05.One Last Breath

by Stephen Booth

  He studied the DI’s face to try to gauge how serious it was. Hitchens hadn’t even bothered to use the positive-negative-positive technique that was taught to managers. He ought to have praised Cooper for something first before he tackled the difficult subject, so as not to destroy his morale. Maybe that meant it was something else. A transfer, perhaps. Cooper had a few years of his tenure in CID to go yet, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t dispense with his services sooner.

  ‘It’s the Mansell Quinn case,’ said Hitchens, taking Cooper by surprise. ‘I mean, the murder of Carol Proctor.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘It’s funny that you should be the one to raise the point about the professionals involved in the case being at risk. I’m thinking about the police officers particularly.’

  ‘You were one of the officers involved, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I was, Cooper.’

  ‘But how does that affect me? Is there something you want me to do?’

  Hitchens smiled.

  ‘You think I might be asking you to protect me? That’s very good of you, Ben. But I’ll take my chances.’

  Then the DI sat down at last and folded his hands on the desk, intertwining his long fingers nervously.

  ‘This is a bit difficult, Cooper,’ he said. ‘But, first of all, you’ve got to remember that the Carol Proctor killing was nearly fourteen years ago. I was a divisional DC then, much like yourself. A bit younger, in fact, but every bit as keen. Anyway, it was my first murder case, so I remember it well. I made notes of everything. Of course, things were done a bit differently in those days.’

  Cooper nodded. He had run out of things to say.

  ‘All the senior officers on the case have long since retired,’ said Hitchens. ‘The SIO died three years ago. Heart attack.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Was he a good detective, sir?’

  Cooper knew that the first Senior Investigating Officer you worked for on a major enquiry could make a lasting impression, like an influential school teacher. He still thought fondly of DCI Tailby, who he’d worked for a couple of times.

  ‘A good detective? Not particularly,’ said Hitchens. ‘He was an old school dick – some of them were still around in the early nineties. He had his own ideas about how things were done. Well, he wasn’t the only one, of course.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘My old DS is still around, but he’s a training officer at Bramshill now,’ Hitchens continued. ‘That only leaves me from the main enquiry team that put Mansell Quinn away. However, the actual arrest wasn’t made by CID but by uniforms. The suspect was still at the scene when the first officers arrived and so the FOAs arrested him. They found the knife, too. Obviously, Quinn hadn’t given any thought to concocting a story before the patrol turned up.’

  Cooper shook his head. ‘I still don’t understand, sir.’

  Hitchens sighed. ‘I know how much the death of your father meant to you, Ben. I think it still bothers you a lot, am I right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The words hardly came out, because Cooper’s mouth felt numb. His mind had latched on to the acronym FOA – first officers to arrive. A uniformed patrol responding to a 999 call. He had a sinking certainty that he knew what the

  DI was going to say next. ‘So in the Mansell Quinn case … ?’

  Hitchens nodded. ‘Yes. After Carol Proctor was murdered,’ he said, ‘the arresting officer was Sergeant Joe Cooper.’

  11

  Another enquiry team had been assigned the action on Mansell Quinn’s friend, William Thorpe. And good luck to them. According to the initial intelligence, he was living on the streets, as so many ex-soldiers did.

  To Diane Fry, ‘living on the street’ meant one of the big cities – Sheffield or Manchester, maybe even Derby. Edendale didn’t have many homeless people. Those who hung around the town were too much of a nuisance to the tourists to be tolerated for long. If Thorpe had been surviving locally, he’d have been picked up by a patrol, but there was no record of it. The only leads were his drunk-and-disorderly charge in Ashbourne, thirty miles to the south, and the existence of an ex-wife, long since divorced. So that action was likely to tie up two unlucky DCs for a good while.

  Fry was on victim’s background. The only trouble was, she’d been teamed up with Gavin Murfin. Their first task was a visit to Dawn Cottrill, Rebecca Lowe’s sister, who had found the body.

