One Last Breath

15

Wednesday, 14 July

The incident room staff at West Street had been maintaining a sequence chart. It showed what was believed to be the order of events leading up to the murder of Rebecca Lowe, and following it. It also revealed the gaps which the enquiry team’s efforts had so far failed to fill.

Some time during the morning, the analyst had removed two items from the chart and replaced them with additional information. Each entry had a time, a description of the information and its source.

‘I can’t help worrying that we’re relying too much on doubtful intelligence to dictate the direction of the enquiry,’ said Ben Cooper, running his eye over the chart. ‘There ought to be some trace and interview tasks for us to handle, at least.’

Diane Fry didn’t even glance at the chart. No doubt she’d checked the new information already, before anyone else came into the office.

‘It’s a resources decision, Ben,’ she said. ‘Why should we commit staff to needless T/Is and chasing down witness statements when a ready-made suspect presents himself on a plate? It’s manpower on the ground that’s vital now. Quinn can’t be far away.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘We’ll just end up doing the work later on.’

‘Let’s hope not.’

‘DCI Tailby wouldn’t have done it this way. He’d have made sure all the possibilities were covered.’

‘Yes, but that approach fills up the system with vast amounts of irrelevant data. There’s a lot to be said for being more focused.’

‘Provided you’re focusing on the right things,’ said Cooper.

‘Well, we’ll see who’s right, won’t we?’

To be fair, plenty of intelligence was available this morning — calls were flooding in from members of the public responding to the local TV news bulletins. A decision had been taken to release Mansell Quinn’s name as a person being sought to help with enquiries, and all the usual phrases. The broadcast of his mugshot had netted a shoal of potential sightings, even before the attack on Simon Lowe in Castleton last night.

‘Any news from the hospital?’ said Cooper.

‘He’ll be all right,’ said Fry. ‘A few cuts and bruises, that’s all. He’s lucky the people in that area take an interest in each other’s welfare. In a lot of places, he would have been left to bleed.’

‘I don’t suppose he saw anything?’

‘No. He was attacked from behind, in the dark. And it seems the resident who heard the disturbance and found him made a big performance of putting all his lights on and creating a lot of noise before he came out of his house, so the assailant was well away before he got near.’

‘Sensible.’

‘But not helpful to us, in the circumstances. Lowe’s attacker could have been anyone — an opportunist mugger, or just some drunk who thought Lowe looked at him a bit funny in the pub. Who knows?’

Cooper looked at the map again. ‘But the temptation is to chalk it up to Quinn, right?’

Fry shrugged. ‘Scenes of crime are there, but I don’t think we should hold our breath for anything useful. If it was Quinn, he’ll be off to the next place by now. He vanishes too easily for my liking.’

‘He knows the area well,’ said Cooper. ‘But why would he attack his own son?’

But Fry had turned her attention to a call from a lady living on Moorland Avenue, Hathersage.

‘Near Mansell Quinn’s mother?’ she asked the actions allocator in the incident room.

‘That’s right. She’s lived there for a long time and knows Quinn by sight. But she wasn’t sure until she saw his photo on the news last night. Now she says she saw him in the street near his mother’s house on Monday afternoon.’

‘I knew old Mrs Quinn was lying,’ said Fry. ‘I just knew it.’

Cooper felt uncomfortable at the tone of her voice. He didn’t like being lied to himself, but it went with the territory. Some people lied to him automatically, simply because he was a police officer, and all he could hope for was an opportunity to expose the lie. Fry’s reaction sounded too much like gloating.

‘You’ll get a chance to ask her to explain herself, anyway,’ he said.

‘Damn right.’

A large-scale map of the Hope Valley had also been pinned to the wall of the incident room. Rebecca Lowe’s house in Aston was marked in red on the slopes of Win Hill, halfway along the valley, as was Castle Street, where a local resident had found Simon Lowe lying unconscious in the churchyard.

Blue stickers flagged Raymond Proctor’s caravan park outside Hope and Mrs Quinn’s home on the estate at Hathersage. A third blue sticker had been reserved for when they located William Thorpe. The bottom of the map reached as far south as Bradwell and Hazlebadge, and right up to the Camphill gliding club on Abney Moor. Just off the map was Bridge End Farm.

