making the halfway line.
‘I’m interested, you see, because we find that sometimes people who have been involved in a crime try to include themselves in the investigation,’ George said mildly.
Charlie’s body unwound as if galvanized. His feet slammed on the floor, his forearms on the table. Startled policemen looked around from the front of the hall. ‘You’re sick,’ he said.
‘I’m not sick, but I’ve got a good idea that somebody around these parts is. It’s my job to find out who. Now, if somebody wanted to take Alison away or do anything to her, it would be a lot easier to manage if it was somebody she knew and trusted. Obviously, you know her. She’s your cousin, you grew up with her. You tell her what records to get her stepfather to buy her. You sit by the fire with her in your cottage while your granny spins her tales of bygone days in sunny Scardale. You take her to the roller rink in Buxton on Wednesdays.’ George shrugged. ‘You’d have no trouble persuading her to go somewhere with you.’
Charlie pushed himself away from the table, then thrust his trembling hands into his trouser pockets. ‘So?’
George produced the photograph he’d taken from Alison’s room. ‘She kept a photo of you in her bedroom,’ was all he said as he showed it to Charlie.
His face twitched and he crossed his legs. ‘She’ll have kept it because of Ma,’ he said insistently. ‘She loves Ma, and the old witch hates having her photo taken. This must be about the only picture of Ma in existence.’
‘Are you sure, Charlie?’ Clough interjected. ‘Because we think, my boss and me, that she fancied you. A nice young lass like that hanging around, worshipping the ground you walk on, not many blokes would say no to that, would they? Especially a lovely lass like Alison. A ripe fruit, ready for the plucking, ready to fall right into your hand. You sure that’s not what it was like, Charlie boy?’
Charlie squirmed, shaking his head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, mister.’
‘Has he?’ George asked pleasantly. ‘So how was it, Charlie? Was it embarrassing for you, having this kid trailing around after you when you went to the roller rink? Did Alison cramp your style with the older girls, was that the problem? Did you meet her in the dale yesterday teatime? Did she push you too far?’
Charlie hung his head and breathed deep. Then he looked up and turned to face George. ‘I don’t understand. Why are you treating me like this? All I’ve done is try and help. She’s my cousin. She’s part of my family. We look out for each other in Scardale, you know. It’s not like Buxton, where nobody gives tuppence about anybody else.’ He stabbed his finger at each of the policemen in turn. ‘You should be out there finding her, not insulting me like this.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Do I have to stop here?’
George stood up and gestured towards the door. ‘You’re free to leave whenever you want, Mr Lomas. However, we will need to speak to you again.’
Clough rose and walked round to George’s side as Charlie stalked angrily out of the door, all raw-boned clumsiness and outrage. ‘He’s not got the gumption,’ he said.
‘Maybe not,’ George said. The two men walked out in Charlie’s wake, pausing on the threshold as the youth set off down the Scardale road. George stared after Charlie, wondering. Then he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be heading home now. I’ll be back before first light in the morning. You’re in charge, at least of CID, till then.’
Clough laughed. It seemed to die in a puff of white breath in the oppressive night air. ‘Me and Cragg, sir, eh? That’ll give the villains something to think about. Was there any line of inquiry in particular you wanted us to pursue?’
‘Whoever took Alison must have got her out of the dale somehow,’ George said, almost thinking aloud. ‘He couldn’t have carried her for long, not a normally developed thirteen-year-old girl. If he took her down the Scarlaston valley into Denderdale, he’d have had to hike about four miles before he got to a road. But if he brought her up here to the Longnor road, it’s probably only about a mile and a half as the crow flies. Why don’t you and Cragg do a door-to-door in Longnor this evening, see if anybody noticed a vehicle parked by the side of the road near the Scardale turn?’
‘Right you are, sir. I’ll just find DC Cragg and we’ll get to it.’
George returned to the incident room and arranged for the tracker dogs to work Denderdale the following morning, spent half an hour in Buxton Police Station filling out requisition forms for the forensic lab on the evidence from the spinney and Alison’s hairbrush, then finally set off for home.
The villagers would just have to wait till tomorrow.
Thursday, 12th December 1963. 8.06 p.m.
George couldn’t remember ever closing his front door with a greater sense of relief. Before he could even take off his hat, the door to the living room opened and Anne was there, taking the three short steps into his arms. ‘It’s great to be home,’ he sighed, drinking in the musky smell of her hair, conscious too that he’d not washed since the previous morning.
‘You work too hard,’ she scolded gently. ‘You’ll do nobody any favours if you work yourself into the ground. Come on through, there’s a fire on and it won’t take me five minutes to warm up the casserole.’ She moved back from his embrace and looked critically at him. ‘You look worn out. It’s a hot bath and bed for you as soon as you’ve finished your tea.’
‘I’d rather have the bath first, if the water’s hot.’
‘And so you shall. I’ve had the immersion on. I was going to have a bath myself, but you’d better take the water. You get yourself undressed and I’ll run the bath.’ She shooed him upstairs ahead of her.
Half an hour later, he was in his dressing gown at the kitchen table, wolfing down a generous helping of beef and carrot stew accompanied by a plate of bread and butter. ‘Sorry there’s no spuds,’ Anne apologized. ‘I thought bread and butter would be quicker and I knew you’d need something as soon as you got in. You never eat properly when you’re working.’
‘Mmm,’ he grunted through a mouthful of food.
‘Have you found her, then, your missing girl? Is that why you’re home?’
The food in his mouth seemed to congeal into an indigestible lump. George forced it down his gullet. It felt like swallowing a hairball the size of a golf ball. ‘No,’ he said, staring down at his plate. ‘And I don’t think she’ll be alive when we do.’
Anne’s face paled. ‘But that’s awful, George. How can you be sure?’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘I can’t be sure. But we know she didn’t go off of her own free will. Don’t ask me how, but we know. She’s not from the kind of family where she’d be kidnapped for a ransom. And people who steal children generally don’t keep them alive for long. So my guess is she’s already dead. And if she’s not, she will be before we can find her, because we’ve got absolutely nothing to go on. The villagers act like we’re the enemy instead of on their side, and the landscape is so difficult to search properly it feels like even that’s conspiring against us.’ He pushed his plate away and reached
