A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  George stopped so suddenly that Cragg cannoned into him. He whirled round. ‘What?’ he said, incredulous.

  ‘It’s Mrs Hawkin. She’s in a state, sir. Asking for you.’

  ‘Did she say why?’ George turned on his heel and practically ran for his phone.

  ‘No, sir, just that she needed to talk to you urgently.’

  ‘Jesus,’ George muttered, grabbing for the phone before he was even sitting down. ‘Hello? This is DI Bennett.’

  ‘Mr Bennett?’ The voice was choked with tears.

  ‘Is that you, Mrs Hawkin?’

  ‘Aye, it is. Oh, Mr Bennett…’ Her sobs rose in a terrible crescendo. ‘What’s happened, Mrs Hawkin?’ he asked, desperately wondering if there was a WPC on duty.

  ‘Can you come, Mr Bennett? Can you come now?’ Her words were gasped out between gulps and sniffs.

  ‘I’ve got your husband here, Mrs Hawkin. Do you want me to bring him home?’

  ‘No!’ It was almost a scream. ‘Just you. Please!’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Mrs Hawkin, try to calm down. Get one of your family to sit with you. I’ll be right there.’ He slammed the phone down and stood for a moment, stunned by the intensity of the phone conversation. He had no idea why Ruth Hawkin was demanding his presence, but it was clearly something traumatic. She couldn’t have found a body…He thrust the idea away before it could even form properly.

  ‘Cragg,’ he bellowed as he emerged from his office. ‘Go and relieve Sergeant Clough. You stay there with Mr Hawkin until we get back. You don’t let him leave. You explain politely we’ve been called away on an emergency and he’s to wait for us to get back. If he insists on leaving, you go with him. Don’t let him bully you.’

  Cragg looked dumbfounded. This wasn’t the pace of life he was accustomed to in Buxton CID.

  ‘What if he gets in his car?’

  ‘His car’s not here. Sergeant Clough drove him in. Cragg, move!’

  George grabbed Clough’s overcoat and his own trench coat, jamming his trilby down over his hair.

  As soon as Clough emerged from the interview room looking bemused, George grabbed him by the arm and hustled him down the stairs. ‘It’s Ruth Hawkin,’ George said before Clough could ask him what was up. ‘She rang me in a hell of a state. She wants me to come out to Scardale right away.’

  ‘Why?’ Clough said as they hurried out into the station yard and made for his car.

  ‘I don’t know. She was too upset to make sense. All I know is she went completely hairless when I asked if she wanted me to bring Hawkin back with me. Whatever it is, it’s big.’

  Clough gunned the engine. ‘Better not hang about, then.’ George had no idea that the journey to Scardale could be completed in so short a time. Clough broke every speed limit and most rules of the road as he threw the big saloon around the bends. They said little on the way, both too tense at the prospect of something that might set the Alison Carter case moving again. As they drew up by the village green, George spoke. ‘Time we had a little bit of luck, Tommy. We’ve got him on the back foot. If Ruth Hawkin’s got something for us, this could be it.’ They took the path to the manor at a run. Before either could knock, the kitchen door swung open and Ma Lomas greeted them.

  ‘We’ve been doing your work for you again,’ she said.

  Ruth Hawkin sat at the head of the table, her face streaked with tears and make–up, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. Kathy sat next to her. Their work-reddened hands were clasped so tight the knuckles showed white. On the table in front of them was a crumpled bundle oftattersall checked material. It was smudged with dirt, but more ominously, there were extensive patches of rust-red that looked remarkably like dried blood. ‘You’ve found something,’ George said, crossing the room and sitting opposite Kathy.

  Ruth took a shuddering breath and nodded. ‘It’s a shirt. And a…And a…’ Her voice cracked and gave up.

  George took out a pen and poked at the material, separating its folds. It was indeed a shirt, made of fine cotton twill. The maker’s name was sewn into a label in the collar. He had seen Philip Hawkin in similar shirts more times than he could count. Lying in the centre of the material was a revolver.

  George didn’t know much about guns, but he’d have bet a year’s salary that this was a .38 Webley.

  ‘Where did you find these, Mrs Hawkin?’

  Kathy gave him a sharp look. ‘Have you still got Phil Hawkin at the police station?’

  ‘Mr Hawkin’s still helping us with our inquiries,’ Clough said stoutly from the bottom of the table, where he sat with open notebook. ‘He’s not going to be walking in on us.’

