A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  Martin left them to it, promising to have tea sent up from the canteen. At first, the four men were wary as strange dogs on their best behaviour in an unfamiliar parlour. Gradually, however, as they offered details of their own operations without anyone finding fault, they began to relax. A couple of hours later, all four were agreed that there was almost as much reason to suppose the three missing children had been snatched by one individual as there was to suppose there were three separate perpetrators. ‘Which is to say, we haven’t got grounds to say anything one way or the other,’ Parrott said glumly.

  ‘Except that you don’t often get cases where there’s nothing at all to show what’s happened,’

  George said. ‘Which is what you two have got. At least I’ve got the dog tied up in one piece of woodland and the signs of a struggle in another. That’s the crucial element that separates Alison Carter’s disappearance from Pauline Reade and John Kilbride.’ There was a grumble of agreement round the table. ‘I tell you something,’ Clough added, ‘I’d put money on Pauline and John being lifted by somebody in a car. Maybe even two somebodies. One to drive and one to subdue the victim. If the abductor had been on foot, there would have had to have been witnesses. To get into a car, that’s a matter of seconds. But in spite of that old couple in Longnor who saw the Land Rover parked up by the chapel, I don’t see how that can have happened to Alison. A kidnapper couldn’t carry her all the way from Scardale woods to the Methodist Chapel, not unless he was built like Tarzan. And there were no strange vehicles seen in the village that afternoon.’

  ‘And they would have been seen,’ George confirmed. ‘If a mouse sneezed in Scardale, it’d have half a dozen home-made cold remedies to choose from before it could blow its nose.’

  Parrott sighed. ‘We’ve wasted your time.’

  George shook his head. ‘Funnily enough, you haven’t. It’s clarified my thinking. I know now what we haven’t got. The more I’ve talked and listened this morning, the more certain I am that we’re not dealing with a stranger abduction. Whatever happened to Alison, she knew who she was dealing with.’

  20

  Monday, 16th December 1963. 7.40AM

  The buoyant mood that had sustained George through another day’s fruitless searching vanished with the Monday-morning edition of the Daily News. This time, Don Smart’s tame clairvoyant had earned him the front page.

  LOST GIRL: FRENCH SEER GIVES DRAMATIC CLUE

  Exclusive by a Staff Reporter

  Investigations into the disappearance of 13year-old Alison Carter took a dramatic turn today as a clairvoyant gave police vital new leads to her whereabouts.

  Madame Colette Charest has given details of what she believed were Alison’s movements when she disappeared five days ago from the tiny Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale.

  Speaking from her home in Lyons, France, Mme Charest gave her findings based on an Ordnance Survey map of the district, a photograph of the pretty blonde girl and on newspaper cuttings from the News.

  Impressed

  The details were passed on last night to Detective Chief Inspector M.C. Carver, who heads the team of detectives investigating the mysterious disappearance. He said, ‘We cannot afford to ignore anything. Her report looks impressive.’

  Mme Charest has amazed French police with her clairvoyant powers which have assisted in previous hunts. The 47-year-old French widow said she ‘saw’ Alison walking through woodland with a man she knew. He was aged between 35 and 45, with dark hair. She said Alison had been waiting for the man by water and that she had been sad and afraid.

  Still alive

  Most remarkably, Mme Charest persisted in her conviction that Alison is still alive and safe. ‘She is living in a city. She is in a house that is one of a row of brick houses on a hill. ‘She arrived there in something like a small van. It was night when she arrived and she has not been outside since she got there. She is not free to leave but she is not in pain. ‘There is a school playground near the house. She can hear the children playing and that makes her sad.’

  Meanwhile, teams of volunteers worked tirelessly with police officers and mountain rescue teams searching the dales and moorland round Scardale. Dogs and grappling irons were used to check a large expanse of moorland which contains several ponds and wells.

  DCI Carver said, ‘We are spreading the search as widely as possible.

