One last breath bcadf-5

by Stephen Booth

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  Mansell Quinn. He was in an armchair near the fireplace, about ten feet away on my left. He was sitting in a relaxed posture, slumped in the chair. I gained the impression that he had been asleep until woken by our arrival, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. Although I could not see a weapon in his possession, I knew it was possible that he was concealing one, either in the upholstery of the chair or under his clothing. Also, I noticed several heavy items within the Defendant’s reach that might be employed as a weapon, including an iron poker which was in the fireplace. There were no other exits from the room apart from the doorway I was standing in.

  When he saw me enter the room, the Defendant said, ‘I don’t know what the hell’s happened here.’

  Lying on the floor of the room was the body of a woman I now know to be Mrs Carol Proctor. There was a considerable quantity of blood around the body, and I noted a knife on the floor nearby. It was a large kitchen knife with a serrated edge. I formed the initial impression that Mrs Proctor was dead.

  I summoned PC Netherton, who entered the room. I instructed him to observe the Defendant while I approached the body of Mrs Proctor and checked for signs of life. There were none. I then used my radio to summon assistance, whereupon the Defendant rose from his chair, as if to attempt to leave the room. I told him. that I was placing him under arrest and I cautioned him, to which he made no reply. PC Netherton assisted me in handcuffing the Defendant, who offered no resistance.

  PC Netherton then placed the Defendant in our vehicle, while I secured the scene and waited the arrival of Specialist Officers.

  Signed: Police Sergeant 285 Cooper

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  Ben Cooper closed the file, and shuddered. It was as if the words on the page still carried the breath of the man who’d spoken them.

  The file had been lying on his desk for almost two days, since DI Hitchens gave it to him on Tuesday. But his reluctance to read it had been justified. Even from a quick scan, it was clear that Sergeant Joe Cooper must have been alone at the scene of Carol Proctor’s murder for a short time. There would have been a crucial gap, if only for a few minutes, between the prisoner being escorted to the police vehicle and the arrival of CID, scenes of crime officers, a medical examiner, and the whole paraphernalia.

  Cooper knew from experience that once the mob descended on a murder scene, it could be chaos for a while. A lot depended on the officer who had taken responsibility for securing the scene. Any contamination that happened before that point couldn’t be helped. But once the scene was secured, precautions were foremost in everyone’s mind.

  Though DNA would not have been foremost in the minds of the officers at a crime scene back in 1990, it would have been even less significant to the perpetrators. Back then, fingerprints would have been the main worry. Offenders wouldn’t have thought twice about leaving other traces of themselves. Hence the high detection rate for cold cases crimes that had lain on the files for years. It came as a shock to many criminals to find they could be connected to an offence they committed fifteen years ago.

  Cooper looked again at the photographs of the Quinns’ sitting room. If Quinn had maintained his innocence and persuaded somebody to take up his case, perhaps to pursue it as far as the Criminal Cases Review Commission, then evidence might have turned up to throw doubt on his conviction. Traces might have been found on the knife, on the victim’s clothes, or on the Coke bottle standing on the table.

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  In fact, those traces might be found even now, if the evidence had been stored in the right conditions. But there had been no reason for anyone to doubt Quinn’s conviction.

  Cooper paused, and looked a bit more closely at the bottle. Who had been drinking from it? Had it been Mansell Quinn, who had allegedly had arrived home only a few minutes before becoming involved in a violent argument with the murder victim? Or Carol Proctor, who wasn’t even in her own home but had let herself in with a spare key to surprise her lover?

  Flicking through the files again, Cooper found an interview with Raymond Proctor. He’d answered questions the way a bereaved husband might be expected to: he seemed shocked, uncomprehending. He had no explanation for what had happened. He hadn’t been aware that his wife had been conducting an affair with Mansell Quinn, though he admitted their marriage had been going through a rocky patch. Proctor told the interviewers he’d known Quinn for twenty years. They’d started work as labourers for a local building firm at the same time, straight from leaving school. The two had become close friends, drinking together regularly in the local pubs - no doubt before they were of legal age, though that went unsaid. Carol had been ‘one of the crowd’, a girl they’d both known but whom Raymond Proctor had later married. Quinn had agreed to be his best man, just as he had for William Thorpe.

  Cooper skipped through the transcript to the afternoon of Carol Proctor’s death. According to Proctor, he’d arranged to go for a drink in the Cheshire Cheese with Mansell Quinn and Will Thorpe, who was home on leave from the army. They’d drunk several pints of beer - Proctor couldn’t remember how many rounds, but it was Thorpe they’d both been trying to keep up with. At some stage, Quinn had switched to single-malt whiskies.

  It was difficult now to imagine the three men as they

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  would have been in their thirties. But Cooper suspected there might have been some tension in the group - perhaps between the experienced soldier, Will Thorpe, who had seen action in Northern Ireland by then, and the two older men, who had barely been outside Derbyshire. Usually, male friends drifted apart when their lives diverged to such an extent. Cooper wondered whether they’d have had much to talk about, or if there had been some kind of ritual element to the meeting, just something they’d always done and were still doing after twenty years. Maybe they’d been drinking quickly to numb the embarrassment, to overcome the feeling that they had nothing to say to each another.

