as hard as it is in Scardale, you learn to bend rather than break. But I don’t know how she’s holding together. She lost her first husband in a farming accident seven years ago, and now this. The new husband’s not a lot of use either. One of those selfish beggars who see everything in terms of how it’s going to affect them.’
‘What? You mean a man?’ Anne teased.
‘Very funny. I’m not like that. I don’t expect my tea on the table when I walk through the door, you know. You don’t have to wait on me.’
‘You’d soon get fed up if it wasn’t.’
George conceded with a shrug and a smile. ‘You’re probably right. Us men get used to you women taking care of us. But if our child ever went missing, I don’t think I’d be demanding my tea before my wife went out looking for her.’
‘He did that?’
‘According to one witness.’ He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’
‘Who am I going to tell? The only people I know here are other coppers’ wives. And they’ve not exactly taken me to their bosom. The ones my age are all lower ranks’ wives so they don’t trust me, especially since I’m a qualified teacher and none of them have ever done anything more challenging than working in a shop or an office. And the officers’ wives are all older than me and treat me like I’m a silly girl. So you can be sure I’m not going to be gossiping about your case, George,’ Anne said with an edge of acerbity.
‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not been easy for you to make new friends here.’ He reached out to grip her hand in his.
‘I don’t know how I’d go on if I lost a child.’ Almost unconsciously, her free hand slipped to her stomach.
George’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ he asked sharply.
Anne’s fair skin flushed scarlet. ‘I don’t know, George. It’s just that…well, my monthly visitor’s overdue. A week overdue. So…I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to say anything till I was sure, what with it being a missing child case you’re on. But yes, I think I might be expecting.’
A slow smile spread across George’s face as her words sank in. ‘Really? I’m going to be a dad?’
‘It could be a false alarm. But I’ve never been late before.’ She looked almost apprehensive.
George jumped to his feet and swung her out of her chair, spinning her around in a whirl of joy. ‘It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.’ They staggered to a halt and he kissed her hard and passionately. ‘I love you, Mrs Bennett.’
‘And I love you too, Mr Bennett.’
He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. A child. His child. All he had to do now was figure out how to manage what had been beyond every parent since Adam and Eve: how to keep it safe.
Up to that point, Alison Carter had been an important case to Detective Inspector George Bennett. Now it had symbolic importance. Now it was a crusade.
In Scardale, the mood was as brooding as the limestone crags surrounding the dale. Charlie Lomas’s experience at the hands of the police had flashed round the village as fast as the news of Alison’s disappearance. While the women checked anxiously and regularly that their children were all in bed asleep, the men had congregated in the kitchen of Bankside Cottage, where Ruth and her daughter had lived until her marriage to Hawkin.
Terry Lomas, Charlie’s father, chewed the stem of his pipe and grumbled about the police. ‘They’ve got no right to treat our Charlie like a criminal,’ he said.
Charlie’s older brother John scowled. ‘They’ve got no idea what’s happened to our Alison. They’re just making an example of Charlie so it looks like they’re doing something.’
‘They’re not going to let it go at that, though, are they?’ Charlie’s uncle Robert said. ‘They’ll go through us one by one if they get no change out of Charlie. That Bennett bloke, he’s got a bee in his bonnet about Alison, you can tell.’
‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Ray Carter chipped in. ‘It means he’s going to do a proper job. He’s not going to settle till he’s got an answer.’
‘That’s fine if it’s the right answer,’ Terry said.
‘Aye,’ Robert said pensively. ‘But how do we make sure he doesn’t get distracted from what he should be doing because he’s too busy persecuting the likes of young Charlie? The lad’s not tough, we all know that. They’ll be putting words in his mouth. For all we know, if they can’t get the right man, they’ll decide to have Charlie anyway and to hell with it.’
‘There’s two roads we can go,’ Jack Lomas said. ‘We can stonewall them. Tell them nothing, except what we need to cover Charlie’s back all ways. They’ll soon realize they’ll have to find another scapegoat then. Or we can bend over backwards to help them. Maybe that way they’ll realize that looking at the people who cared about our Alison isn’t going to find the lass or whoever took her.’
There was a long silence in the kitchen, punctuated by Terry sucking on his pipe. Eventually, old Robert Lomas spoke. ‘Happen we can do both.’
Without George, the work went on. The searchers had given up for the day, but in the incident room, uniformed officers made plans for the following day. Already, they had accepted offers from the local Territorial Army volunteers and the RAF cadets to join the hunt at the weekend. Nobody was voicing their thoughts, but everyone was pessimistic. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t cover every inch of Derbyshire if they had to.
Up in Longnor, Clough and Cragg were awash with tea but starved of leads. They’d agreed to call it a night at half past nine, a farming community being earlier abed than the townies in Buxton. Just before close of play, Clough struck lucky. An elderly couple had been coming home from Christmas shopping in Leek and they’d noticed a Land Rover parked on the grass at the side of the Methodist Chapel. ‘Just before five, it was,’ the husband said definitely.
‘What made you notice it?’ Clough asked.
‘We attend the chapel,’ he said. ‘Normally, it’s only the minister who parks there. The rest of us leave our cars on the verge. Anybody local knows that.’
‘Do you think the driver parked off the road to avoid being noticed?’
‘I suppose so. He wasn’t to know that was the one parking place that would make him conspicuous, was he?’
Clough nodded. ‘Did you see the driver?’
Both shook their heads. ‘It was dark,’ the wife pointed out. ‘It didn’t have any lights on. And we were past it in moments.’
‘Was there anything you did notice about the Land Rover? Was it long wheelbase or short wheelbase? What colour was it? Was it a fixed top or a canvas one? Any letters or numbers from the registration?’ Clough probed.
Again, they shook their heads dubiously. ‘We weren’t paying much attention, to be honest,’ the husband said. ‘We were talking about the fatstock show. Chap from Longnor took one of the top prizes and we’d been invited to join him for a drink in Leek.
