One last breath bcadf-5

by Stephen Booth

  ‘You never really want to talk,’ said Angie, after they had been served.

  Fry paused with a forkful of duck on the way to her mouth. ‘Talk? We’ve talked a lot. Ever since you came to stay, we’ve done nothing but talk.’

  ‘Do you think so, Diane?’

  ‘I’ve told everything I’ve done since I saw you last.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true, in a way.’

  ‘In a way? I’ve given you all fifteen years of it. I’ve told you what I did at school, how I managed to get my “A” levels and scraped a place at university to do my degree.’

  ‘I liked the bit about you getting drunk at a student party and being sick into somebody’s window box. I can’t imagine you doing that, Sis.’

  ‘I didn’t do it often.’

  ‘No, I bet you were a real hard worker. Studious.’

  ‘I wanted to get an education.’

  ‘This steak is nice,’ said Angie. ‘A bit underdone in the middle, but I don’t mind a bit of blood. How’s the duck?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Fry, putting her fork down. ‘And I told you about our parents coming to the graduation ceremony.’

  ‘Our foster parents.’

  ‘And how they got lost in Birmingham, so they arrived late.’

  ‘And you didn’t think anyone was coming, I know. If the duck’s wonderful, why aren’t you eating it?’

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  ‘Then I went back to Warley and joined the police.’

  ‘Which is where you lose me a bit. You really did change somewhere along the way, didn’t you, Sis?’

  ‘It’s an interesting job,’ said Fry. ‘Challenging.’

  Angie nodded. She poured two more glasses of wine, but Diane ignored hers.

  ‘And I told you about the incident - I mean, what happened to me in Birmingham …’

  ‘Incident? That’s a mealy-mouthed police word for it, if ever I heard one. You mean the rape.’

  Fry looked around the restaurant. The other tables were a little too close for her liking. But the restaurant wasn’t full on a Wednesday night, and there were no shocked expressions to deal with.

  ‘Yes, I know all that,’ said Angie. ‘You told me.’

  ‘Don’t minimize the things that have happened in my life,’ said Fry. ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Angie took a drink of her wine. She smiled at a man a couple of tables away, causing his wife to glower back.

  Fry hesitated, watching her sister, reminded again how much of a stranger she’d become. As children they had been so close that she felt she always knew what her sister was thinking. But not now.

  ‘Is there something else you wanted to tell me about yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Fry speared the piece of duck again with her fork. She cut it into two, then cut it again into smaller pieces. ‘I know about the heroin, of course.’

  ‘I’m off it now. I had treatment. It’s not an experience I recommend.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘And there was a man?’

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  Angle shrugged. ‘Quite a few men. They come, and they go. There’s always somebody else.’

  Fry put her fork down with a clatter, tired of pretending to eat. Even the small piece of roast duck felt like dust in her mouth, and she had to force herself to swallow.

  ‘So what then?’ she said. ‘What do you mean we haven’t talked? I’ve told you everything. And you say you’ve told me everything - at least, everything that matters.’

  Fry regretted sounding so abrupt. She could hear the tone of her voice echoing in the corner of the restaurant - the tone she used when she was irritated by one of her colleagues at work, when Ben Cooper or Gavin Murfin had been particularly annoying.

  Angie’s eyes clouded and she began to sit back in her chair as if withdrawing from contact with her sister, deliberately distancing herself from the moment. Diane leaned forward, reaching to touch her sister’s hand, to prevent her from pulling away too far.

  ‘Sis? What is it?’

  But Angie was reluctant to speak now - afraid, perhaps, of people overhearing her, after all.

  ‘We haven’t talked about before,’ she said.

  Fry felt a chill go through her. For a moment, it was as if someone had opened a freezer cabinet door just behind her, loosing an icy draught that penetrated her shirt and raised goose pimples on her skin.

  ‘Before?’ she said. But she knew what Angie meant.

  ‘What happened before I left home,’ Angie said. ‘What happened to me - and to you.’

  Raymond Proctor opened the door to his office, and stopped. At first he thought one of the visitors from the caravan park had walked in of their own accord, taking liberties because he wasn’t there to deal with them. What a bloody cheek, he thought. Here’s some oik with a short

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  haircut sitting at my desk, bold as brass, as if he owns the place.

  ‘What the hell -‘ he started to say.

  Then his mouth hung open in mid-sentence as the figure at his desk turned, and he recognized the profile of a man he’d hoped never to see again.

  ‘Hello, Ray.’

  Mansell Quinn’s face was wet. He’d come straight in from the rain, taking the trouble only to throw the hood of his waterproof back from his head. Water was running off him and gathering on the carpet around the chair he was sitting in. Proctor could sec the drips from Quinn’s sleeve landing on the polished mahogany of his desk.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to an old friend?’ said Quinn.

  ‘Mansell ‘

  ‘Not going to ask how I am? Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing with myself all these years?’

  Quinn smiled. Proctor felt a cold shudder go down his spine.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said feebly.

  ‘Oh, and where should I be, Ray? Back inside?’