  ‘The public are cooperating magnificently but we still need positive information about Alison’s movements after she left home with her dog on Wednesday afternoon.

  ‘Perhaps this new information might jog somebody’s memory. No matter how insignificant it may seem, we want to hear from members of the public who might know something.’

  ‘What does Carver think he’s playing at?’ he grumbled to Anne. ‘The last thing we want is to encourage this sort of thing. We’ll be swamped by every half-baked fortune teller in the country.’

  Anne placidly buttered her toast and said, ‘Most likely they twisted what he said.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ George conceded. He folded the paper and pushed it across the table towards his wife as he rose. ‘I’m off now. Expect me when you see me.’

  ‘Try and get home at a decent time, George. I don’t want you to start getting into the habit of working all the hours God sends. I don’t want our baby growing up never knowing who its father is. I’ve listened to the way the other wives talk about their husbands. It’s almost as if they’re talking about distant relatives that they don’t like very much. It sounds like these men treat their homes as a last resort, somewhere to go when the pubs and clubs are shut. The women say even holidays are a strain. Every year it’s like going away with a stranger who spends the whole time fretting and sulking. That or drinking and gambling.’ George shook his head. ‘I’m not that sort of man, you know that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose most of them thought that’s what they were getting into when they were newlyweds,’ Anne said drily. ‘Yours isn’t a job like any other. You don’t leave it behind at the end of the working day. I just want to make sure you remember there’s more to your life than catching criminals.’

  ‘How could I forget, when I’ve got you to come home to?’ He bent over to kiss her. She smelled sweet, like warm biscuits. It was, he knew now, her particular morning fragrance. She’d told him his odour was faintly musky, like the fur of a clean cat. That’s when he’d realized that everybody had their own distinctive scent. He wondered if the memory of her daughter’s aromatic signature was yet another of the things that tortured Ruth Hawkin. Stifling a sigh, he gave Anne a quick hug and hurried out to the car before his emotions spilled over.

  Swinging by the divisional headquarters to pick up Tommy Clough, George decided to give the morning press conference a miss. Superintendent Martin was far better at handling Don Smart than he’d ever be, and the last thing he needed was to be sucked into the public confrontation his anger made almost inevitable. ‘Let’s go and talk to the Hawkins,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘They must know in their hearts that hope’s running out. They won’t be wanting to admit it, either to themselves or to anybody else. We owe it to them to be honest about the situation.’

  The wipers swept the rain off the windscreen with mindless monotony as they headed off over the moors towards Scardale. At last, Clough said gloomily, ‘She’s not going to be out there in this and still be alive.’

  ‘She’s not going to be anywhere and still be alive. It’s not like abducting a little kid that you can terrify and shut up in a cellar somewhere. Keeping a teenage girl in captivity is in a different league altogether. Besides, sex killers don’t want to wait for their gratification. They want it now. And if she’d been kidnapped by somebody who was idiot enough to think Hawkin had enough money to make a ransom worthwhile, there would have been a ransom note by now.’

  George sighed as he raised a hand to greet the dripping constable who still stood guard at the gate into Scardale. ‘Never mind the Hawkins. We’ve got to face up to the
fact that it’s a body we’re looking for now.’

  The slap of the wipers was all that broke the silence until they pulled up on the village green alongside the caravan. The two men ran through the rain and huddled under the tiny porch waiting for Ruth Hawkin to answer George’s knock. To their surprise, it was Kathy Lomas who opened the door. She stood back to let them pass. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said brusquely.

  They filed into the kitchen. Ruth was sitting at the table wrapped in a pink quilted nylon housecoat, her eyes listless, her hair loose and uncombed. Opposite her sat Ma Lomas, layered in cardigans topped with a tartan shawl pinned across her breast with a nappy pin. George recognized the fourth woman in the room as Ruth’s sister Diane, young Charlie Lomas’s mother. The three younger women were all smoking, but Ma Lomas’s chest didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘What’s to do?’ Ma Lomas demanded before George could say anything.

