A Place of Execution (1999) (27 page)

He and Clough leaned against the bonnet of the Zephyr, smoking in silence. After a few moments, a wedge of yellow light spread across the doorway of Tor Cottage. The unmistakable outline ofMa Lomas appeared, silhouetted against the interior. Then the light disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared. His night vision impaired, George blinked hard. The old woman was almost upon them before he realized that she hadn’t gone back indoors.

‘Have you no home to go to?’ she asked.

‘He’s on duty,’ George said.

‘What’s your excuse?’

‘Christmas is for kids, isn’t that what they say? Well, there’s one kid I couldn’t get out of my mind.’

‘By heck, a copper with a heart,’ Ma scoffed. She opened her voluminous coat and from a poacher’s pocket she took out a bottle of the clear spirit she’d drunk when they’d interviewed her at the very beginning of the investigation. From another pocket, she took three thick tumblers. ‘I thought you might like something to keep the cold out.’

‘That would be an act of Christian charity,’

Clough said.

They watched her place the glasses on the car bonnet and pour three generous measures.

Ceremoniously, she handed them a glass each, then raised hers in a toast.

‘What are we drinking to?’ George asked.

‘We’re drinking to you finding enough evidence,’ she said in a voice that was more chill than the night air.

‘I’d rather drink to finding Alison,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘If you were going to find Alison, you’d have found her by now. Wherever he’s put her, she’s beyond anything except chance. All that’s left for us now is the hope that you can make him pay.’

‘Did you have anyone in particular in mind?’ Clough asked. ‘Same as you, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she said drily, turning to face the manor house and raising her glass. ‘To proof.’

George took a swig of his drink and almost choked. ‘About a hundred and sixty proof, I’d say,’ he gasped when he could speak again. ‘Flaming Nora, what is this stuff? Rocket fuel?’

The old woman chuckled. ‘Our Terry calls it Hellfire. It’s distilled from elderflower and gooseberry wine.’

‘We never found a still when we searched the village,’ Clough remarked. ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ She drained her glass. ‘So, what’s next? How do you get him?’

George forced himself to swallow the rest of the fiery spirit. When he’d recovered the power of speech, he said, ‘I don’t know that we can. That said, I’m not giving up.’

‘See that you don’t,’ she said grimly. She held out her hand for the empty glasses then turned her back and returned to her cottage. ‘That’s us told,’ Clough said.

‘And a Merry bloody Christmas to you, too.’

The first Monday in February, and George was at his desk by eight. Tommy Clough tapped on the door a few minutes after the hour, a couple of steaming mugs of tea gripped in one large hand.

‘How was the weather?’ he asked.

‘Better than we had any right to expect,’ George said. ‘It was freezing, but the sun shone every day.

We neither of us mind the cold as long as it’s dry, and Norfolk’s so flat that Anne was able to walk for miles.’ Clough settled down opposite George and lit up. ‘You look well on it. More like you’d had a fortnight on the Costa Brava than a week in Wells-nextthe-Sea.’

George grinned. ‘The Martinet was right, then.’ He’d resisted furiously when Superintendent Martin had insisted that he take off some time in lieu of the endless hours he’d expended on the Alison Carter inquiry. Eventually, when Jack Martin had turned his suggestion into an order, he’d given in with ill grace and allowed Anne to book them into a guesthouse in the Norfolk seaside town. They’d been the only residents, pampered by a landlady who believed everyone should eat at least three square meals a day. A week of regular food, fresh air and the undivided attention of his wife had filled George with energy and resolve. ‘He’s been on at me to do the same,’ Clough admitted. ‘Maybe I will, now you’re back.’

‘Any developments?’ George asked, blowing gently on his tea. ‘Well, I took that new WPC from Chapel-en-le-Frith to see Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band at the Pavilion Gardens on Friday night, and we had a very nice evening. Think I might ask her if she fancies going to see that Albert Finney film at the Opera House. Tom Jones, they call it. Apparently it’s a right good film to take a young lady to if you want to get her in the mood.’ Clough grinned, without lasciviousness. ‘I meant in the case, not in your pathetic love life,’ George responded with good humour.

‘Funnily enough, there was something. We got a call on Sunday from Philip Hawkin. He said he’d been looking at the Spot the Ball competition in the paper and he could swear that one of the people in the crowd beside the goal was Alison.’ He squinted at George through the smoke. ‘What do you make of that?’

