05.One Last Breath

by Stephen Booth

  And then he noticed Proctor’s frightened expression, and a couple of empty wooden shelves behind him.

  ‘What should be in the cupboard?’ he said.

  Proctor looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘I can’t believe it. I always have it locked, but the keys were on a hook with the others. I never thought anybody would bother to look in the cupboards.’

  ‘What’s missing?’

  ‘But it’s gone. He’s taken it. Some bolts, too.’

  ‘What’s gone, Mr Proctor?’

  ‘My crossbow.’

  28

  And finally, the moment came when they could no longer hear his breathing. It was just one sound missing from the clatter of boots and the murmur of anxious voices, the trickle of water and the clang of oxygen cylinders.

  No one pointed out that the breathing had stopped. There was no need. For nearly three days it had been filling the confined space, seeping through the main chamber until it was inseparable from the clinging mud and the scent of fear. The narrow opening of the limestone shaft had been acting as an amplifier, so that no one could escape the sound or fail to recognize the battle for life in every breath.

  For most of the rescue party, that sound was all they knew of the trapped caver, and all they would ever know. They had heard his breathing, but they never saw the man. A few feet away, he was pinned upright and dying, slowly being poisoned by the carbon dioxide that oozed into the crevices of the rock and settled around him, fouling his air.

  Men cried with frustration as they worked in the chamber. No matter how many lights were brought in from outside, they did little more than cast additional shadows on to the rock walls in every direction, trapping the rescuers in a crushing mesh of light and noise, and dead air.

  One rescuer stripped off his survival suit, his sweater and overalls to squeeze into the shaft, and for a few moments he stood with his boots touching the dying man’s helmet. It was the last living contact Neil Moss would ever have, though it’s doubtful he would have been aware of it. By that time the lack of oxygen had probably caused irreversible brain damage.

  When the sound of the breathing stopped, everyone knew that the carbon dioxide had won the battle. As the church clock in Castleton struck eleven, the news was passed back to a hotel in the village. Neil Moss was dead.

  It would be another four days before a party began to fill in the shaft with stones from a scree slope, permanently sealing the young caver into his limestone coffin. But it would be much longer before they could forget the sound of his breathing. As they worked for days in the mud at the top of the shaft, they had known what no one dared to say. It had been the sound of a dead man’s breath.

  Ben Cooper put down the copy of Death Underground he’d borrowed from Alistair Page and shuddered. Forty-five years had passed since Neil Moss had died in the cave system beyond Peak Cavern. And he was still there.

  In the months leading up to his release, Mansell Quinn had taken this book out of the prison library three times. Cooper wondered why a man who ought to have been looking forward to freedom had instead been contemplating imprisonment for eternity.

  ‘Delta Storm,’ said Gavin Murfin. ‘Well, I ask you. It sounds like something named by one of those Rambo wannabes.’

  Details of the crossbow stolen from Raymond Proctor’s house had been distributed, and Ben Cooper had brought back the manufacturer’s instruction manual from Wingate Lees. The prospect of Mansell Quinn being in possession of this weapon had changed the mood in the incident room, though there was a certain amount of nervous joking among the team while DCI Kessen went upstairs for a top-level meeting.

  DI Hitchens flicked through the handbook. ‘Cooper, is Mr Proctor’s crossbow black or this camouflage style?’

  ‘Black, he says.’

  ‘Is Quinn experienced with a crossbow?’ asked Diane Fry.

  Hitchens looked up. ‘Where would he have got one to practise with, for heaven’s sake? I don’t suppose they let him have one in prison, did they?’

  ‘Who knows? He probably got it delivered to his cell by mail order.’

  ‘You don’t need a licence, and there’s no register either. They’re not even classed as firearms. As far as I recollect, the only restriction on them is that they can’t be possessed by anyone under the age of seventeen.’

  ‘The Crossbows Act 1987,’ said Fry. ‘I looked it up. Even those restrictions don’t apply to crossbows with a draw weight of less than 1.4 kilos.’

  Cooper had no idea how powerful that was in crossbow terms. A bag of sugar weighed a kilo. It didn’t sound a lot, but how much force was needed behind an aluminium bolt to kill someone? Not a huge amount, if you hit them in the right place. He checked the details of the Delta Storm again. It had a draw of one hundred and fifty pounds. About sixty-eight kilos.

  ‘He took some hunting bolts, and a bow bag as well,’ he said. ‘The Delta Storm can be folded up when it’s not in use. They call that a “compact”. It has fold-down limbs, a telescopic stock and a pivoting foot claw, and it weighs only five pounds. When it’s in the bag, Mr Proctor says you’d never know what Quinn was carrying.’

  ‘And the bolts he took – aluminium, rather than plastic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could an aluminium bolt kill somebody?’

  ‘If fired with enough force,’ said Cooper. ‘Certainly.’

  A draw of one hundred and fifty pounds was more than enough force. And according to the manual, the Delta Storm had a hunting range of forty yards.

  DI Hitchens gestured Cooper into his office a few minutes later, and shut the door behind them. More bad news?

