05.One Last Breath

by Stephen Booth

  When he spread his hand flat against the ground, Thorpe could feel the vibration that went with the noise. It reminded him of the movement of a column of armoured vehicles on a desert road, their steel tracks grinding the surface into dust, and their gun barrels swollen and heavy, like ripe fruit. The recollection was so clear that he could almost taste the sand in his mouth and feel the sun on his neck below the band of his beret.

  Thorpe would have liked to be able to step into another reality. If ever it was possible, it ought to be possible now. He’d checked the date when he was in Castleton earlier in the day, and he knew it was 12 July. Somehow, he’d convinced himself that the day would never arrive, but here it was.

  Will Thorpe had seen enough death to believe that he could sense it in the air when it was coming. Not slow, drawn-out death, drugged against the pain and hooked up to drips in a hospital bed. But sudden, violent death that fell out of the sky or burst from the ground, killing in an explosion of blood. The sort of death that he’d prefer for himself, given the choice.

  Thorpe closed his eyes against the pain in his chest, against the sights that he saw in the deep shadows among the trees and the tumbled rocks on the slopes of the quarry.

  ‘Oh shit, oh shit,’ he said.

  He wished he could spit out the permanent bitter taste at the back of his mouth as easily as he could spit out the cement dust. But the taste of violence had soaked into his glands, and now it seeped into his mouth with every trickle of saliva.

  Thorpe’s hands were trembling. He knew the trembling was caused by hunger, not fear. In fact, he had never been afraid, not even in the worst times, when his mates had been blasted to bits alongside him, when the blood had splattered his face mask so thickly that he could no longer see the enemy. He knew that other men were afraid when they went into action, but somehow it had never bothered him, the knowledge that he might die at any moment. In fact, he wasn’t afraid of death at all. It was living that caused him pain.

  Thorpe smiled, feeling several days’ stubble move on his face. You learned to develop the right instincts, because they might be all that kept your mates and yourself alive. Your senses evolved so that you knew precisely where the members of your own unit were positioned and could see an area of ground as if it were magnified on a TV screen, with any movement immediately apparent. That was what he sensed now – a movement somewhere in the hills. Something coming this way.

  There was no sense in giving away his own position. He’d seen men who’d made stupid mistakes and given themselves away. Those men didn’t survive long. Worse, they put their mates at risk.

  The loud squealing of the vehicle working high on the quarry edge echoed over the cement works like the voice of a desert demon. A huge dumper truck had come over the ridge and was descending the banking. Thorpe couldn’t see it yet, but he could feel the vibration in the ground long before it reached him.

  4

  DI Hitchens poked a strip of paper into his desk fan. The whirling blades chewed it with a noise like a high-speed power drill.

  ‘Her name was Carol Proctor,’ he said. ‘Quite a good-looking woman when she was alive.’

  Diane Fry stared out of the window of the DI’s office, wondering what her sister Angie was doing now. Probably she’d gone back to bed, and was rolled up tight in her duvet with a mug of coffee going cold on the floor by the settee. Or maybe she was in the bedroom, trying on her sister’s clothes. With a bit of luck, none of them would fit her. But that was ungracious. And unlikely.

  ‘I hope that was noted in her file,’ said Fry. ‘It would make her relatives feel so much better.’

  Hitchens looked up at her sharply from his fan, but she kept her back turned. She didn’t really want to get into an argument with her boss about detectives whose first response at a murder scene was to comment on the sexual attractiveness of the victim. Not just now, anyway.

  ‘This was in 1990,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Carol Proctor was married to one of Mansell Quinn’s closest friends. But Quinn had been knocking her off for years.’

  ‘He was married himself?’

  ‘Oh, yes. The Quinns were doing quite well for themselves, and had bought a nice little detached house in Castleton. He was in the building trade – but he was bright, you know, not some dim brickie with a sunburnt arse. In fact, he’d recently started his own contracting business, if I remember rightly. Small-scale, but doing OK, by all accounts. There’s always plenty of work in that area – extensions and modernizations, you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘You said they bought the house in Castleton, though,’ said Fry. ‘He didn’t build it himself.’

