Meanwhile, teams of volunteers worked tirelessly with police officers and mountain rescue teams searching the dales and moorland round Scardale.
Dogs and grappling irons were used to check a large expanse of moorland which contains several ponds and wells.
DCI Carver said, ’We are spreading the search as widely as possible.
’The public are cooperating magnificently but we still need positive information about Alison’s movements after she left home with her dog on Wednesday afternoon.
‘Perhaps this new information might jog somebody’s memory. No matter how insignificant it may seem, we want to hear from members of the public who might know something.’
‘What does Carver think he’s playing at?’ he grumbled to Anne. ‘The last thing we want is to encourage this sort of thing. We’ll be swamped by every half-baked fortune teller in the country.’
Anne placidly buttered her toast and said, ‘Most likely they twisted what he said.’
‘You’re probably right,’ George conceded. He folded the paper and pushed it across the table towards his wife as he rose. ‘I’m off now. Expect me when you see me.’
‘Try and get home at a decent time, George. I don’t want you to start getting into the habit of working all the hours God sends. I don’t want our baby growing up never knowing who its father is. I’ve listened to the way the other wives talk about their husbands. It’s almost as if they’re talking about distant relatives that they don’t like very much. It sounds like these men treat their homes as a last resort, somewhere to go when the pubs and clubs are shut. The women say even holidays are a strain. Every year it’s like going away with a stranger who spends the whole time fretting and sulking. That or drinking and gambling.’
George shook his head. ‘I’m not that sort of man, you know that.’
‘I don’t suppose most of them thought that’s what they were getting into when they were newlyweds,’ Anne said drily. ‘Yours isn’t a job like any other. You don’t leave it behind at the end of the working day. I just want to make sure you remember there’s more to your life than catching criminals.’
‘How could I forget, when I’ve got you to come home to?’ He bent over to kiss her. She smelled sweet, like warm biscuits. It was, he knew now, her particular morning fragrance. She’d told him his odour was faintly musky, like the fur of a clean cat. That’s when he’d realized that everybody had their own distinctive scent. He wondered if the memory of her daughter’s aromatic signature was yet another of the things that tortured Ruth Hawkin. Stifling a sigh, he gave Anne a quick hug and hurried out to the car before his emotions spilled over.
Swinging by the divisional headquarters to pick up Tommy Clough, George decided to give the morning press conference a miss. Superintendent Martin was far better at handling Don Smart than he’d ever be, and the last thing he needed was to be sucked into the public confrontation his anger made almost inevitable. ‘Let’s go and talk to the Hawkins,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘They must know in their hearts that hope’s running out. They won’t be wanting to admit it, either to themselves or to anybody else. We owe it to them to be honest about the situation.’
The wipers swept the rain off the windscreen with mindless monotony as they headed off over the moors towards Scardale. At last, Clough said gloomily, ‘She’s not going to be out there in this and still be alive.’
‘She’s not going to be anywhere and still be alive. It’s not like abducting a little kid that you can terrify and shut up in a cellar somewhere. Keeping a teenage girl in captivity is in a different league altogether. Besides, sex killers don’t want to wait for their gratification. They want it now. And if she’d been kidnapped by somebody who was idiot enough to think Hawkin had enough money to make a ransom worthwhile, there would have been a ransom note by now.’ George sighed as he raised a hand to greet the dripping constable who still stood guard at the gate into Scardale. ‘Never mind the Hawkins. We’ve got to face up to the fact that it’s a body we’re looking for now.’
The slap of the wipers was all that broke the silence until they pulled up on the village green alongside the caravan. The two men ran through the rain and huddled under the tiny porch waiting for Ruth Hawkin to answer George’s knock. To their surprise, it was Kathy Lomas who opened the door. She stood back to let them pass. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said brusquely.
They filed into the kitchen. Ruth was sitting at the table wrapped in a pink quilted nylon housecoat, her eyes listless, her hair loose and uncombed. Opposite her sat Ma Lomas, layered in cardigans topped with a tartan shawl pinned across her breast with a nappy pin. George recognized the fourth woman in the room as Ruth’s sister Diane, young Charlie Lomas’s mother. The three younger women were all smoking, but Ma Lomas’s chest didn’t seem to mind.
‘What’s to do?’ Ma Lomas demanded before George could say anything.
‘We’ve nothing fresh to report,’ George admitted.
‘Not like the papers, then,’ Diane Lomas said bitterly.
‘Aye, they’ve always got something to say for themselves,’ Kathy added. ‘It’ll be a load of rubbish, all that stuff about Alison being stuck in some terraced house in a city. You can’t hide somebody in the city that doesn’t want to be hid. Them houses, they’ve got walls like cardboard. Can’t you stop them printing that rubbish?’
‘We live in a free country, Mrs Lomas. I don’t like this morning’s paper any more than you do, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Look at the state of her,’ Diane said, nodding at Ruth. ‘They don’t think about the effect they’ll have on her. It’s not right.’
George’s lips pursed in a thin line. Eventually, he said, ‘That’s partly why I’ve come to see you this morning, Mrs Hawkin.’ He pulled out a chair and sat facing Ruth and her sister. ‘Is your husband in?’
‘He’s gone to Stockport,’ Ma said contemptuously. ‘He needs some chemicals for his photography. O’ course, he can come and go as he pleases. Not like them as are Scardale born and bred.’ Her words hung in the air like a thrown gauntlet.
George refused to pick it up. His own conscience was giving him enough grief about his part in Peter Crowther’s death without allowing Ma Lomas free rein with her sharp tongue. He simply bowed his head in acknowledgement and continued regardless. ‘I wanted to tell you both that we will be continuing the search for Alison. But I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t tell you that I think it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that we’ll find her alive.’
Ruth looked up then. Her face was a mask of resignation. ‘You think that’s news to me?’ she said wearily. ‘I haven’t expected anything else since the minute I realized she was gone. I can bear that, because I have to. What I can’t bear is not knowing what’s happened to my child. That’s all I ask, that you find what’s happened to her.’
George took a deep breath. ‘Believe me, Mrs Hawkin, I am determined to do just that. You have my word that I’m not going to give up on Alison.’
‘Fine words, lad, but what do they mean?’ Ma Lomas’s sardonic voice cut through the emotional atmosphere.
‘It means we go on looking. It means we go on asking questions. We’ve already searched the dale from end to end, we’ve searched the surrounding countryside. We’ve dragged reservoirs and we’ve had police divers checking the Scarlaston. And we’ve not found anything more than we found in the first twenty-four hours. But we’re not giving up.’
Ma snorted, her nose and chin almost meeting as she screwed up her face. ‘How can you sit there and look Ruth in the eye and say you’ve searched the dale? You’ve not been near the old lead mine workings.’