still here?’ George asked. ‘You can go off duty now, if you like. You must be exhausted.’
‘No worse than you were yesterday. Sir, if it’s all right with you, I’d rather stop on. This is my last night shift anyway, so I might as well get used to going to bed at the right time. If you’re interviewing the villagers, happen I could be some help. I’ve seen most of them already, I’ve picked up a fair bit of the background.’
George considered for a moment. Clough’s normally ruddy face was paler than usual, the skin around his eyes puffy. But his eyes were still alert, and he had some of the local knowledge that George lacked. Besides, it was about time George established a working partnership with one of his three sergeants that went deeper than the surface. ‘All right. But if you start yawning when some old dear decides to tell us her life story, I’m sending you straight home.’
‘Fine by me, sir. Where do you want to start?’
George crossed to one of the tables and pulled a pad of paper towards him. ‘A map. Who lives where and who they are. That’s where I want to start.’
George scratched his head. ‘I don’t suppose you know how they’re all related?’ he asked, staring down at the map Tommy Clough had sketched out for him.
‘Beyond me,’ he confessed. ‘Apart from the obvious, like Charlie Lomas is Terry and Diane’s youngest. Mike Lomas is the eldest of Robert and Christine’s. Then there’s Jack who lives with them, and they’ve got two daughters – Denise, who’s married to Brian Carter, and Angela, who’s married to a smallholder over towards Three Shires Head.’
George held up his hand. ‘Enough,’ he groaned. ‘Since you’ve obviously got a natural talent for it, you’re officer in charge of Scardale genealogy. You can remind me of who belongs where as and when I need to know it. Right now, all I want to know is where Alison Carter fits in.’
Tommy cast his eyes upwards as if trying to picture the family tree. ‘OK. Never mind cousins, first, second or third. I’ll stick with just the main relationships. Somehow or other, Ma Lomas is her great-grandmother. Her father, Roy Carter, was David and Ray’s brother. On her mother’s side, she was a Crowther. Ruth is sister to Daniel and also to Terry Lomas’s wife Diane.’ Clough pointed to the relevant houses on the map. ‘But they’re all interconnected.’
‘There must be some fresh blood now and again,’ George objected. ‘Otherwise they’d all be village idiots.’
‘There are one or two incomers to dilute the mixture. Cathleen Lomas, Jack’s wife, is a Longnor lass. And John Lomas married a woman from over Bakewell way. Lasted long enough for her to have Amy, then she was off somewhere she could watch Coronation Street and go out for a drink without it being a military operation. And of course, there’s Philip Hawkin.’
‘Yes, let’s not forget the squire,’ George said thoughtfully. He sighed and stood up. ‘We could do with finding out a bit more about him. St Albans, that’s where he hails from, isn’t it?’ He took out his notebook and jotted down a reminder. ‘Don’t let me forget to follow that up. Come on then, Tommy. Let’s have another crack at Scardale.’
Brian Carter wiped the teats of the next cow in line and, with surprising gentleness, clamped the milking machine on to her udder. Dawn had still been a few hours away when he’d left the warm bed he shared with his new wife, Denise, in Bankside Cottage, the two-bedroomed house where Alison Carter was born on a rainy night in 1950. Tramping up through the silent village with his father, he’d been unable to avoid thinking bitterly how much his cousin’s disappearance had changed his world already.
His had been a simple, uncomplicated life. They’d always been very self-contained, very private in Scardale. He’d grown used to getting called names at school and later in the pubs when folk had had a few too many. He knew all the tired old jokes about inbreeding and secret black magic rituals, but he’d learned to ignore all that and get on with his life.
When there was light, Scardale worked the land and when there wasn’t, they were still busy. The women spun wool, knitted jumpers, crocheted shawls and blankets and baby clothes, made preserves and chutneys, things they could sell through the Women’s Institute market in Buxton.
The men maintained the buildings, inside and out. They also worked with wood. Terry Lomas made beautiful turned wooden bowls, rich and lustrous, the grain chosen for its intricate patterns. He sent them off to a craft centre in London where they sold for what seemed ridiculous sums of money to everyone else in the village. Brian’s father David made wooden toys for a shop in Leek. There wouldn’t have been time for the wild pagan rituals that gullible drinkers speculated about in Buxton bars, even supposing anyone had been interested. The truth was, everyone in Scardale worked too bloody hard to have time for anything except eating and sleeping.
There was little need for contact with the outside world on a daily basis. Most of what was consumed in Scardale was produced in the circle of looming limestone – meat, potatoes, milk, eggs, some fruit and a few vegetables. Ma Lomas made wine from elderflowers, elderberries, nettles, dandelions, birch sap, rhubarb, gooseberries and whinberries. If it grew, she fermented it. Everybody drank it. Even the children would get a glass now and again for medicinal purposes. There was a van came on Tuesdays selling fish and greengrocery. Another van came from Leek on Thursdays, a general grocer. Anything else would be bought at the market in Leek or in Buxton by whoever was there selling their own produce or livestock.
It had been strange, the transition from being at school, where he’d gone out of the dale five days a week, to being an adult, working the land and sometimes not leaving Scardale from one month to the next. There wasn’t even television to disrupt the rhythm of life. He remembered when old Squire Castleton came back from Buxton with a TV he’d bought for the Coronation. His father and his Uncle Roy had erected the aerial and the whole village had crowded into the squire’s parlour. With a flourish, the old man had switched on, and they all stared dumbfounded at a February blizzard. No matter how David and Roy had fiddled with the aerial, all it did was crackle like fat on a fire, and all they could see was interference. The only kind of interference anybody in Scardale had a mind to put up with.
Now it was all changed. Alison had disappeared and all of a sudden, their lives seemed to belong to everybody. The police, the papers, they all wanted their questions answering, whether it was any of their business or not. And Brian felt like he had no natural defences against such an invasion. He wanted to hurt someone. But there was no one to hand.
It was still dark when George and Clough reached the outskirts of the village. The first light they came to spilled out of a half-closed barn door. ‘Might as well start here,’ George said, pulling the car over on to the verge. ‘Who’s this going to be?’ he asked as they tramped over the few yards of muddy concrete to the door.
‘It’ll likely be Brian and David Carter,’ Clough said. ‘They’re the cowmen.’
The two men in the barn couldn’t hear their approach over the clattering and heavy liquid breathing of the milking apparatus. George waited till they turned round, taking in the strangely sweet smells of dung, sweating animal and milk, watching as the men washed the teats of each cow before clamping the milking machine to her udder. Finally, the older of the two turned. George’s first impression was that Ruth Hawkin’s careful eyes had been transplanted into an Easter Island statue. His face was all planes and angles, his cheeks like slabs and his eye sockets like a carving in pink wax. ‘Any news?’ he demanded, his voice loud against the machinery.
George shook his head. ‘I came
