One last breath bcadf-5

by Stephen Booth

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  Even so, a side view of him on a poor-quality CCTV film might not have been enough for a positive ID. Cooper was waiting for the moment when Quinn paid with a couple of ten-pound notes, took his purchases and began to turn away from the counter. Then he paused fractionally and tilted his head in the direction of the camera. His eyes became visible then, just for a second. He wasn’t looking straight at the lens, but slightly to the side, like a man gazing into the distance at a view that had just caught his attention. Then Quinn walked to the door of the shop, and was gone.

  ‘Freeze that and print it,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘It’s him.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Diane Fry. ‘The eyes are very distinctive.’

  ‘What did he buy, Cooper?’ said Hitchens. ‘Do we know?’

  ‘A self-inflating mattress in a stuff sack, and a bundle of light sticks.’

  Hitchens stared at him. The DI wasn’t the outdoors type, and some of the technical details baffled him.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he said.

  ‘He’s planning on sleeping rough somewhere.’

  ‘No more nights at the Cheshire Cheese, then. Pity.’

  ‘No. But I wonder how well Mansell Quinn knows the outdoor equipment shops in Hathersage,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, there are four or five of them. I’m wondering why he chose this one.’

  ‘It was probably just the nearest. Or the biggest and busiest, so that he’d be less likely to be remembered.’

  ‘But it was also one with a camera covering the till.’

  ‘He just didn’t notice the camera, that’s all,’ said Fry. ‘Most people don’t.’

  Cooper froze the tape and played back the short section where Quinn took his purchases and turned away from the counter. There was that slight tilt of the head towards the screen, only a subtle gesture, almost unnoticeable. To

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  Cooper, it seemed like the nod of an actor acknowledging his audience.

  But that could have been just his imagination. It could have been because Cooper thought he’d seen Mansell Quinn before. Less than two days ago.

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  At fifty, Raymond Proctor was older than either Quinn or Thorpe. And Ben Cooper found himself thinking of the caravan park owner as the most tired and demoralized of the three men. He wasn’t sure why this was - Proctor was happily married, and the big trauma in his life had happened fourteen years ago. He ought to have put it all behind him by now.

  ‘Mr Proctor, with your permission, we’d like to have a look inside some of your caravans,’ said Diane Fry when they found him in the office at Wingate Lees.

  Proctor stood up, immediately aggressive.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘They’re occupied. I’ve got visitors in them. I can’t let the police go ferreting around in their property while they’re out. What do you think it would do to my business? And what are you looking for, anyway?’

  ‘We’re looking for your old friend William Thorpe,’ said Fry. ‘And we don’t want to look in the occupied units, just the old Vans down at the far end.’

  ‘Those? They’re empty.’

  ‘We’d like to check, if you don’t mind.’

  Proctor sighed heavily, and made a great performance of opening and shutting drawers, then sorting out the right keys from the neat rows of hooks on the wall behind his desk.

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  Till have to come with you.’

  ‘Fine.’

  They followed him through the site, past the trees and the pond.

  ‘Do they look occupied?’ said Proctor, gesturing at the caravans.

  ‘No, they don’t. That’s the point.’

  ‘Oh, so you think it’s all a clever plot to fool you, do you? What do you reckon I’m doing - running an international drugs operation from a two-berth caravan?’

  ‘Stranger things have been known.’

  ‘Not in the Hope Valley, they haven’t.’

  Proctor poked a key into the door of the first caravan, rattled it without any result, and had to try another one before he got the door open. He cursed continuously as he did it.

  Fry and Cooper exchanged a glance. Proctor was making far more noise than necessary. Was it merely a gesture of irritation, a bit of reassurance for himself? Or a warning to someone?

  ‘Look - there’s nobody in them,’ said Proctor, flinging open the door.

  Fry peered in. ‘Nobody in this one, perhaps.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’d like to see inside them all.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  She pointed at the next ‘van. ‘Mr Proctor, if you don’t mind …’

  ‘For God’s sake. What a waste of time.’

  The interior of the second caravan smelled mouldy and stale. A bad leak in a corner of the roof had stained the ceiling brown and one of the panels was peeling away.

  ‘Who lives here?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘No one. Well, no one at the moment.’

  ‘Someone has been living here recently. There’s used bedding, and some cutlery in the sink.’

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  ‘They were Iraqi refugees.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘As far as I know, they went back to Iraq.’

  ‘They left some of their belongings behind,’ said Cooper, looking at a pair of old shoes and a portable TV set.

  ‘Probably they didn’t want to cart the stuff all the way to Baghdad.’

  ‘Really?’

  Cooper looked at Proctor. His story was almost possible. Refugees and asylum seekers turned up in the most surprising places.

  ‘Mr Proctor, you told us that William Thorpe left the caravan site at the end of April, because you needed the caravan for the tourist season.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that wasn’t right, was it? We believe that William Thorpe was still living here much later than the end of April.’

  Proctor shrugged. ‘All right, I felt for sorry for him. Like you said, he didn’t have anywhere to go. He asked me for a few more weeks.’

