05.One Last Breath Read online

  Giving an exhausted cheer, the six men in yellow oversuits dropped the stretcher with a thump. Cooper’s head banged on the plastic cover.

  ‘Hey, I’m a casualty, you know. Where’s the ambulance? Don’t I get an ambulance?’

  After a moment, one of the men came back to the stretcher.

  ‘Sorry, Ben. But you are dead, you know.’

  ‘My God, if I’d known it’d be like that, Alistair, I wouldn’t have volunteered. In fact, I didn’t volunteer – I was talked into it.’

  Alistair Page took off his gloves and leaned over to unfasten the buckles on the straps. He was still covered in the smelly silt that coated the caves and had been stirred up from the flooded passages by the rescue party. Like the rest of the team taking part in the exercise, he was protected by elbow and kneepads, and had a heavy tackle bag slung from his belt.

  Cooper tried to remember which of his friends had introduced him to Page. Whoever it was, he had a score to settle.

  ‘You’re not telling me you’re claustrophobic,’ said Page. ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  ‘I didn’t think I was, until an hour ago. But I’ve changed my mind. I feel quite sick.’

  ‘You’ll be all right in a minute.’

  At last, Cooper was free of the stretcher. His legs felt numb, and he had to walk up and down and shake them a bit before the painful tingling started, a sign that the blood was flowing back into his limbs. Glad to be using his muscles again, he helped Page to lift a bundle of ropes and slide them into the cave rescue vehicle, an old Bedford van that was kept in the police compound in Edendale. The van was well overdue for replacement, but the Derbyshire Cave Rescue was a voluntary group and relied entirely on donations. They’d have to raise tens of thousands of pounds before they could buy a new vehicle.

  The chattering of the jackdaws made Cooper look up. The birds were circling the roofless keep of the castle on the eastern rim of the Peak Cavern gorge, hopping restlessly from tree to tree, or flapping on to the cliff ledges.

  ‘Do they nest on those ledges?’

  ‘Yes. And so do mallard ducks sometimes,’ said Page. ‘But their ducklings have a habit of falling off. Visitors don’t like that very much.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Cooper, still craning his neck. It was a relief just to be able to move his head and see the sky.

  ‘You did a good job of being dead, by the way. Don’t forget – you get a free tour through the show cave for doing this.’

  ‘I’m coming down with my two nieces tomorrow afternoon. They’ve just broken up for the summer holidays, and I promised them a day out.’

  ‘You can cope with that, can you?’

  ‘At least you don’t get many real deaths here.’

  ‘There’s only ever been one in Peak Cavern. That was a long time ago. And, well …’ Page hesitated, looking back anxiously over his shoulder at the mouth of the cavern, as if he heard noises in the darkness but couldn’t see what was there. ‘Well, that was different,’ he said. ‘It was unique. And a long time ago.’

  Some of the rescue team were carrying their gear back to the cavers’ clubhouse in Castleton. But Page lived only a couple of hundred yards away, in one of the cottages climbing the hillside on a narrow lane called Lunnen’s Back.

  ‘I’ll be here between ten and five tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Just ask for me if I’m not around.’

  Since it was impossible to get a car anywhere near the cavern approach, Cooper had left his Toyota in the main car park, near the new visitor centre. From there, he could see a long line of people winding their way up to Peveril Castle. The climb was gruelling, and some of the older visitors stopped to rest at every chance, pretending to admire the view while they eased the pain in their knees. As a child, Cooper had himself visited Castleton on a school outing. In term time, the streets of the town were full of children with worksheets.

  In the car park, he turned his face to the sun and breathed deeply. Right now, he couldn’t imagine who or what was going to ruin his rest day.

  Diane Fry knocked on the door of the DI’s office at West Street, and walked straight in. Paul Hitchens was leaning back in his chair, gazing out over the roof of the east stand at Edendale Football Club. He barely moved when she entered.

  ‘Sir? You said you wanted to see me.’

  Hitchens was silent for a moment, lost in some thoughts of his own that he wasn’t going to let Fry interrupt. So she waited until he was ready. She watched the sunlight from his window cast shadows on his face, making him look older than the DI she’d met when she first transferred to Derbyshire Constabulary, not all that long ago. Since setting up home with a nurse in Chesterfield he’d become middle-aged almost overnight, preoccupied with finding the right wallpaper for the bathroom and tending his lawn at weekends. Hitchens himself had seemed to sense the difference, too. He was a man settling into his position in life.

  But now Fry noticed him fingering the scar across the middle knuckles of his left hand, as if remembering an old injury.

  ‘I hear Mansell Quinn is due out today,’ said Hitchens finally.