  Proctor shut the door behind him nervously. He walked across the office and opened the inner door, which led into a short passage between the back door and the kitchen. He looked up and down the passage, listened for any noises, and closed the door again quietly.

  He turned to find his visitor watching him with that same chilling smile.

  ‘Why don’t you make an effort, Ray?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me that I haven’t changed much since you saw me last?’

  ‘You haven’t changed all that much,’ said Proctor.

  ‘Good. Because you’ve changed, Ray. I can see that you’re not the man you were fourteen years ago. I wonder why that is?’

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  Proctor tried to speak, but found his mouth too dry. He went round his desk and fumbled in a bottom drawer. He produced half a bottle of malt whisky and a glass.

  ‘Hospitality at last,’ said Quinn. ‘I take it you can run to two glasses?’

  ‘Not without going to the kitchen.’

  ‘And you don’t want what’s-her-name …’

  ‘Connie.’

  ‘And you don’t want Connie to know you have a visitor? Pity. You looked as though you could have done with a drink.’

  Proctor poured some whisky. His eyes met Quinn’s and tried to hold his stare. Finally, he passed the glass across the desk, splashing the liquid on to the mahogany in his haste to get rid of it.

  ‘You’ve got a bit nervy in your old age,’ said Quinn, running a finger through the spilled whisky, creating a pattern on the polished surface with an air of concentration, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Proctor watched him, keeping the open bottle still in his hand, trying to gather the courage to speak. He noticed that Quinn was chewing something, his jaw muscles clenching as he bit on it with his back teeth.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ said Proctor. ‘It’s not right.’

  Quinn stopped moving the amber drops of whisky and looked up. ‘Not right, Ray?’


  ‘It’s not fair. We’ve got children in the house, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Not your children, though, Ray. They’re what’s-her-name’s children.’ ‘Connie’s. From a previous marriage. Two teenagers, Jason and Kelly.’

  ‘From a previous marriage. Yes.’

  ‘Mansell ‘

  ‘I used your bathroom, Ray. I hope you don’t mind. I needed a wash and a shave, and there aren’t many places I can get them.’

  ‘God, how long have you been here?’ said Proctor.

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  ‘A few minutes, that’s all. The door was open.’

  ‘Connie is bound to have heard you. But she probably thought it was me.’

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ said Quinn. ‘Pity. I don’t get to talk to many people.’

  Quinn smiled, and Proctor saw bits of brown seed stuck between his teeth.

  ‘I used to be an outgoing sort of bloke,’ said Quinn. ‘Do you remember, Ray?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not now. Not any more. And you know something else, Ray? When you’re in prison, you can’t help thinking you’ll be able to come out and go back to your life, and things will be exactly the same as they were before. No matter how many years have gone by in between, that’s what you believe. It’s something to hold on to, if nothing else.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I come back here, and Castleton looks pretty much the same. Except somebody else is living in my house. A complete stranger. It’s bloody weird, Ray.’

  ‘It must be.’

  ‘And you. You married again.’

  Proctor nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still trying to pass your genes on to a son then, Ray?’

  Then Proctor heard an intake of breath. He turned to see Connie standing in the passage, staring through the doorway at Mansell Quinn. He was amazed that he hadn’t heard the door open.

  But Quinn didn’t seem worried to see her. He even smiled as he raised the whisky to his lips.

  ‘Who’s he?’ said Connie.

  And Proctor remembered that she’d never seen Quinn before, that the man had never featured in her life the way he had in his. She would have seen the press photographs at the time of Carol’s death, but Mansell Quinn had changed since then.

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  ‘I’m an old friend,’ said Quinn.

  Connie was no fool. She put two and two together quickly enough.

  ‘Get rid of him, Ray,’ she said. ‘Then call the police.’

  ‘That’s not very hospitable,’ said Quinn. ‘You must be Connie.’

  ‘Ray -‘

  But Proctor didn’t move. He felt transfixed between the two of them.

  ‘I’ll phone the police myself,’ said Connie, and began to turn to go back across the passage.

  ‘No,’ said Proctor. ‘Leave it to me.’

  1 won’t have him in the house,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s just about to leave.’

  Quinn raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t as self-confident since Connie appeared. He got up, letting more water drip from his smock where it had gathered in the creases. Connie continued to stare at him, as if trying to drive him towards the door with the strength of her will.

  ‘Mansell, what are you going to do?’ asked Proctor.

  Quinn put his glass back on the desk. Proctor was surprised to see that his hand was shaking.

  ‘Later, Ray,’ said Quinn. Till be seeing you later.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Diane Fry again as they came through the door of the flat.

  ‘But, Di -‘

  ‘Angie, I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever.’

  ‘But you must think about it sometimes? You can’t wipe out memories completely.’

  ‘I can try.’

  Angie slumped on the settee while Diane hung her jacket carefully in the wardrobe.

  ‘Is that why you’re so obsessed with your job, so you

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  can keep the memories away?’ called Angie from the sitting room.

  The? I’m not obsessed with anything.’

  Fry took off the alpaca top as well and folded it away. She found a T-shirt thrown over a chair and pulled that on instead. She immediately felt more comfortable, more ready to defend herself.

