Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

‘It doesn’t sound as though anyone has taken a proper look at the victim yet,’ he said.

‘Eh? You’re expecting a postmortem? Mrs Van Doon would have kittens if we sent her a sheep.’

‘I was thinking of a vet. They ought to get a vet to look at it. Someone will have thought of that, won’t they?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll mention it to the officer in charge,’ said Cooper.

‘But what else could rip a sheep’s throat out? A dog, maybe?’

‘A dog wouldn’t do so much damage. They’ll chase sheep, but they lose interest once they stop running.’

‘Has to be a big cat, then,’ said Murfin confidently.

‘Not at all.’

‘What then?’

‘There’s one other species that would inflict that kind of damage on an animal, and do it just for sport. The human species.’

Cooper watched one of the incident room staff place a new marker on the map. Mansell Quinn’s trail through the Hope Valley had reached Castleton, almost at the head of the valley. Cooper felt sure there would be a second location to add soon. But he had no doubt at all about Quinn’s final destination. Death Underground had some meaning for him and, somehow, he was intending to enter the cavern system. But he wouldn’t do that until he’d finished what he’d come to do. And they still didn’t know what names had been on Quinn’s list.

Raymond Proctor seemed to have aged ten years. Ben Cooper and Diane Fry found him at his desk, staring into space. Though no bottle was visible, a smell of whisky hung in the air. The office looked more untidy than ever. Only the rows of keys remained neat and orderly, as if Proctor thought their orderliness could resist the spread of chaos.

‘I’m really sorry about Will,’ he said. ‘But there wasn’t anything I could have done, was there?’

Fry didn’t seem inclined to ease his conscience.

‘Certainly. If you’d called us when Quinn came here on Wednesday night, we could have had him out of circulation and your friend would still be alive now.’

‘Yeah.’ Proctor looked towards the old filing cabinet. Maybe that was where he kept the whisky.

‘Also, if your crossbow had been properly secured, Quinn wouldn’t now be in possession of a lethal weapon. Would he, sir?’

‘No.’

‘Mr Proctor, do you have any idea who else might be in danger from Quinn? Did he say anything that might give us a clue?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Because I’m sure you wouldn’t want another death on your conscience, would you?’

‘No.’

‘Please think carefully then, sir. What did he talk about?’

Proctor stared into space. ‘He talked about coming out of prison and things being different.’

‘Yes?’

‘He mentioned somebody else living in his old house.’

‘His old house? The one on Pindale Road?’

‘I suppose that’s where he meant.’

‘What else did he say, Mr Proctor?’

Proctor frowned. ‘He must have been thinking about Rebecca. That house in Pindale Road was their home — his and Rebecca’s. But she couldn’t wait to get away from it after what happened. Can’t say I blame her.’

‘Did you know her well, Mr Proctor?’

‘I did back then. She left the valley for a while when she married the second time, you know. She wanted to move back, but she had to have a brand-new house, which isn’t easy to get planning permission for. Anyway, they managed it, and Parson’s Croft was the result. Only trouble was, the new husband had a heart attack before the house was finished.’

‘That must have been tough.’

‘Not for Rebecca. She was quids in. Very comfortable.’

‘Comfortably dead.’

‘Well, yeah. She is now.’

‘She’d have been better off spending some of her money getting away from the area. Moving down south, or out of the country altogether.’

‘Probably. But you can’t help wanting to come back to where you belong, can you?’

Fry watched him. He did seem to be trying to help this time. ‘Anything else, sir?’

Proctor shook his head. ‘Nothing I can remember.’

‘We’d better have a word with your wife, then.’

‘She won’t remember any more than me,’ said Proctor. ‘She hardly saw him.’

‘He was saying something about children when I came in here,’ said Connie when she was called into the office. ‘That’s all I remember. It was such a shock seeing him. But I knew straight away who he was.’

‘Whose children?’ said Fry.

‘Not Jason and Kelly, anyway — he’s never met them, thank God. In fact, he’d never met me until that night.’

‘It must have been his own children he was referring to, then? Simon and Andrea.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. But they don’t even live in the Castleton area any more, do they?’

‘No, that’s true.’ Fry looked disappointed. ‘Oh, well. We’re leaving a patrol car at the entrance for the time being.’

‘My guests won’t like that.’

‘Don’t bother telling me. I don’t care any more.’

‘Well, you were right about the Beast of Bradwell, Ben,’ said Gavin Murfin, when Ben Cooper got back to the office. West Street was a bit quiet, and Cooper thought the senior officers must be in a meeting somewhere.

‘Oh? No beast?’

‘The vet’s report says the sheep’s throat wasn’t ripped by teeth. It was cut with a sharp knife.’

‘There you go, then. Another sicko wandering the area. A few years ago it was horses, remember? Doesn’t sound like a professional poacher — they’re much more organized, and they take entire flocks rather than slaughtering an individual animal in the woods like that.’

‘This was in the daytime, too. Two witnesses came forward who thought they heard something run off when their dog barked. Or someone.’

Cooper noticed that Murfin was looking too smug.

‘Anything else happened, Gavin?’

‘Good vet they got,’ said Murfin. ‘Almost as good as a pathologist.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He said the sheep had been shot. With a crossbow.’

‘My God. Have they — ’

‘Everybody’s out there now,’ said Murfin. ‘Didn’t you notice how quiet it is?’

The search party was working its way along the sides of Rakedale, but the going was slow. The trees on the slopes were too dense, the caves too deep, the holes and crevices in the limestone too numerous to count. Armed officers went ahead of the main group, and their caution slowed the search down even more. But without them, the task force officers would have been too vulnerable, because their attention had to be focused on the ground and on their immediate surroundings. They were looking for traces of recent occupation in the caves, or in the ruins of the old mine buildings that were scattered along the northern side of the dale, almost overgrown with ivy and brambles.

‘It’s much too slow,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘If he’s in here, he’ll see us coming half a mile away.’

‘There’s no way we can speed the search up,’ said DCI Kessen. ‘The troops are too exposed already. If Quinn should be waiting up on one of those limestone cliffs, he could do a lot of damage.’

‘That’s if he’s still armed. We don’t know that for certain.’

‘I’m not taking the chance.’

‘The dogs seem to be all over the place,’ said Hitchens.

‘They don’t know what they’re looking for. We have nothing of Quinn’s to give them.’

‘The helicopter should be here soon, though. Its thermal camera will identify any bodies hiding among these trees.’

‘In the trees, perhaps. But not in the caves.’

‘And what about the public?’ said Hitchens.

‘They’re a nightmare …’

At the bottom end of the dale, several families were enjoying the sun by the water. Half a dozen Mallard ducks sat in a row on a log submerged in a green pool, watching the children rushing about on the grass.