A Place of Execution (1999) (21 page)

‘And what if the breakthrough doesn’t come?’ What if we never find out what happened to Alison Carter? What then?’ George looked up, his eyes wide with apprehension about what such a failure would mean, both personally and professionally.

Clough took a deep breath then slowly exhaled. ‘Then, sir, you move on to the next case. You take the wife out dancing, you go to the pub and have a pint and you try not to lie awake at night fretting over what you can’t change.’

‘And is that a recipe that works?’ George asked bleakly. ‘I wouldn’t know, sir, I’ve not got a wife.’

Clough’s wry smile didn’t mask the knowledge they both shared. If they didn’t uncover Alison Carter’s fate, it would scar them both.

‘Mine’s pregnant.’ The words were out before George knew he was going to say them.

‘Congratulations.’ Clough’s voice was curiously flat. ‘Not the best of times to get the news. How’s Mrs Bennett?’

‘So far, so good. She’s not having morning sickness yet. I just hope…well, I just hope she’s not in for a difficult time. Because I can’t ignore this inquiry, however long it takes.’ George stared through the misted windows of the caravan, not registering the gradual lightening of the sky that signalled the start of another day’s searching. ‘It doesn’t go on at this pitch for long, you know,’

Clough said, reminding George of what the younger man knew in theory but had little direct experience of. ‘If we’ve not found her after ten days or so, say by next weekend, we’ll stop searching. They’ll close down the incident room and pull back to Buxton. We’ll still be following up leads, but if we’re no further forward after a month, it’ll be put on the back burner. You and me, we’ll have other cases up to our armpits, but we won’t close this down. It’ll stay open, we’ll have reviews every three months or so, but we won’t be working it like this.’

‘I know. Tommy, but there’s something about this one. I worked an unsolved murder when I was a DC in Derby, but it didn’t get under my skin like this. Maybe because the victim was in his fifties.

It felt like he’d had a life. Now it’s looking more and more like we’re not going to find Alison alive, and that fills me with rage because she’s hardly started living.

Even if all she was ever going to do was stop in Scardale and have babies and knit jumpers, it’s still been taken from her and I want the law to do the same to whoever did it to her. My only regret is that we don’t hang animals like that any more.’

‘You still believe in hanging them, then?’ Clough asked, leaning forward in his seat.

‘Where it’s cold-blooded, yes, I do. It’s different with spur-of-themoment killings. I’d just put them away for life, give them plenty of time to regret what they’ve done. But the kind of monsters who prey on kids, or the animals that murder some innocent bystander because they’ve got in the way of a robbery, yes, I’d hang them. Wouldn’t you?’ Clough took his time answering. ‘I used to think so.

But a couple of years back I read that book about the Timothy Evans case, Ten Rillington Place.

When he was tried, everybody believed he was bang to rights. Murdered his wife and his kiddy.

The boys in the Met even had a confession. Then it turns out that Evans’s landlord murdered at least four other women, so chances are it was him that killed Beryl Evans. But it’s too late to go to Timothy Evans and say, ‘Sorry, pal, we cocked it up.’’ George gave a half-smile of acknowledgement. ‘Maybe so. But I can’t take responsibility for other people’s bad practice and mistakes. I don’t think I ever have or ever would push an innocent man into confessing and I’m willing to stand by my own results. If Alison Carter has been murdered, like we both probably think by now, then I’d happily watch the man that did it swing from the gallows.’

‘You might just do that if the bastard used a gun. They can still hang them for that, don’t forget.’

George had no chance to respond. The door to the caravan burst open and Peter Grundy stood framed in the doorway, his face the bloodless grey of the Scardale crags. ‘They’ve found a body,’ he said.

Saturday, 14
th
December 1963. 8.47
AM

P
eter Crowther’s body was huddled in the lee of a dry-stone wall three miles due north of Scardale as the crow flies. It was curled in on itself in a foetal crouch, knees tucked up to the chin, arms curled round the shins. The overnight frost that had turned the roads treacherous had given it a sugar-coating of hoar, rendering it somehow innocuous. But there was no mistaking death.

It was there in the blue-tinged skin, the staring eyes, the frozen drool on the chin. George Bennett looked down at the hull of a human being, recognition chilling him deeper than the bitter weather.

He looked up at the miraculously blue sky, oddly surprised that a winter sun was shining as if it had something to celebrate. He certainly didn’t. He felt sick, in his spirit as well as his stomach. The bitter taste of responsibility was sharp in his mouth. He hadn’t done his job properly, and now a man was dead.