  ‘We’ve nothing fresh to report,’ George admitted.

  ‘Not like the papers, then,’ Diane Lomas said bitterly.

  ‘Aye, they’ve always got something to say for themselves,’ Kathy added. ‘It’ll be a load of rubbish, all that stuff about Alison being stuck in some terraced house in a city. You can’t hide somebody in the city that doesn’t want to be hid. Them houses, they’ve got walls like cardboard.

  Can’t you stop them printing that rubbish?’

  ‘We live in a free country, Mrs Lomas. I don’t like this morning’s paper any more than you do, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Look at the state of her,’ Diane said, nodding at Ruth. ‘They don’t think about the effect they’ll have on her. It’s not right.’

  George’s lips pursed in a thin line. Eventually, he said, ‘That’s partly why I’ve come to see you this morning, Mrs Hawkin.’ He pulled out a chair and sat facing Ruth and her sister. ‘Is your husband in?’

  ‘He’s gone to Stockport,’ Ma said contemptuously. ‘He needs some chemicals for his photography. 0’ course, he can come and go as he pleases. Not like them as are Scardale born and bred.’ Her words hung in the air like a thrown gauntlet.

  George refused to pick it up. His own conscience was giving him enough grief about his part in Peter Crowther’s death without allowing Ma Lomas free rein with her sharp tongue. He simply bowed his head in acknowledgement and continued regardless. ‘I wanted to tell you both that we will be continuing the search for Alison. But I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t tell you that I think it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that we’ll find her alive.’

  Ruth looked up then. Her face was a mask of resignation. ‘You think that’s news to me?’ she said wearily. ‘I haven’t expected anything else since the minute I realized she was gone. I can bear that, because I have to. What I can’t bear is not knowing what’s happened to my child. That’s all I ask, that you find what’s happened to her.’ George took a deep breath. ‘Believe me, Mrs Hawkin, I am determined to do just that. You have my word that I’m not going to give up on Alison.’

  ‘Fine words, lad, but what do they mean?’ Ma Lomas’s sardonic voice cut through the emotional atmosphere.

  ‘It means we go on looking. It means we go on asking questions. We’ve already searched the dale from end to end, we’ve searched the surrounding countryside. We’ve dragged reservoirs and we’ve had police divers checking the Scarlaston. And we’ve not found anything more than we found in the first twenty-four hours. But we’re not giving up.’

  Ma snorted, her nose and chin almost meeting as she screwed up her face. ‘How can you sit there and look Ruth in the eye and say you’ve searched the dale? You’ve not been near the old lead mine workings.’

  21

  Monday, 16th December 1963. 9.06AM

  Bewildered, George saw his surprise mirrored on the faces opposite him. Ruth’s eyebrows furrowed as if she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard correctly. Diane looked baffled. ‘What old lead mine workings, Ma?’ she asked.

  ‘You know, up inside Scardale Crag.’

  ‘First I’ve heard,’ Kathy said, sounding mildly affronted. ‘Just a minute, just a minute,’ George burst in. ‘What are we talking about here? What mine workings are we on about?’ Ma gave an exasperated sigh. ‘How much plainer can I make it? Inside Scardale Crag there’s an old lead mine.

  Tunnels and chambers and whatnot. There’s not much to it, but it’s there.’

  ‘How long is it since it was worked?’ Clough asked. ‘How would I know?’ the old woman protested. ‘Not in my lifetime, that’s for sure. For all I know, it’s been there since the Romans were here. They mined for lead and silver in these parts.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of a lead mine inside the crag,’ Diane insisted. ‘And I’ve lived here all my days.’

  With difficulty, George resisted the impulse to shout at the women. ‘Where exactly is this lead mine?’ he asked. Clough was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of this voice that cut like a blade.

