A Place of Execution (1999)

by Val McDermid

  Catherine said. ‘How would you know? You never met my mother,’ Alison said defiantly.

  ‘I’ve seen photographs of her. She was in all the papers during the trial.’

  Alison shook her head. ‘There you go again, talking nonsense. I’ve no idea what you’re on about, you know. My mother was never involved in a trial in her life.’

  Tommy walked across the room and stationed himself opposite her.

  He shook his head with a sympathetic half-smile. ‘It’s too late, Alison.

  There’s no point in keeping up the pretence any longer.’

  ‘What pretence? I keep telling you, I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re on about.’

  ‘Are you still claiming to be Janis Wainwright?’ Catherine said coldly. ‘What do you mean, claiming? What is this? I’m calling the police,’ she said, setting off for the phone.

  Tommy and Catherine did nothing and said nothing. Alison opened the phone book and looked up the number. Then she glanced over her shoulder to see if they were going anywhere. Catherine smiled politely and Tommy shook his head again. ‘You know that’s not a good idea,’ he said sadly, as her hand crept towards the phone. ‘No, Tommy, let her. I really want to hear her explaining how she managed the resurrection,’ Catherine said, the epitome of sweet reason. Alison froze. ‘That’s right, Alison. I know Janis died in 1959. Eleventh of May, to be precise. It must have been hard for your Auntie Dorothy and Uncle Sam. Hard for you too, with you and Janis being much of an age.’

  Alison’s eyes were fearful now. She must have had nightmares about this moment for years, Tommy thought with a pang of pity. And at last it was unfolding before her. He could only imagine the fear that must be coursing through her right now. Two strangers in her kitchen, one with good reason to want to take revenge on her for making a fool of 388 him thirty-five years before, the other apparently hellbent on exposing her darkest secrets to a sensation-hungry world. And Catherine wasn’t making it any easier with her aggressiveness. Somehow, he had to calm things down, to make Alison feel that they were her best chance of salvaging something from this appalling situation. ‘Sit down, Alison,’ he said kindly. ‘We’re not out to get you. We just want to know the truth, that’s all. If we were planning on destroying you, we’d have gone to the police as soon as Catherine turned up Janis Wainwright’s death certificate.’

  Slowly, uneasily, like an animal that expects danger, she moved across to the table and sat at the opposite end from Catherine. ‘What’s any of this to you?’ she asked her.

  ‘George Bennett’s lying in hospital in Derby because of what he saw in this house. I’m sure Helen’s been on the phone to tell you,’ Catherine said.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. And I’m sorry. I only ever wished George Bennett well.’

  ‘You should never have let him come here, if you wished him well,’ Tommy said, unable to keep the edge of anger and pain out of his voice. ‘You must have known he’d recognize you.’

  She sighed. ‘What else could I do? How could I explain to Helen that I didn’t want to meet her future in-laws? It had to be better that we got it over with than him coming face to face with me at the wedding. But you still haven’t answered my question. What’s any of this to you?’ Catherine leaned forward. Her voice was as intense as her expression. ‘I’ve spent six months of my life working with George Bennett to tell a story. Now I find out that we’ve both been manipulated into believing a lie. George Bennett’s paid a hell of a price for finding that out. And I won’t be a party to allowing that lie to persist.’

  ‘Whatever the cost to other people? Even if it shames George Bennett? Even if it destroys Paul Bennett and Helen too?’ Alison exploded, her composure shattering like a light bulb on a stone floor. ‘And it’s not just them.’ Her hand flew to her mouth in a classic gesture, her eyes widening as she realized she had told them more than they knew. ‘If you want me to hold off, you’re going to have to give me a better reason than sentimentality. It’s time to talk, Alison,’ Catherine said coldly. ‘Time for the whole story.’

  ‘Why should I say anything to you? This could be a trick. Everybody knows how far hacks like you will go to get a story. How do I know you know anything about me at all?’ It was a last desperate throw of the dice, and everyone in the room knew it.