  Cooper wanted to know who had suggested the meeting, but it seemed that nobody in the interview room at West Street in 1990 had thought to ask Raymond Proctor. Of course, the interview had been approaching the crucial question by then. The times had been important, and the two detectives had probably spent a good deal of effort maneuvering Raymond Proctor towards a statement that was as precise as it could be. Proctor claimed that Mansell Quinn had left the Cheshire Cheese first, at about ten to three, leaving Proctor and Thorpe together until chucking-out time - which meant they’d staggered out of the pub at around three-twenty, this being a Monday afternoon.

  Cooper put the transcript down and picked up Thorpe’s statement. It was a shorter document, referring mostly to the drinking session in the pub. Again, the interviewee had been questioned carefully on the time of Quinn’s departure. Thorpe’s story coincided with Raymond Proctor’s to within a couple of minutes.

  Despondent now, Cooper checked the statement list for an independent witness. The landlord of the Cheshire Cheese had been interviewed. He remembered all three of the men being in the bar that afternoon, but was unsure about the exact time they left, because the place had been busy. The

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  only other thing he recalled was that the last round of drinks had been bought just before closing time by Raymond Proctor, and had consisted of two pints of beer. No malt whisky for Mansell Quinn, then.

  Cooper sucked at his teeth. As evidence, it wasn’t just peripheral but orbiting somewhere beyond Pluto. Quinn might still have been there, but falling behind his friends’ consumption of alcohol. Besides, Proctor and Thorpe were the only sources for the claim that it was Quinn who’d been drinking whisky.

  If the two men had conspired to concoct a story undermining Quinn’s alibi, they’d been taking a big risk. The landlord might have remembered seeing Quinn, and so might some of the other customers. Assuming the enquiry team had taken the trouble to ask them, of course. But Quinn had presented himself as the obvious suspect. Why bother to put in unnecessary work on the case?

  Cooper went ba
ck to Proctor’s statement. The final thing to strike him was a question about the Quinns’ house. Whatever the interview rules, detectives could still use a bit of misdirection - they could seem to be seeking information or assistance when actually they were considering someone as suspect. This seemed to be an example of that technique.

  ‘Have you ever been inside the scene?’ one of the interviewers had asked.

  ‘The scene?’ said Proctor.

  ‘The house. Have you ever been inside the Quinns’ house?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  And the line of questioning was left there. It was a straightforward enough question, but Cooper thought he could see what had been going on. Probably Proctor had been asked to give his fingerprints at a later stage, so that there seemed to be no direct link with the question. If his prints had matched any found at the scene, it would have proved him to be a liar and given the police a lever to use against him.

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  I

  In this case, Cooper would have preferred the line of questioning to have been pursued, for the sake of preserving Proctor’s answers for posterity - or at least, for the benefit of a detective constable thumbing over the files fourteen years later. It seemed unlikely that Proctor had never visited his old friend Mansell Quinn in his own home. The Quinns had been in the house on Pindale Road for five years, and the Proctors lived close by. Quinn and Proctor had been regular drinking partners throughout that time. If Proctor had really never been in the Quinns’ house, then why not? Was it something to do with Rebecca Quinn? Cooper wondered if she might have had some objection to Quinn’s friends. Maybe she’d,

  already been aspiring to better things.

  In any case, Cooper had to assume that Proctor’s prints had not been found at the scene, because nothing more had been made of his claim.

  Cooper put down the file with a sigh. There was no sense in looking for reasons to cast doubt on Mansell Quinn’s guilt. Everyone else accepted it. In fact, it had been assumed from the start.

  But then, Cooper had to keep reminding himself of one of the things that his father had told him: You should never assume. Never assume anything.

  Diane Fry stared at the strip of orange-and-green paper that Ben Cooper was showing her. It was a train ticket. Anyone could see that.

  ‘This is a Sportis travel ticket,’ said Ben Cooper. ‘Issued by First North Western on the Sheffield to Manchester line.’

  ‘And the significance of it is … ?’

  ‘See the code number? It splits down into sections. The first four numbers tally how many tickets a guard has sold, so they can calculate the takings at the end of a shift. The next set of numbers record where a customer went from

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  and to. Look, these four numbers are the station code for the where the ticket is valid from - in this case, 2826 is Hathersage.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The next four numbers are the station code for where the ticket is valid to. This is 2828 - Hope. There’s two numbers difference, you see - that’s because there’s only one station in between, Bamford.’

  ‘And all the zeros at the end?’

  ‘The routing code. Five zeros means any permitted route.’

  ‘So can we tell whether he got a single or return?’

  ‘First North Western say they can make an accurate guess.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘Would it make a difference?’

  ‘Not really. It might have been one indicator of where he was heading afterwards, though.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Cooper sighed. ‘These people,’ he said. ‘They’re a strange combination.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Rebecca Lowe and her family all seem a bit … well, middle class. It’s hard to picture them in the same circles as the Proctors and the Thorpes.’