  Kathy squeezed Ruth’s hands even more tightly. ‘It’s all right, Ruth.

  You can tell him.’

  ‘I usually wait till he goes out for the day before I can clean his darkroom.

  He hates me getting underfoot, so I always hang on till I know he’s going to be gone for a few hours,’ she blurted out. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to pull it out…I thought I could give the place a proper bottoming for once; I was going fair mad with nowt to keep me occupied…’ George waited patiently. Ruth pulled her hands away from Kathy and covered her face. ‘Oh God, I need a fag,’ she said indistinctly. George handed her a cigarette and managed to light it in spite of her trembling fingers. He wished he could find some useful words, but knew it was futile to tell Ruth that everything was going to be all right. Nothing would ever be right again for this woman. All he could do was sit quietly and watch her drag smoke into her lungs until the hammer of her heart quietened enough to let her take up her tale again. When she spoke this time, it was almost dreamily. ‘The bench he works at, it’s really an old table. It’s got drawers in it. I moved it away from the wall. It was a hell of a job, it’s really heavy. But I wanted to get behind it, to clean properly. I saw this material sticking out of the hole where one of the back drawers used to be. I wondered what it could be. So I pulled it out.’

  ‘She was screaming like a pig with its throat cut,’ Ma Lomas interjected.

  ‘I could hear her all the way over the fields.’ George took a deep breath. ‘There could be an innocent explanation for this, Mrs Hawkin.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ Ma sneered. ‘Let’s hear one, then. Take it away and test that blood, lad. Look where the blood is, you daft lump. It’s all down the front, right where you’d expect it to be. And the gun? How innocent can a pistol be? You check that gun. I bet it fired the bullet you found up in the mine.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘I thought your lot were supposed to have searched this place?’

  ‘I seem to remember Mr Hawkin was very particular about his darkroom,’ George said.

  ‘All the more reason to go through it like a dose of salts,’ Kathy said grimly. ‘Are you going to arrest him now, then?’

  ‘Have you got a paper bag I can put the shirt and the gun in?’

  George asked.

  Ruth gave Kathy a look of mute appeal. She jumped up and rummaged in the cupboard under the sink and came out with a large brown paper sack. George picked the shirt up on the end of the pen and fed it into the bag without touching it. The gun he wrapped meticulously in a clean handkerchief from his pocket and carefully placed it on top of the shirt. ‘I have to go back to Buxton,’ he said quietly. ‘Sergeant Clough will stay here and make sure nobody enters the outhouse where Mr Hawkin’s darkroom is situated.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll be sending out a team of officers to conduct a thorough search just as soon as I can arrange the warrant.’

  ‘But are you going to arrest him?’ Kathy persisted.

  ‘You’ll be kept fully informed of any developments,’ George said. A strange look passed among the women. ‘If you don’t arrest him you’d better keep him away from here,’ Ma Lomas said. ‘For the sake of his health.’

  George gave her a long, steady look. ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that threat, Mrs Lomas.’

  He drove Tommy Clough’s unfamiliar car back to Buxton with
a strange mixture of heaviness and exhilaration in his heart. He parked carefully and walked upstairs to the interview room with an air of quiet determination. He knew he ought to speak to DCI Carver or Superintendent Martin before he acted, but this was his case. George pushed open the door and stared down at Hawkin, whose petulant complaint died on his lips when he saw the inspector’s expression.

  George took a deep breath. ‘Philip Hawkin, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

  25

  The Long Haul 3

  George wasted no time. Hawkin was hustled down to the cells, bleating about trumped-up lies and demanding a lawyer. George turned a deaf ear. There would be plenty of time to deal with Hawkin later. If he was right, nobody would question his actions. If he was wrong, nobody would blame him. Nobody except, possibly, DCI Carver, who saw everything George did as a reproach and would glory in his junior officer’s embarrassment and disgrace. But staying in DCI Carver’s good books was the last consideration in George’s mind right then.

  As the door slammed shut on the still protesting Hawkin, George took DC Cragg to one side.

  ‘Cragg, I want you to ring the divisional CID down in St Albans, where Hawkin came from. We know he’s not got a record, because Sergeant Clough already checked that. What I want to know is if there was ever any talk. Any rumours, any beat gossip. Any allegations where there was never enough evidence for a charge.’

  ‘You mean sex offences?’

  ‘I mean anything, Cragg. Just get alongside the local lads and sound them out.’ He realized he was still clutching the paper sack containing the soiled shirt and the carefully wrapped gun. In his hurry, he’d forgotten the need to get them labelled and sent to the lab. He glanced at his watch. Almost noon. If he hurried, he’d catch one of the justices at the High Peak courtrooms.

