Cragg would have looked fine in a pair of sheepskin chaps with matching Colt pistols slung low on his narrow hips and a ten-gallon hat tipped over his hooded grey eyes. In a suit, he had the air of a man who’s not quite sure how he got where he is, but wishes with all his heart he was somewhere else.
‘Missing girl, is that right, sir?’ he drawled. Even his slow voice would have been more at home in a saloon, asking the bartender for a shot of bourbon. The only saving grace, as far as George could see, was that Cragg showed no signs of being a maverick.
‘Alison Carter. Thirteen years old,’ George briefed them as Clough unfolded his chunky body from under the steering wheel. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘She lives in the manor house, stepdaughter of the squire. Her and her mother are Scardale natives, though.’ Clough snorted and clamped a tweed cap over his tight brown curls. ‘She’ll not have had the sense to get lost, then.
You know about Scardale, don’t you? They’ve all been marrying their cousins for generations.
Most of them would be hard pressed to find their backsides in a toilet.’
‘Alison managed to make it to grammar school in spite of her handicaps,’ George pointed out. ‘Which, as I recall, is more than we can say for you, Sergeant Clough.’ Clough glared at the boss who was three years his junior, but said nothing. ‘Alison came home from school at the usual time,’ George continued. ‘She went out with the dog. Neither of them’s been seen since. That was the best part of five hours ago. I want you to do a door-to-door round the village. I want to know who was the last person to see her, where and when.’
‘It’ll have been dark by the time she went out,’ Cragg said. ‘All the same, somebody might have seen her. I’m going to try and catch up with the dog handler, so that’s where I’ll be if you need me.
OK?’ As he turned away, a sudden chill thought struck him. He looked round the horseshoe of houses huddled round the green, then swung back to face Clough and Cragg. ‘And every house—I want you to check the kids are where they should be. I don’t want some mother having hysterics tomorrow morning when she discovers her kid’s missing too.’
He didn’t wait for an answer, but set off for the stile. Just before he got there, he checked his stride and turned back to find Sergeant Lucas in the middle of directing the remaining six uniformed officers he’d managed to rustle up from somewhere. ‘Sergeant,’ George said. ‘There’s an outbuilding you can see from the kitchen window of the house. I don’t know if anyone’s checked it yet, but it might be worth taking a look, just in case she didn’t go for her usual walk.’
Lucas nodded and gestured with his head to one of the constables. ‘See what you can see, lad.’ He nodded to George. ‘Much obliged, sir.’ Kathy Lomas stood at her window and watched the darkness swallow the tall man in the mac and the trilby. Illuminated by the headlights of the big car that had just rolled to a halt by the phone box, he’d borne a remarkable resemblance to James Stewart. It should have been a reassuring thought, but somehow it only made the evening’s events all the more unreal. Kathy and Ruth were cousins, separated by less than a year, connected by blood on both maternal and paternal sides. They had grown into women and mothers side by side.
Kathy’s son Derek had been born a mere three weeks after Alison. The families’ histories were inextricably intertwined. So when Kathy, alerted by Derek, had walked into Ruth’s kitchen to find her cousin pacing anxiously, chain-smoking and fretting, she’d felt the stab of fear as strongly as if it had been her own child who was absent.
They’d gone round the village together, at first convinced they would find Alison warming herself at someone else’s fire, oblivious to the passing of time, remorseful at causing her mother worry.
But as they drew blank after blank, conviction had shrivelled to hope, then hope to despair. Kathy stood at the darkened window of Lark Cottage’s tiny front room, watching the activity that had suddenly bloomed in the dismal December night. The plain-clothes detective who had been driving the car, the one who looked like a Hereford bull with his curly poll and his broad head, pushed his car coat up to scratch his backside, said something to his colleague, then started towards her front door, his eyes seeming to meet hers in the darkness.
Kathy moved to the door, glancing towards the kitchen where her husband was trying to concentrate on finishing a marquetry picture of fishing boats in harbour. ‘The police are here, Mike,’ she called. ‘Not before time,’ she heard him grumble.
She opened the door just as the Hereford bull lifted his hand to knock. His startled look turned into a smile as he took in Kathy’s generous curves, still obvious even beneath her wraparound apron.
‘You’ll have come about Alison,’ she said.