George lowered his head and turned away, leaving Tommy Clough squatting on his haunches by the body, giving it a minute scrutiny. He crossed to the field gate where two uniformed men were stationed to protect the scene until the pathologist arrived. ‘Who found the body?’ he asked.

‘The farmer. Dennis Dearden’s his name. Well, technically, it was his sheepdog. Mr Dearden came out at first light to check his stock like he always does. It was the dog that alerted him to the presence of the deceased,’ the older constable said.

‘Where’s Mr Dearden now?’ George asked.

‘That’s his place up the lane. The cottage.’ The PC pointed to a single-storey building a few hundred yards away.

‘I’ll be there if anybody needs me.’ George walked up the lane, his step as heavy as his heart. On the threshold of the tiny cottage, he paused, composing himself. Before he could knock, the door opened and a face like a withered apple appeared opposite his, small brown eyes like pips on either side of a nose as shapeless as a blob of whipped cream. ‘You’ll be the gaffer, then,’ the man said.

‘Mr Dearden?’

‘Aye, lad, there’s only me here. The wife’s gone to visit her sister in Bakewell. She always goes for a few days in December, buys all the Christmas doings at the market. Come in, lad, you must be freezing out there.’ Dearden stepped back and ushered George into a kitchen dazzling with sun.

Everything gleamed: the enamel of the cooker, the wood of table, chairs and shelves, the chrome of the kettle, the glassware in a corner cabinet, even the gas fire. ‘Set yourself down by the fire, there,’

Dearden added hospitably, pushing a carver chair towards George. He lowered himself stiffly into a dining chair and smiled. ‘That’s better, eh? Get a bit of heat into your bones. By heck, you look worse than Peter Crowther.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Not to speak to. But I knew who he was. I’ve done some business with Terry Lomas over the years. I know them all in Scardale. I tell you, though, for a terrible minute out there, I thought it were the lass. She’s been on my mind, same as everybody round here, I suppose.’ He pulled a briar pipe from his waistcoat pocket and started prodding at it with a penknife. ‘What a business. Her poor mother must be half mad with worry. We’ve all been keeping an eye out, making sure she wasn’t lying hurt in some ditch or hiding out in a barn or a sheep shed. So of course, when I saw…well, my natural conclusion was that it must be young Alison.’ He paused momentarily to fill his pipe, giving George his first real opportunity to speak.

‘What exactly happened?’ he asked, relieved that at last he was faced with a witness who seemed eager to offer information. After only three days in Scardale, he had developed a fresh appreciation of garrulity.

‘As soon as I opened the gate, Sherpa was off like a streak, down the side of the wall. I knew right off something was amiss. She’s not a dog that goes off at half-cock, not without cause. Then, halfway along the field, she drops to her belly like she’d been felled. Head down, between her front paws, and I can hear her whimpering half a field away. Like she would if she’d come upon a dead ewe. But I knew it wasn’t no sheep, because that field’s empty right now. I only opened the gate because it’s a short cut to t’ bottom piece.’ Dearden struck a match and sucked on his pipe. The tobacco was fragrant and filled the air with the aroma of cherries and cloves. ‘Light up yourself, if you’ve a mind, lad.’ He pushed a worn oilskin pouch across the table. The own mixture.’

‘I don’t, thanks.’ George took out his cigarettes and made an apologetic face.

‘Aye, you’ll not have the time for anything more complicated than fags in your job. You should think about taking up a pipe, though. It does wonders for the concentration. If I’m somewhere I can’t smoke, I’m damned if I can finish the crossword.’ He gestured with a thumb at the previous day’s Daily Telegraph. George tried not to show he was impressed. Everybody knew the Telegraph crossword was easier than The Times, but it was no mean feat to complete it regularly, he knew.

Obviously, behind Dennis Dearden’s loose tongue was a sharp brain. ‘So when I saw the way the dog was behaving, my heart was in my mouth,’ Dearden continued. ‘There’s only one person I knew was missing, and that was Alison. I couldn’t bear the thought of her lying dead minutes away from my front door. So I ran up the field as fast as I could, which is not very fast at all these days.

I’m ashamed to say, I felt kind of relieved when I saw it were Peter.’