  He was sure he would have no trouble getting a search warrant signed. Everyone wanted Alison Carter’s disappearance cleared up, and Hawkin hadn’t yet had time to make many influential friends in a town where people from five miles away were still regarded as foreigners. Swiftly, he filled in the application and left the station at a run. Ignoring his car, he raced down Silverlands and cut through the marketplace towards the courts. Ten minutes later, he walked out of Peak Buildings with a signed 188 search warrant in his pocket for Scardale Manor and its outbuildings. As he emerged, so did the sun, illuminating him with a brief shaft of pale winter light. It was hard not to interpret it as some kind of omen. Back at divisional headquarters, still carrying the paper sack, he was relieved to find Sergeant Bob Lucas on duty. It seemed only fitting that the officer who had first taken him to Scardale should be available to help search on what might possibly be the breakthrough in the case. George gave him a succinct outline of events and finally dealt with the formal paperwork that would send the shirt and gun to the labs, the chain of custody intact.

  Meanwhile, Lucas put together a small search team of two constables and a cadet, all he could spare from the busy day shift. The liveried police car followed George’s unmarked saloon out of the town and through the washed-out February landscape to Scardale. The word of Ruth’s discovery had clearly spread as swiftly as the original report of Alison’s disappearance. Women stood at open cottage doorways and men leaned against walls, their eyes never leaving the police officers as they trooped round the side of the manor towards the outbuilding where Philip Hawkin pursued his hobby. Even more unsettling than their stares was their silence.

  George found Clough standing outside the door of the small stone outbuilding, arms folded, a cigarette drooping from one corner of his mouth. ‘Any problems?’ he asked.

  Clough shook his head. ‘The hardest part was staying outside.’ George opened the door to the outbuilding and took his first look inside Hawkin’s darkroom. It was obvious that six officers would struggle to fit inside, never mind search adequately. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Clough and I will take the darkroom. Sergeant Lucas, I’d like your men to take the house. As you all know, it’s already been searched. But our concern then was to make sure Alison hadn’t left any hidden messages or that there were no signs of an assault or murder on the premises. Now, we’re looking for anything that sheds light on Philip Hawkin’s relationship with his stepdaughter. Or anything that gives us an insight into the man himself. Without a body, we need every scrap of circumstantial evidence we can find to put pressure on Hawkin. You can make a start in his study.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ Lucas said grimly. ‘Come on, lads. Let’s strip this place to the bricks.’ The four uniformed men headed for the back door. Through the kitchen window, George could see Kathy Lomas watching.

  When she caught his eye, she looked away.

  ‘OK, Tommy, let’s make a start.’ George crossed the threshold and flicked a light switch. Red light flooded the room. ‘Great,’ he muttered. He glanced at the wall and saw a second switch. When he clicked that, an ordinary electric light came on, replacing the eerie scarlet glow. He looked around him, taking stock of what needed to be searched. Apart from the heavy table that stood at an angle to the wall, everything was uncannily neat and tidy. A pair of heavy stone slop sinks that looked as if they had been there since the Middle Ages stood against the wall, the plumbing mounted on them brand new and gleaming. So was the photographic equipment. In one corner, a pair of gunmetal filing cabinets stood against the wall. George crossed to them and rattled the drawers. They were locked. ‘Bugger,’ he said softly.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Clough said, moving his boss to one side. He grasped the nearer cabinet, pulled it towards him, then, when it was about five inches clear of the wall, he tipped it backwards. ‘Can you hold it like that for me?’ he asked. George leaned against the cabinet, keeping it tilted at an angle.

  Clough dropped to the floor and fiddled around underneath for a minute or so. George heard the slide and click of a lock unfastening, then Clough’s grunt of satisfaction. ‘There you go, George.

  Very careless of Mr Hawkin to go out and leave his filing cabinets unlocked.’

  ‘I’ll start going through this one,’ George said. ‘You check the table and the shelves.’ He pulled the top drawer open and started on the dozens of suspension files it held. Each one contained strips of negatives, contact sheets and a varying number of prints. Quickly, he checked the other drawers. Each was the same. He groaned. ‘This is going to take for ever,’ he said.

  Clough came over and joined him. ‘There are thousands of these.’

