A Place of Execution Read online

  George leaned forward, one hand clinging to a tree branch for support. There might be important evidence here. He didn’t want to walk over this ground and cause any more harm than the searchers had already done. Even as the thought crossed his mind, his close scrutiny revealed a clump of dark material snagged on the sharp end of a broken twig. Black woolly tights, Ruth Hawkin had said.

  George’s stomach clenched. ‘She’s been here,’ he said softly.

  He moved to his left, circling round the trampled area, stopping every couple of steps to examine what lay before him. He was almost diagonally opposite the point where he’d left the path when he saw it. Just in front of him and to the right, there was a dark patch on the startling white bark of a birch tree. Irresistibly drawn, he moved closer. The blood had dried long since. But adhering to it, unmistakably, were a dozen strands of bright blonde hair. And on the ground next to the tree, a horn toggle with a scrap of material still attached.

  7

  Thursday, 12th December 1963. 5.05PM

  George took a deep breath and raised his hand to knock. Before his knuckles could connect with the wood, the door swung open. Ruth Hawkin stood facing him, her drawn face grey in the evening light. She stepped to one side, leaning against the doorjamb for support. ‘You’ve found something,’ she said flatly.

  George crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him, determined not to provide the watching eyes with more spectacle than was inevitable. His eyes automatically swept the room.

  ‘Where’s the WPC?’ he asked, turning to face Ruth.

  ‘I sent her away,’ she said. ‘I don’t need taking care of like a child. Besides, I reckoned there must be something she could do that would be more use to my Alison than sitting on her backside drinking tea all day.’ There was an acerbic note in her voice that George hadn’t heard there before.

  Healthy, he thought. This was not a woman who was going to collapse in a whimpering heap at every piece of bad news. He was relieved about that, because he believed he definitely qualified as the bearer of evil tidings.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ he said.

  Her mouth twisted in a sardonic grimace. ‘That bad, eh?’ But she pushed herself away from the wall and dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. George sat opposite, noticing that she was still dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing the night before. She’d not been to bed, then.

  Certainly not slept. Probably not even tried.

  ‘Is your husband out searching?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I don’t think he was keen. He’s a fair-weather countryman, my Phil. He likes it when the sun shines and it looks like one of his picture postcards. But days like today, cold, damp, a touch of freezing fog in the air, he’s either sitting on top of the stove or else he’s locked in his darkroom with a pair of paraffin heaters. I’ll say this for him, though. Today, he made an exception.’

  ‘If you like, we can wait till he comes back,’ George said. ‘That won’t alter what you’ve got to say, will it?’ she said, her voice weary.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’ George opened his overcoat and removed two polythene bags from the inside poacher’s pocket. One contained the soft, fluffy ball of material snagged on the broken twig; the other, the smooth, ridged toggle, its natural shades of brown and bone strange against the man-made plastic. Attached to it by strong navy thread was a fragment of navy-blue felted wool. ‘I have to ask you, do you recognize either of these?’

  Her face was blank as she reached for the bags. She stared at them for a long moment. ‘What’s this supposed to be?’ she asked, prodding the material with her index finger.

  ‘We think it’s wool,’ George said. ‘Perhaps from tights like Alison was wearing.’

  ‘This could be anything,’ she said defensively. ‘It could have been out there for days, weeks.’

  ‘We’ll have to see what our lab can make of it.’ No point in trying to force her to accept what her mind did not want to admit. ‘What about the toggle? Do you recognize that?’

  She picked up the bag and ran her finger over the carved piece of antler. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. ‘Is this all you found of her? Is this all there is to show?’

  ‘We found signs of a struggle in the spinney.’ George pointed in what he thought was the right direction. ‘Between the house and the wood where we found Shep, down towards the back of the dale. It’s dark now, so there’s a limit to what we can achieve, but first thing in the morning, my men will carry out a fingertip search of the whole spinney, to see if we can find any more traces of Alison.’

  ‘But that’s all you found?’ Now there was eagerness in her face. He hated to dash her hopes, but he couldn’t lie. ‘We also found some hairs and a little blood. As if she’d hit her head on a tree.’ Ruth clapped her hand to her open mouth, suppressing a cry. ‘It really was very little blood, Mrs Hawkin. Nothing to indicate anything but a very minor injury, I promise you.’

  Her wide eyes stared at him, her fingers digging into her cheek as if physically holding her mouth closed could somehow contain her response. He didn’t know what to do, what to say. He had so little experience of people’s responses to tragedy and crisis. He’d always had senior officers or colleagues with more experience to blunt the acuteness of other people’s pain. Now he was on his own, and he knew he would measure himself for ever according to how he dealt with this stricken woman. George leaned across the table and covered Ruth Hawkin’s free hand with his own. ‘I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t grounds for concern,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing to indicate that Alison has come to any serious harm. Quite the opposite, really. And there is one thing that we can be sure of now. Alison hasn’t run away of her own accord. Now, I know that probably doesn’t seem like much of a consolation to you right now, but it means that we won’t be frittering away our resources on things that are a waste of time. We know that Alison didn’t go off on her own and catch a bus or a train, so we won’t be devoting officers to checking out bus and railway stations. We’ll be using every officer we have to follow lines of inquiry that could actually lead us somewhere.’ Ruth Hawkin’s hand fell away from her mouth. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  George gripped her hand. ‘There’s no reason to think so,’ he said. ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked. ‘I ran out a while back.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I should have sent yon WPC up to the shop at Longnor for me. That would have been useful.’ Once they were both smoking, he took back the plastic bags and pushed the cigarettes across in their place. ‘You keep these. I’ve more in the car.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The tightness in her face slackened momentarily and George saw for the first time the same smile that made Alison’s photograph so remarkable.

