followed Lucas and Grundy across the thresh-old and into a farmhouse kitchen. The floors were stone flagged, the walls rough stone brightened with a coat of white distemper that had discoloured unevenly, depending on its proximity to the wood-burning stove and the electric cooker. A dresser and several cupboards of differing heights painted hospital green ranged round the walls, and a pair of deep stone sinks were set under the windows that looked out towards the end of the dale. Another pair of windows gave a view of the village green, the phone box bright against the darkness. Various pans and kitchen implements hung from the black beams that crossed the room a few feet apart. It smelled of smoke, cabbage and animal fat.
Without waiting for anyone else, Hawkin sat down immediately in a carving chair at the head of a scrubbed wooden table. ‘Make the men some tea, Ruth,’ he said.
‘That’s very kind of you, sir,’ George interjected as the woman lifted a kettle off the stove. ‘But I’d rather we pressed on. Where it’s a matter of a missing child, we try not to waste any time. Mrs Hawkin, if you could sit down and tell us what you know.’
Ruth glanced at Hawkin as if seeking his permission. His eyebrows twitched upwards, but he nodded acquiescence. She pulled out a chair and sank into it, folding her arms on the table in front of her. George sat down opposite her, with Lucas beside him. Grundy unbuttoned his overcoat and lowered himself into the carver at the opposite end to Hawkin. He took his pocketbook from his tunic and flipped it open. Licking the end of his pencil, he looked up expectantly.
‘How old is Alison, Mrs Hawkin?’ George asked gently.
The woman cleared her throat. ‘Thirteen past. Her birthday’s in March.’ Her voice cracked, as if something inside her were splintering.
‘And had there been any trouble between you?’
‘Steady on, Inspector,’ Hawkin protested. ‘What do you mean, trouble? What are you suggesting?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything, sir,’ George said. ‘But Alison’s at a difficult age, and sometimes young girls get things out of all proportion. A perfectly normal ticking-off can feel like the end of the world to them. I’m trying to establish whether there are any grounds for supposing Alison might have run away.’
Hawkin leaned back in his seat with a frown. He reached behind him, tipping the chair back on two legs. He grabbed a packet of Embassy and a small chrome lighter from the dresser and proceeded to light a cigarette without offering the packet to anyone else. ‘Of course she’s run away,’ he said, a smile softening the hard line of his eyebrows. ‘That’s what teenagers do. They do it to get you worried, to get their own back for some imagined slight. You know what I mean,’ he continued with a man-of-the-world air that included the police officers. ‘Christmas is coming. I remember one year I went missing for hours. I thought my mum would be so glad to see me back home safe that I’d be able to talk her into buying me a bike for Christmas.’ His smile turned rueful. ‘All I got was a sore backside. Mark my words, Inspector, she’ll turn up before morning, expecting the fatted calf.’
‘She’s not like that, Phil,’ Ruth said plaintively. ‘I’m telling you, something’s happened to her. She wouldn’t worry us like this.’
‘What happened this afternoon, Mrs Hawkin?’ George asked, taking out his own cigarettes and offering them to her. With a tight nod of gratitude, she took one, her work-reddened fingers trembling. Before he could get his matches out, Hawkin had leaned across to light it. George lit his own cigarette and waited while she composed herself to respond.
‘The school bus drops Alison and two of her cousins at the road end about quarter past four. Somebody from the village always goes up and picks them up, so she gets in about the half-hour. She came in at the usual time. I was here in the kitchen, peeling vegetables for the tea. She gave me a kiss and said she were off out with the dog. I said did she not want a cup of tea first, but she said she’d been shut in all day and she wanted a run with the dog. She often did that. She hated being indoors all day.’ Ambushed by the memory, Ruth faltered then stopped.
‘Did you see her, Mr Hawkin?’ George asked, more to give Ruth a break than because he cared about the answer.
‘No. I was in my darkroom. I lose all sense of time when I’m in there.’
‘I hadn’t realized you were a photographer,’ George said, noticing Grundy shift in his seat.
‘Photography, Inspector, is my first love. When I was a lowly civil servant, before I inherited this place from my uncle, it was never more than a hobby. Now, I’ve got my own darkroom, and this last year, I’ve become semi-professional. Some portraiture, of course, but mostly landscapes. Some of my picture postcards are on sale in Buxton. The Derbyshire light has a remarkable clarity.’ Hawkin’s smile was dazzling this time.
‘I see,’ George said, wondering at a man who could think about the quality of light when his stepdaughter was missing on a freezing December night. ‘So you had no idea that Alison had come in and gone out?’
‘No, I heard nothing.’
‘Mrs Hawkin, was Alison in the habit of visiting anyone when she went out with the dog? A neighbour? You mentioned cousins that she goes to school with.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘No. She’d just go up through the fields to the coppice then back. In summer, she’d go further, up through the woodland to where the Scarlaston rises. There’s a fold in the hills, you can hardly see it till you’re on it, but you can cut through there, along the river bank, into Denderdale. But she’d never go that far of a winter’s night.’ She sighed. ‘Besides, I’ve been right round the village. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of her since she crossed the fields.’
‘What about the dog?’ Grundy asked. ‘Has the dog come back?’
It was a countryman’s question, George thought. He’d have got there eventually, but not as fast as Grundy.
Ruth shook her head. ‘She’s not. But if Alison had had an accident, Shep wouldn’t have left her. She’d have barked, but she wouldn’t have left her. A night like tonight, you’d hear Shep anywhere in the dale. You’ve been out there. Did you hear her?’
‘That’s why I wondered,’ Grundy said. ‘The silence.’
‘Can you give us a description of what Alison was wearing?’ asked the ever-practical Lucas.
‘She had on a navy-blue duffel coat over her school uniform.’
‘Peak Girls’ High?’ Lucas asked.
Ruth nodded. ‘Black blazer, maroon cardie, white shirt, black and maroon tie and maroon skirt. She’s wearing black woolly tights and black sheepskin boots that come up to mid-calf. You don’t run away in your school uniform,’ she burst out passionately, tears welling up in her eyes. She brushed them away angrily with the back of her hand. ‘Why are we sitting here like it was Sunday teatime? Why aren’t you out looking for her?’
George nodded. ‘We’re going to, Mrs Hawkin. But we needed to get the details straight so that we don’t waste our efforts. How tall is Alison?’
‘She’s near on my height now. Five foot two, three, something like that. She’s slim built, just starting to look like a young woman.’
‘Have you got a recent photograph of Alison that we can show our officers?’ George asked.
Hawkin
