‘Right you are, sir,’ Lucas said grimly. ‘Come on, lads. Let’s strip this place to the bricks.’ The four uniformed men headed for the back door. Through the kitchen window, George could see Kathy Lomas watching. When she caught his eye, she looked away.
‘OK, Tommy, let’s make a start.’ George crossed the threshold and flicked a light switch. Red light flooded the room. ‘Great,’ he muttered. He glanced at the wall and saw a second switch. When he clicked that, an ordinary electric light came on, replacing the eerie scarlet glow. He looked around him, taking stock of what needed to be searched. Apart from the heavy table that stood at an angle to the wall, everything was uncannily neat and tidy. A pair of heavy stone slop sinks that looked as if they had been there since the Middle Ages stood against the wall, the plumbing mounted on them brand new and gleaming. So was the photographic equipment.
In one corner, a pair of gunmetal filing cabinets stood against the wall. George crossed to them and rattled the drawers. They were locked. ‘Bugger,’ he said softly.
‘Not a problem,’ Clough said, moving his boss to one side. He grasped the nearer cabinet, pulled it towards him, then, when it was about five inches clear of the wall, he tipped it backwards. ‘Can you hold it like that for me?’ he asked. George leaned against the cabinet, keeping it tilted at an angle. Clough dropped to the floor and fiddled around underneath for a minute or so. George heard the slide and click of a lock unfastening, then Clough’s grunt of satisfaction. ‘There you go, George. Very careless of Mr Hawkin to go out and leave his filing cabinets unlocked.’
‘I’ll start going through this one,’ George said. ‘You check the table and the shelves.’ He pulled the top drawer open and started on the dozens of suspension files it held. Each one contained strips of negatives, contact sheets and a varying number of prints. Quickly, he checked the other drawers. Each was the same. He groaned. ‘This is going to take for ever,’ he said.
Clough came over and joined him. ‘There are thousands of these.’
‘I know. But we’re going to have to go through every one of them. If he’s ever taken dodgy photographs, they could be mixed up with innocent ones anywhere in these drawers.’ He sighed.
‘Shall we take a look in the other filing cabinet, just so we have a clear idea of the scale of the problem?’ Clough asked.
‘Good idea,’ George said. ‘Same routine again?’ This time, he manhandled the cabinet clear of the wall himself, leaving Clough to grope underneath.
‘Wait a minute,’ Clough said, fumbling beneath the metal base. ‘I’ve caught my sleeve on something.’ His hand snaked into his jacket pocket and emerged with his cigarette lighter. A flick of the wheel and the flame lit up the area beneath the filing cabinet. ‘Jesus Christ on a bike,’ he said softly. He looked up at George. ‘You’re going to love this, George. There’s a hole in the floor with a safe in it.’
George nearly dropped the filing cabinet in shock. ‘A safe?’
‘That’s right.’ Clough scrambled clear of the filing cabinet and stood up. ‘Let’s get this moved and you’ll see what I mean.’
They wrestled the heavy steel cabinet out of its slot and walked it across the room to clear enough space for them to study the safe. George crouched down and stared at it. The green metal front was about eighteen inches square, with a brass keyhole and a handle that protruded about an inch above the safe door into the cavity in the base of the filing cabinet. He sighed. ‘We’re going to need fingerprints out here to dust that handle for Hawkin’s prints. I don’t want him walking away from the contents of that safe on the spurious grounds that somebody else must have planted whatever’s in it.’
‘Are you sure?’ Clough asked dubiously. ‘We’ll be lucky if there’s as much as a partial on a handle like that. It’s what’s inside that matters. He won’t have worn gloves, his prints’ll be all over whatever’s in there.’
George sat back on his heels. ‘You’re probably right. So where’s the key?’
‘If I was him, I’d have it on me.’
George shook his head. ‘Cragg searched him when we put him in the cells. The only keys on him were for his car.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Go and ask Sergeant Lucas if they’ve come across any keys that look like they might open a safe. I’ll have a look here.’
George sat down at the table and started to go through the two drawers. One was a meticulous collection of useful implements – scissors, craft knives, tweezers, tiny soft brushes and draughtsman’s pens. The other was the usual jumble of a junk drawer – pieces of string, drawing pins, a broken nail file, a couple of half-used rolls of Sellotape, candle ends, torch bulbs, matchboxes and odd screws. Neither held a key. George lit a cigarette and smoked it furiously. He felt like a watch wound to the absolute limit of its spring.
All through the investigation, he had forced himself to keep an open mind, knowing how easy it was to develop a fixed idea and to force every subsequent piece of information to fit the preconception. But if he was honest, he’d never had an entirely open mind about Philip Hawkin. The more likely it was that Alison was dead, the more likely it was that her stepfather was the man responsible. That was what the statistics suggested, and it was bolstered by his lack of liking for the man. He had tried to stifle his own instinctive response, knowing prejudice was an enemy of building a solid case, but time and again, Hawkin had crept into his consciousness as the prime suspect if murder became the inevitable conclusion of their inquiry.
Now it beckoned irresistibly. Certainty had dropped into place like the tumblers of a well-oiled lock. The only question was whether he could assemble the evidence that would turn it into a conviction.
George walked out of the darkroom and into the darkening chill of the afternoon. The house lights burned pale yellow and he could see figures moving behind the windows. He glimpsed Ruth Hawkin crossing the kitchen and realized he was dreading the moment when he might have to confirm for her what they all believed now anyway. No matter how much she might have thought herself resigned to losing her daughter, the instant when he told her they were formally treating Alison’s disappearance as a murder inquiry would send a blade of pain to her heart.
He lit another cigarette and paced in tight circles outside the darkroom. What was keeping Clough? He couldn’t leave the outhouse now the search was under way, for fear of a later defence argument that while it had been unattended, someone had slipped incriminating evidence inside. He didn’t want to continue searching either, realizing that with so circumstantial an array of evidence, every crucial find must be witnessed. George forced himself to breathe deeply, rotating his shoulders inside his coat to try to release some of the tension that knotted his neck in taut cords.
As the last light faded behind the western edge of the dale, Clough emerged, a wide grin spread across his face. ‘Sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘I had to go through all the desk drawers. Nothing. Then I noticed one of the drawers wasn’t closing flush. So I pulled it out, and bingo! There was the safe key, stuck to the back of the drawer with elastoplast.’ He dangled the key in front of George. ‘The same kind of elastoplast that the dog was muzzled with, incidentally.’
‘Nice work, Tommy.’ He took the key and stepped back inside the darkroom. He crouched over the safe and glanced over his shoulder at his sergeant. ‘I’m almost scared to open it.’
‘In case there’s proof she’s dead?’
George shook his head. ‘In case there’s no proof of anything. I’m convinced now, Tommy. Too many small coincidences. Hawkin’s done for Alison, and I want him to swing for it.’ He turned to his task and slotted the key