‘Damn it, the quickest and easiest way for him to get from Hathersage to Aston would be on the train,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘We need to talk to the station staff at both ends and see if they remember him.’

The railway line from Sheffield to Manchester, passing through Totley Tunnel and up the valley, with stations at Hathersage and Hope. The Sheffield stretch was also used by cement trains from the works. But what Hitchens had noticed was that Hathersage railway station lay right behind the estate where Mansell Quinn’s mother lived, while the stop at Hope was only a mile from the marker indicating Rebecca Lowe’s house at Aston. The red blobs made the connection obvious.

‘I think they’re both unmanned stops,’ said Cooper. ‘He’d have to buy a ticket from the guard on the train.’

‘Is that how it works? Well, check it out, Cooper. See if you can map his route to Rebecca Lowe’s house. Any sightings of him. You know the routine.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This is all very well,’ said DCI Kessen, settling the team down again. ‘But we’re only establishing where Quinn has been, not where he is now. Or at least where he might be heading next.’

‘With respect, sir, the key to his intentions surely lies in the past,’ said Fry. ‘Either with the circumstances of the Carol Proctor case fourteen years ago, or with what happened while he was in prison.’

‘I quite agree, DS Fry. So what about while he was inside? Any interactions with his family or other contacts that might cast light on his intentions?’

‘Well, his mother doesn’t seem to have visited him very often,’ said Fry. ‘She was cagey about it when we spoke to her, but her name doesn’t appear in the visitor records at Sudbury for the two years he was there. We’ve haven’t checked back any further than that, but if we need to …’

‘No, that’s enough.’

‘And the victim, Quinn’s ex-wife, hadn’t visited him for ten years. Though I got two different versions of why that was — one from his mother, and one from her sister, who both might be considered biased, I suppose.’

‘These two close friends of Quinn’s — ’

‘Former close friends,’ said Hitchens. ‘I think that’s how I described them.’

‘Don’t tell me — they were so close they couldn’t be bothered to visit him in prison?’

‘It’s true he doesn’t seem to have had many visitors to speak of.’

‘OK, the two friends …?’

‘Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe. Proctor, of course, was the husband of Quinn’s first victim.’

‘I’ll grant you, that’s enough to damage a friendship. Your best mate kills your wife, it puts a bit of a dent in the old camaraderie.’

‘Not necessarily.’

Cooper turned to stare in amazement at Murfin. It was unlike him to offer constructive comments during a briefing. He was more the sarcastic muttering under his breath sort of man.

‘What do you mean, DC Murfin?’

‘Well, it depends on what sort of relationship you have with your wife. The state of your marriage, like. Some folk would be glad to get rid of their better halves. Grateful to the bloke who did her in, even.’

DCI Kessen looked at him silently for a moment, his mind almost visibly ticking over. Cooper reflected that this was one of the differences between working for Mr Kessen and their former DCI, Stewart Tailby. Cooper had liked Tailby, but he’d have put Murfin down within seconds.

‘Was this possibility looked into at the time?’ asked Kessen, looking towards Hitchens.

Hitchens hesitated. ‘I can’t remember, sir.’

‘Only, you never know whether it might have been a conspiracy between the two of them,’ said Murfin, sensing he was the man of the moment. ‘Proctor might have set Quinn up to do the business on his missus, but then backed out of the deal, like.’

‘Yes, I think we understood what you were suggesting,’ said Kessen.

‘Or something might have gone wrong. Maybe Proctor cocked up the alibi somehow. Hey, Thorpe could have been the spanner in the works — what do you think? He wasn’t supposed to turn up when he did, and Proctor couldn’t get rid of him. If Proctor had alibi’d Quinn then, Thorpe would have been able to scupper the whole deal.’

Fry looked from one to the other. Cooper could see her putting two and two together, and suspecting there was something she hadn’t been told.

Hitchens fidgeted. ‘We’ll check it out.’

‘All right,’ said Kessen. ‘What else do we have on the victim? It seems she had no visitors on Monday that we’re aware of?’