  ‘And you didn’t have any bookings?’

  ‘Bookings have been a bit quiet this season. They were quiet last season, too. They’ve been bloody quiet ever since the foot and mouth thing.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a problem for you to have Thorpe staying in the caravan a bit longer?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Will got to be a nuisance after a while. I had the paying customers to think of. Business is bad enough, without having someone like Will around the place, scaring them off.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us this before, sir?’

  ‘I thought he might be in trouble.’

  ‘Perhaps he is.’

  ‘Well, there’s the question of loyalty, you know.’

  ‘Oh, suddenly there’s a question of loyalty, is there?’

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  Proctor glowered and began to turn away.

  ‘Was there some particular incident that brought matters to a head?’ asked Fry. ‘Yes, there was. It was the last straw. I told him, “Will, I’ve done what I can for you, but I can’t do any more. You’re going to have to go.”’

  ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘Some fool gave him money. I don’t know whether Will had been in the village begging from the tourists, or if he’d nicked it, but he used the money to buy booze and he got himself totally pissed. He was going round banging on all the caravan doors wanting people to let him in so they could have a party. I’ve never had so many complaints as I did that night. We had kids crying, and half the men threatening to punch his lights out. There were two women staying in one of the Westmorlands. They never said a word at the time, but they upped and left first thing next morning. Good customers lost.’

  It was the longest speech they’d heard from Raymond Proctor. He had become a bit red in the face as he spoke, and his voice had grown louder.

  ‘I’m sure you can’t a
fford to lose business,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Damn right I can’t. Do you know how difficult it is to make enough profit in this business to keep that lot in the house in food and clothes, let alone the bills I have to pay? And I’m here at every silly bugger’s beck and call, all hours of the day and night. It’s a mug’s game, mate.’

  ‘All right, Mr Proctor. Calm down.’

  Proctor glared at him. ‘Somebody else should be looking after Will Thorpe, not me. By rights, he should be in hospital. But he’s such an awkward bugger, he’d never agree to that. That’s why he steers clear of Social Services and all those kind of folk. He’s terrified they’ll put him away in a hospital and he’ll never come out again. Will has set his mind on dying in the open air, and that’s what he’ll do, no doubt. It

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  won’t take much longer, either. Another bad winter, and that’ll be the end of him.’

  ‘What exactly is wrong with Mr Thorpe?’

  ‘He has emphysema. It was diagnosed while he was still in the army. Too many cigarettes from too young an age, I suppose.’

  ‘Nobody can do anything to help him unless we find him,’ said Fry.

  Proctor shrugged. ‘Try near the cement works. God knows why, but he hangs out up there.’

  Fry nodded to Cooper, and they turned to go. Proctor watched them, clearing his throat and rattling his keys nervously. He caught Fry’s eye for a second.

  The hope you haven’t forgotten our advice about taking precautions,’ said Fry.

  The told you, I’m not frightened,’ said Proctor. ‘Not of Mansell Quinn. I’m ready for anyone.’

  ‘You don’t happen to have any unauthorized weapons on the premises, do you, sir?’

  Proctor instantly looked capable of being belligerent again.

  ‘Oh, this is a different tune now,’ he said. ‘Well, don’t worry your head about that. I know all about what happens to people who try to defend themselves. Don’t we all?’

  As they reached the car, Cooper looked up at the railway bridge and the embankment rising over the caravan park. The bridge had stones missing here and there, and thick clumps of weed grew on the parapet. It would be impossible to see if anyone was up there, unless they wanted to be seen. Cooper suddenly felt very vulnerable standing under such a perfect vantage point.

  Fry followed his gaze. ‘Personally, I don’t think Quinn will still be in this area. He’s miles away by now. He has a head start on us.’

  ‘Where would he be going?’

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  ‘I’ve no idea. But he’d want to get some distance away from here, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Only if he’d done what he came to do.’

  ‘Which he has, hasn’t he?’

  Cooper felt the back of his neck prickle. He turned away from the viaduct. Trees and dense undergrowth climbed the banking behind the Proctors’ house. It was dark in there, even in the middle of the day. No sunlight penetrated the canopy. The ground would be dry and covered in dead leaves, an ideal place to lie in the shade, unseen, and watch what was going on down in the caravan park. But surely it must only be his imagination that made him feel as though he wTas being watched?

  When Ben Cooper drove to the gate of the cement works, he was seeing it up close for the first time. The entire place was the colour of cement - pale, like a desert landscape. The girders and aerial conveyor belts, towers and silos, hangars and concrete tanks all blended into each other as if camouflaged. Above them rose the tall chimney that was visible from both ends of the valley. To the south, a huge fan of quarries had been blasted into the hillside. On the map, the cement works and its quarries looked as big as Hathersage, Hope and Castleton all lumped together.

  He met Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin in a lay-by near the bridge. Another team of officers were on the older part of the site to the east, where exhausted quarries had been landscaped with trees and fishing lakes.

  Murfin had been gathering information on William Thorpe, and he seemed to have brought it all with him. Thorpe had served in the local regiment, the First Battalion of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, referred to in the army documents as 1WFR.

