Kathy gave him a sharp look. ‘Have you still got Phil Hawkin at the police station?’
‘Mr Hawkin’s still helping us with our inquiries,’ Clough said stoutly from the bottom of the table, where he sat with open notebook. ‘He’s not going to be walking in on us.’
Kathy squeezed Ruth’s hands even more tightly. ‘It’s all right, Ruth. You can tell him.’
‘I usually wait till he goes out for the day before I can clean his darkroom. He hates me getting underfoot, so I always hang on till I know he’s going to be gone for a few hours,’ she blurted out. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to pull it out…I thought I could give the place a proper bottoming for once; I was going fair mad with nowt to keep me occupied…’
George waited patiently. Ruth pulled her hands away from Kathy and covered her face. ‘Oh God, I need a fag,’ she said indistinctly.
George handed her a cigarette and managed to light it in spite of her trembling fingers. He wished he could find some useful words, but knew it was futile to tell Ruth that everything was going to be all right. Nothing would ever be right again for this woman. All he could do was sit quietly and watch her drag smoke into her lungs until the hammer of her heart quietened enough to let her take up her tale again.
When she spoke this time, it was almost dreamily. ‘The bench he works at, it’s really an old table. It’s got drawers in it. I moved it away from the wall. It was a hell of a job, it’s really heavy. But I wanted to get behind it, to clean properly. I saw this material sticking out of the hole where one of the back drawers used to be. I wondered what it could be. So I pulled it out.’
‘She was screaming like a pig with its throat cut,’ Ma Lomas interjected. ‘I could hear her all the way over the fields.’
George took a deep breath. ‘There could be an innocent explanation for this, Mrs Hawkin.’
‘Oh aye?’ Ma sneered. ‘Let’s hear one, then. Take it away and test that blood, lad. Look where the blood is, you daft lump. It’s all down the front, right where you’d expect it to be. And the gun? How innocent can a pistol be? You check that gun. I bet it fired the bullet you found up in the mine.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘I thought your lot were supposed to have searched this place?’
‘I seem to remember Mr Hawkin was very particular about his darkroom,’ George said.
‘All the more reason to go through it like a dose of salts,’ Kathy said grimly. ‘Are you going to arrest him now, then?’
‘Have you got a paper bag I can put the shirt and the gun in?’ George asked.
Ruth gave Kathy a look of mute appeal. She jumped up and rummaged in the cupboard under the sink and came out with a large brown paper sack. George picked the shirt up on the end of the pen and fed it into the bag without touching it. The gun he wrapped meticulously in a clean handkerchief from his pocket and carefully placed it on top of the shirt. ‘I have to go back to Buxton,’ he said quietly. ‘Sergeant Clough will stay here and make sure nobody enters the outhouse where Mr Hawkin’s darkroom is situated.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll be sending out a team of officers to conduct a thorough search just as soon as I can arrange the warrant.’
‘But are you going to arrest him?’ Kathy persisted.
‘You’ll be kept fully informed of any developments,’ George said.
A strange look passed among the women. ‘If you don’t arrest him you’d better keep him away from here,’ Ma Lomas said. ‘For the sake of his health.’
George gave her a long, steady look. ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that threat, Mrs Lomas.’
He drove Tommy Clough’s unfamiliar car back to Buxton with a strange mixture of heaviness and exhilaration in his heart. He parked carefully and walked upstairs to the interview room with an air of quiet determination. He knew he ought to speak to DCI Carver or Superintendent Martin before he acted, but this was his case. George pushed open the door and stared down at Hawkin, whose petulant complaint died on his lips when he saw the inspector’s expression.
George took a deep breath. ‘Philip Hawkin, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.’
George wasted no time. Hawkin was hustled down to the cells, bleating about trumped-up lies and demanding a lawyer. George turned a deaf ear. There would be plenty of time to deal with Hawkin later. If he was right, nobody would question his actions. If he was wrong, nobody would blame him. Nobody except, possibly, DCI Carver, who saw everything George did as a reproach and would glory in his junior officer’s embarrassment and disgrace. But staying in DCI Carver’s good books was the last consideration in George’s mind right then.
As the door slammed shut on the still protesting Hawkin, George took DC Cragg to one side. ‘Cragg, I want you to ring the divisional CID down in St Albans, where Hawkin came from. We know he’s not got a record, because Sergeant Clough already checked that. What I want to know is if there was ever any talk. Any rumours, any beat gossip. Any allegations where there was never enough evidence for a charge.’
‘You mean sex offences?’
‘I mean anything, Cragg. Just get alongside the local lads and sound them out.’ He realized he was still clutching the paper sack containing the soiled shirt and the carefully wrapped gun. In his hurry, he’d forgotten the need to get them labelled and sent to the lab. He glanced at his watch. Almost noon. If he hurried, he’d catch one of the justices at the High Peak courtrooms. He was sure he would have no trouble getting a search warrant signed. Everyone wanted Alison Carter’s disappearance cleared up, and Hawkin hadn’t yet had time to make many influential friends in a town where people from five miles away were still regarded as foreigners. Swiftly, he filled in the application and left the station at a run. Ignoring his car, he raced down Silverlands and cut through the marketplace towards the courts. Ten minutes later, he walked out of Peak Buildings with a signed search warrant in his pocket for Scardale Manor and its outbuildings. As he emerged, so did the sun, illuminating him with a brief shaft of pale winter light. It was hard not to interpret it as some kind of omen.
Back at divisional headquarters, still carrying the paper sack, he was relieved to find Sergeant Bob Lucas on duty. It seemed only fitting that the officer who had first taken him to Scardale should be available to help search on what might possibly be the breakthrough in the case. George gave him a succinct outline of events and finally dealt with the formal paperwork that would send the shirt and gun to the labs, the chain of custody intact. Meanwhile, Lucas put together a small search team of two constables and a cadet, all he could spare from the busy day shift.
The liveried police car followed George’s unmarked saloon out of the town and through the washed-out February landscape to Scardale. The word of Ruth’s discovery had clearly spread as swiftly as the original report of Alison’s disappearance. Women stood at open cottage doorways and men leaned against walls, their eyes never leaving the police officers as they trooped round the side of the manor towards the outbuilding where Philip Hawkin pursued his hobby. Even more unsettling than their stares was their silence.
George found Clough standing outside the door of the small stone outbuilding, arms folded, a cigarette drooping from one corner of his mouth. ‘Any problems?’ he asked.
Clough shook his head. ‘The hardest part was staying outside.’
George opened the door to the outbuilding and took his first look inside Hawkin’s darkroom. It was obvious that