Heads were shaken, but Cooper raised a hand. He reported that he’d visited Rebecca Lowe’s near-neighbours that morning — the only house that was within sight and sound of hers, owned by a family called Newbold. The Newbolds had invited friends to their house on the night that their neighbour had been killed. After the heat of the day was over, they had spent a couple of hours in the garden, drinking wine and playing croquet on the lawn.

‘Croquet?’ said Fry. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s quite a fashionable game in some circles these days.’

Fry nodded tiredly, as if she didn’t believe him but couldn’t find the energy to argue. ‘What time did they play croquet until?’

‘They say half past nine, which is probably about right. At this time of year, it’s still daylight at nine fifteen, but getting dusk half an hour later. They would have been complaining that bad light was affecting play by half past.’

‘OK. So they packed up the hoops and put away the flamingos at about half past nine. And after that? Did they stay outside drinking more wine and admiring the sunset?’

Cooper smiled, noticing her effortless reference to Lewis Carroll, surprising in someone who claimed not to read books. ‘They went indoors.’

‘So they’d have seen nothing outside after nine thirty, when the croquet finished.’

‘Well, not until one in the morning, when the first guests started to leave.’

‘That’s too late.’

‘I know,’ said Cooper. ‘By the way, the Newbolds did report seeing a tramp in the area.’

‘A tramp?’ said Kessen.

‘Well, a vagrant they called him. They saw him on the road between their house and Parson’s Croft.’

‘No, no,’ said Kessen. ‘A passing vagrant as a murder suspect? That’s just too Agatha Christie.’

‘Actually, it was a couple of weeks before Mrs Lowe was killed that they saw him,’ said Cooper. ‘They just thought it was worth mentioning.’

‘We did check out her phone calls,’ said Murfin. ‘Mrs Lowe seemed to spend a lot of time on the phone to family and friends. She did that generally, but on Monday in particular.’

‘Perhaps she needed to hear friendly voices for reassurance,’ suggested Fry.

‘She told her daughter she didn’t need reassurance. In fact, she could have had somebody with her if she was worried.’

‘Gavin, it’s perfectly possible to want your independence and still need reassurance.’

‘Well, if you say so.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘No unusual calls then, Murfin?’ asked Kessen.

‘Family and friends, like I say. Everyone you might expect — her sister, Andrea and Simon, a friend from the gym she goes to, the Proctors — ’

‘The Proctors?’ said Fry. ‘Was she still in touch with them?’

‘She’d known Raymond Proctor for years.’

Fry nodded. ‘Of course she had. So that call was probably mutual reassurance, despite what Mr Proctor tries to pretend.’

‘But there was no phone call that could possibly have come from Quinn himself,’ said Kessen. ‘So it seems reasonable to deduce that Mrs Lowe wasn’t expecting a visit from him that night.’

A few moments of silence followed. Kessen waited, but saw there was nothing else forthcoming.

‘OK, so until we have a clearer picture of Quinn’s intentions, we’re continuing to warn the relevant individuals of the potential risk.’

‘Is that all?’ said Cooper.

‘We’re offering security advice and alarms, too, if they want them. No one would expect us to provide full protection at this level of threat. We don’t have the resources. But there will be more uniforms on the streets in that area. Division is drafting in some extra bodies for visible reassurance.’

‘And, who knows, they might even stumble over Mansell Quinn,’ said Hitchens. ‘We’ve got lucky before.’

Diane Fry marched up to DI Hitchens as soon as the briefing meeting broke up. He looked as though he might have liked to escape to his office, but she was too quick for him.

‘Sir? A word?’

‘Yes, Diane?’

‘I’d be interested in going over the case notes from the original Carol Proctor enquiry, if you’d like somebody to take a look who wasn’t involved.’

‘Why, thank you, DS Fry. Tell you what, you handle it with DC Cooper.’

‘Ben Cooper?’

Hitchens smiled bitterly. ‘Yes. Let’s see what the two of you make of it together.’