  ‘No, the cobbler’s wife and all that. This place was new, and nicely done out. I wouldn’t have minded somewhere like that myself, but you can’t get houses in Castleton these days.’

  Fry turned away from the window, irritated by the sound of another strip of paper being fed into the fan. The grinding was making her think of her last visit to the dentist’s.

  ‘Were there any children, sir?’

  ‘The Quinns had two, one of each. Sounds like the perfect happy family, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But this Carol Proctor … ?’

  ‘Yes, that’s where the pretty picture falls apart. The other woman.’

  ‘It sounds rather predictable.’

  ‘Maybe. Unfortunately, we were never able to establish why Carol Proctor had gone to the Quinn house that day. She only lived down the road, so maybe it was just an impulse, or she had something to say to Quinn that wouldn’t wait. We couldn’t find out why they’d argued, either. Quinn himself was notably unhelpful.’

  ‘And his affair had been going on for some time, regardless of the nice new house, two children and a dog?’

  ‘There wasn’t a dog,’ said Hitchens.

  ‘I meant it figuratively.’

  Hitchens watched her as she moved away from the window and found a chair.

  ‘Are you all right, Fry?’ he said. ‘You seem to be in a strange mood this morning.’

  Fry gave herself a mental shake. ‘I’m fine. Sorry.’

  ‘Good. Anyway, yes. Quinn’s affair was long standing. I was amazed at the time. I mean, how do you keep up a lie to a person you’ve lived with for so long, and not get caught out? You’d be bound to slip up in some way, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ said Fry.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’ve lived alone, mostly.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Fry had lived alone for a long time, as the DI knew perfectly well. But she’d become hardened to it. She’d been able to hold back the tide of loneliness, until now. Having someone else around made it difficult to deal with things in her own way.

  Since the middle of June, she’d been constantly aware that there was another person in the flat. She’d started to notice the grubbiness of the carpets and the damp stains on the walls, as if she were ashamed of the way she lived.

  ‘I think being single can be an advantage sometimes,’ said Hitchens thoughtfully. ‘I mean, for the job. You’re ambitious, aren’t you, Fry? Want to get promoted further?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘With fast-track procedures, you can rise to superintendent in seven years now. The pressure’s immense, and the chances of failure are enormous. But it’s possible. That’s what I wanted to do, you know. But life gets in the way.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  If he was appealing for her sympathy, he was wasting his time. Fry remembered the way she’d been thinking when she first transferred to Derbyshire Constabulary. There had been very little on her mind except how quickly she could progress up the promotion ladder, the best way to make an impression on her senior officers, and who among her new colleagues might be of most use in her ambitions. But at this distance, she could see that she’d been trying hard to fill her mind with work, to keep out the things she didn’t want to think about.

  There ha
d been only one exception to her self-imposed rule then, just one subject that had occupied her thoughts when she was away from the office: her sister.

  Yet that first time Angie had visited Grosvenor Avenue, when Diane had driven her back from the Dark Peak village of Withens in a daze, her sister had barely glanced at the flat, commenting: ‘This place is OK, I suppose.’ She’d shown no interest in seeing the kitchen or the bedroom, let alone any inclination to disapprove of the clutter, or the dirty clothes left on the bathroom floor. So why should her presence have made Fry feel suddenly so defensive about the mess?

  ‘It suits me,’ she’d heard herself say.

  And it was true, of course. She had no need of a home any more, no desire for a place that she might learn to care about.

  ‘Who are the people in the other flats?’ Angie had asked.

  ‘Students.’

  ‘God, students. They’re a pain in the arse.’

  And the conversation had stumbled into one of those awkward pauses again, as if Angie were some total stranger she had nothing in common with, instead of being her sister.