  Mrs Cottrill lived at the end of a modern cul-de-sac in Castleton. It was what the designers called a ‘hammerhead’ close, opening out into two stubby arms at the top. Fry understood this to be something that the planners insisted on to provide room for fire appliances to turn round. Otherwise, the whole point of these modern developments was to allow people to feel they were out of the way of the passing hoi polloi, while still being handy for the shops.

  As they drove into the road, two young men in dark suits and white shirts were walking up the drive of one of the houses. They had short hair and carried leather satchels.

  ‘Watch out,’ said Murfin. ‘Jehovah’s.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses. Don’t stand still when you’re out in the open, or they’ll get you.’

  ‘Just concentrate on the job, Gavin.’

  By the time they’d found somewhere to park the car, the two young men had disappeared – maybe somebody had actually let them in. As Fry looked around the cul-de-sac, she realized it must have been one of the last developments built in Castleton before the national park planning regulations were tightened. To stem the influx of affluent outsiders, the only planning permissions given now were to affordable homes for people who’d lived in the village for at least ten years or had strong family ties with the area.

  ‘Well, I’m not local enough,’ said Murfin when she mentioned it. ‘And I’m damn sure you’re not. They probably lynch Brummies around here.’

  ‘I’m from the Black Country.’

  ‘You sound like a Brummie, though. Maybe you’d better let me do the talking, Diane.’

  ‘What does Dawn Cottrill do?’ asked Fry.

  ‘She’s a lecturer at High Peak College. Economic history.’

  ‘Educated, then.’

  ‘Well, obviously.’

  ‘Maybe you’d better let me do the talking in that case, Gavin.’

  Dawn Cottrill had iron-grey hair in a bob. Her face was pale, and her cheekbones seemed very prominent. Fry could almost have believed that her hair had turned grey overnight since her sister’s death, that her face had been sharpened by the pain.

  ‘It seems impossible to believe that something like this could happen again,’ said Mrs Cottrill. ‘But this time …’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Fry. ‘When you think something is a long way in your past, it’s very shocking.’

  They had been ushered through the house on to a sort of wooden veranda overlooking the garden. The decking had been partly covered with rugs and set out with a table, on which stood glasses and a jug filled with fruit juice and ice. Fry and Murfin sat on a settee with a blue blanket thrown over it and cushions scattered everywhere.

  Dawn Cottrill sat with her back to the sun, perhaps to avoid having the light in her face as she talked. With a steady hand, she poured them a drink. Fry was impressed by the woman’s composure, a reassuring sign when her job was to ask difficult questions.

  ‘Mrs Cottrill, do you happen to know when your sister last saw her ex-husband, Mansell Quinn?’

  ‘It would be the final visit Rebecca made to him in prison. Not the open prison at Sudbury, but about two before that. I’m sorry, but they seemed to keep moving him from one prison to another. I think this one was somewhere in Lancashire.’

  ‘And that last visit was several years ago, I think?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I can’t remember how long exactly, I’m afraid. But Andrea was still quite young.’

  ‘Before the divorce and her new marriage, though?’

  ‘Of course. Rebecca was only married to Maurice Lowe for eighteen mont
hs before he died. He had a heart attack, you know. He’d been playing squash. I always thought it was too energetic a game for a man of his age.’

  Mrs Cottrill’s voice faltered. She brushed a nonexistent strand of hair from her forehead. Her hand was very slender, too – the veins and tendons showed clearly through the skin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a difficult time. Thank goodness the children are old enough to cope with it better. They were both worried, you know, about their father coming out of prison. More worried than Rebecca was herself. She was obviously much too trusting.’

  ‘Did Mrs Lowe say why she stopped visiting Mansell Quinn in prison?’ said Fry, sticking to her line of questions.

  ‘Why? It was understandable, wasn’t it? The divorce was going through. She had her own life to lead.’

  ‘But the children – Simon and Andrea. He was their father, after all. It meant he didn’t see them again.’

