Stephen Booth - One Last Breath

He thought about the early cave explorers, back in the 1950s, using primitive diving equipment, walking on the bottom of flooded passages in weighted boots. In a sump, you couldn’t come up for air. There was only one way out — the way you came in. Quinn knew that in those circumstances the only thing to worry about was fear. You could die with nothing wrong, simply because you’d panicked.

He had expected to be cold, but he didn’t feel chilled any more. The temperature was warm enough down here to attract new life into the cave system — the bats and spiders and insects. But some were accidentals, like himself. They fell in through the cracks in the rock, or were washed in by the underground rivers or the water soaking through the hill. Others just followed the movement of air, the irresistible pull of cave breathing. They drifted with the current, taking the easiest route — until they found themselves out of their environment, isolated from their own world. They’d been drawn in by the breathing. And there was no way to return.

Quinn lifted his arms above his head like a high diver. He felt the wound on his side break open and begin to ooze blood, but he ignored it. The yellow glow was fading at last. The light was almost gone.

Then Mansell Quinn took one last breath. And the darkness rose up to meet him.

Monday, 19 July

Simon Lowe had been lucky to get this house, all right. In fact, Diane Fry could see that he’d be the envy of many a first-time home buyer in North Derbyshire.

The house stood in the middle of a traditional stone terrace on a side street off Meadow Road, one of the few parts of Edendale where property hadn’t moved up into an unreachable price range. The street ended at the fence that enclosed a school playing field. In common with all the older areas of town, there was almost nowhere to park.

A lot of the tension and anger seemed to have gone out of Simon since Fry had spoken to him at his aunt’s the day before. As she watched him move a roll of carpet aside so they could squeeze down the narrow passage into the house, she remembered how alike he and his sister had seemed on the day they identified the body of their mother at the mortuary. How alike, and how close.

But after days of studying photographs of Mansell Quinn, she could see Simon’s father in him now, too. He had the same colouring and the same slightly wary look in the eyes.

‘Watch where you walk,’ said Simon. ‘Sorry about the mess. There isn’t a habitable room in the house at the moment.’

‘It’s no problem.’

Fry turned to see where Ben Cooper had got to. He was still coming up the path, though it was only a few feet from the pavement to the door. He limped awkwardly over the step, smiling at her as though his leg wasn’t troubling him in the least.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to stay in the car, Ben?’ she said.

‘No, no. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine.’

She tried to rein in her irritation. Cooper had practically begged to come in on this interview, and she knew she’d made a mistake in agreeing. She didn’t really need him now, not once she’d picked the relevant information out of his statement. She’d let him come because she felt sorry for him. But if he was going to be a martyr, it was just too much.

All the rooms of Simon Lowe’s house seemed to smell of old floorboards and stale plaster. When he led them through into a back room, Fry could see why. There were no carpets down, and most of the wallpaper had been stripped. Wires protruded from holes at skirting-board level.

‘Have you been in this house long?’ she asked.

Simon laughed. ‘A couple of months. I suppose you think it isn’t possible to live here when it’s in this condition, but you get used to it.’

Well, at least there was furniture. A three-seater settee stood opposite a TV set, and Simon whipped off a couple of dust sheets to reveal matching armchairs.

‘There’s a lot of work to do on it, of course,’ he said. ‘It’ll have to be completely re-plastered and re-wired, and it needs a new floor in the kitchen. And you ought to see the bathroom — you couldn’t go in there without a decontamination suit when I first saw it. It’ll all have to be ripped out. But I can do most of it myself, given time.’

Cooper was having difficulty lowering himself into one of the armchairs, because his leg didn’t seem to bend properly. Fry hoped she wouldn’t have to help him up when it came time to go. She might prefer just to leave him there.

‘Do you live here alone, then?’ asked Cooper.

‘For the moment. But I’m engaged, and my fiancée and I are planning to get married next April. We’d already been saving up for a while, so when we saw this house on the market we snapped it up. It has three bedrooms, so we can start a family as soon as we want. We were very lucky.’

‘Yes, you were. But you’re taking a lot on, aren’t you?’

‘I’m nearly twenty-nine,’ said Simon. ‘It’s time I settled down.’

Fry heard a noise in the kitchen. ‘Is your fiancée here?’

‘No, that’s Andrea. I presume it’s all right my sister being here?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Simon glanced towards the kitchen. ‘You know, we’ve always been very close. Well, not always, perhaps. I didn’t appreciate having a little sister when I was in my early teens. But after what happened with our father, we became close. And now, after all this, well …’

‘There are times when you need to turn to members of your family for support,’ said Cooper.

‘Exactly.’

Fry looked at Cooper, but he wasn’t paying her any attention. He was gazing around the room, as if memorizing the entire contents. If he could have moved more easily, she thought he would have got up to count the videos and CDs, and inspect the magazines in the rack by the telly.

‘Mr Lowe,’ she said, ‘I have to ask you some serious questions.’

Simon’s face fell. ‘Go ahead, then.’

Andrea came into the room then, as if on cue, and sat next to her brother on the settee. She nodded at Fry and Cooper, but said nothing.

‘For a start,’ said Fry, ‘did it ever occur to you that it might not have been your father who killed Carol Proctor?’

Simon looked shocked by her directness. She saw the first hint of that rush of colour to his face, but it died away again.

‘No, it didn’t.’

‘It’s a pity. But the scapegoat was too obvious, wasn’t he? Too obvious, and too easy.’

‘That’s uncalled for.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Fry. ‘We were all the same. It helped everybody to believe that your father was guilty.’

Simon leaned forward. ‘Look, I honestly believed he was guilty. I mean, he did kill Carol Proctor, didn’t he?’

‘We can’t be entirely sure of that, in the light of recent events.’

‘Oh?’ Simon and Andrea looked at each other. ‘And what’s your evidence for that?’ said Simon.

Instead of answering, Fry changed tack, trying to keep him off balance.

‘You bunked off school a lot when you were about fifteen, didn’t you, sir?’

‘So what? Everyone does it. It means nothing.’

‘I know. Believe it or not, I did it myself.’

‘Where is this leading, Sergeant?’

‘The day Carol Proctor was killed, you both bunked off school together, didn’t you? I mean, you and your good friend Alan.’

Now Simon looked really surprised, and Fry knew she was right. Until that moment, she hadn’t been entirely sure.

‘Well, not together exactly,’ he said. ‘We were supposed to sneak out separately and meet up at my house. We were just going to drink Coke and listen to some music, it was as innocent as that. But Alan managed to get away from school and I didn’t. One of the teachers spotted me and sent me back. I was supposed to be preparing for my GCSEs, you see. I didn’t want a bad report going back to my parents. They wanted me to do well — you know what it’s like.’