  Diane had found herself standing like an idiot in the middle of the sitting-room carpet, shuffling from one foot to the other while she tried to think of something else to say.

  Angie had flopped down on the old settee and stretched her legs with a sigh, staring at the toes of her trainers, which were still damp from the rain in Withens.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to offer me a coffee or something, Sis? Even Ben offered me a coffee, when I was at his place.’

  Fry didn’t move. Even her shuffling stopped. She waited for her sister to meet her eye, but Angie wouldn’t look up.

  ‘You went to Ben Cooper’s house?’

  Angie smiled at her toes in a conspiratorial way, as if they’d done something quite clever.

  ‘I only stayed there the one night,’ she said.

  Fry clenched her fingers until her nails dug into her palms. ‘I don’t think I want to know this.’

  Angie shrugged. ‘It’s not important. Ask me about it when you feel a bit more interested.’

  Fry opened her mouth, shifted her feet again, and noticed the pain in the palms of her hands.

  ‘How do you take your coffee?’ she said.

  For some reason, Angie was still smiling. But now she looked up at her younger sister with a knowing look in her eyes.

  ‘We’ve got a lot to learn about each other,’ she said. ‘Haven’t we, Sis?’

  Diane Fry left the DI’s office aware that she’d absorbed only part of what he’d been telling her. And that wasn’t like her at all. She prided herself on a good memory for details when she was on the job. At home, life might pass in a haze some of the time, but not when she was at work. She was sharp, on the ball, a cut above the rest of them in CID. Well, usually she was. Maybe she was sickening for something.

  It was remembering that day in Withens that had distracted her. She still felt the shock of the moment that she’d turned to see Ben Cooper walking away and her sister standing there in the road instead, as if fifteen years had vanished in a blink of an eye. Since that day, she hadn’t been able to think of her sister without thinking of Cooper, too. The bastard had intruded himself into her private life like a splinter under her fingernail. She would have to find out the truth from him one day. Until she had an explanation of his involvement, there was a missing connection. And without it, the presence of her sister in her life again just didn’t add up.

  Pausing in the corridor, Fry pulled out her phone and dialled Cooper’s number again before she could stop to reconsider. But all she got was the recorded voice telling her his number was still unobtainable.

  She thrust the phone back into her pocket and kept walking. That was the problem with feelings – they could be so ambiguous. It didn’t make any sense at all to feel disappointed and relieved at the same time.

  *

  ‘The Devil’s Arse,’ said the older of the two girls, with conviction. ‘We want to go up the Devil’s Arse.’

  Ben Cooper smiled at an old lady who turned to stare at them. He tried to get a sort of tolerant amusement into the smile, mingled with embarrassed apology. The old lady lowered her head and leaned to whisper something to a friend supporting herself on a walking frame. Cooper flushed, imagining the worst possible thing she could be saying.

  They’re not mine, he’d wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t.

  Although it was a Monday, the streets of Edendale were packed. The summer holiday season had started in the Peak District. It was sunny enough for the old ladies to stroll from their excursion coach to the tea rooms, as well as for younger visitors to shed some of their clothes and sprawl on the grass near the river. Cooper found it too humid in town when the weather was warm. He preferred to be on higher ground, where he could feel a bit of cool breeze coming over the moors.

  In the pedestrianized area of Clappergate, they weaved their way between the benches and stone flowerbeds, wrought-iron lampposts and bicycle racks. A little way ahead was the Vine Inn and the brass plaque outside it that he knew so well: In memory of Sergeant Joseph Cooper of the Derbyshire Constabulary, who died in the course of his duty near here.

  Cooper tried walking a bit more quickly. Perhaps if he could get away from the crowds, he’d feel a bit easier.

  ‘That’s rude,’ said Josie. ‘I don’t say rude words.’

  ‘“The Devil’s Arse” is what they call it,’ said Amy. ‘So it can’t be rude.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s not. Just you ask Uncle Ben.’