  Catherine opened her bag and took out print-outs of the four certificates. ‘This is where we start,’ she said, tossing them down the table to Alison. They landed in an unruly flurry. Alison slowly read through them, using the time to regain control of herself. When she looked up, her face was impassive once more. But Catherine could see dark sweat stains forming under the arms of her pale-green blouse. ‘So?’ Alison said.

  Catherine took out the computer-aged photograph and slid it towards Alison. ‘According to the computers at Manchester University, this is what Alison would look like if she was still alive.

  Looked in a mirror lately?’ Alison’s lips parted, revealing clenched teeth and she drew in a hiss of breath. The look she gave Catherine made her glad she had Tommy with her.

  ‘What we know is that you are not Janis Wainwright. Thanks to the wonders of DNA, what can probably be proved is that you are Alison Carter. What can definitely be proved is that Helen is not your sister but your daughter. The daughter you had when you were barely fourteen, following the systematic abuse and rape that you suffered at the hands of your stepfather, Philip Hawkin. The man they hanged for your murder. If we went to the police with what we have, they could exhume the bodies and prove these relationships, no bother at all.’ Catherine spoke with clinical precision.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s right, Alison,’ Tommy said. ‘But I meant what I said. We didn’t come here to make a case against you. For the sake of everybody involved in this, we need to know what happened. So we can all decide together about the best way to deal with this.’ Without asking for permission, Catherine took out her cigarettes and lit one. Tommy walked across to the draining board and brought her a plate. The activity filled a long silence while Alison stared wordlessly at the computer-aged photograph. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. ‘Here’s what we think happened,’ Tommy said gently, sitting down near her. ‘Hawkin was abusing you, and we think you didn’t know what to do about it. You were afraid of what would happen if you told your mum.

  Most kids are. But you’d already seen her lose one husband and you were afraid she’d have the same terrible grief if you forced her to choose between Hawkin and you. Then you fell pregnant.

  And your mum realized what had happened.’

  Alison’s nod was almost imperceptible. A single tear slid from her right eye and trickled down her cheek. She made no move to wipe it away. ‘So she sent you off to live with your aunt and uncle, telling you that from now on you had to be Janis,’ Tommy continued. ‘And then she set him up.

  With the information you gave her, she was able to arrange for George Bennett to stumble over the clues she’d planted. She even found where the photographs were kept. And through it all, you kept your silence. You endured the horrors of a pregnancy you didn’t want, you lost your childhood and you lost any chance you had of happiness. You didn’t even get to bring up your daughter as your own child. For years, the sacrifice was bearable because it meant you all had something approaching a decent life. And now, because of one terrible coincidence, because Paul and Helen met and fell in love, it’s all gone tragically wrong.’ Alison took a deep shuddering breath. ‘You seem to have managed to work it all out without any help from me,’ she said shakily. Tommy laid a hand on her arm. ‘We’re right, aren’t we?’

  ‘No, Tommy,’ Catherine interjected, apparently unmoved by the emotional scene playing itself out before her. ‘There’s more. We thought before we got here that that was the whole story, but it’s not, is it? You gave it away, Alison. When you said it wasn’t Just Paul and Helen whose lives could be destroyed. There’s more to this, and you’re going to tell us.’ She looked up at Catherine, her eyes dark with anger. ‘
You’re wrong.

  There’s nothing more to tell.’

  ‘Oh, I think there is. And I think you’re going to tell us. Because as things stand, I’m not on your side. You and your mother murdered Philip Hawkin. It wasn’t something done on the spur of the moment, under immediate provocation. It took months to achieve, and the pair of you kept your mouths shut all that time. You certainly made a meal of your revenge. But I don’t see any reason why you should be protected from the consequences of what you did. If you wanted to avoid the risk of Helen’s life being destroyed, you should have told her the truth years ago,’ Catherine said, injecting anger into her voice. She was determined not to be diverted by Alison’s pain, no matter how genuine it was. ‘Now all you’ve achieved is that you’ve risked another man’s life, a good man’s life, all because your mother didn’t have the courage to deal with Philip Hawkin head on.’

