By the time George got over the stile, the lights from the tracker team’s torches were no more than a hazy wavering in the distance. He guessed they had entered some woodland by the way the yellow beams seemed suddenly to disappear and reappear at random. Switching on the torch he’d borrowed from the police Land Rover that had brought some of the men over from Buxton, he hurried across the uneven tufts of coarse grass as quickly as he could.
The trees loomed up sooner than he’d expected. At first, all he could see was undisturbed undergrowth, but swinging the torch to and fro soon revealed a narrow path where the earth was packed hard. George plunged into the woodland, trying to balance haste against caution. The torch beam sent crazy shadows dancing off in every direction, forcing him to concentrate harder on the path than he’d had to do in the field. Frosted leaves crunched under his feet, the occasional twig whipped his face or brushed his shoulder, and everywhere the decaying mushroomy smell of the woodland assailed him. Every twenty yards or so, he snapped off his torch to check his bearings against the lights ahead. Absolute darkness swallowed him, but it was hard to resist the feeling that there were hidden eyes staring at him, following his every move. It was a relief to snap his torch on again. A few minutes into the wood, he realized the lights before him had stopped moving. Putting on a spurt that nearly sent him flying over a tree root, he almost collided with a uniformed constable hurriedly retracing his steps.
‘Have you found her?’ George gasped.
‘No such luck, sir. We have found the dog, though.’
‘Alive?’
The man nodded. ‘Aye. But she’s been tied up.’
‘In silence?’ George asked incredulously.
‘Somebody taped her muzzle shut, sir. Poor beast could barely manage a whimper. PC Miller sent me back to fetch Sergeant Lucas before we did owt.’
‘I’ll take responsibility now,’ George said firmly. ‘But go back anyway and tell Sergeant Lucas what’s happened. I think it might be wise to keep people out of this piece of woodland until daylight. Whatever’s happened to Alison Carter, there might be evidence that we’re destroying right now.’
The constable nodded and took off along the path at a trot. ‘Bloody mountain goats they breed around here,’ George muttered as he blundered on down the path.
The clearing he emerged into was a chiaroscuro of torchlight and strangely elongated shadows. At the far end, a black and white collie strained against a rope tied round a tree. Liquid brown irises stood out against the white of its bulging eyes. The dull pink of the elastoplast that was wound round its muzzle looked incongruous in so pastoral a setting. George was aware of the stares of the uniformed men, looking him over speculatively.
‘I think we should put that dog out of its misery. What do you say, PC Miller?’ he asked, directing his question to the dog handler, who was methodically covering the clearing with Prince.
‘I don’t think she’ll argue with you on that, sir,’ Miller said. ‘I’ll take Prince out of the way so he won’t upset her.’ With a jerk on the dog’s leash and a word of command, he made for the far side of the clearing. George noticed his dog was still casting around as he’d done outside the house earlier.
‘Has he lost the scent?’ he asked, suddenly concerned about more important matters than a dog’s discomfort.
‘Looks like the trail ends here,’ the dog handler said. ‘I’ve been right round the clearing twice, and down the path in the opposite direction. But there’s nothing.’
‘Does that mean she was carried out of here?’ George asked, a cold tremor twitching upwards from his stomach.
‘Like as not,’ Miller said grimly. ‘One thing’s for sure. She didn’t walk out of here unless she turned straight round and walked back to the house. And if that’s what she did, why tie up the bitch and muzzle her?’
‘Maybe she wanted to creep up on her mum? Or her stepdad?’ one of the constables hazarded.
‘The dog wouldn’t have barked at them, would she? So there’d be no need to muzzle her, or leave her behind,’ Miller said.
‘Unless she thought one or other of them might be with a stranger,’ George said, half under his breath.
‘Aye well, my money says she never left this clearing under her own steam.’ Miller spoke with finality as he walked his dog down the path.
George approached the dog cautiously. The whimper in the dog’s throat turned to a soft grumble. What had Ruth Hawkin called it? Shep, that was it. ‘OK, Shep,’ he said gently, holding his hand out so the dog could sniff his fingers. The growl died away. George hitched up his trousers and kneeled down, the frozen ground uneven and ungenerous beneath his knees. Automatically, he noticed the elastoplast was the thicker kind, from a roll two inches wide with a half-inch band of lint bulging up the middle of it. ‘Steady, girl,’ he said, one hand gripping the thick hair at the scruff of the dog’s neck to hold her head still. With his other hand, he picked at the end of the elastoplast till he had freed enough to pull clear. He looked up. ‘One of you, come over here and hold the dog’s head while I get this stuff off.’