  ‘Cooper, DS Fry tells me you’ve been getting a bit too involved in reviewing the Carol Proctor murder,’ he said. ‘I know I was the one who suggested that you look at the files, but only because I hoped it would put your mind at rest. The details are no longer relevant to the present situation. You need to be concentrating all your time and effort on finding Mansell Quinn, with the rest of the team.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hitchens looked at him sharply, detecting the uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘Sir, it just feels as though there was something not quite right with Quinn’s conviction.’

  Hitchens turned towards the window. Cooper wasn’t sure if he actually found any comfort or inspiration from looking at the back of the Edendale FC stand – especially as he was a Chesterfield fan.

  ‘To all intents and purposes, it was a domestic,’ said Hitchens. ‘Practically a self-solver.’

  ‘Except that Quinn didn’t confess.’

  ‘Not right then. But later, he accepted guilt.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘If you ask me, he was just badly advised by his defence team. These days, they’d have made great play of the past history between Quinn and your father. But the judge wouldn’t have accepted it then. It wouldn’t have been considered relevant to the case.’

  Cooper felt guilty that he should be so troubled by that. Even in fourteen years, the world had become more cynical. And inevitably, the cynicism all around had rubbed off on him, colouring his own reactions.

  Hitchens paused, reading Cooper’s troubled expression. ‘Joe Cooper was very highly regarded as an officer of honesty and integrity. As I’m sure you know, Ben.’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ said Cooper, flushing at the implied rebuke.

  ‘Mansell Quinn was convicted and sentenced,’ said Hitchens. ‘There was no appeal, and no attempt to take it to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. So that’s the end of that, as far as we’re concerned. The important thing is what’s going on in Quinn’s mind now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Quinn knew who Joe Cooper was, no doubt about that. And if he put some of the blame for his conviction on your father, then you might have cause for concern. You’d be wise to tread carefully, and take precautions. But the question of whether Quinn had any genuine gr
ounds for resentment is irrelevant now. The risk is the same, whether he’s right or wrong. That’s what you should be concerning yourself with.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everybody knows Joe Cooper was as straight as a die. Frankly, Ben, I’m surprised you’re even taking any other possibility seriously. If that’s what you’re doing.’

  Cooper didn’t reply.

  ‘Is that what you’re doing, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Well, if it is, I’d recommend that you keep your ideas to yourself.’

  Hitchens watched him for a reaction.

  ‘You did say you’d deal with it, Ben,’ he said. ‘And I trust you to do that. Don’t let any of this get in the way of you doing your job. Your DS thinks you’re getting too distracted, and I’m supporting her on this.’

  The DI gave him a moment to think about it. Cooper was about to get up and leave the office, when Hitchens spoke again.

  ‘There’s one other thing, Ben.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Despite what you might think, I do pick up on things that are going on around the department. I hear people talking. So I want to give you a word of advice. It’s about DS Fry.’

  ‘Sir?’

  The DI spun his chair from side to side, betraying a little uncertainty about venturing into personal issues.

  ‘For a start, Ben,’ he said, ‘you’ve no idea what a battle Fry has gone through to get this far.’

  ‘Well, I think –’

  Hitchens held up a hand. ‘Just let me finish. You can do your thinking later.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say, Ben, is that it’s a mistake to involve yourself in DS Fry’s private life, no matter what your motives are, or how good your intentions. Sorting out her own problems is what keeps her going – it gives her the strength to be the way she is. I don’t want anything undermining that. And I don’t suppose she’ll thank you for it, either. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The thing is, you really won’t help her by interfering. You’ll only make things worse. And you’ll make her resent you, too. Do you understand, Ben?’

  ‘Is that it, sir?’ said Cooper.

  He stood up this time, determined to get out of the room, no matter what.

  ‘Cooper?’ said Hitchens. ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  In the incident room, the map was starting to show a detailed picture of Mansell Quinn’s trail across the Hope Valley. Hathersage had three red markers: Mrs Quinn’s home, the railway station, and the Out and About shop.

  There were the same number of locations in the Hope area too. Added to the station and Rebecca Lowe’s house in Aston was the third site known to have been visited by Quinn: the Proctors’ caravan park. The markers formed another little cluster, a second triangular shape, like the footstep of a giant insect.

  The tracks were heading up the valley towards Castleton, where the toilet block in the car park had been marked with a query – a location pending confirmation. The area was being searched right now, but it hardly mattered. Ben Cooper had no doubt that Quinn was already in the Castleton area.

  The pattern of markers on the map made Cooper think of the footprints that Quinn had left at crime scenes. He hesitated for a moment, remembering the conversation he’d had with his DI only a few minutes before. Then he got out the forensic reports from the two murder scenes. Fourteen years had passed between the two killings, but there were remarkable similarities.

  The two pairs of boots were entirely different, of course. Those that Quinn had been wearing at the time of Carol Proctor’s murder had been only a few months old, according to the lab reports. Made in China, a leather safety boot with rubber soles and reinforced toe caps. Despite their newness, they had a number of small damage features on the soles, including a tiny piece of sharp stone embedded in a ridge of the rubber. These were the details that allowed the forensic lab to make a meaningful comparison. Wear alone might not have been enough.