  He let enough time pass for them both to gain some benefit from the nicotine. ‘I need some help, Mrs Hawkin,’ George said. ‘Last night, we had to work against the clock to try and find traces of Alison. And today, we’ve been searching. All the mechanical, routine things that are often successful, that we have to do. But I’ve not had a proper chance to sit down and talk to you about what kind of girl Alison was. If someone has taken her—and I won’t lie to you, that is looking increasingly likely—I need to know everything I can about Alison so that I can work out where the point of contact is between Alison and this person. So I need you to tell me about your daughter.’

  Ruth sighed. ‘She’s a lovely lass. Bright as a button, always has been.

  Her teachers all say she could go to college if she sticks in at her books. University even.’ She cocked her head to one side. ‘You’ll have been to university.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes. I studied law at Manchester.’

  She nodded. ‘You’ll know what it’s like then, studying. She never has to be told to do her homework, you know, not like Derek and Janet. I think she actually likes schoolwork, though she’d cut her tongue out soon as admit it. God knows where that comes from. Neither me nor her dad were one
s for school. Couldn’t get out soon enough. She’s not a swot, mind you. She likes her fun an’ all, does our Alison.’

  ‘What does she do for fun?’ George probed gently. ‘They’re all daft about that pop music, her and Janet and Derek. The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers, all that lot. Charlie too, though he’s not got the time to be sitting round every night listening to records. But he goes to the dances at the Pavilion Gardens, and he’s always telling Alison what records she should get next. She’s got more records than the shop, I’m always telling her. You’d need more than two ears to listen to that lot. Phil buys them for her. He goes into Buxton every week and chooses a selection from the hit parade as well as the ones Charlie tells her about…’ Her voice tailed off. ‘What else does she do?’

  ‘Sometimes Charlie takes them into Buxton to the roller-skating on a Wednesday night.’ Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Oh God, I wish he’d been taking them last night,’ she cried, sudden realization felling her. Her head dropped and she drew so hard on her cigarette that George could hear the tobacco crackle. When she looked up, her eyes brimmed with tears and held an appeal that cut directly through his professional defences to his heart. ‘Find her, please,’ she croaked.

  He pressed his lips together and nodded. ‘Believe me, Mrs Hawkin, I intend to do just that.’

  ‘Even if it’s only to bury her.’

  ‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ he said.

  ‘Aye. You and me both.’ She exhaled a narrow stream of smoke. ‘You and me both.’

  He waited for a moment, then said, ‘What about friends? Who was she close to?’

  Ruth sighed. ‘It’s hard for them, making friends outside Scardale. They never get the chance to join in anything after school. If they get invited to parties or owt, chances are they can’t get back home afterwards. The nearest they can get on a bus is Longnor. So they just don’t go. Besides, folk in Buxton are set against Scardale folk. They think we’re all heathen inbred idiots.’ Her voice was sarcastic. ‘The kids get picked on. So they stick to their own, by and large.

  Our Alison’s good company, and I hear tell from her teachers that she’s well enough liked at school. But she’s never really had what you’d call a best friend apart from her cousins.’ Another dead end. ‘There’s one other thing…I’d like to look at Alison’s room, if I may. Just to get a sense of what she was like.’ He didn’t add, ‘and to help myself to the contents of her hairbrush so the forensic scientists can compare what we found sticking to the blood on the tree in the spinney.’

  She got to her feet, her movements those of a woman far older. ‘I’ve got the heater on up there.

  Just in case…’ She left the sentence unfinished.

  He followed her into the hall, which was no warmer than it had been the night before. The transition nearly took his breath away. Ruth led the way up a broad flight of stairs with barley-sugar-twist banisters in oak turned almost black by years of polishing. ‘One other thing,’ he said as they climbed. ‘I presume that the fact that Alison is still called Carter means your husband hasn’t formally adopted her?’ The tensing of the muscles in her neck and back was so swift George could almost believe he’d imagined it. ‘Phil were all for it,’ she said. ‘He wanted to adopt. But Alison were only six when her dad…died. Old enough to remember how much she loved him. Too young to see he was a human being with faults and failings. She thinks letting Phil adopt her would be a betrayal of her dad’s memory. I reckon she’ll come round in time, but she’s a stubborn lass, won’t be pushed where she doesn’t want to go.’ They were on the landing now and Ruth turned to him, face composed and unreadable. ‘I persuaded Phil to let it lie for now.’ She pointed past George, down a corridor that made a strange dog-leg halfway down where the building had been extended at some indeterminate period. ‘Alison’s room is the last one on the right. You won’t mind if I don’t come with you.’ Again, it was a statement, not a question. George found himself admiring the way this woman still managed to know her own mind, even under such extreme stress.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Hawkin. I won’t be long.’ He walked along the passage, conscious of her eyes on him. But even that uncomfortable knowledge wasn’t sufficient distraction to prevent him noting his surroundings.

