A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  It felt like he’d had a life. Now it’s looking more and more like we’re not going to find Alison alive, and that fills me with rage because she’s hardly started living.

  Even if all she was ever going to do was stop in Scardale and have babies and knit jumpers, it’s still been taken from her and I want the law to do the same to whoever did it to her. My only regret is that we don’t hang animals like that any more.’

  ‘You still believe in hanging them, then?’ Clough asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  ‘Where it’s cold-blooded, yes, I do. It’s different with spur-of-themoment killings. I’d just put them away for life, give them plenty of time to regret what they’ve done. But the kind of monsters who prey on kids, or the animals that murder some innocent bystander because they’ve got in the way of a robbery, yes, I’d hang them. Wouldn’t you?’ Clough took his time answering. ‘I used to think so.

  But a couple of years back I read that book about the Timothy Evans case, Ten Rillington Place.

  When he was tried, everybody believed he was bang to rights. Murdered his wife and his kiddy.

  The boys in the Met even had a confession. Then it turns out that Evans’s landlord murdered at least four other women, so chances are it was him that killed Beryl Evans. But it’s too late to go to Timothy Evans and say, ‘Sorry, pal, we cocked it up.’’ George gave a half-smile of acknowledgement. ‘Maybe so. But I can’t take responsibility for other people’s bad practice and mistakes. I don’t think I ever have or ever would push an innocent man into confessing and I’m willing to stand by my own results. If Alison Carter has been murdered, like we both probably think by now, then I’d happily watch the man that did it swing from the gallows.’

  ‘You might just do that if the bastard used a gun. They can still hang them for that, don’t forget.’

  George had no chance to respond. The door to the caravan burst open and Peter Grundy stood framed in the doorway, his face the bloodless grey of the Scardale crags. ‘They’ve found a body,’ he said.

  17

  Saturday, 14th December 1963. 8.47AM

  Peter Crowther’s body was huddled in the lee of a dry-stone wall three miles due north of Scardale as the crow flies. It was curled in on itself in a foetal crouch, knees tucked up to the chin, arms curled round the shins. The overnight frost that had turned the roads treacherous had given it a sugar-coating of hoar, rendering it somehow innocuous. But there was no mistaking death.

  It was there in the blue-tinged skin, the staring eyes, the frozen drool on the chin. George Bennett looked down at the hull of a human being, recognition chilling him deeper than the bitter weather.

  He looked up at the miraculously blue sky, oddly surprised that a winter sun was shining as if it had something to celebrate. He certainly didn’t. He felt sick, in his spirit as well as his stomach. The bitter taste of responsibility was sharp in his mouth. He hadn’t done his job properly, and now a man was dead.

  George lowered his head and turned away, leaving Tommy Clough squatting on his haunches by the body, giving it a minute scrutiny. He crossed to the field gate where two uniformed men were stationed to protect the scene until the pathologist arrived. ‘Who found the body?’ he asked.

  ‘The farmer. Dennis Dearden’s his name. Well, technically, it was his sheepdog. Mr Dearden came out at first light to check his stock like he always does. It was the dog that alerted him to the presence of the deceased,’ the older constable said.

  ‘Where’s Mr Dearden now?’ George asked.

  ‘That’s his place up the lane. The cottage.’ The PC pointed to a single-storey building a few hundred yards away.

  ‘I’ll be there if anybody needs me.’ George walked up the lane, his step as heavy as his heart. On the threshold of the tiny cottage, he paused, composing himself. Before he could knock, the door opened and a face like a withered apple appeared opposite his, small brown eyes like pips on either side of a nose as shapeless as a blob of whipped cream. ‘You’ll be the gaffer, then,’ the man said.

  ‘Mr Dearden?’

  ‘Aye, lad, there’s only me here. The wife’s gone to visit her sister in Bakewell. She always goes for a few days in December, buys all the Christmas doings at the market. Come in, lad, you must be freezing out there.’ Dearden stepped back and ushered George into a kitchen dazzling with sun.

