Val McDermid 3-Book Crime Collection: A Place of Execution, The Distant Echo, The Grave Tattoo. Val McDermid
call my first witness?’
Sampson nodded. ‘Please proceed, Mr Stanley.’
‘Thank you. I call Mrs Ruth Carter.’
Now the silence in the body of the court was disturbed by a ripple of muttered comments. The only island of silence was the stolid-faced contingent of Scardale villagers. Every adult who was not required as a witness was there, dressed uncomfortably in Sunday best, determined to see the justice they wanted done for their Alison.
Ruth Carter walked through the courtroom with her eyes fixed firmly ahead of her. Not once did she succumb to the temptation to look at her husband in the dock. She wore a simple black two-piece suit, the collar of her white blouse the only relief from its bleakness. She carried a small black handbag, clutched tightly between her gloved fingers. Once she reached the witness box, she carefully positioned herself so she could not accidentally catch a glimpse of Hawkin. She took the oath without a stumble, her voice low and clear. Stanley mopped his eyes and looked gravely at her. He took her through the formal questions of identity and relationship, then moved straight into the meat of his interrogation. ‘Do you remember the afternoon of Wednesday, the eleventh of December last year?’
‘I’ll never forget it,’ she said simply.
‘Can you tell the magistrates what happened that day?’
‘My daughter Alison came home from school and came into the kitchen where I was getting the tea ready. She went straight out again to take the dog for a walk. She usually did that unless the weather was too bad. She liked to get out into the open after a day in the classroom. The last words she said to me were, “See you in a bit, Mam.” I haven’t seen her from that day to this. She never came back.’ Ruth looked up at the bench of magistrates. ‘I’ve lived in hell ever since.’
Gently, Stanley led Ruth through the events of that evening; her desperate door-to-door search of the village, her emotional call to the police and their arrival at the manor house. ‘What was your husband’s attitude to Alison’s absence?’
Her mouth tightened. ‘He took it all very lightly. He kept saying she was doing it on purpose to frighten us so that when she came home, we’d be so glad to see her we’d let her get her own way.’
‘Did he agree you should call the police?’
‘No, he was very opposed to that. He said there was no need. He said nothing could happen to harm her in Scardale, where she knew every inch of the land and everybody on it.’ Her voice shook and she took a small white handkerchief from the black handbag. Stanley waited while she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.
‘Did your husband resent your devotion to your daughter?’ Stanley asked. ‘I mean in a general way.’
‘I never thought so. I thought he spoiled her. He was always buying her things. He bought her an expensive record player, and every week he’d go into Buxton and buy her records. He spent a fortune on doing out her bedroom – more than he ever spent on our room. He always said he was trying to make up for what she’d missed out on, and I was daft enough to believe him.’
Stanley let her words sink in. ‘What do you think now?’ he asked.
‘I think he was buying her silence. I should have taken more notice of how she was with him.’
‘And how was that?’
Ruth sighed and looked down at her feet. ‘She never liked him. She wouldn’t be in the same room alone with him, now I think about it. She was moody in the house, which she’d never been before, though everybody said she was just the same as always when she was away from me and him. At the time, I put it down to her thinking nobody could replace her dad. But I was just kidding myself.’ She lifted her eyes and fixed the judge with a pleading gaze. ‘I thought I was doing what was best for her as well as me when I married him. I thought she’d come round in time.’
‘Did you know your husband took photographs of Alison?’
‘Oh aye,’ she said bitterly. ‘He was always getting her to pose for him. He’s a clever beggar, though. Nine times out of ten, it would all be innocent and above board and out there in public. Alison posing with the calves, Alison by the river. So I never questioned the other times when he took her off to one of the barns, or when he’d say he was going to have a session with her when I was out shopping.’ She put a hand to her cheek, as if appalled by what she was saying. ‘She tried to tell me what was happening, but all I heard was the words, not what was under them. A few times, she said she hated the photography sessions. She didn’t like posing for him. But I told her not to be daft, that it was his hobby and it was something they could do together.’
Her words fell like stones in the courtroom. Throughout her testimony, Hawkin sat shaking his head, as if in puzzled wonderment that she could be saying such things about him.
‘Moving on, Mrs Carter. Has your husband ever owned a gun?’
She nodded. ‘Oh yes. He showed it to me after we were married. He said it was a wartime souvenir of his father’s, but it wasn’t licensed so I shouldn’t tell anybody about it.’
‘Did you notice anything distinctive about it?’
‘The handle grip was all criss-crossed. But there was a chip out of the bottom corner on one side.’
Stanley made a note, then continued. ‘Where did he keep the gun?’
‘It was in his study, in a locked metal box.’
‘Have you seen that box recently?’
‘The police found it when they searched his study the day they arrested him. But it was empty.’
‘Can Mrs Carter be shown exhibit…’ Stanley shuffled his papers. ‘Exhibit fourteen.’
The court clerk handed Ruth the Webley, tagged and labelled. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘The handle’s chipped there, on the bottom, like I said.’
Hawkin frowned, casting a glance across at his barrister, Rupert Highsmith, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.
Stanley moved on to the discovery of the shirt and gun in Hawkin’s darkroom, taking Ruth through the painful evidence with courtesy and patience. At last, he seemed to have reached the end of his questions. But halfway to his seat, he stopped, as if suddenly struck by something. ‘One more thing, Mrs Carter. Have you ever asked your husband to buy elastoplast for you?’
Ruth looked at him as if he’d lost his senses. ‘Elastoplast? When we need elastoplast, I buy it off the van.’
‘The van?’
‘The mobile shop that comes once a week. I never asked him to buy elastoplast.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Carter. I have no further questions, but you must wait to see if my learned friend wants to ask you anything.’ He sat down.
By then, the town hall clock had long since struck noon. Sampson leaned back in his seat and said, ‘We’ll adjourn now. We shall resume at two o’clock.’
Before the door had closed behind the judge, Hawkin was already being hustled from the court. He threw a look over his shoulder towards his wife and his mask of imperturbability finally slipped to reveal the bitter hatred behind it. Highsmith registered the look and sighed. He wished there was another way for him to exercise his skills to the full, but unfortunately, there was nothing more exacting or enthralling than defending someone he knew in his bones to be guilty. He was often asked how it felt to know he’d helped murderers escape punishment. He would smile and say it was a mistake to confuse the law with morality. It was, after all, the prosecution’s job to prove their case, not the defence barrister’s.
After lunch, he set out to do what damage he could to the prosecution case. He made no pretence at befriending Ruth. His face stern, he went straight to the heart of the case. ‘You’ve been married before, Mrs Hawkin?’ The prosecution might choose to obscure her relationship to the man in the dock, but he would use it against