A few minutes later, Fry and Cooper were both sitting in the DI’s office, looking at a heap of old files. Witness statements, forensic reports, crime scene photographs. Bits and pieces of the case that had put Mansell Quinn away for a life sentence. There would be a lot more documentation somewhere, dusty stacks of it, accumulated by all sides during the pre-trial stages of the investigation.

Fry looked at Cooper. Of the three of them, he seemed the most ill at ease. It was strange that every time something seemed to be going on behind her back, Ben Cooper was involved. She hadn’t yet got to the bottom of the connection between him and her sister, how he’d managed to find Angie when Fry had been looking for her for years. But since Angie was being evasive, the only way to discover the truth would be to talk to him, which Fry baulked at.

‘Mansell Quinn wasn’t considered ready for parole,’ said Hitchens, ‘because the prison authorities were concerned about the lack of family support. Quinn was a man on his own. And therefore a potential risk.’

Fry saw Cooper blink and open his mouth to speak. But the moment passed.

‘Of course, Mansell Quinn’s initial story was that he came home, went into the house and found the body on the floor,’ said Hitchens. ‘He said he thought at first that it was his wife who’d injured herself — cut herself with a carving knife or something like that. He didn’t even seem to recognize that the clothes she was wearing weren’t his wife’s.’

‘That’s no surprise.’

‘Right, Fry. Well, the first thing he said he did was to turn the body over.’

‘Getting blood on his hands in the process, of course.’

‘And on his clothes, and on his shoes. He said he touched her where she was injured, to try to help her. He said it didn’t occur to him at first that she was dying. But when he turned her over, the biggest surprise for him was that she wasn’t his wife.’

‘He recognized his mistress, though, I suppose.’

‘Oh, yes. But apparently not the fact that she was on the point of death. He started to pull at her clothes to get at the injuries, thinking that he could stop the bleeding.’

‘Hold on, what was Carol Proctor doing at the Quinns’ house?’

‘We couldn’t be sure. Quinn insisted there was no prior arrangement to meet. But he admitted they’d been having an affair for some time. Off and on, he said. We can only surmise that they’d argued, that she went up there to continue the argument, or perhaps to tell him something that made him angry.’

‘That she was ending the affair?’

‘Possibly, Fry. We don’t know.’

‘So he lashed out.’

‘And he didn’t stop until she was dead.’

Fry hesitated. ‘Exactly how much blood was there?’

‘A lot,’ said Hitchens. ‘There are photos, if you want to see them.’

Fry didn’t really want to look at them but supposed she had to. Every photograph of a murder scene she’d ever seen seemed seedy and depressing. Maybe it was a result of the photographic techniques the SOCOs used, or the quality of the lighting. Or perhaps it was something to do with the nature of the crime itself — as if photographs could capture a shameful residue left in the air, or a thin layer of dirt lying on the carpet and coating the pathetic, scattered possessions of the victim.

Cooper picked up the photos first, but didn’t look at them himself. Instead, he passed them to Fry. Surely he wasn’t squeamish about them? Cooper didn’t know the woman; he had no connection to the case at all, as far as she could see. So why should he even be involved?

Sure enough, the shots of Carol Proctor’s body in situ looked like something out of a third-rate horror movie: her limbs were bent at unnatural angles, while dark red stains were daubed on her face and arms, and soaking through her clothes. A sea of red stained the carpet. The blood had surged and splashed outwards in a ragged pattern, as if the woman had tripped and spilled a five-litre can of crimson gloss.

‘There are footprints,’ said Fry. ‘Both sides of the body.’

She would never have spotted them, except that the SOCOs attending the scene had indicated the location of each print with a white marker. At first glance, they were nothing more than irregularities in the spread of the blood. But she turned to the next photo and found a close-up of a print, with a heel mark now clearly visible in the drying stain.

‘Mansell Quinn’s prints,’ said Hitchens. ‘He was wearing the same boots when he was arrested. They got a perfect match.’

‘Blood on the soles of his boots, or on the uppers?’

‘Both.’

‘And no other impressions?’

‘None in the blood.’

Then Cooper chipped in for the first time.

‘It could just mean that anyone who was present at the scene earlier took more care than Quinn not to step in the blood,’ he said.