  He’d had no idea that George had such an edge in him, but it confirmed to Clough that this had been the right star to hitch his wagon to. Ma Lomas shrugged. ‘How would I know? Like I said, it’s never been worked in my day. All I know is that you get into it some place down the back of the spinney. There used to be a stream ran along there, but it dried up years ago, when I was a lass.’

  ‘So the chances are nobody knows it even exists,’ George said, his 156 shoulders falling. What had seemed like a thread worth pursuing was falling apart in his hands, he thought.

  ‘Well, I know about it,’ Ma said emphatically. ‘The squire showed me.

  In a book. The old squire, that is. Not Philip Hawkin.’

  ‘What book?’ Ruth said, showing the first sign of animation since the two men had arrived.

  ‘I don’t know what it were called, but I could probably recognize it,’ the old woman said, pushing her chair back from the table. ‘Has that husband of yours chucked out the squire’s books?’ Ruth shook her head. ‘Come on, then, let’s take a look.’

  In Philip Hawkin’s absence, the study was as cold as the frigid hall. Ruth shivered and pulled her housecoat tighter across her body. Diane threw herself into one of the chairs and took out her cigarettes. She lit up without offering them, then curled around herself in the chair like a plump tabby cat with a mouse in its paw. Kathy fiddled with a pair of prisms on the desk, holding them up to the light and turning them this way and that. Meanwhile, Ma scrutinized the shelves and George held his breath.

  About halfway along the middle shelf, she pointed a bony finger. ‘There,’ she said in a satisfied voice. ‘A Charivari of Curiosities of the Valley of the Scarlaston.’ George thrust out an arm and pulled the volume down. It had clearly once been a handsome volume, now ravaged by time and much use. Bound in faded red morocco, it was about ten inches by eight, almost an inch thick. He laid it on the desk and opened it. ‘A Charivari of Curiosities of the Valley of the Scarlaston in the County of Derbyshire, including the Giant’s Cave and the Mysterious Source of the River itself. As retailed by the Reverend Onesiphorus Jones. Published by Messrs. King, Bailey 6-Prosser of Derby MDCCCXXII,’ George read. ‘1822,’ he said. ‘So where’s the bit about the mine, Mrs Lomas?’ Her fingers with their arthritic knuckles crept across the frontispiece and flicked over to the contents page. ‘I recall it were near the middle,’ she said softly. George leaned over her shoulder and quickly scanned the list of contents.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked, pointing to Chapter XIV-The Secret Mysteries of Scardale Cragg; Ancient Man in the Dale; Fool’s Gold and the Alchemist’s Base Metal.

  ‘Aye, I think so.’ She stepped back. ‘It were a long time ago. The squire liked to talk to me about the history of the dale. His wife were an incomer, you see.’

  George was only half listening. He flicked over thick off-white pages flecked with occasional foxing until he came to the section he was looking for. There, accompanied by competent line drawings that entirely lacked atmosphere, was the story of l
ead mining in Scardale. The veins of lead and iron pyrites had first been discovered in the late Middle Ages but had not been exploited fully until the eighteenth century when four main galleries and a couple of hollowed-out caverns were excavated. However, the seams were less productive than they’d appeared and at some point in the 1990S, the mine had ceased to operate commercially. At the time the book had been written, the mine had been closed off with a wooden palisade.

  George pointed to the description. ‘Are these directions good enough for us to find the way in to these workings?’

  ‘You’d never find it,’ Diane said. She’d come up behind him and was peering round his arm. ‘I tell you who could, though.’

  ‘Who?’ George asked. It can’t have been harder to get lead out of the ground than information out of Scardale natives, he thought wearily. ‘I bet our Charlie could,’

  Diane said, oblivious to his exasperation. ‘He knows the dale better than anybody living. And he’s fit as a butcher’s dog. If there’s any climbing or caving to be done, he’s your lad. That’s who you need, Mr Bennett. Our Charlie. That’s if he’s willing, after the way you’ve treated him.’

  22

  Monday, 16th December 1963. 11.33AM