One Last Breath. Stephen Booth
were being watched. They were probably part of the group he’d seen in the village carrying their worksheets, ticking off the things they were supposed to find.
These two had found Cavedale, but they weren’t satisfied with simply ticking it off. They scrambled up the rock across the dale from Thorpe and stood at the mouth of one of the small caves in the limestone cliff. It looked dark and mysterious, but Thorpe knew that it ended after only a few feet. Though the hill was honeycombed by the Peak Cavern and Speedwell system, there was no entrance to it from Cavedale.
The two boys looked around and noticed him. Perhaps it was the whiff of his cigarette smoke that had alerted them to his presence.
‘Excuse me, is this cave safe?’ called one of the boys.
Thorpe was impressed by polite children. They always took him by surprise.
‘Safe?’
‘Are there bats – or anything?’
‘No, I don’t think there’ll be any bats. Or bears.’
‘Thank you. We’re going in to explore.’
‘If you’re not out in an hour, I’ll call cave rescue,’ said Thorpe.
The boys disappeared. Thorpe laughed to himself, coughing and taking a drag on his cigarette. The hollow was quite a little sun trap, and the warmth felt good on his skin. He’d forgotten that it was possible to feel like this. Temporarily, he could even ignore the constant struggle to draw in air. Once he’d got this burden off his mind, he’d be able to breathe properly at last. No dust or poisons would break down his lungs, no holes would erupt into his chest cavity. He’d take a breath with ease, as everyone else did. That was all he wanted.
‘Did you know it was so small?’ called a voice.
Thorpe looked up. The two youngsters were out of the cave, looking disappointed. There had been no bats, then. Only a couple of yards of damp sandy floor and a graffiti-covered rock face.
‘No, I didn’t. Sorry.’
The boys looked as though they didn’t believe him. But Thorpe reckoned you had to find things out for yourself in this life. You had to learn from your disappointments. There would be bigger ones to come later on.
He watched the youngsters clamber down the rocky path and head back into Castleton. What was next on the worksheet? Church, youth hostel, school?
In the distance, Thorpe could hear a hammer tapping on stone, a whistle blowing for a football game, and kids chattering in the market square. He lay back on the grass, letting a cloud of blue smoke drift away into the sky, and closed his eyes. In the warmth of the sun, he began to relax, and was almost asleep by the time Mansell Quinn found him.
10
In the incident room at Edendale, officers found themselves in a reversal of the normal routine – they were drawing up a list of potential victims rather than suspects.
For a few minutes, DCI Oliver Kessen watched Hitchens organizing the enquiry teams.
‘And once we have a list of names, what do we do?’ said Kessen.
‘We warn them of the risk, sir.’
‘Look, we have to be careful here. If the press gets hold of the idea that there might be more murders, it could lead to a general panic.’
‘That goes without saying.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Ben Cooper hadn’t quite got used to DCI Kessen. He was too quiet by far. In fact, he was so quiet as he moved around West Street that his officers often turned around to find him standing in the doorway, watching them. And they wouldn’t know how long he’d been there, or what he was thinking.
‘All right, so who have we got?’ said Kessen.
‘There are the two children from the Quinns’ marriage,’ said Hitchens. ‘The daughter, Andrea, is twenty-six. I don’t suppose she’ll remember all that much of her father. But the son, Simon, is twenty-eight now. He’d have been about fifteen years old when his father was sent down. He’ll remember.’
‘I should think he damn well would.’
‘But I don’t think we’re looking at the children as potential victims. He’s still their father, after all.’
Kessen shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, fathers have been known to kill their children. Do we have any evidence as to how Quinn viewed his two?’
He watched Hitchens shake his head. ‘No.’
‘Get somebody on to the prison authorities. They have personal officers for prisoners on each wing these days. They also have counsellors, and all that business. Someone will have talked to Quinn about his family. Or tried to, at least. Let’s see what we can get out of them. Any insight into how his mind might be working would be useful.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where do Quinn’s family live?’
‘The daughter is working in London. But the son, Simon – he has a job in Development Control with the district council. He recently bought a house right here in Edendale.’
‘He was lucky,’ said Gavin Murfin. ‘There isn’t much property for first-time buyers around here.’
‘No, you’re right. I wonder how he managed the mortgage.’ Hitchens sighed. ‘There’s an awful lot of stuff to work on, sir.’
‘Information is what we need,’ said Kessen. ‘If we can establish what sort of people we’re dealing with and what terms they’re on with Quinn, we might be able to work out his intentions.’
‘I suppose so. But we can’t begin to take measures to protect all these people, can we?’
‘We can warn them that they might be at risk. Who else do we have?’
‘There are two friends of Mansell Quinn. Or former friends, at least. The three of them were very close at the time of the murder. Both were called to give evidence at the trial, and both declined to give him an alibi. That was pretty much the clincher.’
‘Who needs enemies, eh?’
‘Number one, we have Raymond Proctor, aged fifty, married. He runs a caravan park near Hope.’
‘Family?’
‘Married, as I said. Two teenage children. Hang on, no – one grown-up son. The teenagers are step-children, from his wife’s previous marriage. Poor bugger.’
Kessen regarded him coolly. ‘Proctor, you say?’
‘Yes, this is the guy whose first wife was killed by Quinn – he’d been having an affair with her. So we can’t expect much love lost there, I suppose.’
‘Friend number two?’
‘Number two is William Edward Thorpe, aged forty-five, single. Thorpe was a soldier, spent quite a lot of his time serving overseas. He was with the local regiment, the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, but he was discharged last year.’
‘Current whereabouts?’
‘Unknown.’
‘His regiment should have records.’
‘We’ve tried them,’ said Hitchens. ‘On discharge, Thorpe went to Derby for a while. He was staying with one of his old army buddies who’d finished his stint a few months earlier. But the friend says Thorpe walked out after a few days, and he doesn’t know where he went after that. The computer throws up a drunk-and-disorderly charge for a William Edward Thorpe in Ashbourne a couple of months ago, but his address was given as “no fixed abode”.’
‘We need to find him. Quinn has a motive for looking him up.’
‘So much work,’ said Hitchens.