‘Did you go right up to the body?’ George asked. ‘I didn’t have to. I could see Peter wasn’t going to be waking up much before the last trump.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Bloody daft beggar.

Of all the nights to take it into his addled head to walk back to Scardale, he had to pick the worst kind. He’d been away from the country too long. He’d forgotten what weather like last night’s can do to human beings. The sleet soaks you through to the skin. Then when the sky clears and the frost comes down, you’ve no resistance. You keep plodding on, but the cold penetrates right to your bones. Then all you want to do is lie down and sleep for ever. That’s what Peter did last night.’ He drew on his pipe, letting a plume of smoke escape from the corner of his mouth. ‘He should have stopped in Buxton. He knew how to keep safe in the town.’

George clamped his mouth tightly round his cigarette. Not any longer, he thought. Peter Crowther had run out of options. His terror of losing only the second place he’d ever felt safe had driven him back, against his fear, to the place that had rejected him. It was exactly what George had dreaded.

But in spite of his concerns, he’d let Tommy Clough persuade him to set Crowther free, because it was the most convenient way to deal with the problem. And thanks to a leaky CID and a sensation-hungry local paper, now Peter Crowther was frozen stiff in a Derbyshire sheep field. ‘Your farm’s a bit off the beaten track for someone coming from Buxton to Scardale, isn’t it?’ he asked. It was the only thing that gave him any grounds for doubting Dearden’s theory of how Crowther had died.

Dearden chuckled. ‘You’re thinking like a motorist, lad. Peter Crowther thought like a countryman.

You go back and look at an Ordnance Survey map. If you drew a line from Scardale to Buxton, avoiding the worst of the ups and downs, it’d go straight through that field. In the old days, before we all got our Land Rovers, there would be somebody from Scardale across my land at least once a day. It’s not marked on the map as a footpath, mind you. It’s not a right of way. But anybody from round here knows to respect livestock, so it never bothered me, nor my father before me, that the folk from Scardale used it for a short cut.’ He shook his head. ‘I never thought it’d be the death of any of them.’ George got to his feet. ‘Thanks for your help, Mr Dearden. And for the warm. We’ll be back to take a formal statement. And I’ll make sure somebody lets you know when we’ve moved the body.’ That’d be welcome.’ Dearden followed him out to the front door. The old man peered past him down the lane at a maroon Jaguar with two wheels up on the verge. ‘That’ll be the doctor,’ he said. By the time George had walked back up the lane and into the field, the police’ surgeon was getting to his feet and brushing down his wideshouldered camel overcoat. He peered curiously at George through square glasses with heavy black frames. ‘And you are?’ he asked.

‘This is Detective Inspector Bennett,’ Clough chipped in. ‘Sir, this is Dr Blake, the police surgeon.

He’s just been carrying out a preliminary examination.’

The doctor gave a curt nod. ‘Well, he’s definitely dead. From the rectal temperature, I’d say he’s been that way from somewhere between five and eight hours. No signs of violence or injury.

Looking at the way he’s dressed—no overcoat, no waterproof—I’d say the likeliest cause of death is exposure. Of course, we won’t know for sure till the pathologist’s gutted him on the slab, but I’d say this is natural causes. Unless you’ve found a way of charging the Derbyshire weather with murder,’ he added with a sardonic twist of his mouth.

‘Thanks, Doc,’ George said. ‘So, sometime between—what? One and four this morning?’

‘Not just a pretty face, eh? Oh, of course, you must be the graduate 138 we’ve all heard so much about,’ the doctor said with a patronizing smile. ‘Yes, Inspector, that’s right. Once you know who he is, you might even be able to figure out what he was doing wandering round the Derbyshire moors in the middle of the night in a pair of worn-out shoes that would hardly keep out the weather in the town, never mind out here.’ Blake pulled on a pair of heavy leather gloves.

‘We know who he is and what he was doing here,’ George said mildly. He’d been patronized by experts and wasn’t about to be riled by a pompous ass who couldn’t be more than five years older than him. The doctor’s eyebrows rose. ‘Gosh. There you go, Sergeant, the perfect example of how educating our police officers will advance the fight against crime. Well, I’ll leave you to it. You’ll have my report early next week.’ He side-stepped George with a sketchy wave and set off towards the gate. ‘Actually, sir, I’d like it tomorrow,’ George said. Blake stopped and half turned. ‘It’s the weekend, Inspector, and there can be no urgency since you already have an identity for your corpse and a reason for his being here.’