Arrival in Hallowmere

The train station at Hallowmere was notable for two things: first, it was the sort of place that made you wonder whether civilisation had ever quite touched it, and second, it had a coin-operated vending machine that offered only three items - diet cola, a packet of plasters, and a screwdriver.

The train coughed itself to a stop, and Detective Inspector Dan Shaw stepped down from the carriage and into air that smelled of wet stone, woodsmoke, and something else that was less identifiable, like secrets left out in the rain. As if on cue, a strangled fart that bore an uncanny resemblance to a creaking door was twisted out into the country atmosphere courtesy of the only other person about, a man sat on a bench eating a sandwich. As if he’d just provided a service, he nodded sagely in Shaw’s direction, before taking another bite of his precious lunch. No one else departed the train, and it slowly grovelled away up the track, leaving the Detective Inspector in silence, give or take the occasional munch from the other platform, and the rattling mock of an unseen magpie.

Shaw, used to the comforting anonymity of London’s hustle and bustle, grasped the strap of his rucksack and looked about. The village lay a few hundred yards ahead, slate roofs huddled like conspirators, a dark church spire craning towards the sky as if eavesdropping. Around, steep hillsides formed the valley in which the village lay, hiding the rest of the world from view. Just a dark hill, shadowed in the distance, gave any hint of anything existing beyond Hallowmere. He cleared his throat, adjusted his coat, and started walking.

His mood was sour. On his journey north from St Pancras, he’d stopped off in Derby for something barely resembling a briefing from the county constabulary. More a grilling really, and one given on an old barbecue with damp coals. Derbyshire Police HQ was every bit as grey and shabby as the town in which it lurked, one that was resignedly loosening its grip on the faintest whiff of any former glories. There was a whiff of a great deal else besides, but on entering the station Shaw was somewhat relieved to be greeted with a pleasing buzz of his fellow coppers dealing with everyday cases. Visitor lanyard in place, he made his way through the main floor, an open-plan centre alive with glowing laptop screens, phones, and chatter.

Any joy in familiarity was quickly extinguished as he entered the meeting room however. Three uniformed officers sat facing him in silence at the far end of a long, imposing, black table. A jug of water and some glass tumblers sat in the middle, just far enough so that neither party could have refreshed themselves should they have wanted to. The copper sat in the middle of the three, clearly an inspector, was a slightly ruddy-faced man who could’ve been anywhere between 45 and 65. He stared directly at Shaw from beneath a furrowed brow and unkempt, greying eyebrows. Flanking him were two much younger officers, a female and a male. To his credit, the younger man managed to flash an over-eager smile in Shaw’s direction, but then seemed to remember who he was sitting next to, and returned to his solemnity. A momentary flick of the inspector’s glance to a chair at the opposite end of the table was Shaw’s invitation to sit, and he took it.

Just as he placed his rucksack at his feet and the seat of his smart jeans hit the pad of the chair, the inspector spoke, his voice brusque and nicotined, his accent a long way north of the capital.

“Good morning. I am Detective Chief Inspector Cartwright, these are my colleagues: DS Ellie Wainwright (the female officer gave a brief but pleasant nod) and PC Darren Lomas (again, the over-enthusiastic smile from the male). Welcome to Derbyshire.” His expression remained as unwelcoming as it had when he began to speak.

“Thank you, sir.” said Shaw. “It’s a pleasure to -”
“So,” said Cartwright, cutting him short. “Daniel Shaw. Detective Inspector. Missing Persons Unit.” He sniffed. “Met.”
“That’s correct,” replied Shaw, “I’m -”
“Met”, repeated Cartwright, seemingly spitting out the word for fear that it might poison him if it remained in his mouth too long. “London Metropolitan Police Force. Hmmm. I gather you’re quite gifted at what you do. Good career progression, handled a grizzly case or six, a decent track record of finding and solving. Handy. You’ll have read up on the case, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. Two girls, missing since -”
“That’s them. Puzzling case. Believe me when I say that we’ve put everything at it. Our best men.”
At this, the female officer sat to Cartwright’s left shifted in her seat slightly, and she flicked Shaw a look that he thought carried a hefty weight.
“Despite this” continued the DCI, “and despite the fact we were doing quite all right thank you very much, I was advised to bring in some… outside help. Missing person’s specialist. Met.”

