A Place of Execution (1999) (43 page)

‘All in good time,’ Ma Lomas shouted back. ‘He’s drinking with Scardale first. Come on, George, we’re not letting you out of our sight until you’ve had a drink off each and every one of us. And bring that big ox of a sergeant of yours along with you.’

His head spinning, his stomach swimming, George Bennett was carried off into the night. Against all odds, he’d triumphed. He’d given Alison Carter the justice she had demanded of him. He had challenged his bosses, the tenets of the English legal system and the vile slanders of the press, and he had triumphed.

A Place of Execution

O
n the evening of Thursday, 27
th
August 1964, two men descended from the train at Derby station, each carrying a small suitcase. None of their fellow passengers had given them a second glance, but a police car stood ready to carry them through the streets to the prison where Philip Hawkin sat in a cell with the two prison warders appointed to the death watch. Later that evening, the older of the two men slid open the oiled flap that allowed him to look into the condemned cell. He saw a moderately tall man whose medium frame had clearly shed every spare ounce of flesh. He was restlessly pacing the floor, a cigarette burning between his fingers. He saw nothing to contradict the calculations he had already made based on the piece of paper he had been handed which said, ‘Five feet ten inches, nine stone ten.’ A seven-foot drop would do nicely. Hawkin spent the night awake, devoting some of the time to writing a letter to his wife. According to Detective Sergeant Clough, who was shown the letter by Ruth Carter, it maintained his innocence. Whatever wrongs I may have done you, killing your beloved daughter was not one of them. I have committed many sins and crimes in my life, but not murder. I should not hang for something I have not done, but my fate is sealed now because other people have lied. My blood is on their conscience. I do not hold it against you that you were taken in by their lies. Believe me when I say I have no idea what happened to Alison. I have nothing left to lose now except my life and that will be taken from me in the morning, so there is no reason for me to lie now. I am sorry that I was not a better husband.

Less than five miles away on the other side of the city, George Bennett was also awake. He stood smoking at the open bedroom window of the house that had been their home since his transfer from Buxton a month 284 before. But it was not Philip Hawkin’s destiny that was interfering with his sleep. At seven fifty-three the previous evening, Anne had straightened up in her chair and gasped with pain. She had staggered to her feet, George at her side with breathtaking swiftness. It was clearly the moment he’d been anticipating for the two weeks since Anne’s due date had passed without a sign of labour. Everyone had told him first babies were often late, but that hadn’t made it any easier. Now, before they had reached the living room door, suddenly, mystifyingly to George, clear liquid was pouring out of her. She’d stumbled to the bottom of the stairs and slumped down, reassuring him that this was perfectly normal, but that it was time to take her to the hospital. She’d pointed to the small suitcase, packed and ready in a corner of the hall.

Half-crazy with worry and concern, George helped Anne out to the car and ran back for the suitcase. Then he drove like a maniac through the quiet streets, attracting sharp glances from respectable gardeners and admiring ones from lads lounging on street corners. By the time they reached the infirmary, Anne was shrieking with pain every couple of minutes.

Almost before he could register what was happening, Anne was whisked away from him into the alien world of the maternity wing, a place where no man who lacked a stethoscope would ever be heeded. In spite of his protests, George was firmly herded to the reception area where he was told by a staff nurse who wouldn’t have been out of place in Superintendent Martin’s regiment that he might as well go home since he was neither use nor ornament to his wife or the medical staff.

Stunned and bemused, George found himself outside in the car park without quite knowing how he’d got there. What was he supposed to do now? Anne had been busily reading books about how to prepare for motherhood, but nobody had told George what he was supposed to do. Once the baby was born, that was all right. He knew about that. Cigars all round for the lads in the office, then down to the pub to wet the baby’s head. But how was he to fill the time until that moment? Come to that, how long would it take? With a sigh, he got back into the car and headed home. When he reached the smart little semi, the identical twin of the one in Buxton except that it lacked the advantage of a corner garden, his first act was to grab the phone and call the hospital.

‘Nothing’s going to happen for hours yet,’ a nurse told him crossly.

‘Why don’t you have an early night and call us in the morning?’

George clattered the phone back into its cradle. He didn’t even know anybody well enough in the city CID to ring them up and suggest a drink. He was about to raid the bottle of whisky in the sideboard when the phone rang, startling him so much he dropped one of the crystal tumblers they’d been given for a wedding present. ‘Damn!’ he exclaimed as he picked the phone up.