  Everything gleamed: the enamel of the cooker, the wood of table, chairs and shelves, the chrome of the kettle, the glassware in a corner cabinet, even the gas fire. ‘Set yourself down by the fire, there,’

  Dearden added hospitably, pushing a carver chair towards George. He lowered himself stiffly into a dining chair and smiled. ‘That’s better, eh? Get a bit of heat into your bones. By heck, you look worse than Peter Crowther.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Not to speak to. But I knew who he was. I’ve done some business with Terry Lomas over the years. I know them all in Scardale. I tell you, though, for a terrible minute out there, I thought it were the lass. She’s been on my mind, same as everybody round here, I suppose.’ He pulled a briar pipe from his waistcoat pocket and started prodding at it with a penknife. ‘What a business. Her poor mother must be half mad with worry. We’ve all been keeping an eye out, making sure she wasn’t lying hurt in some ditch or hiding out in a barn or a sheep shed. So of course, when I saw…well, my natural conclusion was that it must be young Alison.’ He paused momentarily to fill his pipe, giving George his first real opportunity to speak.

  ‘What exactly happened?’ he asked, relieved that at last he was faced with a witness who seemed eager to offer information. After only three days in Scardale, he had developed a fresh appreciation of garrulity.

  ‘As soon as I opened the gate, Sherpa was off like a streak, down the side of the wall. I knew right off something was amiss. She’s not a dog that goes off at half-cock, not without cause. Then, halfway along the field, she drops to her belly like she’d been felled. Head down, between her front paws, and I can hear her whimpering half a field away. Like she would if she’d come upon a dead ewe. But I knew it wasn’t no sheep, because that field’s empty right now. I only opened the gate because it’s a short cut to t’ bottom piece.’ Dearden struck a match and sucked on his pipe. The tobacco was fragrant and filled the air with the aroma of cherries and cloves. ‘Light up yourself, if you’ve a mind, lad.’ He pushed a worn oilskin pouch across the table. The own mixture.’

  ‘I don’t, thanks.’ George took out his cigarettes and made an apologetic face.

  ‘Aye, you’ll not have the time for anything more complicated than fags in your job. You should think about taking up a pipe, though. It does wonders for the concentration. If I’m somewhere I can’t smoke, I’m damned if I can finish the crossword.’ He gestured with a thumb at the previous day’s Daily Telegraph. George tried not to show he was impressed. Everybody knew the Telegraph crossword was easier than The Times, but it was no mean feat to complete it regularly, he knew.

  Obviously, behind Dennis Dearden’s loose tongue was a sharp brain. ‘So when I saw the way the dog was behaving, my heart was in my mouth,’ Dearden continued. ‘There’s only one person I knew was missing, and that was Alison. I couldn’t bear the thought of her lying dead minutes away from my front door. So I ran up the field as fast as I could, which is not very fast at all these days.

  I’m ashamed to say, I felt kind of relieved when I saw it were Peter.’

  ‘Did you go right up to the body?’ George asked. ‘I didn’t have to. I could see Peter wasn’t going to be waking up much before the last trump.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Bloody daft beggar.

  Of all the nights to take it into his addled head to walk back to Scardale, he had to pick the worst kind. He’d been away from the country too long. He’d forgotten what weather like last night’s can do to human beings. The sleet soaks you through to the skin. Then when the sky clears and the frost comes down, you’ve no resistance. You keep plodding on, but the cold penetrates right
to your bones. Then all you want to do is lie down and sleep for ever. That’s what Peter did last night.’ He drew on his pipe, letting a plume of smoke escape from the corner of his mouth. ‘He should have stopped in Buxton. He knew how to keep safe in the town.’

  George clamped his mouth tightly round his cigarette. Not any longer, he thought. Peter Crowther had run out of options. His terror of losing only the second place he’d ever felt safe had driven him back, against his fear, to the place that had rejected him. It was exactly what George had dreaded.

  But in spite of his concerns, he’d let Tommy Clough persuade him to set Crowther free, because it was the most convenient way to deal with the problem. And thanks to a leaky CID and a sensation-hungry local paper, now Peter Crowther was frozen stiff in a Derbyshire sheep field. ‘Your farm’s a bit off the beaten track for someone coming from Buxton to Scardale, isn’t it?’ he asked. It was the only thing that gave him any grounds for doubting Dearden’s theory of how Crowther had died.