One of the constables straddled the nervous collie and grasped her head firmly. George gripped the end of the elastoplast strip and pulled it as hard as he could. Inside a minute, he’d yanked the last of it free, narrowly avoiding the snapping teeth of the collie, panicking in response to having chunks of her fur ripped away with the tape. The constable behind her hastily jumped clear as she swung round to try her chances with him. As soon as she realized her mouth was free, Shep dropped to the ground and began to bark furiously at the men. ‘What do we do now, sir?’ one of the constables asked.
‘I’m going to untie her and see where she wants to take us,’ George said, sounding more confident than he felt. He walked forward cautiously, but the dog showed no sign of wanting to attack him. He took out his penknife and sawed through the rope. It was easier than trying to untie it while the dog was straining against it. And it had the advantage of preserving the knot, just in case there was anything distinctive about it. George thought not; it looked pretty much like a standard reef knot to him.
Instantly, Shep lunged forward. Taken by surprise, George gouged a slice out of his thumb as he tried to hold on to the sheepdog. ‘Damn!’ he exploded as the rope whirled through his fingers, burning the skin where it touched. One of the constables attempted to grab the rope as the dog fled, but failed. George clutched his bleeding hand and watched helplessly as the dog raced down the path Miller and Prince had taken from the clearing.
Moments later, there was the sound of a scuffle and Miller’s voice shouting sternly, ‘Sit.’ Then silence. Then an eerie howling split the night.
Groping in his pocket for a handkerchief, George followed the dog’s path. A dozen yards into the wood, he came upon Miller and the two dogs. Prince lay on the ground, his muzzle between his paws. Shep sat on the ground, her head lifted towards the sky, her mouth opening and closing in a long series of heart-stopping wails. Miller held the rope, securing the straining collie. ‘She seems to want to go this way,’ Miller said, gesturing with his head down the path away from the clearing.
‘Let’s follow her, then,’ George said. He wrapped his bleeding thumb with the handkerchief then took the rope from the handler. ‘Come on, girl,’ he encouraged the collie. ‘Show me.’ He shook the rope.
Immediately, Shep bounded to her feet and set off down the trail, tail wagging. They wove through the trees for a couple of minutes, then the track emerged from the trees on to the banks of a narrow, fast-flowing stream. The dog promptly sat down and looked back at him, her tongue hanging out and her eyes bewildered.
‘That’d be the Scarlaston,’ Miller’s voice said behind him. ‘I knew it rose in these parts. Funny river. I’ve heard tell it just sort of seeps out of the ground. If we have a dry summer, it sometimes vanishes altogether.’
‘Where does it lead?’ George asked.
‘I’m not sure. I think it flows either into the Derwent or the Manifold, I can’t remember which. You’d have to look at a map for that.’
George nodded. ‘So if Alison was carried out of the clearing, we’d lose the trail here anyway.’ He sighed and turned away, guiding his torch beam over his watch. It was almost quarter to ten. ‘There’s nothing more we can do in darkness. Let’s head back to the village.’
He practically had to drag Shep away from the Scarlaston’s edge. As they made their slow progress back to Scardale, George fretted about Alison Carter’s disappearance. Nothing made sense. If someone was ruthless enough to kidnap a young girl, surely they wouldn’t show mercy to a dog? Especially a dog as lively as Shep. He couldn’t imagine a dog with the collie’s spirit meekly submitting to having elastoplast tightly wound round its muzzle. Unless it had been Alison who’d done the deed?
If it had been Alison, had she acted on her own initiative or had she been forced to silence her own dog? And if she’d done it for her own ends, where was she now? If she’d been going to run away, why not take the dog with her for protection, at least until dawn broke? The more he thought about it, the less he understood.
George trudged out of the woods and through the field, the reluctant dog trailing at his heels. George found Sergeant Lucas conferring with PC Grundy in the light of a hurricane lamp hanging from the back of the Land Rover. Briefly, he explained the scenario in the woods. ‘There’s no point in trampling through there in the dark,’ he said. ‘I reckon the best we can do is put a couple of men on guard and at first light, we search the woodland inch by inch.’