  Cooper stopped. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said brightly.

  ‘Why can’t we ask you now?’ said Amy.

  ‘No, I mean we’re going there tomorrow.’

  ‘Peak Cavern,’ said Josie. ‘That’s what it’s called properly. We’ll go to Peak Cavern.’

  Cooper was sweating. And it wasn’t just the humidity either. Talking to his nieces was like walking through a minefield these days. He didn’t want Matt and Kate accusing him of teaching the girls to say ‘arse’. But he could already hear them saying it when they went home to the farm tonight. Uncle Ben says we can say ‘arse’, Dad. Just great.

  ‘It’s your day off today,’ said Amy, who was the older of the two and knew CID shift patterns and duty rosters better than he did himself.

  ‘I’ve got two days off this time,’ he said. ‘So we can go tomorrow.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But what if you get phoned up?’

  Cooper sighed. He felt a surge of sympathy for all the family men on E Division. This must be what it was like for them all the time. The constant cries of: ‘Why weren’t you there, Dad?’, ‘It’s supposed to be your day off,’ and ‘What if you get phoned up?’

  ‘If I get phoned up,’ said Cooper, ‘we’ll go some other time. I promise.’

  He could almost hear the girls weighing up the value of his promise, and judging its reliability. They were far too wise to trust any promise that an adult made, but they wanted to believe him. He opened his mouth to add: I’ve never let you down before, have I? But he knew it wouldn’t be true.

  A party of hikers went by. Their clothes were dazzling, and their walking poles the latest anti-shock design. Getting kitted up for a day on the Derbyshire hills was becoming an exercise in fashion awareness, and all the accessories had to be exactly right. Soon, people would be choosing their rucksacks to match the colour of their eyes.

  A white-haired man walked towards them on the pedestrianized area. The first thing Cooper noticed was his comb-over. Every time he saw one, Ben prayed that he’d have enough sense not to do it himself when he was losing his hair. Be bald, wear a hat – anything but a comb-over.

  The man was wearing a silver-grey sports jacket and a blue silk shirt that hung outside his trousers. He had dazzling white trainers and a white toothbrush moustache that was probably the height of fashion when it had been black. His hair was long, too, e
ven allowing for the requirements of his comb-over. He looked like an ageing British character actor playing the role of a faded gigolo.

  Cooper was so distracted by the shopper that at first he didn’t notice a man in a security company uniform gesturing to him from the doorway of W.H. Smith’s. He was a retired police officer who had moved into the expanding private security business, so now he got a better uniform to wear.

  ‘I think there’s a couple of those Hanson brothers just been in here,’ he said. ‘Right toe-rags, they are. There’s a warrant out for both of them. I don’t know them myself, but it looked like them from the pictures.’

  Cooper stopped. ‘I know them, but …’

  ‘You might want to keep an eye out for them. They’re probably somewhere down near the High Street.’

  Amy and Josie were looking at the man and listening with interest.

  ‘Look, I’m off duty,’ said Cooper.

  The security man noticed the girls for the first time. ‘Oh, right. You’ve got your kids with you.’

  ‘They’re not mine, actually.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘They’re my nieces. My brother’s children.’

  Cooper had realized before he even stopped to speak to him that the ex-bobby was just the right age to have worked with his father. He found himself fidgeting immediately, anxious to move on before the reminiscences began, the stories of late turns together as young PCs. Because they would be followed very quickly by the assurances of how much everyone had respected and loved Sergeant Joe Cooper, and how devastated they’d all been when it happened.

  It wasn’t so much of a problem at the West Street station in Edendale these days, but the retired coppers were the worst. These were the blokes who had been counting the days and hours until they could collect their full pensions after thirty years’ service. Yet now you would think they’d been forced to leave behind the happiest days of their lives.

  ‘Must get on,’ said Cooper. ‘Nice to see you.’

  ‘Hey, these must be Joe Cooper’s grandchildren, then.’