  ‘They were teenagers,’ said Mrs Cottrill. ‘Old enough to make up their own minds. They could have gone to visit their father, if they’d wanted to. But they never did, not since then. You couldn’t expect Rebecca to force them to go, if they were frightened.’

  ‘Frightened?’

  Dawn Cottrill looked at her. Fry realized that the woman hadn’t really been focusing on her until now. Her gaze had been fixed somewhere over Fry’s head, at the trellising on the wall of the house.

  ‘I imagine you’ve been inside a prison,’ she said. ‘In your job.’

  Fry felt suitably put down. Mrs Cottrill’s tone of voice suggested that her job made her almost as bad as the prison inmates.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘It isn’t pleasant for visitors. Especially for children. But, as you say, Simon and Andrea were teenagers by then. They were old enough to know what was going on.’

  Mrs Cottrill considered for a moment. She looked at Gavin Murfin, who had sensibly chosen to remain silent, taking notes. He took a drink of the fruit juice, which Fry hadn’t tasted. She saw him look around the table, as if hoping for some home-made cake to go with it.

  ‘Rebecca once said that Mansell had started to be rather strange when they visited him.’

  ‘Strange in what way, Mrs Cottrill?’ said Fry.

  ‘He used to grab at the kids, wanted to hold on to them too tightly, tugged at their hair even. Well, Simon in particular. He was always especially fond of Simon, and I suggested to Rebecca that it was just the frustration of not being able to hold his own children, you know, that made him a bit rough. The lack of physical contact. Anyway, the children didn’t like it, and they were frightened.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I said they were teenagers, but I recall now that Andrea must have been about twelve at the time. She’s nearly three years younger than Simon. You can’t imagine what might be going through a child’s mind at that age.’

  ‘Would you have said Mansell Quinn was a violent man generally?’

  ‘Actually, no I wouldn’t. No one was more surprised than I was when he committed that dreadful act. I didn’t know Mrs Proctor, so I can’t say what their relationship had been to have provoked that kind of outburst from him.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘This? I can’t explain it. I have no explanation for it at all.’

  Fry detected a slight break in the woman’s voice. She might not have much longer before the interview began to slip away from her.

  ‘It’s Simon I’m mostly worried about now,’ said Mrs Cottrill.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had Rebecca and both the children to stay in my house for a while after it happened. I mean, the first time. They were dreadfully shocked and upset, of course. We all were. But Simon went completely in on himself. Rebecca took him to see a counsellor at one stage, when he was having problems at school. I don’t know what this will do to him now.’

  ‘We will need to talk to him, I’m afraid,’ said Fry.

  ‘I suppose so. But you’ll get more out of Andrea. She spoke with her mother on the phone shortly before it happened. She might be able to give you an idea of what Rebecca was thinking in the last hour or so of her life.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Fry.

  ‘You know, I’ve thought about Mansell Quinn quite a bit over the years,’ said Dawn. ‘We have to make an attempt to understand what goes on in the mind of someone like that – especially if we’ve become their target. We always want to know “why”, don’t we?’

  ‘Sometimes you can ask “why” for as long as you like,’ said Fry, ‘but there’s never going to be an answer.’

  She pushed herself out of the settee and left her drink sitting on the table on the warm veranda.

  At Wingate Lees caravan park, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin found that the Proctors lived in a large house that stood a little way back from the site itself, sheltered by a line of dark conifers. Leylandii, in fact. They had grown fast, and would soon be so big that they’d block off the light from the windows of the house.

  Thanks to the Victim’s Charter, a probation officer should have contacted the Proctors to let them know when Mansell Quinn was being moved to an open prison, and when he came due for release. Maybe Raymond Proctor had even been allowed to give his views to the parole board when Quinn’s review came up. At least it ought to mean that their news wouldn’t come as too much of a shock.