  Alison’s head came up. ‘You don’t understand a damn thing,’ she said bitterly. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘So help me to understand,’ Catherine challenged.

  Alison stared at Catherine long and hard then stood up. ‘I have to fetch something. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added as Tommy pushed his chair back. ‘I’m not going to run away. I’m not going to do anything silly. But there’s something I need to show you. Then maybe you’ll believe me when I tell you what really happened.’

  She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Tommy and Catherine staring at each other, wondering what was coming next. ‘You’re being a bit hard on her,’ Tommy said. ‘She’s been through hell. We don’t have the right to make her suffer.’

  ‘Come on, Tommy. She’s holding out on us. You have to ask what could be worse than we already know. She’s admitted to conspiring with her mother to murder her stepfather, but there’s still something locked away inside her that she thinks is even worse.’ Tommy gave Catherine a look that bordered on the contemptuous.

  ‘And you think you’ve a right to that knowledge?’

  ‘I think we all have.’

  He sighed. ‘I hope we don’t all live to regret this, Catherine.’

  55

  August 1998

  Alison returned, carrying a locked metal file case. She unlocked it with a key from the table drawer, flipped the top open and stepped back as if afraid the contents might bite. Her shoulders hunched protectively as she crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I’m putting the kettle on,’ she said. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Black coffee,’ Catherine replied.

  ‘Tea,’ Tommy said. ‘Milk, one sugar.’

  ‘I’ve had my fill of what’s in that box,’ Alison said, turning her back and crossing to the Aga. ‘You look as much as you want, and maybe then you won’t be so bloody glib about my past,’ she added, turning briefly to glare at Catherine.

  Tommy and Catherine approached with the cautious reverence of bomb-disposal experts moving in on a suspect device. The box contained perhaps a dozen manila envelopes, all around ten inches by eight. Tommy pulled out the first. In straggling block capitals, the ink faded, it was labelled, ‘Mary Crowther’.

  Against the routinely domestic background noises of hot drinks being made, Tommy inserted his thumb under the tucked-in flap of the envelope. He tipped the contents on to the table. There were a dozen black and white photographs, some strips of negatives and two contact sheets. These were not happy portraits of an innocent seven-year-old girl. They were obscene parodies of adult sexuality, lewd poses that turned Catherine’s stomach. In one, Philip Hawkin appeared, his hand thrusting between the weeping child’s legs.

  There were envelopes for Mary’s nine-year-old brother Paul; for thirteen-year-old Janet, eight-year-old Shirley, six-year-old Pauline, and even three-year-old Tom Carter; for Brenda and Sandra Lomas, aged seven and five; and for four-year-old Amy Lomas. The horror contained in those envelopes was almost beyond their comprehension. It was a guided tour of a hell Catherine would rather not have known about. Her legs gave way and she slumped into a chair, her face white and strained. Tommy turned his face away and shuffled the envelopes back into the file box. Now he understood the primeval urge to destroy Philip Hawkin. What had been done to Alison had been bad enough. But this was infinitely worse in its scale and its depravity. If he had seen these photographs thirty-five years before, he doubted whether he’d have been able to keep his hands away from the man’s throat.

  Alison dumped a tray on the table. ‘If you want something stronger, you’ll have to go to thpub at Longnor. I don’t keep alcohol in the house. In my early twenties, I had a bad patch when the world looked better through a glass. Then I realized it was just another way of letting him win. Damned if I was going to do that after all we’d been through.’ Her voice was cold and hard, but her lips quivered as she spoke. She poured out coffee and tea and sat down at the opposite end of the table from Catherine and Tommy and the Pandora’s box she’d gifted them. ‘You wanted the truth,’ she said. ‘Now it’s going to be your burden too. See how you like living with it.’ Catherine stared dumbly at her, only barely beginning to realize the weight of the curse she had brought on her own head. Images engraved on her mind’s eye, she already knew she had condemned herself to nightmares.