Both men looked at him as if he’d gone mad. ‘With respect, sir, if you’re intending to keep the villagers out of the wood, there’s not a lot of point in leaving a couple of men to catch frostbite in the field,’ Lucas said wearily. ‘The locals know the lie of the land far better than we do. If they want to get into those woods, they will, and we’ll never know about it. Besides, I don’t think there’s a soul in the place who hasn’t already volunteered to help searching. If we tell them what’s what, they’ll be the last ones to destroy any possible clues.’
He had a point, George realized. ‘What about outsiders?’
Lucas shrugged. ‘All we have to do is post a guard on the gate on the road. I don’t imagine anybody’ll be keen enough to hike in from the next dale. It’s a treacherous path up the Scarlaston banks at the best of times, never mind on a frosty winter night.’
‘I’m happy to trust your judgement, Sergeant,’ George said. ‘I take it your men have been searching the houses and outbuildings?’
‘That’s right. Not a trace of the girl,’ Lucas said, his naturally cheery face as sombre as it could manage. ‘The building out the back of the manor, it’s where the squire develops his photographs. Nowhere for a lass to hide in there.’
Before George could respond, Clough and Cragg appeared from the shadows on the village green. Both looked as cold as he felt, the collars of their heavy winter coats turned up against the chill wind that whistled up the valley. Cragg was flipping back the pages of his notebook. ‘Any progress?’ George asked.
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Clough complained, offering his cigarettes round the group. Only Cragg took one. ‘We spoke to everybody, including the cousins she came back from school with. It was Mrs Kathy Lomas’s turn to pick them up at the road end, which she did as per usual. The last she saw of Alison, the lass was walking in the kitchen door of the manor. So the mother’s telling the truth about the lass getting home in one piece. Mrs Lomas went indoors with her lad and never saw Alison again. Nobody saw hide nor hair of the girl after she came home from school. It’s like she vanished into thin air.’
4
Thursday, 12th December 1963. 1.14 a.m.
George looked around the church hall with an air of resignation. In the pale-yellow light, it looked dingy and cramped, the pale-green walls adding to the institutional flavour. But they needed an incident room large enough to accommodate a CID team as well as the uniformed officers, and there were precious few candidates within striking distance of Scardale. Pressed, Peter Grundy had only been able to come up with either the village hall in Longnor or this depressing annexe to the Methodist Chapel that squatted on the main road just past the Scardale turn-off. It had the advantage not only of being closer to Scardale, but of having a telephone line already installed in what claimed, according to the sign on its door, to be the vestry.
‘Just as well Methodists don’t go in for vestments,’ George said as he stood on the threshold and surveyed the glorified cupboard. ‘Make a note, Grundy. We’ll need a field telephone as well.’
Grundy added the telephone to a list that already included typewriters, witness-statement forms, maps of assorted scales, filing cards and boxes, electoral rolls and telephone directories. Tables and chairs were no problem; the hall was already well furnished with them. George turned to Lucas. ‘We need to draw up a plan of action for the morning,’ he said decisively. ‘Let’s pull up some chairs and see what we need to do.’
They arranged a table and chairs directly below one of the electric heaters that hung suspended from the roof beams. It barely dented the damp chill of the icy night air, but the men were glad of any relief. Grundy disappeared into the small kitchen and returned with three cups and a saucer. ‘For an ashtray,’ he said, sliding the saucer across the table towards George. Then he produced a Thermos flask from inside his overcoat and plonked it firmly on the table.
‘Where did that come from?’ Lucas demanded.
‘Betsy Crowther, Meadow Cottage,’ Grundy said. ‘The wife’s cousin on her mother’s side.’ He opened the flask and George stared greedily at the curl of steam.
Fortified by tea and cigarettes, the three men began to plan. ‘We’ll need as many uniforms as we can muster,’ George said. ‘We need to comb the whole of the Scardale area, but if we draw a blank there, we’ll have to widen the search down the course of the Scarlaston river. I’ll make a note to contact the Territorial Army, to see if they can spare us any bodies to help with the searching.’