  The man who answered the door looked suspicious, though – even more suspicious than most citizens would on finding Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin standing on their doorstep. He was reluctant to open his door fully and peered at them in irritation.

  ‘Don’t worry, sir, we’re not more of those flamin’ Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ said Murfin cheerfully.

  Instead of seeming relieved, the man looked at him even more sourly.

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry? You’re what?’

  ‘A Jehovah’s Witness.’

  ‘Oh.’

  For once, Murfin was lost for words. Fry grimaced and tried to edge him aside.

  ‘Mr Proctor? We’re police – Detective Sergeant Fry and Detective Constable Murfin.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘You are Mr Raymond Proctor?’

  ‘Of course I am. What do you want? Is it one of my guests?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The guests. My customers. The buggers staying in my caravans. There’s that bunch from Glasgow in one of the cabins. Two youths, and two girls with them – that’s always a recipe for trouble. I wouldn’t have let them rent a cabin if I’d realized how old they were.’

  ‘It isn’t about any of your customers,’ said Fry.

  ‘It’s about an old friend of yours: Mansell Quinn. Can we come in?’

  Proctor’s face changed, but Fry wasn’t sure if he was surprised or not.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  They followed him down a passage into an extension at the side of the house, where a room had been equipped as an office, with filing cabinets, a phone and a wooden desk on which stood a PC with a blank screen. Three oak cupboards were lined up against the back wall, and dozens of keys hung on orderly rows of hooks, neatly tagged and labelled. Despite its business use, the place had a general air of untidiness, making the neatness of the keys look out of place.

  ‘Are you really a Jehovah’s Witness?’ said Murfin as he passed Proctor in the doorway.

  ‘Am I buggery. I said that so you’d go away.’

  ‘It didn’t work.’

  ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘Mr Proctor, are you aware that Mansell Quinn is out of prison?’

  ‘No. Is he? Well, I suppose it had to be around this time. I haven’t been keeping track exactly.’

  ‘Did you know when he was moved to an open prison?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘You have the right to information like that under the Victim’s Charter. A probation officer should have contacted you to let you know what your rights are.’

  ‘Oh, I recol
lect that someone came to see me a couple of months after Quinn was sent down. Perhaps that was a probation officer. He asked if I wanted to know about Quinn’s progress. He mentioned parole boards, and all that stuff. But why would I want to know? I’d rather forget about him.’

  ‘A lot of people would have wanted to know when he was due for release. It can come as a shock to see someone walking down the street when you thought they were safely inside. That’s the whole purpose of the Victim’s Charter.’

  Proctor shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to know. I’m married again now, got a new family. What happened is all in the past, as far as I’m concerned. And Quinn wouldn’t come back here, anyway. Would he?’

  ‘Actually, we think there may be a threat to your safety, sir,’ said Fry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mansell Quinn was released from prison on Monday morning, but has since gone missing. We have reason to believe he may be in this area.’

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘Also, we think he might already have attacked one person. We don’t know what his intentions are, but we’re very concerned.’

  ‘Attacked one person? Who?’

  ‘Well, it’ll soon be in the news. His former wife was murdered last night.’

  Proctor stared at her, almost glassy-eyed. ‘Rebecca? So what has that to do with me? Why are you here instead of out there looking for Quinn?’

  ‘If he’s planning more violent attacks, it’s possible he might have you in mind as a potential victim, sir.’

  ‘What a load of rubbish,’ said Proctor. ‘Somebody’s over-reacting here, aren’t they? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Fry. Detective Sergeant Fry.’

  ‘Is this all your idea?’

  Fry began to get rankled. He seemed to be suggesting she was some kind of neurotic female, worrying about nothing.

  ‘No, sir. There’s concern at senior level. We’ve come to advise you –’

  ‘I mean, Mansell Quinn … well, it was all over and done with fourteen years ago. Why should Quinn care about me? I never did anything wrong. In fact, it was me that was done wrong to. If Quinn comes here, it’ll be to apologize.’