Val McDermid 3-Book Crime Collection: A Place of Execution, The Distant Echo, The Grave Tattoo. Val McDermid

       9

       Friday, 13^th December 1963. 4.05 p.m.

      George was beginning to think he would dream the road to Scardale for the rest of his life. The car plunged down the narrow defile in the gathering dusk of a gloomy winter afternoon. If the sun had made an appearance through the day’s cloud and mist, he’d certainly missed it, he thought, slowing down as the village green grew near. Men were milling around the police caravan, cups of tea sending wisps of steam to join the wraiths of mist creeping down the dale. The day’s fruitless searching was over with the dying of the light.

      Ignoring them, George crossed the green to Tor Cottage. It was time Ma Lomas stopped behaving like a character from a Victorian melodrama and started taking responsibility for what might happen to Alison if the matriarch and her extended family continued to keep their mouths shut, he told himself resolutely. As he rounded the woodpile that almost blocked the path to her front door, his foot snagged on something and he pitched forward. Only Clough’s quick grasp of his arm prevented him from an ignominious tumble.

      ‘What the hell…?’ George exclaimed, staggering to right himself. He turned and peered through the gathering gloom at Charlie Lomas, sprawled on his back amid a scattered pile of logs, and groaning.

      ‘I think you broke my ankle,’ Charlie complained.

      ‘What in the name of God were you doing?’ George demanded, crossly rubbing his arm where Clough’s strong fingers had dug into the muscle.

      ‘I was just sitting here, minding my own business, trying to get five minutes’ peace. It’s not a crime, is it?’ Charlie squirmed to an upright position. He rubbed the back of his hand fiercely across his face and in a gleam of light from the cottage window, George realized the youth’s eyes were bright with tears. He didn’t look capable of abducting a kitten, never mind a teenage girl.

      ‘Thinking about Alison?’ George said gently.

      ‘It’s a bit late to start treating me like a human being, mister.’ Charlie’s shoulders hunched in defiance. ‘What’s the matter with you lot? She was my cousin. My family. Ain’t you got anybody to care about, that you think it’s so bloody strange that we’re all upset?’

      Charlie’s words jolted George’s memory. He’d learned early on in his police life that he couldn’t do the job as well as he wanted unless his personal concerns were battened down firmly, protected from the raw pain and unpleasantness of so much of his work. Mostly, he managed to keep the Chinese walls intact. Occasionally, like now, the two realities collided. Suddenly George remembered that overnight he’d acquired someone new to care about.

      A smile crept over him. He couldn’t help it. He could see the contempt in Charlie Lomas’s eyes and the puzzlement in Clough’s. But the sudden consciousness of the child that Anne was carrying was irresistible.

      ‘What’s so bloody funny?’ Charlie burst out.

      ‘Nothing’s funny,’ George said gruffly, dragging himself back into the appropriate state. ‘I was thinking about my family. And you’re right. I would be devastated if anything happened to them. I’m sorry if I offended you.’

      Charlie got to his feet, brushing himself down with his hands. ‘Like I said, it’s a bit late for that now.’ He half turned his head so his eyes were obscured by the shadow. ‘You looking for me or my gran?’

      ‘Your gran. Is she in?’

      He shook his head. ‘She’s not come back yet.’

      ‘Back from where?’

      ‘I saw her when we were coming back from looking for Alison. She was walking across the fields, over between where you found Shep and where we were yesterday, when you found that…stuff.’ Charlie frowned as if recalling something half buried. ‘It was like she was going over the same road the squire was walking on Wednesday teatime.’

      There are times when a particular combination of words shifts the world into slow motion. As the significance of Charlie Lomas’s words sank in, George had the strange swimming sensation of a man whose senses have moved into overdrive, leaving the outside world crawling by at a pitiful pace. He blinked hard, cleared his throat then said carefully, ‘What did you just say, Charlie?’

      ‘I said my gran was walking over the fields. Like she was heading towards the manor the back way,’ he added. He’d obviously decided that in spite of their treatment of him, it was in Alison’s interests to be helpful to this strange policeman who didn’t behave like any copper he’d ever seen in the flesh or at the pictures in Buxton.

      George struggled to keep his self-control. He wanted to grab Charlie by the throat and scream at him but all he said was, ‘You said she was walking the same road as the squire on Wednesday teatime.’

      Charlie screwed up his face. ‘So? Why wouldn’t the squire be walking his own fields?’

      ‘Wednesday teatime, you said.’

      ‘That’s right. I particularly remember because of all the fuss later on when Alison went missing.’

      George exchanged a look with Clough. His incredulity met Clough’s rage. ‘You were asked if you’d seen anybody in the fields or the woods on Wednesday,’ Clough ground out.

      ‘I wasn’t,’ Charlie said defensively.

      ‘I asked you myself,’ Clough said, his lips stretched tight over his teeth, the sibilants hissing.

      ‘No, you never,’ Charlie insisted. ‘You asked if we’d seen any strangers. You asked if we’d seen anything out of the ordinary. And I didn’t. I just saw the same thing I’ve seen a thousand times before – the squire walking his own land. Anyway, it can’t have had anything to do with Alison going missing. Because it was still light enough to see clearly who it was, and according to what you said, Alison didn’t go out till it was nigh on dark. So there’s no call to take that tone with me,’ he added, straightening his shoulders and attempting a maturity he hadn’t earned. ‘Besides, you were too busy trying to make out I had something to do with it to listen to anything I might have to say.’

      George turned away in disgust, his eyes closing momentarily. ‘We’ll need a statement about this,’ he said, his excitement at the possibilities this information opened up overcoming his frustration at the time wasted because the literal minds of Scardale could see no further than the question as asked. ‘Get yourself up to the Methodist Hall and tell one of the officers there I sent you. And give him every detail. The time, the direction Mr Hawkin was walking in, whether he was carrying anything, what he was wearing. Do it now, please, Mr Lomas, before I give in to the temptation to arrest you for obstructing a police inquiry.’

      He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Charlie’s eyes widen in panic. ‘I never did,’ he said, sounding half his age. ‘He never asked me about the squire.’

      ‘I never asked you about the Duke of Edinburgh neither, but if he was walking the fields, I’d expect you to tell me,’ Clough snarled. ‘Now, don’t waste any more time. Get your arse up the road before