  Fry felt a surge of irritation and fought to contain it. ‘Who,’ she said, ‘is Mansell Quinn?’

  The DI spun a little on his chair, glanced at Fry as if checking who she was. She had a feeling that he’d have said the same thing no matter who had walked into his office. He might have been having this conversation with the cleaner.

  ‘You won’t remember him, DS Fry,’ he said. ‘Quinn got a life sentence for murder some years ago. He lived in Castleton, a few miles up the road from here, in the Hope Valley. Do you know it?’

  ‘A tourist honeypot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Interesting place, actually. I went there as a kid. I remember being particularly impressed by the sheep – they came right down into the centre of the town. I suppose they must have been looking for food. I hadn’t seen one up close before.’

  ‘Sir?’ said Fry. ‘You were talking about somebody called Quinn …’

  ‘Yes, Mansell Quinn.’ Hitchens swung his chair back again and gazed out of the window. His eyes seemed to go out of focus, as if he were staring beyond Edendale to the country further north – towards Hope Valley, on the fringes of the Dark Peak. ‘Well, Castleton’s quiet most of the year, when the tourists aren’t there. People know each other very well. Quinn’s case caused quite a stir. It was a pretty violent killing – blood on the sitting-room carpet, and all that.’

  Fry hadn’t been asked to sit down, so she leaned against the wall by the door instead.

  ‘A domestic?’

  ‘Well, sort of,’ said Hitchens. ‘The thing was, Quinn denied the charge at first, but entered a guilty plea at trial. Then he changed his mind again when he’d been inside for a while. He said he didn’t do it after all.’

  ‘A bit perverse. Did he get parole?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He ruined his own case, then. The parole board would have thought he was in denial.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that any more. Early release depends on an assessment of any future risk you might pose, not on whether you’ve accepted the court’s verdict. The Home Office makes an issue of it in its policy for lifers these days.’

  ‘They were forced into that, weren’t they?’

  ‘That’s a sore point around here, Fry.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Risk assessment,’ said Hitchens. ‘That’s what it comes down to. We know about risk assessment, don’t we?’

  Fry nodded. Too often, it meant covering your back, a means of avoiding litigation or compensation payouts. But that was one thought she didn’t articulate. It might not have been what the DI meant.

  ‘Mansell Quinn had behaviour issues,’ said Hitchens. ‘He had to undertake anger-management training in prison.’

  ‘And he still didn’t get parole?’

  ‘No. Quinn served thirteen years and four months, until he reached his automatic release date.’ Hitchens turned round fully in his
chair and leaned forward on his desk. ‘And that date is today. Mansell Quinn was due to collect his belongings and walk out of HMP Sudbury at half past eight this morning.’ Hitchens looked at his watch. ‘Half an hour ago, in fact.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Quinn will be on licence. He’s supposed to move into temporary hostel accommodation in Burton on Trent, and he has an appointment with his probation officer this afternoon. One of the conditions of his licence is that he stays away from this area. We’ve been asked to keep an eye out for him, in case he breaches his conditions.’

  Fry shrugged. ‘So what if he does turn up here? Sometimes prisoners get a bit over-excited about being out and decide to celebrate. We might find him in a pub somewhere, but it will mean nothing.’

  ‘Probably.’

  She straightened up to leave the DI’s office. But then Fry hesitated, feeling there might be something more that he hadn’t told her.

  ‘Anger management? So Quinn is a violent man, would you say, sir?’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Hitchens. ‘He has a long history of violent incidents in his past. In fact, he got knockback early in his sentence because he assaulted a fellow prisoner. He broke the man’s arm and removed a couple of his teeth. And he couldn’t explain why he did it. Or wouldn’t.’

  ‘And what about the original murder?’

  ‘Well, there was certainly enough blood at the scene. The place was like an abattoir. Not what you’d want your sitting room to look like – especially in your nice new three-bedroom detached house in Castleton. Pindale Road, that was the place.’

  Fry settled back against the wall with a sigh. ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘Well, it seems that Quinn had made his way home from the pub, where he’d been drinking with his mates all afternoon. There was a row; he lost his temper, grabbed a handy kitchen knife … And bingo – a body on the floor, blood on the shag-pile, and the suspect still on the premises when a patrol responds to the 999 call. Terrible scenes with the kids arriving home. The whole street hanging out of their doors to see what was going on and generally getting in the way. All the usual mess. The victim was dead at the scene. She had multiple stab wounds to her body.’

  ‘An ordinary domestic, then,’ said Fry, irrationally disappointed. ‘One like thousands of others. I suppose the reasons for the argument might vary a bit, but the choice of household object doesn’t usually show much imagination. And it’s always the wife who ends up dead on the floor.’

