rendered the blue velveteen slippers and the pink sprigged jacket. Holding them gingerly, to avoid contamination with his scent, George walked back through the kitchen and out into the night air. Wordlessly, he handed the items to Miller and watched while the dog handler spoke soft words of command to Prince, offering the garments to its long nose.
The dog raised its head delicately, as if scenting some culinary delight on the wind. Then it started nosing the ground by the front door, its head swinging to and fro in long arcs, inches above the ground. Every few feet, it gave a snorting snuffle then looked up, thrusting its nostrils towards Alison’s clothes and her scent, as if reminding itself what it was supposed to be seeking. Dog and handler moved forward in tandem, covering every inch of the path from the kitchen door. Then, at the very edge of the dirt track that skirted the back of the village green, the Alsatian suddenly stiffened. As rigid as a child playing statues, Prince paused for long seconds, hungrily drinking in the scent from the scrubby grass. Then in one smooth, liquid motion, the dog moved swiftly across the grass, its body close to the ground, its nose seeming to pull it forward in a low lope.
PC Miller quickened his step to keep up with the dog. On a nod from Sergeant Lucas, four of the uniformed men who’d arrived minutes after the dog team fell into step behind them, fanning out to cover the ground with the cones of their torch beams. George followed them for a few yards, not certain whether he should join their party or wait for the two CID officers he’d summoned but who hadn’t arrived yet.
Their path touched the village green at a tangent then, via a stone stile, into a narrow salient between two cottages that gave out into a larger field. As the dog led them unwaveringly across the field, George heard a car grumbling down the road into the village. As it pulled up behind the cluster of police vehicles already there, he recognized the Ford Zephyr of Detective Sergeant Tommy Clough. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder at the tracker team. Their torches gave their positions away. It wouldn’t be hard to catch up with them. He turned on his heel, strode over to the bulky black car and yanked open the driver’s door. The familiar ruddy harvest moon face of his sergeant grinned up at him. ‘How do, sir,’ Clough said on a wave of beer fumes.
‘We’ve got work to do, Clough,’ George said shortly. Even with a drink in him, Clough would still do a better job than most officers sober. The passenger door slammed and Detective Constable Gary Cragg slouched round the front of the car. He’d watched too many Westerns, George had decided the first time the lanky DC had swaggered into his line of vision. 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