  Tommy said nothing, his head bowed, his eyes hidden beneath his heavy brows. He knew he was still numb from shock and wished that state would never pass.

  ‘I don’t know how to tell this story,’ Alison said wearily. ‘It’s been in my head for thirty-five years but I’ve had no practice. Once it was all over, none of us ever spoke of it again. I see Kathy Lomas every day I’m in Scardale, and we never mention it. Even with you coming round and digging up old memories, we’ve none of us sat down and talked about it. We did what we thought we had to do, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t feel guilty. And guilt isn’t something anybody finds easy to share. I learned that from personal experience long before I studied psychology.’ She pushed her hair back from her face and looked Catherine in the eye. ‘I never thought we’d get away with it. I lived every day in fear of the knock at the door. I remember my real mum ringing up Dorothy to talk about what was happening with the investigation. Every day she’d phone. And she was on pins because George Bennett was such a good, 394 honest copper. He was so persistent, she said. She was convinced he was going to work out what was really going on. But he never did.’ Tommy raised his head. ‘You all lied like you were born to it,’ he said stonily. ‘Come on, Alison, you might as well let us have the rest of it.’ Alison sighed. ‘You have to remember what life was like in the nineteensixties. Child abuse didn’t exist inside families or communities. It was something that some pervert, some stranger, might do. But if you’d gone to your teacher or your doctor or the village bobby and said the squire of Scardale was fucking and buggering all the village kids, you’d have been locked up for being mentally ill.

  ‘You also have to remember that Philip Hawkin owned us, lock, stock and barrel. He owned our livelihoods, our homes. Under old Squire Castleton, we’d grown up in a feudal system, more or less. Not even the grown-ups questioned the squire. And we were little kids. We didn’t know we could tell on the new squire. And we none of us knew about the others, not for sure. We were all too terrified to talk about what was happening, even to each other.

  ‘He was a shrewd bastard, you see. He’d never shown any signs of being a paedophile when he was courting my mother. He never had much time for me before he married her. He was nice enough, buying me things. But he never bothered me at all. I’m convinced the only reason he married my mother was a way of covering his back. If any of us had dared to speak out against him, he could have played the outraged innocent, the happily married man.’ She stabbed a finger at Tommy. ‘And you lot would have believed him.’

  Tommy sighed and nodded. ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘I know I’m right. Anyway, like I say, he never came near me before the wedding. But as soon as they were married, it was a different story.

  T
hen it was, ‘little girls have to show their fathers how grateful they are for all he does for them,’ and all that sort of pernicious emotional blackmail. ‘But I wasn’t enough for him. That bastard Hawkin was abusing each and every one of us. Except Derek. I think Derek was that little bit too old for him to fancy.’ She cupped her hands round her mug of tea and sighed again. ‘And we all kept our mouths shut. We were bewildered and terrified, but none of us knew what to do.

  ‘And then one day, my mother asked me why I’d not been using the sanitary towels she’d bought me when my first period had started.

  I told her I’d not had another period since. She started asking questions, and it all came out. What he’d been doing to me, how he’d been taking pictures of himself doing it to me. And she realized I must be pregnant.’

  Alison took a sip of her tea to ease the huskiness in her voice and compose herself. ‘Next time he went into Stockport for the day, she ransacked his darkroom. And that’s when she found the rest of the pictures, in his stupid bloody safe. She knew then what he was. She got all the adults together and showed them the photographs. You can imagine what it was like. People were baying for Hawkin’s blood. The women were all for castrating him and letting him bleed to death. The men talked about killing him and making it look like a farm accident. ‘It was old Ma Lomas that talked sense into them. She said that if we killed him, somebody would have to take the blame. Even if he died under a tractor, it wouldn’t be written off as just another farm accident. It would be investigated, because he was important. He was the squire, not just some farm labourer who didn’t count for anything. One little slip, and somebody from the village would end up in the dock, especially once it became obvious I was pregnant. Besides, she reckoned he wouldn’t suffer nearly enough from a quick death.