  Dearden chuckled. ‘You’re thinking like a motorist, lad. Peter Crowther thought like a countryman.

  You go back and look at an Ordnance Survey map. If you drew a line from Scardale to Buxton, avoiding the worst of the ups and downs, it’d go straight through that field. In the old days, before we all got our Land Rovers, there would be somebody from Scardale across my land at least once a day. It’s not marked on the map as a footpath, mind you. It’s not a right of way. But anybody from round here knows to respect livestock, so it never bothered me, nor my father before me, that the folk from Scardale used it for a short cut.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought it’d be the death of any of them.’ George got to his feet. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Dearden. And for the warm. We’ll be back to take a formal statement. And I’ll make sure somebody lets you know when we’ve moved the body.’ That’d be welcome.’ Dearden followed him out to the front door. The old man peered past him down the lane at a maroon Jaguar with two wheels up on the verge. ‘That’ll be the doctor,’ he said. By the time George had walked back up the lane and into the field, the police’ surgeon was getting to his feet and brushing down his wideshouldered camel overcoat. He peered curiously at George through square glasses with heavy black frames. ‘And you are?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Bennett,’ Clough chipped in. ‘Sir, this is Dr Blake, the police surgeon.

  He’s just been carrying out a preliminary examination.’

  The doctor gave a curt nod. ‘Well, he’s definitely dead. From the rectal temperature, I’d say he’s been that way from somewhere between five and eight hours. No signs of violence or injury.

  Looking at the way he’s dressed—no overcoat, no waterproof—I’d say the likeliest cause of death is exposure. Of course, we won’t know for sure till the pathologist’s gutted him on the slab, but I’d say this is natural causes. Unless you’ve found a way of charging the Derbyshire weather with murder,’ he added with a sardonic twist of his mouth.

  ‘Thanks, Doc,’ George said. ‘So, sometime between—what? One and four this morning?’

  ‘Not just a pretty face, eh? Oh, of course, you must be the graduate 138 we’ve all heard so much about,’ the doctor said with a patronizing smile. ‘Yes, Inspector, that’s right. Once you know who he is, you might even be able to figure out what he was doing wandering round the Derbyshire moors in the middle of the night in a pair of worn-out shoes that would hardly keep out the weather in the town, never mind out here.’ Blake pulled on a pair of heavy leather gloves.

  ‘We know who he is and what he was doing here,’ George said mildly. He’d been patronized by experts and wasn’t about to be riled by a pompous ass who couldn’t be more than five years older than him. The doctor’s eyebrows rose. ‘Gosh. There you go, Sergeant, the perfect example of how educating our police officers will advance the fight against crime. Well, I’ll leave you to it. You’ll have my report early next week.’ He side-stepped George with a sketchy wave and set off towards the gate. ‘Actually, sir, I’d like it tomorrow,’ George said. Blake stopped and half turned. ‘It’s the weekend, Inspector, and there can be no urgency since you already have an identity for your corpse and a reason for his being here.’

  ‘Indeed, sir. But this death is connected to a larger investigation and I require the report tomorrow.

  I’m sorry if that interferes with your plans, but that is why the county pays you so handsomely.

  Sir.’ George’s smile was pleasant, but his eyes held Blake’s without flinching. The doctor tutted.

  ‘Oh, very well. But this isn’t Derby, Inspector. We’re a small community out here. Most of us try to bear that in mind.’ He walked briskly away.

  ‘It’s obviously my week for making friends,’ George remarked as he turned back to Clough.

  ‘He’s a lazy sod,’ Clough said carelessly. ‘About time somebody reminded him who pays for his Jag and his golf club subscription. You’d think he would have been curious about the identity of a body he’d just been on intimate terms with, wouldn’t you? He’ll be on the blower this afternoon demanding to know what name to put on his report, I bet you.’

  ‘We’re going to have to go and break the news to Mrs Hawkin,’ George said. ‘And fast. The jungle drums will have been beating.

  She’ll know there’s a body on the moors, and she’s bound to be thinking the worst.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a bad day when hearing your brother’s dead passes for good news.’

