One Last Breath

45

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.’

Fry nodded as if she understood. But proud and ambitious parents were one pressure that she’d never had to suffer.

‘So Alan went to your house and waited for you to turn up. But he got into the house, didn’t he? How could he have done that?’

Simon sighed. ‘There was a spare back-door key under one of Mum’s garden ornaments — a concrete rabbit with a hollow base. She didn’t trust me or Andrea not to lose keys of our own, so she always left one under the rabbit for us in case we came home when no one was in. Alan knew about the key. He’d seen me get it from there before. That day, he waited outside for a while, but it started raining, so he got the key and went into the house. He knew I wouldn’t mind — we were good mates.’

‘I see.’

‘You know, Mum carried on doing that, even after we left home. She used to say wherever we all were in the world, her house was still our home.’

Fry watched him for a moment, fearing a show of emotion that she’d have to pretend to sympathize with.

Then she realized that Cooper had tensed and was sitting forward in his armchair. She gave him a glance, but he was concentrating on Lowe. At least he wasn’t going to interrupt at the wrong moment.

‘So let’s go over that again,’ she said. ‘Alan Proctor had gone into your parents’ house to get out of the rain. He was waiting for you, but you didn’t turn up. So what did he do with himself?’

‘He got a bottle of Coke from the fridge, then went up to my room, drew the curtains and put some music on the stereo. That’s what we would have done anyway, if I’d been there. There was nothing wrong with that.’

‘OK. And then?’

‘He waited a bit, until eventually he realized there must be something wrong. After a while, he knew there was a chance of my father coming home, and it would look odd him being in the house without me. So when he heard somebody coming up the path, he scarpered.’

‘Out of the back door?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘So whoever he heard must have been approaching the house from the front?’

Simon shrugged. ‘I imagine he heard my father parking his car and coming in through the gate. Maybe Alan actually saw him — my room looked out on to the street. Dad had a bit of a temper, and he didn’t like Alan very much. He thought he was a bad influence on me — you know the sort of ideas parents get.’

‘Did Alan tell you all this himself?’

‘I’m sure he told me some of it — about going into the house anyway, then leaving sharpish.’

‘When did you see him to talk about it?’

‘Oh, it was days later.’ Simon frowned. ‘In fact, it must have been weeks. Andrea and I stayed at our Aunt Dawn’s for a while, and we didn’t go back to school until nearly the end of term. My memories of that time are all a bit vague. I was thinking mostly about my father, and worrying about my mother. The shock, you know … To be honest, I don’t think it even occurred to me at the time that Alan would have been at the house. Everything else seemed so unimportant.’

‘And when you did see Alan again, did you ask him about it? Or did he volunteer this story?’

‘He volunteered it. Like I say, I hadn’t even remembered that he was going to the house. When he told me, I just thought he was so lucky that he’d got out of the way in time. If my father was drunk and lost his temper, he might have attacked Alan too.’

Fry studied him. Concern for a friend was all very well, up to a point. Had Simon Lowe’s sense and judgement been influenced by his feelings for the people involved? Well, why not? Everyone else’s had.

‘But I don’t understand why you call it a story,’ said Simon. ‘Don’t you believe it?’

‘Surely you can see there’s something wrong with your friend’s version of events?’ said Fry.

‘What do you mean?’

‘According to all the evidence, your father didn’t arrive at the house while Alan was there — or, at least, he wasn’t the first to arrive. The person your friend would have seen coming up the drive was Carol Proctor — his own mother. When she came into the house, he must have realized she was having an affair with your father.’

‘You don’t think he would …?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fry. ‘What do you think?’

But Simon Lowe said nothing.

‘OK. So let’s try this — who told your father about Alan Proctor being there?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know? Mr Lowe, there’s only one person it could have been. Apart from Alan Proctor himself, you were the only one who knew.’

She could see Simon was sweating now. If she’d made him uncomfortable, she’d achieved at least part of her aim in coming here.

‘My father wrote to me from prison once,’ he said. ‘His letter sounded almost reasonable.’

‘When was this?’

‘About nine years ago, or a bit less.’

‘So you told him about Alan?’

‘He asked me what I remembered of that day. He said his memories were very vague and fragmented. Well, I understood that. I was like that myself for a long time after it happened. Shock can do that.’

‘Yes, Mr Lowe. So you told him?’

‘I told my father what I could remember. None of it seemed important, especially after all that time. And I never heard from him again, so I put it out of my mind.’

‘Why do you think he didn’t write again?’ said Fry.

‘I don’t know. I supposed he hadn’t really wanted to make contact with me, but just needed the information.’

‘Well, there is another possibility.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Perhaps your father concluded that you knew who’d really killed Carol Proctor, but you’d let him go to prison for it, as everyone else had.’

‘Oh, but — ’

‘And maybe,’ said Fry, ‘he thought your betrayal was the greatest of all.’

Simon glowered. ‘I hardly think betrayal is a word you can use in the circumstances.’

‘No? Didn’t you try to tell your father at one point that you weren’t his son?’

‘That was just something I said in the heat of the moment. I was only a teenager, and I was upset.’

Fry paused for a moment, conscious that it made Lowe nervous about what was coming next.

‘Did you know that Alan Proctor was your half-brother?’ she said. ‘Your father’s son?’

Simon looked as though all his fears had been realized. ‘What? My father — and Carol Proctor? I don’t believe it. That can’t be true, can it?’

‘You know it can,’ said Fry. ‘Ask Raymond Proctor. He believes it. And Alan found out later, too.’

‘That would have devastated him. He thought the world of Ray.’

‘Yes, I think the feeling was mutual. It was a dangerous kind of love, though, as it turns out.’

‘I really don’t understand what you mean, Detective Sergeant. This is all too much to take in.’

Fry knew it was time to leave, and she studied the Lowes for the last time. The brother and sister always looked so close that it made her wonder what it would take to split them apart and set them against each other. There’d be something, no doubt. There always was.

‘What I mean, sir,’ she said, ‘is that DNA isn’t everything. As Raymond Proctor said to me himself only yesterday, blood doesn’t always have to be thicker than water.’

When he saw Ben Cooper back in the office, Gavin Murfin was the first to slap him on the back, as if he were some sort of hero. But Cooper knew perfectly well that he wasn’t anything of the kind.

‘Well, we don’t need to do a DNA test on you, Ben,’ said Murfin. ‘There’s no mistaking who your father was. You’re so like him it’s unbelievable.’

Cooper smiled. It was the reaction expected of him, and he’d practised it.

‘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.’