Hitchens nodded. ‘That’s what the defence said. But there was no evidence to put anyone else at the scene. Everything fit Quinn. The scenario the enquiry team constructed had him picking up the knife and stabbing Carol Proctor repeatedly, thereby getting blood on his shoes and his clothes. She fell to the floor, and he bent down to stab her again. He walked around the body a couple of times, not sure what to do. He moved her to see if she was dead. Then he dialled 999.’

‘Where’s the phone?’ asked Fry.

‘Just by the door. There should be a photo.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘See the trail of blood?’

‘Quinn’s footprints?’

‘Exactly. His fingerprints were in the blood on the handset of the phone, and in the smears on the dial. Having made the emergency call, he walked back to the body, then across to the other side of the room and sat down in the armchair. He said in his statement he felt faint, a bit sick. He said he was in shock.’

‘I suppose that’s possible,’ said Fry.

‘And that was where the uniformed patrol found him when they arrived,’ said Hitchens. ‘In the armchair.’

Fry caught a fleeting moment of communication as Hitchens looked towards Cooper and met his eye. She felt a surge of anger. Somehow this was a test, and she wasn’t going to let them get away with their little secrets. She concentrated on the photographs, flicking them over one after another. Was there something she ought to be able to see, some factor they thought she would miss?

‘Wait a minute — was the front door open?’

‘Yes,’ said Hitchens.

‘Why would that be?’

‘I don’t know. But don’t forget that Quinn phoned the emergency services himself. He probably opened the door so they’d be able to get into the house when they arrived.’

‘Did he say that was what he did?’

‘As far as I recall, he couldn’t remember.’

‘Shock again?’ said Fry. ‘It can be quite convenient sometimes, don’t you think?’

She felt Cooper watching her, too, now.

‘Were there bloody footprints in the hallway?’ she said.

‘Mmm. Not sure. But it doesn’t make any difference. Everything was tied up.’

‘The weapon?’

‘It was in the kitchen. It looked as though he’d been trying to wash the blood off it. Quinn was arrested right there at the scene. It was a self-solver. And, after he’d been interviewed, Quinn changed his story anyway. He pleaded guilty. So, no problem.’

‘The similarities with the Rebecca Lowe killing are obvious,’ said Fry, ‘apart from the absence of the suspect from the premises. I suppose he just learned his lesson the first time.’

‘In the Carol Proctor case, there was some question of an alibi,’ said Cooper.

‘In the early stages, yes. Quinn tried to give us a story about the time he left the pub where he’d been drinking with Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, it was, in Castleton.’

‘I know the place. It’s hardly any distance from the Quinns’ house in Pindale Road.’

‘And that was a relevant point, Cooper. Quinn maintained that it took him only five minutes to drive home from the Cheshire Cheese, so he couldn’t have left the pub before three fifteen — about ten minutes before he dialled 999.’

‘Three fifteen would have been chucking-out time. There was no all-day opening in 1990.’

‘Yes. And Quinn’s argument was that he couldn’t possibly have had time to drive home, unload his tools from the car, go into the house, get into an argument with Carol Proctor, stab her several times, and then make the call. Not in ten minutes.’

‘I think I’d agree,’ said Fry.

‘Indeed. But Quinn’s two pals failed to support that version of events. When we interviewed Proctor and Thorpe, they both said their friend had left the pub earlier, before three o’clock. Quinn couldn’t account for the rest of the time.’

‘How long had they been drinking that day?’ asked Cooper.

‘Since before one o’clock. And they were all heavy drinkers, by their own admission.’

‘Five, six pints of beer? More?’

‘Their statements don’t quite agree on the amounts,’ said Hitchens.

‘But Quinn wouldn’t have been sober.’

‘Far from it, Cooper. In fact, he was asleep when the first officers arrived at Pindale Road.’

Fry sucked in her breath. ‘Asleep? With a woman lying dead on the floor in front of him, soaked in her own blood? What sort of man is that?’

She watched both Hitchens and Cooper drop their eyes and avoid the question.

‘And after that,’ said the DI, ‘Quinn could only say that his memory was hazy.’

‘I damn well hope the vivid details came back to him eventually,’ said Fry.