  ‘I know. But we’re going to have to go through every one of them. If he’s ever taken dodgy photographs, they could be mixed up with innocent ones anywhere in these drawers.’ He sighed.

  ‘Shall we take a look in the other filing cabinet, just so we have a clear idea of the scale of the problem?’ Clough asked. ‘Good idea,’ George said. ‘Same routine again?’ This time, he manhandled the cabinet clear of the wall himself, leaving Clough to grope underneath.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Clough said, fumbling beneath the metal base. ‘I’ve caught my sleeve on something.’ His hand snaked into his jacket pocket and emerged with his cigarette lighter. A flick of the wheel and the flame lit up the area beneath the filing cabinet. ‘Jesus Christ on a bike,’ he said softly. He looked up at George. ‘You’re going to love this, George. There’s a hole in the floor with a safe in it.’

  George nearly dropped the filing cabinet in shock. ‘A safe?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Clough scrambled clear of the filing cabinet and stood up.

  ‘Let’s get this moved and you’ll see what I mean.’ They wrestled the heavy steel cabinet out of its slot and walked it across the room to clear enough space for them to study the safe. George crouched down and stared at it. The green metal front was about eighteen inches square, with a brass keyhole and a handle that protruded about an inch above the safe door into the cavity in the base of the filing cabinet. He sighed. ‘We’re going to need fingerprints out here to dust that handle for Hawkin’s prints. I don’t want him wa
lking away from the contents of that safe on the spurious grounds that somebody else must have planted whatever’s in it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Clough asked dubiously. ‘We’ll be lucky if there’s as much as a partial on a handle like that. It’s what’s inside that matters. He won’t have worn gloves, his prints’ll be all over whatever’s in there.’ George sat back on his heels. ‘You’re probably right. So where’s the key?’

  ‘If I was him, I’d have it on me.’

  George shook his head. ‘Cragg searched him when we put him in the cells. The only keys on him were for his car.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Go and ask Sergeant Lucas if they’ve come across any keys that look like they might open a safe. I’ll have a look here.’ George sat down at the table and started to go through the two drawers. One was a meticulous collection of useful implements—scissors, craft knives, tweezers, tiny soft brushes and draughtsman’s pens. The other was the usual jumble of a junk drawer—pieces of string, drawing pins, a broken nail file, a couple of half-used rolls ofSellotape, candle ends, torch bulbs, matchboxes and odd screws. Neither held a key. George lit a cigarette and smoked it furiously. He felt like a watch wound to the absolute limit of its spring.

  All through the investigation, he had forced himself to keep an open mind, knowing how easy it was to develop a fixed idea and to force every subsequent piece of information to fit the reconception. But if he was honest, he’d never had an entirely open mind about Philip Hawkin. The more likely it was that Alison was dead, the more likely it was that her stepfather was the man responsible. That was what the statistics suggested, and it was bolstered by his lack of liking for the man. He had tried to stifle his own instinctive response, knowing prejudice was an enemy of building a solid case, but time and again, Hawkin had crept into his consciousness as the prime suspect if murder became the inevitable conclusion of their inquiry.

  Now it beckoned irresistibly. Certainty had dropped into place like the tumblers of a well-oiled lock. The only question was whether he could assemble the evidence that would turn it into a conviction. George walked out of the darkroom and into the darkening chill of the afternoon. The house lights burned pale yellow and he could see figures moving behind the windows. He glimpsed Ruth Hawkin crossing the kitchen and realized he was dreading the moment when he might have to confirm for her what they all believed now anyway. No matter how much she might have thought herself resigned to losing her daughter, the instant when he told her they were formally treating Alison’s disappearance as a murder inquiry would send a blade of pain to her heart. He lit another cigarette and paced in tight circles outside the darkroom. What was keeping Clough? He couldn’t leave the outhouse now the search was under way, for fear of a later defence argument that while it had been unattended, someone had slipped incriminating evidence inside. He didn’t want to continue searching either, realizing that with so circumstantial an array of evidence, every crucial find must be witnessed. George forced himself to breathe deeply, rotating his shoulders inside his coat to try to release some of the tension that knotted his neck in taut cords. As the last light faded behind the western edge of the dale, Clough emerged, a wide grin spread across his face. ‘Sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘I had to go through all the desk drawers. Nothing. Then I noticed one of the drawers wasn’t closing flush. So I pulled it out, and bingo! There was the safe key, stuck to the back of the drawer with elastoplast.’ He dangled the key in front of George. ‘The same kind of elastoplast that the dog was muzzled with, incidentally.’