  ‘People change. She may have moved on since Quinn was sent down. She got half of the proceeds of the sale of the business and the house. And her new husband was a partner in an estate agency. More than thirteen years, remember - she probably has nothing in common with the Thorpes and Proctors any more. Except a past.’

  ‘I phoned William Thorpe’s father,’ said Cooper. ‘He lives at a farm over the Winnats Pass from Castleton. In the Peak Forest parish.’

  Fry had been trying to write up a report on their visit to the Proctors’ caravan park at Wingate Lees. She had a box

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  of tissues open at her elbow, and her voice came out in a wheeze when she spoke.

  ‘What did he say?’ ‘Not very much,’ said Cooper.

  ‘I take it his son isn’t there with him?’

  ‘Mr Thorpe says not. In fact, he was quite vehement about it. “I wouldn’t have the bugger in my house” were the words he used. He says William isn’t welcome there.’

  ‘And he doesn’t know where he might be?’

  ‘No.’

  Fry looked up. ‘Did you believe him, Ben?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Cooper without hesitation.

  ‘OK. He might still be worth a visit. A surprise visit. Especially if he thinks he’s convinced you.’

  ‘Right.’

  It was easy for Fry to suggest that old Jim Thorpe could have been lying. She hadn’t been the one to speak to him. Cooper had flinched at the undisguised venom in the old man’s voice when he talked about his son. The wouldn’t have the bugger in my house’ was only the half of it.

  ‘What about the prison end, Diane?’

  ‘Well, the most interesting interview I had was with Richard Wakelin. Or Rick, he prefers to be called. He’s a convicted burglar, released from LIMP Sudbury at the same time as Mansell Quinn. They walked out of the gate together. They were supposed to catch the bus together to Burton on Trent.’

  ‘Supposed to? That sounds like the crucial phrase.’

  ‘Quinn didn’t get on the bus. But we figured that out, didn’t we? The thing is, the two of them had never met before, but they did talk a bit on the way to the bus stop. Wakelin says that Quinn was in “a strange mood”. Not as happy as you might expect someone to be who’d just been let out after a life sentence.’

  Fry remembered how depressed she’d felt after her visit to the prison, and her walk through the smelly underpass to the

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  bus shelter with the broken glass. Perhaps, after all, she had managed to catch a bit of what had been going through Quinn’s mind.

  ‘What about Quinn’s visitors? Did he have any?’

  ‘Official visitors,’ said Fry. ‘His probation officer, a solicitor.’

  ‘No journalists, no campaigners for miscarriages of justice?’

  ‘Not in Manscll Quinn’s case. lie wasn’t of any interest to them.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want to be.’

  Fry nodded. ‘In fact, he had only one other visitor in the last couple of years while he was in Sudbury. But that one is of interest to us.’

  ‘Someone we know?’

  ‘Someone whose name we know, anyway: William Edward Thorpe.’

  ‘Now, that is interesting.’

  ‘Quinn managed to get in contact with Thorpe via their old regiment. Thorpe was still living with his friends in Derby at the time.’

  ‘But he went AWOL shortly afterwards, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Remember Thorpe’s drunk-and-disorderly charge in Ashbourne? I pulled up the date, and it turns out the offence was committed on the same day as a visit to Quinn in Sudbury.’

  ‘Even more interesting.’

  ‘Oh, and I checked with the prison library,’ said Fry.

  ‘You did?’ Cooper looked at her in surprise. ‘That was my idea.’

  ‘Yes. And it was a good idea, Ben.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Has your ego been massaged enough now? Would you like to know what I found out?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It seems Quinn favoured books about caving, particularly the C
astleton system.’

  ‘Peak Cavern?’

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  ‘I guess so. His number one favourite was a book called Death Underground. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Have we found a copy?’

  ‘Not yet. But we just had a call from a Mr Henry Marrison. Know him?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘He works at Wingate Lees, the Proctors’ caravan park.’

  ‘Oh, the maintenance man?

  ‘That’s him. He seems to have overheard some of what Mr Proctor told us yesterday.’

  Till bet he did,’ said Cooper.

  ‘He says X^ill Thorpe was staying at the site much more recently than April. Up to last week, in fact. So that gives us another excuse to visit Mr Proctor, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.’

  They joined the rest of the team to watch the tape from the security camera at Out and About. Most of the officers watched in silence, squinting at the jerky footage.

  When it was finished, Cooper asked for the tape to be rewound and played over again. He watched the assistant behind the counter look up and smile as a dark figure approached from the right of the camera. The time stamp showed that it had been 15.32. It must have been raining at the time, because Mansell Quinn was wearing a black slicker that glittered with drops of water in the grainy light. Cooper had seen plenty like it on sale in Out and About, but Quinn could have bought it in any one of a dozen places.

  Cooper had no doubt that it was Quinn, even though they had only a profile view of him as he waited patiently for the assistant to run his purchases through the bar-code reader and ring up a sale on the till. Quinn had changed in appearance from the photographs they had of him, even the most recent. He was leaner and fitter, the planes of his face narrowing from his cheekbones to a strong jawline. He had short cropped hair, grey at the temples now.