Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

‘So they tell me, Gavin.’

‘I don’t mean just the way you look. It’s the way you go about the job. Joe Cooper was the same — he wanted to know everything about everybody. Who was doing what to who, how often and what with. It seems a bit of an old-fashioned idea to us modern coppers, but I suppose it has its advantages. He knew Mansell Quinn. And I’ll bet he knew Alan Proctor, too.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I gather he was a bit of a teenage tearaway, always getting into fights. I wonder if your Dad ever pulled him in for anything?’

‘I don’t know, Gavin.’

‘Away, when he was nineteen the magistrates finally lost patience and he got sent down for twelve months. He was past the age for youth detention centres by then, so he got a spell in Gartree. And guess who he ran into there, among Her Majesty’s guests?’

‘Mansell Quinn.’

‘Right in one. And it was Quinn who knocked Alan Proctor’s front teeth out. He had to wear dentures after that. It must have been a right bugger for a lad in his twenties. According to the records at Gartree, Quinn would never give a reason for the assault. But they obviously had something between them. Who says they don’t let men form close relationships in prison?’

Cooper could see Diane Fry busy at her desk. She seemed to have shaken off the hay fever, or at least the drugs were working. She looked less tired this morning than he’d seen her for days. At Simon Lowe’s house, Fry had been very much back on her old form — combative, direct and getting results. But missing all the subtleties.

‘Thanks for letting me come with you this morning, Diane,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘That’s OK, Ben. As long as you don’t take it into your head to have any more outings. You need to rest that leg. Stay in the office. Do some paperwork.’

‘Yes, all right.’

‘Simon Lowe is coming in later on to make a formal statement and have a chat with the DI. You can bet Lowe wasn’t very happy about it, but that’s too bad. I thought we got a lot out of him, didn’t you? It seems to tie up a loose end or two, anyway.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what it does.’

Fry looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a pity we can’t interview Will Thorpe again, though. He was very important in all this, wasn’t he? Thorpe felt under an obligation to Quinn.’

‘Of course he did, Diane. He made a choice fourteen years ago — Quinn hoped Thorpe would lie for him, but he didn’t. Even when you’ve made a right decision, you can still feel guilty about it. That was why he agreed to do favours for Quinn when he was due out of prison.’

‘Right. For a start, he got addresses for him. But when Thorpe actually saw Quinn, he started to worry about what he’d do when he got out. So Will Thorpe must have told Rebecca Lowe the truth, mustn’t he?’

‘All of the truth?’ said Cooper, frowning. ‘Everything that he knew from Quinn — including about Alan Proctor having killed Carol?’

‘Yes, why not? He was trying to clear his conscience, I suppose. He knew he hadn’t got much longer to live.’

‘Let’s hope it worked, then.’ He frowned again. ‘But wait — did Will Thorpe die knowing that Rebecca had been murdered, or not?’

‘Oh yes, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Don’t you remember? We told him ourselves.’

Cooper closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes, we did.’

He’d been standing at the window of the CID room, but now he limped back to his desk. His leg wasn’t too painful, but he was resigned to being stuck on desk jobs for a week or two. He wondered about asking Fry if he could move his desk next to the window, so he could get a bit more light.

Cooper was well aware of his own role in the death of Alan Proctor, and it didn’t make him a hero. The only reason that Alan had entered the cavern that night was because his elderly neighbour told him Cooper had gone there to look for him. Maybe the old girl really had thought he was a suspicious character, and had laid it on a bit thick. Otherwise, Mansell Quinn might well have waited in vain for Alan to appear on his security check, thanks to the false alarm at Speedwell.

It was nothing if not ironic. At one stage, Cooper had imagined that Quinn was trying to draw him into the cavern. But he had never been Quinn’s intended victim. Alan Proctor had. And, in the end, Cooper had made it possible for Quinn to achieve his aim.

And now where was Quinn himself? It seemed as though the caverns had simply swallowed him and digested him.

Cooper looked at Gavin Murfin. What was it Murfin had said a few minutes ago? ‘Like father, like son.’ Quinn had used the same words that day in Peak Cavern. At the time it had seemed he was talking about Cooper and his father, and he’d meant it as a compliment.

He thought about fathers and sons while he tried to clear up some of the stuff that had gathered in his trays. You didn’t have to retire from the job for your desk to become everybody’s dumping ground around here. The layers of accumulated paper were as deep as the pile of the carpet at Rebecca’s Lowe’s house. Nothing had protected her at Parson’s Croft. But then, she hadn’t known what direction the danger would come from.

‘Diane,’ said Cooper.

He heard her sigh. ‘Yes, Ben?’

‘What about Rebecca Lowe? Why would Alan Proctor have killed her ? Why is there no forensic evidence? And what was his motive?’

‘We’ll never know, thanks to Quinn,’ she said. ‘With all three of them gone, the relationship between them is impossible to figure out.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Cooper moved a stack of paper aside and found a packet of photographs. What were these? He slid one out. ‘The City of Aberdeen’, hurtling towards distant hills and an evening sky ominous with thunderclouds. He’d forgotten to send the trainspotter’s pictures back.

The photo of Mansell Quinn on the westbound platform at Hope was missing, of course. But the photographer had been right — the light had been interesting that night. Over to the right he could see the slopes of Win Hill and Lose Hill, and in the centre the distinctive shape of Mam Tor stood out against the sky. Mam Tor meant Mother Hill. But it was a father who’d been most important in this case. Like father, like son . And there was something else that Diane Fry had said today. Something about a dangerous love. DNA isn’t everything .

Cooper dropped the photos suddenly and stared out of the window at the sunlight on the roofs of Edendale. It was a nice day again out there. But they’d had an awful lot of rain recently.

He spun round to see if Fry was still there.

‘Diane,’ he said.

‘What now?’

‘I know you said I shouldn’t think about outings …’

‘Yes, Ben?’

‘But do you have time for a drive?’

She turned to stare at him as if he’d made an indecent suggestion.

‘Where to?’

‘Well, first of all, I’d like to call at the Cheshire Cheese in Castleton.’

‘A pub? It’s a bit early, Ben, isn’t it?’

Cooper shook his head. ‘No, it’s late enough. I just hope it isn’t too late.’

Beyond the railway line it wasn’t much of a road, more of a dirt track. But it had been well constructed, and it didn’t have too many potholes to gather mud when it rained. It passed a farm entrance and skirted the edge of Win Hill before petering out in a gateway. From there, the route marked on Ben Cooper’s street atlas was actually a public footpath that crossed a stile and ran along the edge of a field, where it was barely visible but for a line of flattened grass.

‘OK, the times fit all right,’ said Diane Fry. ‘Ten o’clock at the Cheshire Cheese, and the journey between the two locations is what — fifteen minutes?’