‘If we’re spreading the net wider, it might be worth asking the High Peak Hunt if they can help us out,’ Lucas said, hunched over his tea to make the most of its warmth. ‘Their hounds are used to tracking, and their riders know the land.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ George said, inhaling the smoke from his cigarette as if it could warm his frozen core. ‘PC Grundy, I want you to make a list of all the local farmers within, say, a five-mile radius. At first light, we’ll send some men out to ask them all to check their land to see if the girl’s there. If she was running away, she could easily have had an accident, wandering around in the dark.’
Grundy nodded. ‘I’ll get on to it. Sir, there was one thing I wanted to bring up?’ George nodded. ‘Yesterday was Leek Cattle Market and Christmas Show. Fatstock and dairy cattle. Decent prize money, an’ all. So that means there would have been a lot more traffic than usual on the roads in these parts. There’s a lot go over to Leek for the show, whether they’ve got cattle entered or not. Some of them will have been doing their Christmas shopping at the same time. They could have been heading for home round about the time Alison went missing. So if the lass was on any of the roads, there’s a better than average chance that she’ll have been spotted.’
‘Good thinking,’ George said, making a note. ‘You might want to ask the farmers about that when you talk to them. And I’ll mention it at the press conference.’
‘Press conference?’ Lucas asked suspiciously. He’d been reluctantly approving of the Professor this far, but now it looked like George Bennett was planning on using Alison Carter to make a name for himself. It was a move that failed to impress the sergeant.
George nodded. ‘I’ve already been on to headquarters asking them to arrange a press conference here at ten o’clock. We need all the help we can get, and the press can reach people quicker than we can. It could take us weeks to contact everybody who was at Leek Market yesterday, and even then we’d miss plenty. Whereas with press coverage, nearly everybody will know there’s a missing girl in a matter of days. Luckily, today’s press day for the High Peak Courant, so they should be able to get the news on the streets by teatime. Publicity’s vital in cases like these.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have done much for our colleagues in Manchester and Ashton,’ Lucas said dubiously. ‘Other than waste officers’ time chasing down false leads.’
‘If she has run away, it’ll make it harder for her to stay hidden. And if she’s been taken anywhere else, it increases our chances of finding a witness,’ George said firmly. ‘I spoke to Superintendent Martin, and he agrees. He’s coming out here for the press conference himself. And he’s confirmed that for now, I’m in overall charge of the operation,’ he added, feeling slightly awkward at his assertiveness.
‘Makes sense,’ Lucas said. ‘You being here from the first shout.’ He got to his feet, pushing his chair back and leaning forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘So, shall we head back to Buxton now? I don’t see there’s much we can do here. The day-shift men can set it up when they come on at six.’
Privately, George agreed. But he didn’t want to leave. Equally, he didn’t want to appear to push his authority by insisting they hang around pointlessly. With some reluctance, he followed Lucas and Grundy out to the car. Little was said on the way back to Longnor to drop Grundy off, still less on the seven miles back to Buxton. Both men were tired, both troubled by their private imaginings.
Back in the divisional headquarters in Buxton, George left the sergeant to type up a list of orders for the day shift and the extra officers drafted in from other parts of the county. He climbed behind the wheel of his car, shivering at the blast of cold air that issued from his dashboard vents when he turned the engine on. Within ten minutes, he was drawing up outside the house that Derbyshire Police decreed was appropriate for a married man of his rank. A three-bedroomed stone-clad semi, it sat in a generous garden, thanks to the sharp bend in the street. From the kitchen and the back-bedroom windows, there was a view of Grin Low woods stretching along the ridge to the beginning of Axe Edge and the grim miles of moorland where Derbyshire blurred into Staffordshire and Cheshire.
George stood in the moonlit kitchen, looking out at the inhospitable landscape. He’d dutifully taken the sandwiches out of the fridge and brewed himself a pot of tea, but he hadn’t eaten a bite. He couldn’t even have said what the sandwiches contained. There was a thin pile of Christmas cards on the table, left by Anne for his attention, but he ignored them. He cradled the fragile china cup in his broad square hands, remembering Ruth Hawkin’s ravaged face when he’d brought the dog back and broken into her private vigil.