  ‘Because I can relate to that, you know, Sis,’ said Angie. ‘That’s what an addiction is all about, in the end.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like heroin. When you start using, it’s all about the buzz you get at first. But after a while, you’re using it to take the pain away.’

  ‘I don’t want to know this,’ said Fry.

  ‘The point is - that doesn’t make a heroin user much different from anyone else, does it? We all need something to take the pain away now and then. Some of us need it more often than others, that’s all.’

  ‘There are better ways. Positive things that don’t damage your body.’

  Angie laughed. ‘I bet you’ve never taken anything in your life, have you, Sis? Not even a puff of cannabis?’

  Fry shook her head stiffly.

  ‘God, I can’t believe how straight you are.’ said Angie. ‘My little sister. It’s a scream.’

  ‘I’m glad you think I’m so funny.’

  Angie’s mood changed suddenly. ‘Look, there’s no need for you to get all snotty about it. I’m off the stuff, all right? I told you, I went through the whole detox business. Besides, don’t you know that in hospitals they use heroin as a painkiller? Only they call it diamorphine, which makes it all right because it has a posh medical name. They even give it to mothers in childbirth. Hey, Sis, you could hang around the maternity ward and nick a few new mums. Earn yourself another promotion, why not?’

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  Fry stood. The conversation was making her too restless. She couldn’t bear to sit still and listen to what her sister had to say.

  Till make some coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Besides, it doesn’t do the body much harm,’ said Angie. ‘Provided you’re careful and don’t do anything stupid like overdosing. You probably lose a bit of weight, you get a bit of a tendency to infections and stuff, that’s all.’

  Angie looked sideways at her sister, and Fry became conscious of her running nose and itching eyes. She popped a couple of tablets of Zirtek from their package.

  ‘In your case, Cetirizine takes it away,’ said Angie.

  ‘Mmm?’

  Fry went to the kitchen to make the coffee. She drank a glass of water and wiped her face on a piece of kitchen roll. Ceti-what? She looked at the box that her antihistamine tablets had come in. She had never read the ingredients before - why should she? But Angie was right. The active constituent of Zirtek was something called Cetirizine hydrochloride.

  ‘So if it really doesn’t do you any harm, why did you stop?’ she said from the kitchen doorway.

  Angie looked up. For a moment, she’d seemed to be about to fall asleep. But Fry couldn’t let the subject go just yet.

  ‘When you’re single, skint, homeless and begging on the street, then you know it’s time to stop,’ said Angie. ‘If you still have any sense left, that is. Then there’s the wait for rehab. Nine months it was for me, even after I got the money together.’

  ‘But you found a way to do it?’

  ‘Sometimes, you’ll do anything to find a way out. Anything.’

  Late that night, Diane Fry woke with a jolt, sweating. She had been dreaming of the sound of a footstep on a creaking floorboard, a door opening in the darkness. Opening and

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  closing continually, but nothing coming through. She had been dreaming that she was frightened, yet had no clear focus for her fear. She heard the footstep, and the door opening, saw shadows sliding across the wall. Still nobody came in. She woke with a wail in her throat and the smell of shaving foam in her nostrils - a smell that always made her nauseous, even now.

  It was the presence of her sister in the house that had caused th
e nightmare, and Angie’s insistence on talking about their childhood. It had been a big risk, she knew. Just one sound, a single movement or a smell, could trigger the train of memory that stimulated her fear.

  Angie herself had changed a lot in fifteen years, yet there was still the familiar rhythm in her speech, the faint buzz of a Black Country accent under the studied flatness from her time in Sheffield. And Fry couldn’t avoid noticing a characteristic gesture, a tense lifting of the shoulders that she knew very well because she was aware of doing it herself.

  Fry turned over and tried to go back to sleep. She heard the sound of voices on the street outside, two men arguing loudly, a girl shouting, but she ignored them. When she was off duty, she didn’t feel any obligation to concern herself about the dangerous private lives of her neighbours.

  When it had quietened down, all she could hear was the rain. It beat against her window in fat drops, hard and persistent. But her window was closed against the intrusion of pollen. So the rain couldn’t get into her room, and not even the poisonous air could reach her.

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  21

  Thursday, 15 July

  At 15.40 hours on Monday, 9 October 1990 I attended an Incident at number 82 Pindale Road, Castleton, following an emergency 999 call. At the time of the incident, I was on Uniformed Patrol with Constable 4623 Netherton in a liveried police vehicle.

  I parked the vehicle in the entrance to the driveway of the property and PC Netherton and I went to the front door, which we found to be unlocked and partly open. I pushed the door open fully. I saw a hallway with four doorways leading from it. Two of the doors were open, but the hallway was empty. I shouted: ‘Police! Who’s in here?’ There was no response. I moved further into the hallway and called again: ‘Police! Is there anyone here?’ An unidentified person said, ‘In here.’ I determined that the person was speaking from the second room on the right, where the door was open. I indicated to PC Netherton that he should wait in the hallway and I proceeded to enter the room, which transpired to be a sitting room. Inside, I saw a man who I knew to be the Defendant,