  Techniques of crime scene examination had moved on since 1990. In the garden at Parson’s Croft, the SOCOs had used a hard-setting plaster to lift the footwear impressions, so that dirt could be washed off the casts. But at the Carol Proctor scene, they’d been relying on plaster of Paris, while the bloody footprints themselves had been enhanced by gentian for the photographer.

  Cooper moved a desk lamp over and rummaged around in the drawers of his desk.

  ‘Gavin, have you got a magnifying glass?’ he said.

  Murfin looked up in amazement. ‘Who do you think I am? Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘Well, somebody must have one.’

  Cooper opened and shut a few more drawers, and poked at the back among the old mints and bits of crumpled paper. He crossed the office and opened the drawers of a desk that had belonged to a detective who’d retired and not been replaced. Now it was used as a general dumping ground.

  ‘Ah, here we are.’

  He pulled a magnifying glass out of a box containing a tangle of paper clips, leaking ballpoint pens and old business cards. He carried it back to his desk and looked more closely at the photographs of the footprints in the Quinns’ sitting room. Under magnification, the photos became grainy and the detail unclear. But there was something odd about the edge of one of the impressions – a blurring that was more than just the way the foot had been put down; a sort of halo effect, or a shadow of the footprint’s outline.

  ‘Interesting.’

  Cooper went to find Liz Petty in the scenes of crime department. The SOCOs occupied a small room that had been converted from some other use a few years ago, and its partition walls gave it an unfinished look. Liz’s computer had a row of yellow post-it notes stuck along the bottom edge. A small brown teddy bear wearing a BBC Radio Derby T-shirt sat on top of the monitor alongside a plastic hedgehog that bobbed on a spring with every movement of air.

  Though a civilian, like the other SOCOs, Petty was wearing a navy-blue sweater with the Derbyshire Constabulary logo. She looked at the photographs that Cooper had brought with him.

  Cooper pointed out the area around the footprint. ‘I was wondering what you think of this.’

  ‘Mmm. It’s nothing you could draw a firm conclusion from. It could just be a trick of the light. When was this taken?’

  ‘October 1990.’

  ‘Ah. I don’t know what techniques they’d have been using at the time, or what light sources they had. No one could prove this was anything other than a shadow, Ben.’

  ‘OK. But what would be your guess?’

  ‘We don’t guess in this department.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to put in a written report, Liz. What’s your instinct?’

  ‘Well, I’d say there might be an earlier impression that’s been almost covered by this one. At least, that’s a possibility – but only one possibility. It proves nothing, Ben. Whoever the footprints belonged to might have stepped in the same place twice.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. It was just an idea.’

  Cooper took the photo back. Yes, Quinn had walked around the body, there was no dispute about that. And at some point he’d stepped in a footprint that had already been there. But whose? His own? Or had Mansell Quinn unwittingly obliterated the one bit of evidence that might have saved him?

  ‘Did you say 1990?’ said Petty. ‘Is this the Mansell Quinn case?’

  ‘That’s right, Liz.’

  ‘No DNA, then. Profiling hadn’t come into general use. In fact, the first conviction using DNA evidence was the year before – a case in Leicestershire. A bloke who was sent down for rape. And they got him because he persuaded a mate to give a sample for the DNA test in his place, which was a bit of giveaway.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So they wouldn’t have taken samples from a suspect in 1990, not even after he was convicted.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Liz. But …’

  She looked up at him. �
�But what?’

  ‘I wondered whether there might be some exhibits still in storage from this case that could yield a bit of DNA.’

  ‘In storage? Have you seen our storage?’ Petty sighed. ‘Well, I suppose you might be lucky, depending on what it was and how it was handled. Now and then you can still come across something in an evidence bag attached to a case file.’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing.’

  ‘But, Ben, what good would it do? This bloke was sent down for murder, and he served his time. Are you trying to prove that he didn’t do it? I mean, what’s the point?’

  ‘I know, I know. I understand what you’re saying, Liz.’

  ‘You’ve got a sample from this bloke for comparison, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Petty handed him the photos back. ‘Ben, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t work miracles, you know.’

  ‘Just forget it, Liz.’

  Cooper began to walk away, regretting that he’d raised the subject at all. It had been a ludicrous idea. And worst of all, Liz Petty had asked the one question he didn’t know the answer to. What on earth was wrong with him?

  Back at his desk in the CID room, Cooper saw Diane Fry leaving the DI’s office. He tried to catch her eye, but she looked away. He supposed she must have been talking to the boss about him again. But it didn’t really trouble him – she regularly told him to his face that he was too easily distracted. It was entirely his own fault, not hers.

  ‘What have you got scheduled, Ben?’ said Fry as she passed his desk.

  ‘Old Mr Thorpe – William’s father.’

  ‘Don’t let it take up too much of your time. And report back, Ben.’

  ‘Of course. Oh, Diane, I got a copy of the book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘The one that Quinn was reading in prison – Death Underground.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  ‘There’s a story about a young caver who died in Peak Cavern back in 1959. And you won’t believe this, but –’

  ‘Ben – 1959?’ Fry raised an eyebrow. ‘First it’s 1990, now 1959. You’re burying yourself in the past.’