George felt a strange fluttering in his stomach. ‘Go on. Tommy. I’m all ears.’ Tea forgotten, he leaned forward and stared intently at his sergeant.

‘I went straight out to see what was what. It was the Sunday Sentinel, the Nottingham Forest match.

As soon as I saw the photo, I could see why he’d rung. Admittedly, it was a tiny photograph, but it did look a lot like Alison. So I got in touch with the newspaper, and they got their lads to blow up the original. They sent it up on the train and it got here Monday teatime.’ He didn’t need to continue; his face told the rest of the story. Closer examination had proved the girl in the football crowd was someone quite different.

George took a deep breath and closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Thank you, God,’ he said softly. He looked at Clough and smiled. ‘Do we happen to know whether Philip Hawkin takes the Manchester Evening News7’

‘Funnily enough, I do know. Kathy Lomas mentioned it when she was running through the kids’ routine. Because the daily paper doesn’t get to Scardale till lunchtime and Hawkin likes a paper with his breakfast, the newsagent at Longnor leaves an Evening News in the mailbox at the end of the lane every morning and whoever does the school run drops it off at the manor afterwards.’

George’s smile grew wider. ‘I thought as much.’ He jumped to his feet and yanked open the drawer of his filing cabinet. He scrabbled among the files, then came up with a large manila envelope. He waved it at Clough and said triumphantly, ‘This is what I call leverage.’ Clough caught the file as it sailed through the air towards him. The front of the envelope read, ‘Pauline Catherine Reade’. He opened the envelope and a thin bundle of newspaper cuttings spilled across the desk. He frowned as he saw the dates noted in red biro on the edge of the clippings. ‘You’ve been following this from the beginning, back last July. That’s four months before Alison went missing,’ he said, his voice indicating precisely how strange he found such behaviour. George pushed his blond hair back from his forehead. ‘I always take an interest in stories that might turn up on our patch,’ was all he said.

‘What am I looking for?’ Clough asked, flicking through the cuttings. ‘You’ll know when you see it.’ George leaned against the filing cabinet, arms folded, a cool smile on his lips.

Suddenly, Clough froze. His index finger prodded a single clipping as if it could be provoked into biting. ‘Bugger me,’ he said softly.

Manchester Evening News, Monday, 2
nd
November 1963, p.3

Picture dashes mothers hopes

For a few brief hours, hopes of a reunion with her missing 16-year-old daughter were raised for Mrs Joan Reade by a crowd picture in the Manchester Evening News & Chronicle Football Pink. But they were dashed when Mrs Reade was shown a specially enlarged copy of the photograph. Sadly she said at her home in Wilesstreet, Gorton, today, ‘That is not Pauline after all.’

Pauline has been missing from home since July 12, when she went to a dance and did not return. Mrs Reade’s 15-year-old son Paul spotted a picture in last Saturday’s Football Pink of a section of the crowd at the Lancashire Rugby League Cup Final at Swinton, and thought it was Pauline.

Clough looked up. ‘He thinks we’re thick.’

‘You’re sure it was Hawkin and not his wife who spotted the likeness?’

‘It was him that rang up and him that took all the credit. When I asked Mrs Hawkin what she thought of the likeness, she said she’d been more convinced when she’d first seen it, but looking at it again, she wasn’t at all sure. He sounded a bit brassed off with her, like she was supposed to back him up all the way and she wasn’t performing as a dutiful little wife should.’

George reached for his cigarettes and paced while he talked. ‘So we’ve got him trying to make himself look good. Why has he done it now?’ Clough waited, knowing he was supposed to let the boss answer his own question. ‘Why? Because he expected that we’d have given up on Alison long ago and moved on to the next thing. He’s disconcerted because you and I are still out there in Scardale two or three times a week, talking to folk, going over the ground, not leaving it alone.

He’s not stupid; he must realize we fancy him for whatever has happened to his stepdaughter. Not to mention the fact that Ma Lomas thinks he’s done it, and I can’t imagine her being any more reticent to his face than she is behind his back.’

‘Except that everybody in that village owes Hawkin the roof over their head and the bread in their mouths,’ Clough reminded him. ‘Even Ma Lomas might think twice about telling him to his face she thinks he raped and murdered Alison Carter.’