‘Bad moment, George?’ Tommy Clough’s bantering tone was as welcome to his ears as the confession of a grass.

‘I’ve just taken Anne to the maternity ward, but apart from that, I’m fine. What can I do for you?’

‘I’ve just managed to swap my shift for tomorrow. I thought I’d come down and make sure they hang that bugger in the morning. And then I thought we could go out and get drunk as skunks. But it sounds like you’re otherwise engaged.’

George clutched the phone like a drowning man would a life belt. ‘Come down. I could use the company. Those nurses act like men have got nothing to do with babies.’

Tommy chuckled. ‘There’s an answer to that, but you’re a married man so I won’t sully your ears with it. I’ll be there in an hour or so.’ George filled some of the time by walking down to the local pub and buying bottles of beer to supplement the whisky. In the event, they’d drunk very little, both affected in their different ways by the magnitude of the events that were unfolding around them.

Some time after midnight—and George’s fourth call to the maternity ward—Clough had bedded down in the spare room. But it wasn’t the soft grumble of his snoring that kept George awake. As the long night unfurled into dawn, he found the images of Alison Carter’s ordeal intermingling with what he imagined Anne was enduring until he could no longer separate the sufferings. Eventually, as the eastern sky lightened, he dozed off, curled like a foetus in one corner of the bed. The alarm roused him at seven and his eyes snapped open, his mind fully conscious. Was he a father? He uncoiled his legs and half ran across the room, almost tripping as he hurried downstairs to the phone. The tone was the same, even though the accent was different. No news. The subtext: stop bothering us.

Clough’s tousled curls and bleary eyes appeared over the banister.

‘Any news?’

George shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Seems weird,’ Clough yawned. ‘Anne going into labour now.’

‘Not really. She was already two weeks overdue. Anxiety can sometimes bring on labour, according to one of her books. And she’s had more than her fair share of anxiety out of this case,’

George said, walking back upstairs. ‘First she has to cope with me working all the hours God sends on the initial inquiry, then she has to read all that stuff in the papers about how I’m so corrupt I’d send an innocent man to the gallows, then she had to read it all over again after the appeal, and now she’s had to think about a man hanging because I’ve done my job.’ He stood on the landing and shook his head, his rumpled fair fringe swinging with the movement. ‘It’s a miracle she’s not lost it.’

Clough put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s get dressed. I’ll buy you breakfast. There’s a café not far down the road from the prison.’ George froze. ‘Are you going to the prison?’

‘Were you not?’

George looked surprised. ‘I’m going to the office. Somebody'll phone me when it’s all over.’

‘You’re not coming to the prison? They’ll all be there, the Lomases and the Carters and the Crowthers. You’re the man they’ll want to see.’

‘Am I?’ George said with an edge of bitterness in his voice. ‘Well, they’ll just have to make do with you, Tommy.’

Clough shrugged. ‘I’ve always reckoned if I’ve done my bit to send a man to the gallows, I should take the consequences.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve not got the stomach for it. I’ll buy you breakfast in the police canteen, then you can go over there if you’ve a mind.’

‘Aye, fine.’

George turned away and made for the bathroom.

‘George?’ Clough said softly. ‘There’s no shame in it, either way. There’s nothing worse in this job, not even telling a mother her child’s dead. But you have to survive it. I’ve got my way, and you’re finding your way. Never mind breakfast. I’ll catch up with you later, and we’ll go out tonight and get slaughtered.’

Eight fifty-nine, and George watched the second hand of his watch stutter round the dial. The priest would be finished with Hawkin now. George wondered how Hawkin would be. Terrified, for sure.

He thought he’d probably try for dignity.

The hand swept up towards twelve and the nearby church clock boomed out the first stroke of nine o’clock. The double doors in the condemned cell would be swung open and Hawkin would walk the last twenty feet of his life. The hangman would be wrapping the leather strap round his wrists.

The second stroke. Now the executioner is walking ahead of Hawkin, his assistant behind, keeping the pace as even as possible, the official killers trying to act as if this were another stroll in the park.

The third stroke. Hawkin is on the drop now, feet planted one on each side of the double doors of the trap that will fall away and take his life with it.

The fourth stroke. The hangman will be turning to face the condemned man, holding out his hands to halt his progress while his assistant squats and straps Hawkin’s legs together.

The fifth stroke. The linen bag appears as if by a magic trick. The hangman drops it over Hawkin’s head with the ease of practice. Now it’s faster because nobody has to look at the man who will be dead inside a minute, his eyes have ceased to implore them, to stare with the wall-eyed panic of the condemned animal. The hangman pulls the bag down and smooths it round the neck so the linen won’t catch in the eye of the noose. The sixth stroke. The hangman slips the noose over his head, checking that the brass eye which had replaced the traditional slip-knot is positioned behind Hawkin’s ear for maximum speed in the fracture and dislocation process that makes hanging theoretically swift and relatively painless.

The seventh stroke. The hangman steps back, signals to his assistant. The assistant pulls out the cotter pin that acts as a safety measure in the gallows mechanism. Then, almost in the same instant, the hangman pulls the lever.

The eighth stroke. The trap falls away, Hawkin plunges down in the fatal drop.

The ninth stroke. It is over.

George knew there was sweat on his lip. He could see his hand tremble as it reached for his cigarettes. Tiny human gestures lost to Hawkin now, as they had been lost earlier to Alison Carter.

Only with the release of his breath did he realize he’d been holding it. He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the rough skin with something like gratitude.

When the phone rang, he jumped.

Within the same five minutes, Philip Hawkin had left the number of the living and Paul George Bennett had joined them. Tommy Clough and George never did get together for that drink.

February 1998

E
ven a pale winter sun made the White Peak dramatic. The chill blue of the sky contrasted with the tired green of the fields, which seemed to have picked up a tinge of grey from the dry-stone walls.

There were more shades of grey than seemed possible; the off-white of limestone cliffs, striated and stippled with a spectrum that ranged from dove through battleship to almost black; the darker tones of the barns and houses that dotted the landscape; the flat matt-grey of slate roofs, splashed with the white of hoarfrost where the sun had failed to reach; the dirty grey of moorland sheep.

Nevertheless, it was the green and blue of grass and sky that dominated the landscape.

The scarlet coupe cruising smoothly down the narrow country road stood out like an exotic parrot in an English wood. As the Methodist Chapel came into view on the right, the blonde woman behind the wheel touched the brakes softly. The car slowed gradually and she changed down a gear when she caught sight of a road sign she didn’t recall. Pointing to a narrow turning on the left, it read, ‘Scardale’. At last, she thought. The unfamiliar road sign was a timely reminder that the world had changed, she realized. Nowadays people who didn’t know where they were going had to be able to find Scardale. If she succeeded as well as she hoped, there would be plenty of others who would be seeking that guidance. With a shiver of excitement, she swung the car round the bend.

Even though she vaguely recalled the sudden dips and rises of the twisting road, she kept her speed down. The high limestone walls had kept the weak February sunshine off the single-track road and it was still heavily rimed with frost, save where previous traffic had exposed the black tarmac. It wouldn’t be an auspicious start to the project if she skidded and damaged her paintwork, she reminded herself.

It came as no shock to Catherine Heathcote when the dry-stone walls suddenly gave way to towering cliffs of streaked grey limestone. What was a surprise was that there was no longer a gate across the road, separating public from private. Now, the only indications that once Scardale had deliberately cut itself off were the stone gateposts and the cattle grid that her wide-profile tyres bumped softly over.

Nothing in the landscape had changed significantly, she realized. Shield Tor and Scardale Crag still loomed above the dale. Sheep still safely grazed, although the dictates of fashion had imposed a flock of Jacob’s sheep among the more familiar hardy moorland ewes. The scatterings of woodland were more mature, it was true, but they’d been well maintained, with new saplings replacing the trees that had been cropped or felled by the harsh weather. But it still felt like leaving the world behind and entering a parallel universe, Catherine thought. For all the change in the view, she could have been a child again, peering from the back seat over the adults’ shoulders as they drove down into this remote world to find the mysterious source of the seeping Scarlaston on a summer Sunday afternoon. Only when she drew up on the edge of the village green was real change apparent. In the years since Hawkin’s execution, a new prosperity had come to Scardale. She reminded herself of what she’d learned when she’d first written about Alison Carter’s murder a dozen years before in a news feature commissioned because a new ‘no body’ case had hit the headlines. Catherine’s research in the local paper archives and among her mother’s bridge-playing cronies had revealed that when Ruth Hawkin had inherited the dale and the village from her husband, she had decided to move away from the memories. She had sold the manor house and set up a trust to administer the land and the farms. Tenants had been given the opportunity to buy their homes, and over the intervening years some had been sold to outsiders. Ruth Hawkin had also proved impossible to track down, and had refused all Catherine’s attempts to secure an interview via the solicitor who acted for the trust.