taken aback. Her docile responses to Stanley’s questions had not prepared him for Ma Lomas in combative mood. ‘How can you be certain it was Mr Hawkin you saw cross the field that afternoon?’
‘How can I be certain? Because I saw him. Because I know him. The way he looks, the way he walks, the clothes he wears. There’s nobody in Scardale you could confuse with him,’ she said, her voice outraged. ‘I might be old but I’m not daft.’
A snigger stuttered round the press benches and the Scardale contingent allowed themselves tight smiles. Ma would show this London lawyer what was what.
‘That much is obvious, ma’am,’ Highsmith squeezed out.
‘You don’t have to “ma’am” me, lad. Ma’ll do.’
Highsmith blinked hard. The point of his pencil snapped against the pad in his hand. ‘This book in the study at the manor. You say you knew exactly where to look for it?’
‘Well remembered, lad,’ Ma said grimly.
‘So it was where it should have been?’
‘Where else would it have been? Of course it was where it should have been.’
Highsmith pounced. ‘No one had moved it?’
‘I can’t say that, can I? How can I know that? It wouldn’t be hard to put it back in the right place – them shelves are full. When you take a book out, it leaves a gap. So you put it back in the same place. Automatic,’ she said scornfully.
Highsmith smiled. ‘But there was no sign that anyone had done that. Thank you, Mrs Lomas.’
The judge leaned forward. ‘You’re free to go now, Mrs Lomas.’
She turned to Hawkin and smiled pure malicious triumph. George was relieved she had her back to the jury. ‘Aye, I know,’ she said. ‘More than he can say, isn’t it?’ She paraded across the room like the royalty she was in her village and settled in a specially vacated chair at the heart of her family.
The following day was taken up with an assortment of specialists who could testify on particular matters of fact. Hawkin’s tailor had travelled up from London to confirm that the stained shirt hidden in the darkroom was one of a batch the accused had had made to measure less than a year before. An assistant from Boots the Chemist revealed he had sold Philip Hawkin two rolls of elastoplast which corresponded to both the tape found on the muzzle of Alison’s dog and the short section fixing the safe key to the back of the drawer in the study.
A fingerprint officer revealed that Philip Hawkin’s prints were on the photographs and the negatives found in the safe. However, there were no prints on the Webley, and the cover of the antiquarian book had been impossible to retrieve prints from.
The final witness of the day was the firearms expert. He confirmed that one of the bullets found in the cave was clearly identifiable as a .38 fired from the gun that Ruth Carter had found hidden in her husband’s darkroom.
Through all of this testimony, Highsmith asked little, except to attempt to demonstrate that there were alternative explanations to all the statements made by the prosecution. Anyone, he argued, could have obtained a shirt belonging to Hawkin. They could even have stolen one from the manor washing line. Hawkin might not have been buying the elastoplast on his own account, but may have been running an errand for someone else. Of course his prints were on the pictures and the negatives – the police had thrown them at him across an interview room table before they were encased in plastic, before his solicitor had ever arrived at the police station. And the only person who had made any connection between the gun and Hawkin was, of course, his wife, who was so desperate to find an explanation for her daughter’s disappearance that she was even prepared to turn on her husband.
The jury sat impassively, offering no clue as to their opinion of his performance. At the end of the third day, the court adjourned till morning.
On Friday morning, George’s mind was jolted out of his own concerns. There, in the Daily Express, was a story that harrowed him.
Tracker dogs join hunt for lost boy
Eight policemen with two tracker dogs searched railway sidings, parks and derelict buildings today for short-sighted schoolboy Keith Bennett, missing from home for nearly three days.
Said a senior police officer: ‘If we do not find him today, the search will be intensified. We just don’t know what has happened to him. We do not suspect foul play yet, but we can find no reason for him to be missing.’
Twelve-year-old Keith of Eston Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, disappeared on Tuesday night on his way to visit his grandmother.
His home is in an area of Manchester where several murders have occurred and missing persons have gone untraced.
Home-loving
Left behind at home are the thick-lensed spectacles – with one lens broken – without which he has difficulty in seeing.
Keith’s mother, Mrs Winifred Johnson, aged 30, who has five other children and is expecting her seventh in two weeks, wept today as she talked of her missing son.
She said: ‘He has never done anything like this before. He’s a home-loving lad. He can hardly see without his spectacles.’
Said his grandmother, Mrs Gertrude Bennett, aged 63, of Morton Street, Longsight, Manchester: ‘We can not eat, sleep or do anything for worrying about him.’
The police search party is made up of a sergeant, five constables and two dog handlers. They are searching an area within a mile of Keith’s home.
George stared at the paper. The thought of another mother going through what Ruth Carter had experienced was agonizing for him. But in a corner of his mind, he couldn’t help thinking that if it had to happen, it could not have come at a more opportune moment. For any member of the jury reading the paper, Winifred Johnson’s anguished plight could only reinforce Ruth Carter’s agony and diminish any inclination to believe Hawkin.
A sudden wave of shame washed over him. How could he be so callous? How could he even think about exploiting the disappearance of another child? Disgusted with himself, George crumpled the paper and tossed it into the bin.
That afternoon, as he made his way up the stairs towards the courtroom, he saw a familiar figure waiting by the door. Spotless in his dress uniform, Superintendent Martin stood fiddling with his soft black leather gloves. As George approached, he looked up. ‘Inspector,’ he greeted him, his face inscrutable. ‘A word, please.’
George followed him down a side corridor to a small room that smelled of perspiration and cigarettes. He closed the door behind them and waited.
Martin lit one of his untipped cigarettes and said abruptly, ‘I want you back in the office next week.’
‘But, sir –’ George protested.
Martin held up a hand. ‘I know, I know. The prosecution should finish today and then it’ll be the defence case next week. And that’s precisely why I want you back in Buxton.’
George’s head came up and he glared at his station commander. ‘This is my case, sir.’
‘I