  Kathy Lomas was feeding her pigs, filling their troughs with a mixture of wilted turnip tops and the vegetable trimmings and leftovers of the village. The thunder of galloping feet over the frozen ground caught her attention and she turned to see Charlie Lomas racing down the back field as if the hounds of hell were after him. He would have run straight past her if she hadn’t reached out to grab one of his flailing arms. His momentum whirled him round and cannoned him into the pigsty wall, where he would have tipped right over into the sty if his aunt hadn’t grabbed the back of his heavy leather jerkin.

  ‘What’s up, Charlie?’ Kathy demanded. ‘What’s happened?’ Winded, he bent double, hands on knees, chest heaving for breath. At last, he managed to stammer, ‘Old Dennis Dearden’s dog found a body in one of his sheep fields.’

  Kathy’s hand flew to her chest. ‘Oh no, Charlie. No,’ she gasped. ‘That can’t be right. No, I won’t believe it.’

  Charlie struggled into a half-erect position, leaning on the wall and panting. ‘I was down by the Scarlaston. I’ve got some illegal traps down there and I wanted to get them cleared out before the searchers got that far up Denderdale. I cut back up through Carter’s Copse and I overheard a couple of bobbies talking about it. It’s right, Auntie Kathy, they’ve found a body on Dennis Dearden’s land.’

  Kathy reached out convulsively for her nephew and clung on to him.

  They stood in their awkward embrace till Charlie had his breath back.

  ‘You’ve got to tell Ruth,’ she finally said.

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I was going to tell Ma.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Kathy said firmly, grabbing his arm above the elbow and marching him across the back fields to the manor. ‘Those bloody bastards,’ she muttered angrily as they went. ‘How dare they be tittle-tattling about it before anybody’s seen fit to tell our Ruth. Well, I’m damned if I’m going to wait on their pleasure to break the news.’ Kathy dragged Charlie into the manor kitchen without knocking. Ruth and Philip were sitting at the kitchen table over the remains of breakfast. His breakfast, Kathy noticed. She didn’t think Ruth had had anything but tea and cigarettes since Alison had disappeared. ‘Charlie’s got summat to tell you,’ she said baldly. She knew the pointlessness of dressing up bad news.

  Charlie repeated his stumbling words, anxiously eyeing Ruth. If she hadn’t been sitting down already, she’d have collapsed. What colour was left in her face seeped away till she resembled a putty model. Then she started shivering as if she had a fever. Her te
eth were chattering and her whole body was trembling. Kathy crossed the kitchen in half a dozen strides and took hold of her, rocking her as she had her children.

  Philip Hawkin appeared oblivious to everything around him. Like Ruth, he’d paled at the news. But that was the only common point in their responses. He pushed his chair back from the table and walked out of the room like a man sleepwalking. Kathy was too occupied with Ruth to take it in at first, but Charlie stood staring after him openmouthed, unable to credit what he’d just seen.

  Ruth Hawkin was wearing fresh clothes, George noted. A brown jersey dress under a knobbly heather-mixture cardigan indicated that she had probably gone to bed and tried to sleep for the first time since Alison had vanished. The dark bruises of insomnia told of her failure. She sat at the kitchen table folded in on herself, a cigarette held in shaking fingers. Kathy Lomas leaned against the cooker, arms folded, a frown on her face. ‘I don’t understand,’ Kathy said. ‘Why would Peter think of coming back to Scardale now? When all this is going on?’ Ruth Hawkin sighed. ‘He won’t have been thinking like that, Kathy,’ she said wearily. ‘Nothing penetrates his head except what affects him directly. He’ll have been upset by being at the police station, then when he went for a drink somewhere he thought was safe, he gets terrorized by the landlord. He only knows two places—Buxton and Scardale. But by God, he must have been scared out of his wits if he thought coming back to Scardale was the easy option.’ She crushed out her cigarette and rubbed her face in a washing motion. ‘I can’t bear it.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Kathy said bitterly. ‘We all know who to blame.’

  She pursed her lips and glared at George and Clough. ‘No, not Peter. I can bear that. I’ve no grieving to do for him. It’s thinking about Alison I can’t bear. When young Charlie came tearing in saying there was a body up on Dearden’s farm, I couldn’t breathe. It was like I’d been punched in the chest. Everything inside me stopped working.’