George acknowledged the point with a dip of his head. ‘OK, I’ll grant you that. But he must be aware that the villagers suspect him of doing something terrible to Alison, if only because he’s the outsider. So when it becomes clear that this is not just going to go away, Hawkin decides it’s about time he makes himself look good. And he remembers the story he read in the Manchester Evening News about Pauline Reade.’ He stopped pacing and leaned on the desk. ‘What do you think, Tommy? Is it enough to pull him in for questioning?’

Clough pushed his lips together, in and out like a goldfish. ‘I don’t know. What are we going to ask him?’

‘If he reads the Evening News. What his relationship with Alison was like. The usual stuff. All the pressure points. Did she resent him taking her father’s place? Did he think she was attractive? Christ, Tommy, we can ask him what his favourite colour is. I just want him in here, under pressure, so we can see what happens. We’ve given him an easy ride so far because we didn’t have a big enough lever to justify not treating him like a worried parent. Well, I think we have now.’

Clough scratched his head. ‘You know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘I think they don’t pay us enough to carry the can on a decision like this. I think that’s why the DCI and the Martinet get their money. If I was you, I’d go and lay all this out before them and see what they say.’ George dropped into his chair like a sack of coal, his face dispirited.

‘Oh, Tommy, don’t tell me you think I’m talking bollocks?’

‘No, I think you’re right. I think Hawkin’s the man who knows what happened to Alison. But I don’t know if this is the right time to put the pressure on, and I don’t want to lose him because we’ve been too hungry. George, we’re too close to this case. We’ve breathed, slept and dreamed it for nigh on seven weeks. We can’t see the wood for the trees. Go and talk to the Martinet. Then if the wheels do come off, they can’t use it as a stick to beat us with.’

George’s laugh was bitter. ‘You really think so? Tommy, if the wheels come off this, we’ll be back directing traffic in Derby for the rest of our careers.’

Clough shrugged. ‘Better make sure we get it right, then.’

The long Haul 2

C
lough walked Hawkin into the interview room where George was already waiting. He was sitting at the table, intently reading the contents of a file folder. When Hawkin walked in, George didn’t even look up. He simply carried on, a frown of concentration on his face. It was the first move in a carefully orchestrated process. Silently, Clough indicated to Hawkin that he should sit opposite George. Hawkin, lips compressed, eyes unreadable, did as he was bid. Clough grabbed a chair and swung it round so it stood between Hawkin and the door. His solid legs straddled it, his notebook propped on its back. Hawkin breathed out heavily through his nose but said nothing.

Eventually, George closed the file, placed it precisely on the table in front of him and looked evenly at Hawkin. He took in the expensive overcoat draped over his arm, the tailored tweed sports jacket over the fine-wool polo-neck sweater and the crossed legs in their palecream twill. He’d have bet a month’s salary that Hawkin had spent a chunk of his inheritance buying his country squire look as a job lot in Austin Reed. It seemed entirely wrong on a man who looked as if he belonged in a bank clerk’s cheap navy suit. ‘Good of you to come in, Mr Hawkin,’ George said, his voice devoid of welcoming inflection.

‘I was planning to come into Buxton today anyway, so it was no great hardship,’ Hawkin drawled.

He looked entirely at ease, his small triangular mouth composed, apparently on the edge of a smile.

‘Nevertheless, we’re always glad when members of the public recognize their duty to support the police,’ George said sanctimoniously. He took out his cigarettes. ‘You’re a smoker, aren’t you?’

‘Thank you, Inspector, but I’ll stick to my own,’ Hawkin said, spuming the offered packet of Gold Leaf with a slight sneer. ‘Is this going to take long?’

‘That depends on you,’ Clough ground out from behind Hawkin’s right shoulder.

‘I don’t think I like your sergeant’s tone,’ Hawkin said, his voice petulant.

George stared at Hawkin, saying nothing at all. When the older man shifted slightly in his chair, George spoke formally. ‘I need to ask you some questions relating to the disappearance of your stepdaughter, Alison Carter, on the eleventh of December last year.’

‘Of course. Why else would I be here? I’m hardly likely to be involved in anything criminal, am I?’ Hawkin’s smirk was self-satisfied, as if he alone held a secret that the others could never guess at. ‘While I was away last week, you contacted us because you thought you saw Alison in a Spot the Ball competition photograph.’ Hawkin nodded. ‘Sadly, I was mistaken. I could have sworn it was her.’