  ‘Join the army and see the world,’ said Murfin. ‘According to the Regimental HQ in Nottingham, this battalion has spent

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  the last few years serving everywhere from the Falkland Islands to Sierra Leone and Brunei. Me, I joined the police, and all I’ve seen is a selection of the worst shit-holes in Derbyshire.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have taken you in the army,’ said Fry.

  ‘You’re right. I had too many GCSEs. It seems you’re overqualified for the infantry if you can spell your name on the application form.’

  ‘So where’s the battalion now?’ said Cooper.

  ‘Back in their barracks after a spell in Northern Ireland. Did you know the squaddies get nine weeks leave and four long weekends a year? And the army pays to get them home, too.’

  ‘Nine weeks? So where did William Thorpe go all those times when he was on leave? He didn’t come home to Derbyshire - not to his dad’s place, anyway.’

  ‘Are you thinking of a change in career, Gavin?’ asked Fry hopefully, looking at Murfin’s copy of the army recruitment booklet.

  ‘I’m just amazed,’ he said. ‘Amazed how easy it is to get into the army. You don’t need any educational qualifications at all. You take an entrance test, but they give you a practice book beforehand, and you can have three goes at passing it. How difficult can that be?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you don’t have to be a genius to be a soldier. As long as you can fire an automatic weapon in the right direction.’

  ‘It says here Thorpe was in a mortar platoon.’

  Cooper picked up Thorpe’s file and looked at the photos of him. The ex-soldier wasn’t a big man physically - only five feet six inches tall. As a recruit to the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, he must have been one of those soldiers who looked out of place marching in the ranks, with the peak of his cap a few inches below those of the men on either side.

  But a photograph of him in a T-shirt suggested he must have spent time working out in the gym to make up for his lack of size. He would already have been in his forties when the photo

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  was taken, but the muscles in his shoulders and upper arms were still firm, though the flesh was receding a little from his cheekbones, giving his face a sharp look, like an old dog fox.

  In the picture, Thorpe wore a black beret at a jaunty angle, and his face was tanned. The narrowing of his eyes as he stared at the camera hinted at hostility. Cooper thought it might simply be a result of living outdoors, a physical reaction against exposure to wind and sunlight, or an effort to keep out the fine, hot sand that filled the desert air. But there could also have been a trace of ingrained suspicion, a need to be aware of dangers approaching from a distance.

  Cooper passed the photograph back. ‘When was he discharged, Gavin?’

  ‘Nine months ago. The army says he was a good soldier. A sound record, and all that.’

  ‘He served in several hotspots, I see.’

  ‘That’s not so unusual these days,’ said Fry. ‘The time is long past when British soldiers could look forward to spending their service careers idling around in Germany or Cyprus. They have to go out and get shot at on peacekeeping missions.’

  ‘You’re just trying to put me off,’ said Murfin.

  ‘He was in Northern Ireland in the eighties. Kuwait and Iraq during the first Gulf War; Bosnia, too. Did he see much action?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘I don’t know. They won’t give us that sort of information.’

  ‘I was just thinking a few survival skills would help him.’

  Fry shook her head. ‘Lots of people claim to have been in the SAS, but very few actually were. Even fewer ever talk about it, and the ones that do tend to write books. But we’ll check, anyway.’

  A railway engine went past on the cement works spur, pulling a line of
dirty white tankers over the bridge.

  Fry gazed at the works. ‘This place is pretty big,’ she said. ‘What’s it doing here? How come the environment lobby didn’t stop it?’

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  ‘It was here before the national park,’ said Cooper. ‘Besides, it employs a lot of local people.’

  ‘A bit of the real world, eh?’

  Cooper was sent to follow the public footpath that ran alongside the works fence and skirted the hillside hollowed out by quarrying operations. The whole scene was coloured a drab cement grey, but for red doors among the buildings and the occasional worker in orange overalls.

  Against a continuous background roar and rumble, he heard the squeal of some kind of machinery operating on the spoil heap at the edge of the quarry. Down in the centre of the works, he saw a slowly rotating metal tube about two hundred yards long, its end disappearing into one of the buildings. Cement several inches thick lay encrusted on pipes, like ice formed on the masts of an Arctic exploration ship. Sirens sounded now and then, but not the one like an air-raid warning he’d heard from Peveril Castle.

  The path crossed the tracks to the quarry itself, and conveyor belts rattled through a runway over his head. A vast hunk of machinery passed him on one of the tracks. He had to step aside and cling precariously to the banking in order to avoid its tyres, which only just fit into the width of the track.

  Then he found an abandoned concrete building. Its walls were broken and its steel reinforcements were exposed. It lay half-buried in a mountain of limestone chippings, like a bombed bunker.

  After only a few minutes in the vicinity of the cement works, Cooper’s mouth was starting to feel dry. His tongue was coated with dust, and he could taste nothing but limestone. Soon, he was having difficulty swallowing.

  Cooper looked down at the ground. The bottom inch of his boots had turned white with cement dust. When he stamped his feet, the dust flew off them in clouds.