Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

‘OK, stop,’ said Quinn a few minutes later.

Another second of light, and Cooper saw the yellowish-white calcite sheets glistening on the walls, and tiny black hooks hanging from the roof. Then the torch turned away, and there was only darkness around him again. The surface was four hundred feet away now, through solid rock.

Cooper realized that his skin was tingling in the cool air. All his attempts to engage Quinn in conversation had failed so far. Maybe he could think of something that would force him to answer.

‘Sit down,’ said Quinn. He pointed with the torch. ‘On the floor.’

Quinn had the torch in his left hand, on his injured side. But the crossbow was gripped firmly in his right, his index finger curled close to the trigger. Cooper sat cross-legged on the floor, immediately feeling the chill of the damp rock through his trousers. He hadn’t come dressed for this. In fact, he hadn’t come equipped for it, either. Like the most foolhardy of amateur cave explorers, he had no equipment, no proper clothing, no food or water, and now no light of his own. And he hadn’t told anybody where he was going. What an idiot. Alistair Page was the only person who might think of looking for him in the cavern.

Quinn sat on a boulder across the chamber, at a safe distance and above Cooper’s level. He was taking no chances. But Cooper saw that Quinn hadn’t put his shirt back on. It would be difficult for him to do that now without losing control of the crossbow or the torch, or both. His body had dried, but he must be feeling the cold.

‘Why did you confess to killing Carol Proctor?’ said Cooper.

His voice jarred the silence. He’d never heard himself sound so small and tinny. As the cavern swallowed the sound of his words, he was overwhelmed with a sense of his own insignificance in the vastness of the cave system.

But at least it had worked.

‘Because I was guilty,’ said Quinn.

‘That’s not what you said at first.’

‘I changed my mind.’

‘Why?’

The torchlight flickered. Quinn put the torch down on the boulder next to him, flexed his left arm and gripped the shaft of the crossbow to steady it. Cooper saw that he was shivering.

‘Why did you change your mind? Was it because your friends let you down, didn’t give you an alibi for the right time? Without that, your defence wouldn’t stand up, would it?’

Quinn didn’t answer. So Cooper tried again — he had to keep him talking.

‘Or was it because of what you remembered during the police interviews, Mr Quinn?’

‘What do you mean?’

Cooper leaned forward and talked a little more quickly and insistently, focusing Quinn’s attention on him.

‘I think it must have been very traumatic going into your own house and finding your lover dying on the floor. The shock would’ve driven everything else out of your mind. You couldn’t think properly, could you? I can see that’s how it must have been. But some things came back later, didn’t they? Details, impressions. They came back when the detectives asked you questions.’

Quinn stared at him. ‘I don’t understand how you can know that. You weren’t there.’

‘I’ve read the transcripts, Mr Quinn. I think I could tell where it happened — where the memories came back to you.’

‘You can’t know something like that. You’re making it up.’

Quinn shifted the butt of the crossbow a little. It must be very uncomfortable, pressed against his naked shoulder like that.

Cooper leaned an inch or two closer. The torchlight was definitely failing now, but Quinn didn’t seem to notice. The gradual fading of light could be indiscernible, until it was too late. Until you realized it was already too dark to see.

‘What was it you saw that day?’ said Cooper. ‘You noticed something in the room, something that surprised you. It shouldn’t have been there. What did you remember seeing?’

Quinn’s eyes were drifting away, and he was losing concentration. The nose of the crossbow dipped a little. Cooper realized that Quinn must be exhausted. He’d been sleeping rough for the past few nights, and constantly on the move during the day, always looking over his shoulder for a police car or a CCTV camera. It was almost over for him now; he was drawing on his last reserves of energy.

‘The Coke bottle,’ said Quinn, as if talking in his sleep. ‘I smelled it first. There was a Coca Cola bottle on the table. It wasn’t quite empty.’

‘What was wrong with the Coke bottle being there?’

‘Carol didn’t drink Coke. She hated it. The bottle shouldn’t have been there.’

‘And what else?’

But Cooper couldn’t get out the next question before Quinn cut across him.

‘And there was a light — a light from upstairs. Carol wouldn’t have gone upstairs. She wouldn’t go near the bedroom, not even to pass it on the way to the loo.’

Cooper wanted to hold his breath, so as not to disturb Quinn’s recall. But he needed to ask one more thing.

‘There was something you heard?’

‘Music. There was music in the house.’

Cooper hadn’t expected that. A voice, a footstep, the sound of a door closing, perhaps.

‘Music? What music?’

‘I knew it,’ said Quinn. ‘Not at the time. But later, I recognized it. It was U2.’

‘U2?’ Cooper closed his eyes. It had been there in the transcript of the interview, after all. But he hadn’t understood it. Nor had the interviewers. As far as they were concerned, Mansell Quinn had said, ‘ You, too .’

‘Somebody else had been in the house before you arrived,’ said Cooper. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

‘Only the kids drank Coke. And the light was from Simon’s room. He used to draw the curtains and put the lamps on, even in broad daylight. He played U2 all the time up there, and it drove me mad. When he had it on too loud, I got angry with him. Too angry.’

He turned his attention back to Cooper, who sank reluctantly back on his heels as the cross-bow straightened up again.

‘I’ve been angry all my life,’ said Quinn.

When the torchlight finally became too low, Mansell Quinn reached into his rucksack with one hand and withdrew a round foil packet about eight inches long, which he opened with his teeth.

Ben Cooper couldn’t make it out properly. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

At least Quinn had become calmer now. For a moment, Cooper had feared he’d pushed the man too far. But instead he’d withdrawn into silence again, wrapped up in his own thoughts.

‘Light sticks — high intensity,’ said Quinn, taking the end of one of the sticks in his teeth and removing it from the packet. ‘They last thirty minutes.’

‘Thirty minutes?’

‘It’s enough,’ said Quinn.

Out of its foil, the light stick itself was a translucent yellow tube full of fluid, capped at one end and with a small hook at the other. Quinn bent the tube in the middle until the inner section burst with a snap. The fluid made contact with the crystals in the cap and began to glow. It threw a greenish-yellow light around the chamber that would have been bright enough for Cooper to read by if he’d held it close to his face. Its glow was almost fluorescent, and it threw complicated shadows on the walls and roof, and on the faces of the two men.

Quinn found a level part of the floor and stood the tube upright on its cap. Lit from below, his features seemed skeletal and demonic. But Cooper thought he probably looked the same way himself.

He gazed at the yellow glow. ‘You bought a packet of two light sticks at the outdoor shop in Hathersage.’

‘Yes,’ said Quinn. He didn’t seem at all surprised that Cooper should know.

‘Two light sticks,’ repeated Cooper.