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if reminding itself what it was supposed to be seeking. Dog and handler moved forward in tandem, covering every inch of the path from the kitchen door. Then, at the very edge of the dirt track that skirted the back of the village green, the Alsatian suddenly stiffened. As rigid as a child playing statues, Prince paused for long seconds, hungrily drinking in the scent from the scrubby grass. Then in one smooth, liquid motion, the dog moved swiftly across the grass, its body close to the ground, its nose seeming to pull it forward in a low lope.
    PC Miller quickened his step to keep up with the dog. On a nod from Sergeant Lucas, four of the uniformed men who’d arrived minutes after the dog team fell into step behind them, fanning out to cover the ground with the cones of their torch beams. George followed them for a few yards, not certain whether he should join their party or wait for the two CID officers he’d summoned but who hadn’t arrived yet. Their path touched the village green at a tangent then, via a stone stile, into a narrow salient between two cottages that gave out into a larger field. As the dog led them unwaveringly across the field, George heard a car grumbling down the road into the village. As it pulled up behind the cluster of police vehicles already there, he recognized the Ford Zephyr of Detective Sergeant Tommy Clough. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder at the tracker team.
    Their torches gave their positions away. It wouldn’t be hard to catch up with them. He turned on his heel, strode over to the bulky black car and yanked open the driver’s door. The familiar ruddy harvest moon face of his sergeant grinned up at him. ‘How do, sir,’ Clough said on a wave of beer fumes.
    ‘We’ve got work to do, Clough,’ George said shortly. Even with a drink in him, Clough would still do a better job than most officers sober. The passenger door slammed and Detective Constable Gary Cragg slouched round the front of the car. He’d watched too many Westerns, George had decided the first time the lanky DC had swaggered into his line of vision.
    Cragg would have looked fine in a pair of sheepskin chaps with matching Colt pistols slung low on his narrow hips and a ten-gallon hat tipped over his hooded grey eyes. In a suit, he had the air of a man who’s not quite sure how he got where he is, but wishes with all his heart he was somewhere else.
    ‘Missing girl, is that right, sir?’ he drawled. Even his slow voice would have been more at home in a saloon, asking the bartender for a shot of bourbon. The only saving grace, as far as George could see, was that Cragg showed no signs of being a maverick.
    ‘Alison Carter. Thirteen years old,’ George briefed them as Clough unfolded his chunky body from under the steering wheel. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘She lives in the manor house, stepdaughter of the squire. Her and her mother are Scardale natives, though.’ Clough snorted and clamped a tweed cap over his tight brown curls. ‘She’ll not have had the sense to get lost, then.
    You know about Scardale, don’t you? They’ve all been marrying their cousins for generations.
    Most of them would be hard pressed to find their backsides in a toilet.’
    ‘Alison managed to make it to grammar school in spite of her handicaps,’ George pointed out. ‘Which, as I recall, is more than we can say for you, Sergeant Clough.’ Clough glared at the boss who was three years his junior, but said nothing. ‘Alison came home from school at the usual time,’ George continued. ‘She went out with the dog. Neither of them’s been seen since. That was the best part of five hours ago. I want you to do a door-to-door round the village. I want to know who was the last person to see her, where and when.’
    ‘It’ll have been dark by the time she went out,’ Cragg said. ‘All the same, somebody might have seen her. I’m going to try and catch up with the dog handler, so that’s where I’ll