  The carpet was worn, but had clearly once been expensive. Some of the prints and watercolours that lined the wall were spotted with age, but still retained their charm. George recognized several scenes from the southern part of the county where he’d grown up as well as the familiar stately historic houses of Chatsworth, Haddon and Hardwick. He noticed that the floor was uneven at the jink in the corridor, as if the builders had been incompetent in all three dimensions. At the last door on the right, he paused and took a deep breath. This might be the closest he’d ever get to Alison Carter.

  The warmth that hit him like a blanket seemed curiously appropriate to what was, in spite of its size, a snug room. Because it was on the corner of the house, Alison’s bedroom had two windows, increasing the sense of space. The windows were long and shallow, each divided into four by deep stone lintels which revealed the eighteen-inch thickness of the walls. He closed the door and stepped into the middle of the room.

  First impressions, George reminded himself. Warm: there was an electric fire as well as the plug-in oil radiator. Comfortable: the threequarter-sized bed had a thick quilt covered in dark-green satin, and the two basket chairs had plump cushions. Modern: the carpet was thick brown shag pile with swirls of olive-green and mustard running through it, and the walls were decorated with pictures of pop stars, mostly cut from magazines by the looks of their skewed edges. Expensive: there was a plain wooden wardrobe and matching dressing table with a long, low mirror and a vanity stool in front of it, all so unscarred they had to be relatively new. George had seen bedroom suites like that when he and Anne were choosing their own furniture and he had a pretty good idea how much it must have cost. Cheap it wasn’t. On a table under the window was a Dansette record player, dark red plastic with cream knobs. A deep stack of records was piled haphazardly underneath. Philip Hawkin was clearly determined to make a good impression on his stepdaughter, he surmised.

  Maybe he thought the way to her heart was through the material goods she must have lacked as the child of a widow in a community as impoverished as Scardale.

  George moved across to the dressing table and folded himself awkwardly on to the stool. He caught his eye in the mirror. The last time his eyes had looked like that had been when he’d been cramming for his finals. And he’d missed a patch of stubble under his left ear, a direct result of the lack of vanity of the Methodist faith. The absence of a mirror in the vestry had forced him to shave in his rear-view mirror. No self-respecting advertising agency would hire him to promote anything except sleeping pills. He pulled a face at himself and got to work. Alison’s hairbrush lay bristles upwards on the dressing table, and George expertly removed as many hairs as he could. Luckily, she’d not been too fastidious and he was able to accumulate a couple of dozen, which he transferred to an empty polythene bag.

  Then, with a sigh, he began the distasteful search of Alison’s personal possessions. Half an hour later, he had found nothing unexpected. He’d even flicked through every book on the small bookcase that stood by the bed. Nancy Drew, the Famous Five, the Chalet School, Georgette Heyer, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre held neither secret nor surprise. A well-thumbed edition of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury contained only poetry.The dressing table yielded schoolgirl underwear, a couple of training bras, half a dozen bars of scented soap, a sanitary belt and half a packet of towels, a jewellery box containing a couple of cheap pendants and a baby’s silver christening bracelet inscribed, ‘Alison Margaret Carter’. The only thing he might have expected to find but hadn’t was a bible. On the other hand, Scardale was so cut off from the rest of the world, they might still be worshipping the corn goddess here. Maybe the missionaries had never made it this far.

  A small wo
oden box on the dressing table yielded more interesting results. It contained half a dozen black and white snapshots, most of them curled and yellowing at the edges. He recognized a youthful Ruth Hawkin, head thrown back in laughter, looking up at a dark-haired man whose head was ducked down in awkward shyness. There were two other photographs of the pair, arms linked and faces carefree, all obviously taken on the Golden Mile at Blackpool. Honeymoon? George wondered. Beneath them was a pair of photographs of the same man, dark hair flopping over his forehead. He was dressed in work clothes, a thick belt holding up trousers that looked as if they’d been made for a man much longer in the torso. In one, he was standing on a harrow hitched to a tractor.

  In the other, he was crouched beside a blonde child who was grinning happily at the camera.

  Unmistakably Alison. The final photograph was more recent, judging by its white margins. It showed Charlie Lomas and an elderly woman leaning against a dry-stone wall, blurred limestone cliffs in the background. The woman’s face was shadowed by a straw hat whose broad brim was forced down over her ears by the scarf that tied under her chin. All that was visible was the straight line of her mouth and her jutting chin, but it was obvious from her awkwardly bent body that she was far too old to be Charlie Lomas’s mother. As if they were being captured by a Victorian photographer, held still by dire warnings of moving during the exposure, Charlie stood stony-faced and gazed straight at the camera. His arms were folded across his chest and he looked like every gauche and defiant young lad George had ever seen protesting his innocence in a police station.