The flaps had all been tucked inside. George inserted his thumb and flicked the first envelope open. It contained eight-by-ten photographs. He removed them by pushing the sides of the envelope inwards and letting the photos spill out on to the table, to avoid smudging any fingerprints on the envelope or the pictures. There were half a dozen photos, which he spread out using his pen.
Alison Carter was naked in all of them. Her face was devoid of its natural charm, rendered ugly by fear. Her body somehow expressed her reluctance to adopt poses that would have been lewd in an adult but which were gut-wrenchingly tragic in a child. Unless, of course, the viewer was the sort of paedophile who had taken them. Then, they would doubtless have appeared erotic.
Clough looked over his shoulder. ‘Ah, Jesus,’ he said, his voice thick with disgust.
George could find nothing to say. He gathered the photographs together and slid them back into the envelope, placing it carefully to one side. The second envelope contained strips of large-format negatives. With the aid of the light box on the table, they were able to establish that these were the negatives the prints had been made from. There were sixteen negatives. Hawkin hadn’t bothered printing ten of them. Those were the ones where Alison appeared to be crying.
The third envelope was worse. The poses were even more explicit. This time, however, there was a floppy quality to the girl’s head, a distant look in her eyes. ‘She’s either drunk or drugged,’ Clough said. Still George could not speak. Methodically, he replaced the photographs in their envelope then checked that the negatives in the fourth envelope corresponded to the photographs they’d just looked at.
The fifth envelope went beyond anything George could have imagined. This time all sixteen negatives had been printed. This time, Hawkin was in the photographs along with his stepdaughter. The background was unmistakably Alison’s bedroom, its very ordinariness an obscene counterpoint to the acts it had contained. It formed an innocent backdrop to experiences no thirteen-year-old should endure. In a series of terrible monochrome images, Hawkin’s erect penis thrust into Alison’s vagina, anus and mouth. His fingers probed her body with ruthless and repellent efficiency. All the while, he stared into the camera, exulting in his power.
‘The fucking bastard,’ Clough groaned.
George suddenly thrust himself away from the table, sending the chair crashing to the ground. Pushing past his sergeant, he made it through the door just as the wave of nausea he couldn’t contain swept through him. Hands on knees, he vomited until his stomach was in spasm and there was nothing left inside him but pain. He half leaned, half fell against the wall, sweating, tears pouring down his face, oblivious to the chill night wind and the scatter of sleety rain that swept the dale.
He’d rather have found her corpse than endured those images of her violated body. Plenty of motive there for running away. But more motive still for the man who had invaded her if she had finally rebelled and threatened to reveal his vile perversion. George ran a trembling hand over his wet face and struggled upright.
Clough, standing right behind him in the doorway, handed him the cigarette already lit. His beefy face was as pale as the night clouds. George inhaled deeply and coughed as the smoke hit a throat left raw by his retching. ‘Still think capital punishment’s such a bad thing?’ he gasped. The rain plastered his hair to his head, but he failed to react to the drops of icy water coursing down his face.
‘I could kill him with my own hands,’ Clough growled, his voice coming from deep in his throat.
‘Save him for the hangman, Tommy. This one, we do by the book. He doesn’t have any accidental falls, he doesn’t conveniently get put in a cell with a drunk who hates sex offenders. We bring him to court in one piece,’ George said hoarsely.
‘It won’t be easy. Meanwhile, what do we tell Alison’s mum? This…this beast’s wife? How do you say to a woman, “By the way, love, this man you married – he’s raped and buggered your daughter and probably murdered her.”?’
‘Oh Christ,’ George said. ‘We need a WPC out here. And a doctor.’
‘She won’t want a WPC, George. She trusts you. And she’s got her family around her. They’ll take better care of her than any doctor can. We’re just going to have to go in there and find a way to tell her.’
‘We better tell the uniforms as well. They can keep an eye out specifically for photographs or negatives.’ He shuddered as he breathed in deeply. ‘Let’s bag and tag those envelopes. Forensic will need to do their stuff with them.’
They forced themselves back into the darkroom and collected the envelopes with their hellish contents. ‘Take these indoors to Sergeant Lucas,’ George instructed Clough. ‘I don’t want to be standing there holding them when I speak to Ruth Hawkin. I’ll have a last look here to see if there’s anything else obvious. We’re going to have to get a team to go through every single one of those negatives. But not tonight.’
Clough disappeared into the night. George checked the room, but could see nothing else deserving his notice. He stepped back outside into the miserable weather and closed the door behind him. He carefully fixed a pair of police seals so that nobody could tamper with the evidence. He’d have to have an overnight guard placed on the outbuilding to protect its contents. Tomorrow, he’d organize a team to strip the place and start the long slog through Hawkin’s photographic collection. There would be no shortage of volunteers.
‘I’ve handed the evidence over to Sergeant Lucas,’ Clough said, running across from the house.
‘Thanks. Now, this is how I want to play it. You take the relatives, I’ll speak to Ruth Hawkin on her own. Just tell them we’ve found evidence that suggests Hawkin may have been involved in Alison’s disappearance and that we’ll be charging him with at least one serious offence tonight. It’s up to Ruth how much more she wants to tell them.’
‘They’re going to want chapter and verse. Especially Ma Lomas,’ Clough warned.
‘Let them come to court, then. I’m concerned about Ruth Hawkin. She’s my key witness as of this moment, and she’s got the right to decide how much her family knows at this point,’ George said dismissively. ‘Tell them as little as you need to.’ He squared his shoulders and flicked his cigarette butt into the night. He ran a hand over his soaking hair, showering Clough with tiny droplets of water. ‘Right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s go.’
They walked through the back door and across the hall into the warm fug of the smoky kitchen. The support team of Ma Lomas and Kathy had been joined by Ruth’s sister Diane and Janet’s mother, Maureen. The five women’s faces sharpened with fear at the sight of the grim expressions on the men’s faces. ‘We have some news, Mrs Hawkin,’ George said heavily. ‘I’d like to talk to you alone, if I may. The rest of you ladies, if you’ll go with Sergeant Clough, he’ll explain what’s happening.’
Kathy opened her mouth to argue, but a second look at George’s face killed her protest. ‘We’ll go through to the parlour,’ she said meekly.
Ruth said nothing as they filed out. Her face was like a bolted door, tightly secured, her jaw muscles bulging with the effort of silence. She never took her eyes off George as he sat down at the table opposite her. He waited till he heard the door close behind Clough, then he said, ‘There’s no easy way to say this, Mrs Hawkin. We’ve found evidence that Philip Hawkin has committed serious sexual assaults against your daughter. There can be no doubt about that, and he will be charged before the day’s out.’
A whimper escaped from her lips, but her gaze continued to pin him down. He shifted in his seat and automatically reached for his cigarettes. She shook her head as