Val McDermid - A Place of Execution

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 to introduce myself. I’m Detective Inspector George Bennett. I’m in charge of the investigation.’ As he walked towards the older man, the younger stopped what he was doing and leaned against the massive hindquarters of one of his Friesians, arms folded across his chest.

‘I’m David Carter,’ the older man said. ‘Alison’s uncle. And this is my lad Brian.’ Brian Carter gave a stately nod. He had his father’s face, but his eyes were narrow and pale, like shards of topaz. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty, but the downward cast of his mouth appeared to have been set in stone.

‘I wanted to say we’re doing everything we can to find out what’s happened to Alison,’ George said.

‘Haven’t found her though, have you?’ Brian said, his voice sullen as his expression.

‘No. We will be searching again as soon as it’s light and if you want to join us again, you’d be more than welcome. But that’s not why I’m here. I can’t help thinking that the answer to what happened to Alison was somewhere in her life. I don’t believe that whoever did this acted on the spur of the moment. It was planned. And that means somebody left traces. Whether you know it or not, someone in this village saw something or heard something that will give us a lead. I’m going to be talking to everybody in the village today, and I’ll say the same to you all. I need you to search your memories for anything out of the ordinary, anyone you saw that didn’t belong here.’

Brian snorted. He sounded surprisingly like one of his cows. ‘If you’re looking for somebody that doesn’t belong here, you don’t have to look very far.’

‘Who did you have in mind?’ George asked.

‘Brian,’ his father warned.

Brian scowled and fumbled in the pocket of his overall for a cigarette. ‘Dad, he doesn’t belong here. He never will.’

‘Who are we talking about?’ George persisted.

‘Philip Hawkin, who else?’ Brian muttered through a mouthful of smoke. His head came up and he stared defiantly at the back of his father’s head.

‘You’re not suggesting her stepfather had anything to do with Alison’s disappearance, are you?’ Clough asked, an edge of challenge in his voice that George suspected Brian Carter would find irresistible.

‘You didn’t ask that. You asked who didn’t belong here. Well, he doesn’t. Ever since he turned up, he’s been sticking his oar in, trying to tell us how to farm our land, as if he’s the one been doing it for generations. He thinks if you read a book or an NFU pamphlet, suddenly you’re an expert. And the way he courted my Auntie Ruth. He wouldn’t leave her alone. The only way she was ever going to get any peace was if she married him,’ Brian blurted out.

‘Didn’t think you minded that,’ his father said sarcastically. ‘If Ruth and Alison hadn’t moved out of Bankside Cottage, you and Denise would have had to start your married life in your old bedroom. I don’t know about you, but I could do without the bedhead banging on the wall half the night.’

Brian flushed and glowered at his father. ‘You leave Denise out of this. We’re talking about Hawkin. And you know as well as me that he doesn’t belong here. Don’t act like you don’t spend half of every day maunging on about what a useless article he is and how you wish the old squire had had more sense than leave the land to an incomer like Hawkin.’

‘That doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Alison going,’ David Carter said, rubbing his hand over his chin in what was clearly a familiar gesture of exasperation.

‘Your father’s right,’ George said mildly.

‘Maybe so,’ Brian muttered grudgingly. ‘But he always has to know best, does Hawkin. If he lays down the law in the house the way he does on the land, then my cousin’s got worse than a dog’s life. I don’t care what anybody says, she can’t have been happy living with Hawkin.’ He spat contemptuously on the concrete floor then turned away abruptly and stalked off to the far end of the milking shed.

‘Take no notice of the lad,’ David Carter said wearily. ‘His mouth works harder than his brain. Hawkin’s an idiot, but according to Ruth, he thought the world of Alison. And I’d take my sister’s word ahead of that son of mine.’ He shook his head and half turned to watch Brian fiddling with a piece of machinery. ‘I thought marrying Denise would knock some sense into him. Too much to hope for, I suppose.’ He sighed. ‘We’ll be out with the searchers, Mr Bennett. And I’ll think on what you’ve said. See if I can think of owt.’

They shook hands. George could feel Carter’s cool eyes appraising him as he followed Clough out into the grey-streaked light of dawn. ‘No love lost between young Brian and the squire,’ George commented as they walked back to the car.

‘He’s saying nothing that the rest of Scardale doesn’t think, according to PC Grundy. We had a chat with him last night after we’d done the door-to-door interviews. He says all the villagers reckon Hawkin’s in love with the sound of his own voice. He likes people to be in no doubt who the boss is, and they don’t take kindly to that in Scardale. The tradition here has always been that the villagers get on with working the land the way they see fit and the squire collects his rents and keeps his nose out. So you’re going to hear a lot of complaints about Hawkin,’ Clough said.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

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