Shaw returned the DCI’s stare cooly, starting to get a flavour of the kind of man Cartwright was, and the kind of operation he liked to run. Old school. No nonsense. Nothing that was going to trouble him outside of office hours. Everything this case isn't. Shaw smiled, opened his mouth to speak and, true to form, Cartwright dived straight back in.
“You’re thought of very highly. A good prospect, good with high-risk… complex cases, and your name was put my way. So here we are. You’re a city boy, I take it? London type?”
“Well yes, it’s where I live and work, so -”
“A word of advice. The Peak District isn’t London, but Hallowmere is very definitely Peak District. Close community, tight-knit, that lot. Do things their way. You’re to keep them on side. If you’re to mock them and how they are, you’ll lose them. And we need them. And another thing,” he continued, ignoring Shaw’s need to breathe, “we need this case shutting sharp. We don’t want any negative press that might go denting people’s yen for a sojourn in the Peaks. It goes without saying that towns and villages up that way rely on outsiders for their tourist money. Hikers. Bikers. Weekenders. That sort of caper.”

This time, Shaw didn’t hold back. “Thank you, Detective Chief Inspector. I have indeed read up on this case, quite thoroughly, as I’m sure you’d expect. I have a number of questions which I’ll be needing some answers to, sooner rather than later, ideally.”

“Do you, now?” said Cartwright, sitting back and folding his arms.
“Yes. In fact I rather hoped that you might have responded to my emails by now.”
There was a squeak as Cartwright leaned back in his chair, which extended longer than he would have wished in the manner and pitch of the air being squeezed out of an untied balloon.
“Emails? I haven’t read any e-”
“Well that’s unfortunate, but salvageable,” responded Shaw, with a pleasant smile, “sir.”
Now Cartwright paused, staring Shaw down. Shaw’s smile did not waver. Come on, you fat fucker, he thought. I bet you don’t even know how to turn your laptop on.
For the slightest moment, Cartwright looked to his side. It was long enough.
“I’ll get Wainwright on it. Wainwright, kindly furnish DI Shaw with whatever he needs to get his e-mails sufficiently dealt with.”
“Yes, sir,” came her response. Shaw saw the tiniest hint of the smile which Cartwright didn’t.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding in appreciation and flickering her a smile in return.  

Suddenly, having judged that was quite enough and that his time would be better spent in his office with the door shut and the blinds down, Cartwright stood, followed swiftly by his officers. Shaw, a beat later, did likewise. Cartwright had gathered a cardboard folder that had been lying on the table in front of him. He eyed Shaw for a final time. “You’ll be meeting DS Kapoor tomorrow. Knows the patch. Don’t step on her toes.” He sniffed.  “And don't fuck it up. Nice meeting you.” And with that he was off, with officers Wainwright and Lomas doing their best to keep up. Upon reaching the door through which his colleagues had swiftly exited, Lomas stopped and hovered. Turning back to the still-standing Shaw, he took a deep breath and then said, “I’m really glad you’re on the case, sir. I-I was wondering if maybe I could-”
“Darren.” The head of Cartwright reappeared through the door. “Come on.”
“Yes, sir.”

DI Daniel Shaw didn’t find out what PC Lomas was wondering about. Instead, he saw himself out, made his way back to Derby station, and caught the next train up into the Peaks. As the train clacked along the track, and the city flats and warehouses fell away into open countryside and gorse moors criss-crossed with drystone walls, Shaw brooded. This wasn’t a secondment he’d relished, other than it giving him an opportunity to get away for a few weeks and leave some heavy baggage behind in London. “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life”. Samuel Johnson’s quote floated into view in Shaw’s mind, and mocked him. Yeah, but he wasn’t a copper though, was he.

So. Hallowmere. Still brooding, Shaw walked away from the station, rucksack tugging at his shoulder, and tried not to pay too much attention to the way that the birds had just stopped singing. The soles of his leather brogues filled the emptiness with a pleasing and affirming ‘clop’ with each stride, and an occasional ‘crunch’ thrown in for good measure, just as they would when he was walking home from his local tube station in Clapham. But here the sound was slightly muted, and didn’t deliver quite the same pleasure he savoured when walking south of the river. He stopped for a moment, and pulled his phone out from the back pocket of his jeans, to look at a map of the village and find the inn that would be his home for the next few weeks. But - just as he feared - zero reception. No wait, a bar appeared… and then winked out of existence.

