the earth was packed hard. George plunged into the woodland, trying to balance haste against caution. The torch beam sent crazy shadows dancing off in every direction, forcing him to concentrate harder on the path than he’d had to do in the field. Frosted leaves crunched under his feet, the occasional twig whipped his face or brushed his shoulder, and everywhere the decaying mushroomy smell of the woodland assailed him. Every twenty yards or so, he snapped off his torch to check his bearings against the lights ahead. Absolute darkness swallowed him, but it was hard to resist the feeling that there were hidden eyes staring at him, following his every move. It was a relief to snap his torch on again. A few minutes into the wood, he realized the lights before him had stopped moving. Putting on a spurt that nearly sent him flying over a tree root, he almost collided with a uniformed constable hurriedly retracing his steps.
‘Have you found her?’ George gasped.
‘No such luck, sir. We have found the dog, though.’
‘Alive?’
The man nodded. ‘Aye. But she’s been tied up.’
‘In silence?’ George asked incredulously.
‘Somebody taped her muzzle shut, sir. Poor beast could barely manage a whimper. PC Miller sent me back to fetch Sergeant Lucas before we did owt.’
‘I’ll take responsibility now,’ George said firmly. ‘But go back anyway and tell Sergeant Lucas what’s happened. I think it might be wise to keep people out of this piece of woodland until daylight. Whatever’s happened to Alison Carter, there might be evidence that we’re destroying right now.’
The constable nodded and took off along the path at a trot. ‘Bloody mountain goats they breed around here,’ George muttered as he blundered on down the path.
The clearing he emerged into was a chiaroscuro of torchlight and strangely elongated shadows. At the far end, a black and white collie strained against a rope tied round a tree. Liquid brown irises stood out against the white of its bulging eyes. The dull pink of the elastoplast that was wound round its muzzle looked incongruous in so pastoral a setting. George was aware of the stares of the uniformed men, looking him over speculatively.
‘I think we should put that dog out of its misery. What do you say, PC Miller?’ he asked, directing his question to the dog handler, who was methodically covering the clearing with Prince.
‘I don’t think she’ll argue with you on that, sir,’ Miller said. ‘I’ll take Prince out of the way so he won’t upset her.’ With a jerk on the dog’s leash and a word of command, he made for the far side of the clearing. George noticed his dog was still casting around as he’d done outside the house earlier.
‘Has he lost the scent?’ he asked, suddenly concerned about more important matters than a dog’s discomfort.
‘Looks like the trail ends here,’ the dog handler said. ‘I’ve been right round the clearing twice, and down the path in the opposite direction. But there’s nothing.’
‘Does that mean she was carried out of here?’ George asked, a cold tremor twitching upwards from his stomach.
‘Like as not,’ Miller said grimly. ‘One thing’s for sure. She didn’t walk out of here unless she turned straight round and walked back to the house. And if that’s what she did, why tie up the bitch and muzzle her?’
‘Maybe she wanted to creep up on her mum? Or her stepdad?’ one of the constables hazarded.
‘The dog wouldn’t have barked at them, would she? So there’d be no need to muzzle her, or leave her behind,’ Miller said.
‘Unless she thought one or other of them might be with a stranger,’ George said, half under his breath.
‘Aye well, my money says she never left this clearing under her own steam.’ Miller spoke with finality as he walked his dog down the path.
George approached the dog cautiously. The whimper in the dog’s throat turned to a soft grumble. What had Ruth Hawkin called it? Shep, that was it. ‘OK, Shep,’ he said gently, holding his hand out so the dog could sniff his fingers. The growl died away. George hitched up his trousers and kneeled down, the frozen ground uneven and ungenerous beneath his knees. Automatically, he noticed the elastoplast was the thicker kind, from a roll two inches wide with a half-inch band of lint bulging up the middle of it. ‘Steady, girl,’ he said, one hand gripping the thick hair at the scruff of the dog’s neck to hold her head still. With his other hand, he picked at the end of the elastoplast till he had freed enough to pull clear. He looked up. ‘One of you, come over here and hold the dog’s head while I get this stuff off.’
One of the constables straddled the nervous collie and grasped her head firmly. George gripped the end of the elastoplast strip and pulled it as hard as he could. Inside a minute, he’d yanked the last of it free, narrowly avoiding the snapping teeth of the collie, panicking in response to having chunks of her fur ripped away with the tape. The constable behind her hastily jumped clear as she swung round to try her chances with him. As soon as she realized her mouth was free, Shep dropped to the ground and began to bark furiously at the men. ‘What do we do now, sir?’ one of the constables asked.
‘I’m going to untie her and see where she wants to take us,’ George said, sounding more confident than he felt. He walked forward cautiously, but the dog showed no sign of wanting to attack him. He took out his penknife and sawed through the rope. It was easier than trying to untie it while the dog was straining against it. And it had the advantage of preserving the knot, just in case there was anything distinctive about it. George thought not; it looked pretty much like a standard reef knot to him.
Instantly, Shep lunged forward. Taken by surprise, George gouged a slice out of his thumb as he tried to hold on to the sheepdog. ‘Damn!’ he exploded as the rope whirled through his fingers, burning the skin where it touched. One of the constables attempted to grab the rope as the dog fled, but failed. George clutched his bleeding hand and watched helplessly as the dog raced down the path Miller and Prince had taken from the clearing.
Moments later, there was the sound of a scuffle and Miller’s voice shouting sternly, ‘Sit.’ Then silence. Then an eerie howling split the night.
Groping in his pocket for a handkerchief, George followed the dog’s path. A dozen yards into the wood, he came upon Miller and the two dogs. Prince lay on the ground, his muzzle between his paws. Shep sat on the ground, her head lifted towards the sky, her mouth opening and closing in a long series of heart-stopping wails. Miller held the rope, securing the straining collie. ‘She seems to want to go this way,’ Miller said, gesturing with his head down the path away from the clearing.
‘Let’s follow her, then,’ George said. He wrapped his bleeding thumb with the handkerchief then took the rope from the handler. ‘Come on, girl,’ he encouraged the collie. ‘Show me.’ He shook the rope.
Immediately, Shep bounded to her feet and set off down the trail, tail wagging. They wove through the trees for a couple of minutes, then the track emerged from the trees on to the banks of a narrow, fast-flowing stream. The dog promptly sat down and looked back at him, her tongue hanging out and her eyes bewildered.
‘That’d be the Scarlaston,’ Miller’s voice said behind him. ‘I knew it rose in these parts. Funny river. I’ve heard tell it just sort of seeps out of the ground. If we have a dry summer, it sometimes vanishes altogether.’
‘Where does it lead?’ George asked.
‘I’m not sure. I think it flows either into the Derwent or the Manifold, I can’t remember which. You’d have to look at a map for that.’
George nodded. ‘So if Alison was carried out of the clearing, we’d lose the trail here anyway.’ He sighed and turned away, guiding his torch beam over his watch. It was almost quarter to ten. ‘There’s nothing more we can do in darkness. Let’s head back to the village.’
He practically had to drag Shep away from the Scarlaston’s edge. As they made their slow progress back to Scardale, George fretted