‘You’re right, missus,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Clough, and this is Detective Constable Cragg. Can we come in a minute?’ Kathy stepped back and let them pass, allowing Clough to brush against her breasts without complaint. ‘The kitchen’s straight ahead. You’ll find my husband in there,’ she said coldly.
She followed them and leaned against the range, trying to warm herself against the cold fear inside, waiting for the men to introduce themselves and settle round the table. Clough turned to her. ‘Have you seen Alison since she got home from school?’
Kathy took a deep breath. ‘Aye. It was my turn to pick up the kids off the school bus. In the winter, one of us always drives up to the lane end to collect them.’
‘Was there anything different about Alison that you noticed?’ Clough asked.
Kathy thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Nowt.’ She shrugged. ‘She were just the same as usual. Just…Alison. She said cheerio and walked off up the path to the manor. Last I saw of her she was walking through the door, shouting hello to her mum.’
‘Did you see any strangers about? Either on the road or up at the lane end?’
‘I never noticed anybody.’
‘I believe you went round the village with Mrs Hawkin?’ Clough asked.
‘I wasn’t going to leave her on her own, was I?’ Kathy demanded belligerently.
‘How did you come to know Alison was missing?’
‘It was our Derek. He’s not been doing as well as he should have been at school, so I took it on myself to make sure he was doing his homework properly. Instead of letting him go off with Alison and their cousin Janet when they got home from school, I’ve been keeping him in.’
‘She makes him sit at the kitchen table and do all the work his teachers have set him before she’ll let him loose with the girls. Waste of bloody time, if you ask me. The lad’s only going to be a farmer like me,’ Mike Lomas interrupted, his voice a low rumble.
‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ Kathy said grimly. ‘I tell you what’s a waste of time. It’s that record player Phil Hawkin bought Alison. Derek and Janet are never away from there, listening to the latest records. Derek was desperate to get over to Alison’s tonight. She’s just got the new Beatles number one, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’.
But it was after tea before I let him out. It must have been just before seven. He came back within five minutes, saying Alison had gone out with Shep and hadn’t come home. Of course, I went straight over to see what was what.
‘Ruth was up to high doh. I told her she should check with everybody in the village, just in case Alison had popped in to see somebody and lost track of the time. She’s always sitting with old Ma Lomas, her and her cousin Charlie keeping the old witch company, listening to her memories of the old days. Once Ma gets going, you could sit all night. She’s some storyteller, Ma, and our Alison loves her tales.’ She settled herself more comfortably against the range. Clough could see she was on a roll, and he decided just to let her run and see where her story took them. He nodded. ‘Go on, Mrs Lomas.’
‘Well, we were just about to set off when Phil came in. He said he’d been in his darkroom, messing about with his photographs, and he’d only just noticed the time. He was going on about where was his tea and where was Alison? I told him there were more important things to think about than his belly, but Ruth dished him up a plate of the hotpot she’d had cooking. Then we left him to it and went knocking doors.’ She came to a sudden halt.
‘So you never saw Alison again after she got out of the car coming back from school?’
‘Land Rover,’ Mike Lomas growled.
‘Sorry?’
‘It were a Land Rover, not a car. Nobody has cars down here,’ he said contemptuously.
‘No, I’ve not seen her since she walked in the kitchen door,’ Kathy said. ‘But you’re going to find her, aren’t you? I mean, that’s your job. You are going to find her?’
‘We’re doing our best.’ It was Cragg who trotted out the formulaic placebo.
Before she could utter the angry retort Tommy Clough could see coming, he spoke quickly. ‘What about your lad, Mrs Lomas? Is he where he should be?’
Her mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Derek? Why wouldn’t he be?’
‘Maybe the same reason Alison’s not where she should be.’
‘You can’t say that!’ Mike Lomas jumped to his feet, his cheeks flaming scarlet, his eyes tight with anger.
Clough smiled, spreading his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘Nay, don’t 34 take me wrong. All I meant was, you should check in case something’s happened to him an’ all.’
By the time George got over the stile, the lights from the tracker team’s torches were no more than a hazy wavering in the distance. He guessed they had entered some woodland by the way the yellow beams seemed suddenly to disappear and reappear at random. Switching on the torch he’d borrowed from the police Land Rover that had brought some of the men over from Buxton, he hurried across the uneven tufts of coarse grass as quickly as he could.