So this is it then he thought to himself. The Sticks. I’m in ‘The Sticks’.
Out of habit he flicked through his lifeless apps anyway to see if he’d had a chat message, then cursed himself for having done so. Nothing there. Of course there wasn’t. What were you expecting? He sighed a deep breath of the country air, and again was aware of that unidentifiable something mixed into it.

Returning his useless smartphone to his back pocket, he looked up, and with a start noticed two motionless figures stood in the middle of the road ahead of him. One appeared taller than the other, and they seemed to be peering at him as far as he could tell, but from this distance it was difficult to make out their features exactly.

Oh well. Best get to know the local yokels, then. Fixing the most pleasant smile that he could muster, he nodded amicably and began to walk towards them. A row of old terraced houses now stood either side of him, and as he passed one he felt rather than saw something in his peripheral vision, a small and solemn-looking girl looking at him through a downstairs window. He shone his smile in her direction, but upon being noticed she ducked out of sight.

The figures were gone. Perhaps they’d scurried away too. He checked around him but yes, he was completely alone again. If a ball of tumbleweed had chosen that moment to bounce across the high street, and Sergio Leone had struck up his orchestra to accompany a lone cowboy sauntering out from the Tesco Express, warning him back to London, he'd have been in no way surprised. 

It didn’t. Sergio didn't. And the cowboy remained conspicuous in his absence. There wasn’t even a Tesco Express either - just a small village shop with a few postcard carousels and butterfly nets arranged by the door, with jars of sweets stacked on shelves in the windows. A rusting litter bin emblazoned with a faded yellow, blue, and green ‘R. White’s Soft Drinks’ logo stood precariously at the edge of the pavement, while huddled up next to the shop stood the pub: The Old Nick. This would be Shaw's digs while on the case, and he allowed himself a wry smile at the thought of a copper being banged up in such a place. He read the sign haphazardly nailed above the door:

Mrs. Beryl Sconge

Licensed for the sale of wine, beer, and spirits for consumption on the premises.

Shaw was just about to push the door inwards when it was suddenly opened, causing him to step back in surprise. A woman stepped from within and into the doorframe. Possibly in her early fifties, she had something about her that put the Detective Inspector in mind of Velma from the Scooby Doo cartoons he’d seen as a kid when sat on the living room carpet in front of the television. But this was Velma after the Scooby Snacks had run dry, after Shaggy had got shagged out, after Fred had run off with Daphne, and Scoobs had been put down.

Shaw blinked hard. “Hello,” he said. “I'm looking for Mrs. Sconge - I'm going to be staying here at her pub tonight.” 

“Oh, there's plenty round here would love to stay in my pub all night,” said the woman, “stay in and drink themselves to ruddy death if they could. “You've got homes to go to! And I need my kip! Sod off!” I tell the dozy boggers, but then they're always back next evening, still chancing their arm. Silly sods, love ‘em. But that's not what you meant, was it, young Detective Inspector?”

“Not exactly, no” replied Shaw as good-naturedly as he was able. “I take it you're who I'm after, Mrs Sconge?”

“That'll be me. Welcome to the Old Nick, and welcome to Hallowmere. Or at least, here’s Hallowmere, and you’re welcome to it. Come on in, I'll show you to your room. Mind the step down, won't you.” 

As she turned to head back in, Shaw suddenly became aware of something in an alleyway to the side of the pub. He held himself stock still as a cold and uneasy feeling, one that he wasn’t used to, seeped rapidly through his body and took hold of him. Something in his brain was telling him not to look, but his curiosity won over. He glanced down to see a small boy in a grey school uniform standing only a few feet away, glaring up at him. His stance was all wrong somehow, and his eyes suggested he was eagerly waiting for Shaw to act. The boy’s accompanying smirk was in no way pleasant. It was filled with spite, with an intense sense of malice, and Shaw gasped as he turned away and back towards the pub. The landlady had already turned back to Shaw and was reading him from the doorway, with a look of almost amused puzzlement. She looked to where the boy stood in the alleyway, but he wasn't there. Shaw swallowed, about to say something.

“Come on,” said Beryl, not giving him the chance. “Let's get your things up to your room and then get you fed. You must be tired and hungry after your journey north. You certainly look it.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons