respect, sir, if you’re intending to keep the villagers out of the wood, there’s not a lot of point in leaving a couple of men to catch frostbite in the field,’ Lucas said wearily. ‘The locals know the lie of the land far better than we do. If they want to get into those woods, they will, and we’ll never know about it. Besides, I don’t think there’s a soul in the place who hasn’t already volunteered to help searching. If we tell them what’s what, they’ll be the last ones to destroy any possible clues.’
He had a point, George realized. ‘What about outsiders?’
Lucas shrugged. ‘All we have to do is post a guard on the gate on the road. I don’t imagine anybody’ll be keen enough to hike in from the next dale. It’s a treacherous path up the Scarlaston banks at the best of times, never mind on a frosty winter night.’
‘I’m happy to trust your judgement, Sergeant,’ George said. ‘I take it your men have been searching the houses and outbuildings?’
‘That’s right. Not a trace of the girl,’ Lucas said, his naturally cheery face as sombre as it could manage. ‘The building out the back of the manor, it’s where the squire develops his photographs. Nowhere for a lass to hide in there.’
Before George could respond, Clough and Cragg appeared from the shadows on the village green. Both looked as cold as he felt, the collars of their heavy winter coats turned up against the chill wind that whistled up the valley. Cragg was flipping back the pages of his notebook. ‘Any progress?’ George asked.
‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ Clough complained, offering his cigarettes round the group. Only Cragg took one. ‘We spoke to everybody, including the cousins she came back from school with. It was Mrs Kathy Lomas’s turn to pick them up at the road end, which she did as per usual. The last she saw of Alison, the lass was walking in the kitchen door of the manor. So the mother’s telling the truth about the lass getting home in one piece. Mrs Lomas went indoors with her lad and never saw Alison again. Nobody saw hide nor hair of the girl after she came home from school. It’s like she vanished into thin air.’
Thursday, 12th December 1963. 1.14 a.m.
George looked around the church hall with an air of resignation. In the pale-yellow light, it looked dingy and cramped, the pale-green walls adding to the institutional flavour. But they needed an incident room large enough to accommodate a CID team as well as the uniformed officers, and there were precious few candidates within striking distance of Scardale. Pressed, Peter Grundy had only been able to come up with either the village hall in Longnor or this depressing annexe to the Methodist Chapel that squatted on the main road just past the Scardale turn-off. It had the advantage not only of being closer to Scardale, but of having a telephone line already installed in what claimed, according to the sign on its door, to be the vestry.
‘Just as well Methodists don’t go in for vestments,’ George said as he stood on the threshold and surveyed the glorified cupboard. ‘Make a note, Grundy. We’ll need a field telephone as well.’
Grundy added the telephone to a list that already included typewriters, witness-statement forms, maps of assorted scales, filing cards and boxes, electoral rolls and telephone directories. Tables and chairs were no problem; the hall was already well furnished with them. George turned to Lucas. ‘We need to draw up a plan of action for the morning,’ he said decisively. ‘Let’s pull up some chairs and see what we need to do.’
They arranged a table and chairs directly below one of the electric heaters that hung suspended from the roof beams. It barely dented the damp chill of the icy night air, but the men were glad of any relief. Grundy disappeared into the small kitchen and returned with three cups and a saucer. ‘For an ashtray,’ he said, sliding the saucer across the table towards George. Then he produced a Thermos flask from inside his overcoat and plonked it firmly on the table.
‘Where did that come from?’ Lucas demanded.
‘Betsy Crowther, Meadow Cottage,’ Grundy said. ‘The wife’s cousin on her mother’s side.’ He opened the flask and George stared greedily at the curl of steam.
Fortified by tea and cigarettes, the three men began to plan. ‘We’ll need as many uniforms as we can muster,’ George said. ‘We need to comb the whole of the Scardale area, but if we draw a blank there, we’ll have to widen the search down the course of the Scarlaston river. I’ll make a note to contact the Territorial Army, to see if they can spare us any bodies to help with the searching.’
‘If we’re spreading the net wider, it might be worth asking the High Peak Hunt if they can help us out,’ Lucas said, hunched over his tea to make the most of its warmth. ‘Their hounds are used to tracking, and their riders know the land.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ George said, inhaling the smoke from his cigarette as if it could warm his frozen core. ‘PC Grundy, I want you to make a list of all the local farmers within, say, a five-mile radius. At first light, we’ll send some men out to ask them all to check their land to see if the girl’s there. If she was running away, she could easily have had an accident, wandering around in the dark.’
Grundy nodded. ‘I’ll get on to it. Sir, there was one thing I wanted to bring up?’ George nodded. ‘Yesterday was Leek Cattle Market and Christmas Show. Fatstock and dairy cattle. Decent prize money, an’ all. So that means there would have been a lot more traffic than usual on the roads in these parts. There’s a lot go over to Leek for the show, whether they’ve got cattle entered or not. Some of them will have been doing their Christmas shopping at the same time. They could have been heading for home round about the time Alison went missing. So if the lass was on any of the roads, there’s a better than average chance that she’ll have been spotted.’
‘Good thinking,’ George said, making a note. ‘You might want to ask the farmers about that when you talk to them. And I’ll mention it at the press conference.’
‘Press conference?’ Lucas asked suspiciously. He’d been reluctantly approving of the Professor this far, but now it looked like George Bennett was planning on using Alison Carter to make a name for himself. It was a move that failed to impress the sergeant.
George nodded. ‘I’ve already been on to headquarters asking them to arrange a press conference here at ten o’clock. We need all the help we can get, and the press can reach people quicker than we can. It could take us weeks to contact everybody who was at Leek Market yesterday, and even then we’d miss plenty. Whereas with press coverage, nearly everybody will know there’s a missing girl in a matter of days. Luckily, today’s press day for the High Peak Courant, so they should be able to get the news on the streets by teatime. Publicity’s vital in cases like these.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have done much for our colleagues in Manchester and Ashton,’ Lucas said dubiously. ‘Other than waste officers’ time chasing down false leads.’
‘If she has run away, it’ll make it harder for her to stay hidden. And if she’s been taken anywhere else, it increases our chances of finding a witness,’ George said firmly. ‘I spoke to Superintendent Martin, and he agrees. He’s coming out here for the press conference himself. And he’s confirmed that for now, I’m in overall charge of the operation,’ he added, feeling slightly awkward at his assertiveness.
‘Makes sense,’ Lucas said. ‘You being here from the first shout.’ He got to his feet, pushing his chair back and leaning forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘So, shall we head back to Buxton now? I don’t see there’s much we can do here. The day-shift men can set it up when they come on at six.’
Privately, George agreed. But he didn’t want to leave. Equally, he didn’t want to appear to push his authority by insisting they hang around pointlessly. With some reluctance, he followed Lucas and Grundy out to the car. Little was said on the way back to Longnor to drop Grundy off, still less on the seven miles back to