The trees loomed up sooner than he’d expected. At first, all he could see was undisturbed undergrowth, but swinging the torch to and fro soon revealed a narrow path where the earth was packed hard. George plunged into the woodland, trying to balance haste against caution. The torch beam sent crazy shadows dancing off in every direction, forcing him to concentrate harder on the path than he’d had to do in the field. Frosted leaves crunched under his feet, the occasional twig whipped his face or brushed his shoulder, and everywhere the decaying mushroomy smell of the woodland assailed him. Every twenty yards or so, he snapped off his torch to check his bearings against the lights ahead. Absolute darkness swallowed him, but it was hard to resist the feeling that there were hidden eyes staring at him, following his every move. It was a relief to snap his torch on again. A few minutes into the wood, he realized the lights before him had stopped moving. Putting on a spurt that nearly sent him flying over a tree root, he almost collided with a uniformed constable hurriedly retracing his steps.
‘Have you found her?’ George gasped.
‘No such luck, sir. We have found the dog, though.’
‘Alive?’
The man nodded. ‘Aye. But she’s been tied up.’
‘In silence?’ George asked incredulously.
‘Somebody taped her muzzle shut, sir. Poor beast could barely manage a whimper. PC Miller sent me back to fetch Sergeant Lucas before we did owt.’
‘I’ll take responsibility now,’ George said firmly. ‘But go back anyway and tell Sergeant Lucas what’s happened. I think it might be wise to keep people out of this piece of woodland until daylight. Whatever’s happened to Alison Carter, there might be evidence that we’re destroying right now.’
The constable nodded and took off along the path at a trot. ‘Bloody mountain goats they breed around here,’ George muttered as he blundered on down the path.
The clearing he emerged into was a chiaroscuro of torchlight and strangely elongated shadows. At the far end, a black and white collie strained against a rope tied round a tree. Liquid brown irises stood out against the white of its bulging eyes. The dull pink of the elastoplast that was wound round its muzzle looked incongruous in so pastoral a setting. George was aware of the stares of the uniformed men, looking him over speculatively.
‘I think we should put that dog out of its misery. What do you say, PC Miller?’ he asked, directing his question to the dog handler, who was methodically covering the clearing with Prince. ‘I don’t think she’ll argue with you on that, sir,’ Miller said. ‘I’ll take Prince out of the way so he won’t upset her.’ With a jerk on the dog’s leash and a word of command, he made for the far side of the clearing. George noticed his dog was still casting around as he’d done outside the house earlier.
‘Has he lost the scent?’ he asked, suddenly concerned about more important matters than a dog’s discomfort.
‘Looks like the trail ends here,’ the dog handler said. ‘I’ve been right round the clearing twice, and down the path in the opposite direction. But there’s nothing.’
‘Does that mean she was carried out of here?’ George asked, a cold tremor twitching upwards from his stomach.
‘Like as not,’ Miller said grimly. ‘One thing’s for sure. She didn’t walk out of here unless she turned straight round and walked back to the house. And if that’s what she did, why tie up the bitch and muzzle her?’
‘Maybe she wanted to creep up on her mum? Or her stepdad?’ one of the constables hazarded.
‘The dog wouldn’t have barked at them, would she? So there’d be no need to muzzle her, or leave her behind,’ Miller said. ‘Unless she thought one or other of them might be with a stranger,’
George said, half under his breath.
‘Aye well, my money says she never left this clearing under her own steam.’ Miller spoke with finality as he walked his dog down the path.
George approached the dog cautiously. The whimper in the dog’s throat turned to a soft grumble.
What had Ruth Hawkin called it? Shep, that was it. ‘OK, Shep,’ he said gently, holding his hand out so the dog could sniff his fingers. The growl died away. George hitched up his trousers and kneeled down, the frozen ground uneven and ungenerous beneath his knees. Automatically, he noticed the elastoplast was the thicker kind, from a roll two inches wide with a half-inch band of lint bulging up the middle of it. ‘Steady, girl,’ he said, one hand gripping the thick hair at the scruff of the dog’s neck to hold her head still. With his other hand, he picked at the end of the elastoplast till he had freed enough to pull clear. He looked up. ‘One of you, come over here and hold the dog’s head while I get this stuff off.’