can find no reason for Alison being missing. She was not in trouble at home or at school.

  ‘If we do not find Alison today, the search will be intensified. We just don’t know what has happened to her, and we’re very concerned, not least because of the very bitter weather we’re experiencing at the moment.’

  A Manchester CID officer told the Daily News, ‘Of course, we hope Alison is found quickly. But we would be very happy to share the fruits of our investigations with Derbyshire if this case drags on.’

  ‘Bloody journalists,’ George complained. ‘They twist everything you say. Where’s all
the stuff I said about there being more dissimilarities than there are similarities? I might as well have saved my breath. This Don Smart’s just going to write what he wants to write, no matter what the truth is.’

  ‘It’s always the same with the Fleet Street reporters,’ Lucas said sourly. ‘The local lads have to stay on the right side of the truth because they have to come back to us week after week for their stories, but that London lot don’t give a monkey’s whether they upset the police in Buxton or not.’

  He sighed. ‘Were you looking for me, sir?’

  ‘Just something I wanted you to pass on to the day shift. I think it’s time we located any known sex offenders in the area and brought them in for questioning.’

  ‘In the whole division, sir?’ Lucas sounded weary.

  Sometimes, George thought, he understood exactly why some officers remained locked inside their uniforms for the duration of their careers. ‘I think we’ll concentrate on the immediate area round Scardale. Maybe a five-mile radius, extending it up on the northern side to include Buxton.’

  ‘Hikers come from miles around,’ Lucas said. ‘There’s no guaranteeing our man isn’t from Manchester or Sheffield or Stoke.’

  ‘I know, Sergeant, but we’ve got to start somewhere.’ George pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘I’m off to Scardale. I’ll be there all day, I expect.’

  ‘You’ll have heard about the Land Rover?’ Lucas said, his voice as neutral as his face was smug.

  ‘Land Rover?’

  ‘Your lads turned up a pair of witnesses in Longnor last night. Saw a Land Rover parked off the road near the Scardale turn-off round about the time young Alison left the house.’

  George’s face lit up. ‘But that’s fantastic news!’

  ‘Not entirely. It were dark. The witnesses couldn’t give any description except that it was a Land Rover.’