Gallows Knot (Inspector Yarrow Book 3)

Book summary

In the misty backdrop of 1950s West Garside, Yorkshire, "Gallows Knot" follows D.I. Yarrow as he leads a tense investigation into the abduction of a young girl from a local hospital. Still grappling with personal injuries and internal department pressures, Yarrow faces a community rattled by suspicion and fear. As he navigates through the most challenging case of his career, his own life unravels, pushing him to the limits of his resolve. Will he manage to solve the case amidst mounting obstacles? This gripping tale captures the essence of a small-town mystery intertwined with personal struggle.

Excerpt from Gallows Knot (Inspector Yarrow Book 3)

It was still dark as Yarrow pulled up into the hospital grounds. Already two black Wolseley police cars were parked to the side by the main entrance, four uniformed coppers standing uneasily by their cars, waiting for instruction. Yarrow quickly posted two of them to keep all but essential visitors from entering; genuine patients and staff were of course allowed in, but no others until the scene had been secured. He then ordered the other two officers to stay with him in case he needed them to run messages or other tasks.

DS Marcus Harding was waiting for Yarrow, looking dishevelled and darkly unshaven, a weary rim of sleep about his eyes. He held a white crash helmet in his hand; having ridden to the hospital on a 1933 overhead valve 249cc BSA R33-4 motorbike that had seen extensive service during the war, racking up tens of thousands of miles and was now on its last legs – following his promotion, he could have afforded a newer motorbike but he really loved the battered but reliable BSA and was reluctant to change it.

‘A missing girl, sir?’ he asked, yawning into his hand. ‘Taken from the ward?’

‘That’s what it seems like, four-year-old Emily Black. I hope to God we are wrong, but first indications point that way.’

‘How do we go about things then, sir?’

‘I want to look at the ward from where the girl has gone missing. We need to get that secured, transfer any other patients to another ward but keep them handy in case we have to talk to them.’

‘Most of them are only young, toddlers, babies even, so I gather, and most of them can’t even talk yet.’

‘Even so, we must try; we’ll need the parents present, of course, preferably the mother when or if we do talk to them.

‘Right!’

‘We’ll talk to the night nurse who raised the alarm; uniform will do a top to bottom search of the hospital, there are all sorts of nooks and crannies where she could be hiding.’

‘Or could have been hidden if she’s come to harm.’

‘Aye, there’s always that. Then we spread out, a fingertip search of the grounds. We’ll talk to the girl’s parents. I don’t think they would have come in at night and taken her home, but we’d look right stupid if we didn’t check and she was there all the time.’ said Yarrow, taking out his cigarettes and lighting up, offering them to Harding who declined with a shake of his head. It was too early in the morning, and although he had only recently taken up smoking, he was trying to give it up. He had a new girlfriend called Janet Beaseley; she did not like the smell or taste of tobacco on his breath when he tried to kiss her.

‘Do we search the family home as well?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we must; it’s standard procedure. I know it doesn’t help distraught parents to have police poking in the attic or nosing around the garden, but it has to be done.’

‘You don’t seriously suspect the parents?’

‘No, but like I said, it must be done. Send Suzanne, Suzanne Fillmore, to sit with the mum and dad until we get there. She’s steady and sensible; they’ll need somebody calm and compassionate with them.’

A thin smear of dawn light edged its way over the brow of the encompassing hills, bleeding pale light into the morning. The birds began to wake and stir, hesitantly at first, as if not wanting to be the first ones to start singing, and then soon they were in the full throat of their dawn chorus. An ambulance pulled up alongside Yarrow and Harding, the tyres scrunching loudly on the gravel forecourt. The ambulance crew opened the back doors and helped an old lady down from inside. She was dazed and looked about her confusedly, a trickle of dried blood down her forehead.

‘The old dear fell and hit her head,’ one of the crew said, recognising the two men as police. ‘She’ll be right as rain, just needs a bit of rest and a good, strong, hot cup of tea.’

‘Could do with that myself,’ Harding yawned as Yarrow took a final drag at his cigarette, dropped it to the ground, and crushed it under his foot before walking off into the front entry of the hospital, Harding and the two uniforms trailing on behind.

Nurse Alison Worthywool was short, plump, and round, with a motherly air of comfort about her, although she was no more than 25 years old. She had a round, moon-shaped face; a face made for bright, beaming smiles, but not this day. Not this morning.

Thin runnels of tear tracks marked her cheeks, a shock of startlingly white-blonde hair had escaped out from under her cap, and she nervously kept trying to push it back in place. She looked worn, worried sick that a child had gone missing on her watch, obviously frightened that she would be held culpable, concerned for her job, but even more concerned for the whereabouts of the little girl in her charge.

The Albert Doakes Children’s Ward was housed in a new wing attached to the rear of the older Victorian hospital, stuck on with all the subtlety of an extra limb sewn onto someone’s shoulder. The yellow glazed brickwork of the extension was harshly at odds with the mellow gritstone of the main building. An apparently endless warren of corridors ran from the main entrance of the old building through to the new ward, the ever-present hospital smell of antiseptic and boiled cabbage permeating the yellow glazed tiles and light green painted plaster walls of the corridors.