She’d been standing by the kitchen sink, staring out into the darkness behind the house. Now he came to think about it, he wondered why she wasn’t devoting her attention to the front of the house. After all, if Alison was going to return, she’d presumably come from the direction of the village green and the fields she’d set off towards earlier. And any news would come that way too. Perhaps, George thought, Ruth Hawkin couldn’t bear to see the familiar scene criss-crossed by police officers, their presence a poignant and forceful reminder of her daughter’s absence.
Whatever the reason, she’d been gazing out of the window, her back to her husband and the WPC who still sat awkwardly at the kitchen table, there to offer a sympathy that clearly wasn’t wanted. Ruth hadn’t even moved when he’d opened the door. It was the sound of the dog’s claws on the stone flags that had dragged her eyes away from the window. When she turned, the dog had dropped to the floor and, whimpering, crawled towards Ruth on her belly.
‘We found Shep tied up in the woods,’ George had said. ‘Someone had taped her mouth shut. With elastoplast.’
Ruth’s eyes widened and her mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. ‘No,’ she protested weakly. ‘That can’t be right.’ She dropped to her knees beside the dog, who was squirming round her ankles in a parody of obsequious apology. Ruth buried her face in the dog’s ruff, clutching the animal to her as if it were a child. A long pink tongue licked her ear.
George looked across at Hawkin. The man was shaking his head, looking genuinely bewildered. ‘That makes no sense,’ Hawkin said. ‘It’s Alison’s dog. It would never have let anybody harm a hair on Alison’s head.’ He gave a mirthless bark of laughter. ‘I lifted a hand to her one time, and the dog had my sleeve in its teeth before I could touch her. The only person who could have done that to the dog was Alison herself. It wouldn’t even stand for me or Ruth doing something like that, never mind a stranger.’
‘Alison might not have had any choice,’ George said gently.
Ruth looked up, her face transformed by the realization that her earlier fears might truly be reflected in reality. ‘No,’ she said, her voice a hoarse plea. ‘Not my Alison. Please God, not my Alison.’
Hawkin got to his feet and crossed the room to his wife. He hunkered down beside her and put an awkward arm round her shoulders. ‘You mustn’t get into a state, Ruth,’ he said, casting a quick glance up at George. ‘That won’t help Alison. We’ve got to stay strong.’ Hawkin seemed embarrassed at having to show concern for his wife. George had seen plenty of men who were uncomfortable with any display of emotion, but he’d seldom encountered one so self-conscious about it.
He felt enormous pity for Ruth Hawkin. It wasn’t the first time George had watched a marriage crack under the weight of a major investigation. He’d spent less than an hour in the company of this couple, but he knew instinctively that what he was witnessing here was not so much a crack as a major fracture. It was hard enough at any time in a marriage to discover that the person you had married was less than you imagined, but for Ruth Hawkin, so recently wed, it was doubly difficult, coming as it did on top of the anxiety of her daughter’s disappearance.
Almost without thinking, George had crouched down and covered one of Ruth’s hands with his own. ‘There’s very little we can do just now, Mrs Hawkin. But we are doing everything possible. At first light, we’ll have men scouring the dale from end to end. I promise you, I won’t give up on Alison.’ Their eyes had met and he’d felt the intensity of a clutch of emotions far too complicated for him to separate.
As he stared out towards the moors, George realized there was no way he could sleep that night. Wrapping the sandwiches in greaseproof paper, he filled a flask with hot tea and softly climbed the stairs to pick up his electric razor from the bathroom.
On the landing, he paused. The door to their bedroom was ajar, and he couldn’t resist a quick look at Anne. With his fingertips, he pushed the door a little wider. Her face was a pale smudge against the white gleam of the pillow. She lay on her side, one hand a fist on the pillow beside her. God, she was beautiful. Just watching her sleep was enough to make his flesh stir. He wished he could throw his clothes off and slide in beside her, feeling her warmth the length of his body. But tonight, the memory of Ruth Hawkin’s haunted eyes was more than he could escape.
With a soft sigh, he turned away. Half an hour later, he was back in the Methodist Hall, staring at Alison Carter. He’d pinned four of Hawkin’s photographs of her to the notice board. He’d left the other at the police station, asking for it to be copied as a matter of urgency so it could be distributed at the press conference. The night duty inspector seemed uncertain whether it could be done in time. George had left him in no doubt what he expected.