Tearfully, Nurse Alison Worthywool led the two detectives and the two uniformed policemen through the maze, an equally harassed duty doctor trailing along behind them, his white coat flapping like washing on the line on a breezy day.

Nurses and orderlies, wheeling trolleys of medications or patients, flowed past in a steady stream. The disappearance of the young girl seemed not to affect the normal activities of the hospital; patients still had to be fed, cleaned, medicated, operated upon, assessed, admitted, and released; life – and death – continued apace.

Other long corridors branched off left and right at regular intervals, staircases appeared at random. Notice boards on the walls had plans of the sprawling hospital complex displayed, with arrows marking the positions of various wards and departments.

Yarrow stopped briefly to examine one, noticing that the children’s ward was at the far extremity of the hospital. ‘Nurse, we’ll need a copy of this plan, and of the other floors. Plans of the basement as well. The little girl could have wandered off down there and got lost. I know I would soon get lost here,’ Yarrow said, wondering how long it took for a new nurse or doctor to find their way around. He was told, somewhat later and tongue in cheek, ‘that new staff were given a map and compass, a packet of sandwiches, and told to find their way around.’

The nurse looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m not sure who’d have a plan. I’d have to ask for that.’

‘Probably the Engineering department, I should think.’ He turned to the following uniformed officers. ‘One of you go back and find out how we get these plans. We need them urgently. And more than one copy.’

‘Sir.’ A brief salute before turning on his heels and trotting off back down the corridor, the clatter of the steel cleats on his boots echoing around the walls.

Yarrow marched on to the ward from where four-year-old Emily Black had disappeared. He stood by the door of the ward, now empty, the children having been relocated to another ward which had been made free by either discharging some recovered patients earlier or transferring others to beds at the Cottage Hospital in Moorgate. Behind him, Harding, the other uniformed copper, Nurse Worthywool, and Dr Draper, the duty doctor, his white coat seeming still to flap about his legs even though he was stationary, hovered uncertainly, trying to peer around Yarrow as he stood immobile in the doorway.

Yarrow breathed in deeply, as if assimilating the atmosphere of the scene into his being. Beyond the nurses’ station, there were two rows of now empty cots, lined up along each long wall, 12 beds to each row, a small night table stood by each bed. The usual screens, trolleys, and uncomfortable-looking chairs for visitors also were in evidence.

‘Which was Emily’s bed?’ he asked over his shoulder. Alison Worthywool pushed up alongside him to point out the bed, and for a sudden moment, he felt the press of her ample breasts against his arm, sending a totally inappropriate and unexpected frisson through his body.

‘That one, sir, the end bed on the left,’ she said, pointing.

‘Thank you,’ he said, still not moving away from the doorway.

Then he squatted down on his haunches, scrutinising the barely discernible pattern of footprints in the highly polished floor that were visible from that angle. It was a tangled, multi-directional pattern, a constant flow swirling about the beds, as nurses, doctors, and the tiny patients themselves had moved about the ward and finally exited. His head jerked up; beside Emily’s bed, there was an open window, and just by the side of the bed, he could see a faint line of marks, mere smudges, in the polish seeming to lead from the bed to the window.

He quickly unfastened his shoelaces and pulled off his shoes, hoping that there were no holes in his socks. ‘Harding, take off your shoes and then follow me. Please, everyone else stay by the door. Don’t come in.’

In stockinged feet (without holes), Yarrow and Harding made their way over to the missing child’s bed, where a pale blue fluffy rabbit lay forlornly amongst the rumpled sheets and blankets.

Careful not to disturb the slight marks in the floor, Yarrow placed his own footprint close to one of the marks. ‘I thought so; these prints were made by someone in stocking feet, the same as us.’ Carefully, he made his way over to the window, motioning Harding to stay back so as not to risk damaging the prints on the floor.

‘Nurse,’ he called, ‘was this window open last night?’

‘Only very slightly, sir. All the windows were open an inch or two at the top and bottom to allow some fresh air in the room. It was so hot and stuffy in here otherwise.’

‘But not opened all the way as it is now.’

‘No, good heavens, no. We don’t want the wee ones to catch cold. I mean, poor Emily had scarlet fever and was a bit… vulnerable to colds and such and still had a sore throat. Although apart from that, she was almost better and ready to go home in a day or so, most of the desquamation…’

‘Desquamation?’

‘Sorry, skin peeling. It’s characteristic of scarlet fever during recovery.’

‘Right, desquamation. Thank you.’

Yarrow rubbed his chin, thinking, feeling, and hating the shell-like carapace of his burned face. He did not like what he was beginning to understand. Somebody, presumably the abductor, had come to Emily Black’s bed in the night in his stocking feet, seemingly opened the window, picked her up, and apparently left with her that way, through the window. Why did she not cry out?

‘Scarlet fever, you said, she still had a sore throat?’

‘Yes, it was still very sore; that’s why we were still keeping her in.’

That could explain why she did not call out, Yarrow thought, turning back to the window. Where were the abductor’s shoes, tied around his neck by the laces? Did any of the other children see him? One little girl had apparently said ‘doctor man.’

Was the abductor a doctor? If so, why go out through the window? Did anyone hear the window being raised? All these thoughts and others raced through his mind, more and more certain that Emily Black had not simply wandered off and got lost but had been taken in the night by a man in a white coat and carried out through the window.