  ‘Except there was one big difference in the Quinn case.’

  Fry lifted her head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The body on Quinn’s sitting-room floor,’ said Hitchens. ‘It wasn’t his wife’s.’

  2

  Sudbury Prison, Derbyshire

  There used to be poppies in every cornfield once – they were bright red, like splashes of fresh blood. Mansell Quinn was sure he’d seen them all through the summer. As soon as the sun came out, they were everywhere in little clusters, peering from among the yellow stalks, nodding their bloodied heads in the sun, waiting for the combine to scythe them down. For a few hot days each year, a field in the bottom of the valley would be filled with entire red rivers of poppies, pooling and streaming, moving slowly in the breeze.

  This morning, he noticed for the first time that there was a cornfield right across the road, its acres of brown stalks just starting to seed. The fences around it were strung barbed wire. Quinn looked for poppies in the corn, needing that glimpse of red. But there were no poppies.

  As he walked towards the outer gate clutching a plastic carrier bag and his travel warrant, Quinn began to realize that even his liberty clothing was too big for him, and too stiff to be comfortable. He’d lost weight during the last fourteen years, and his body had hardened, as if a callus had grown over his skin, the way it had grown over his heart.

  Past the gatehouse, he turned to look back for the last time. Above a bank of flowers was the white sign with its slogan Custody with Care and a mission statement: committed to rehabilitation and resettlement of prisoners.

  Eight thirty was time for the morning collection. Right now, a court van was turning in through the gate and slowing for the speed hump, its steel grilles and reinforced doors making it look like an armoured personnel carrier. As Quinn stepped on to the grass to let it pass, the driver gave him a cautious glance, though the van would be empty yet this morning, its cage still smelling of too much disinfectant.

  ‘I’ll be home in an hour or so. And I can’t bloody wait. What about you?’

  The man who fell into step alongside him was at least twenty years younger than Quinn, somewhere in his mid-twenties. He had short, gelled hair and a tattoo on the side of his neck, and he looked freshly shaved and scrubbed. He could have mingled with any bunch of lads in town on a Saturday night – which was just what he’d be doing by tonight, no doubt.

  ‘It’ll take me a bit longer than that,’ said Quinn.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘A bit longer to get home.’

  ‘Oh? You sound like a Derbyshire bloke, though.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am.’

  ‘Right.’

  But Quinn had been born in the Welsh borders. It was there that the poppies had filled his summers. He supposed they must have found their way into the seed that the farmers sowed, or lay hidden in the ground until disturbed by the plough. Then they would flower before the wheat ripened, flourishing secretly between sowing and harvest. For the young Mansell Quinn, those poppies had been like a glimpse of wicked things existing where they shouldn’t be.

  But when his father had got himself a new job as a forester on a country estate near Hathersage, his family had moved north to the Hope Valley. There were no cornfields among the gritstone hills and shale valleys of the Dark Peak.

  The young man laughed. ‘You mean you’re getting right away from the old place? I don’t blame you, mate. Not for a minute.’

  Quinn had no idea who the lad was. Yet in a way, they were as close as brothers. There were things that created a bond, ties that didn’t need to be talked about in these few minutes between the prison gate and the outside world.

  ‘Have you got somebody waiting at home for you?’ said Quinn.

  ‘Bloody right. I told her we’d get married when I came out. It’s only right, for the sake of the kids. We’ve got a council house and everything.’

  ‘Lucky.’

  ‘Yeah. I won’t be going back, that’s for sure.’

  Quinn had stopped listening. His mind was on another house and another family.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘you have to go back.’

  ‘You what? What are you saying? You know nothing about me, mate.’

  ‘No,’ said Quinn. ‘Nothing.’

  The young man’s edginess subsided. It was only tension born of a fear of the unknown.

  ‘I’m Rick. You?’

  ‘Quinn.’

  ‘I’ve seen you around, I think. But I’ve not spoken to you before.’

  ‘Make the most of it.’

  They walked across the road from the gate. This road was a dead end, created to serve the prison when the Sudbury bypass had been built. Ahead of them was the entrance to a concrete underpass.

  ‘So where are you heading?’ said Rick.

  ‘Burton on Trent. Some hostel my probation officer fixed up.’

  The underpass was damp and smelly, a dim tunnel leading towards a patch of light. Their voices echoed from the walls, but the sound of their footsteps was muffled by the dirt floor.

  ‘First thing tomorrow,’ said Rick, ‘I’ll be off to Meadowhall to get myself a load of new gear. Well, after I’ve slept off the hangover from tonight, anyway. Getting pissed is the first priority.’ He laughed. ‘You too, I bet.’

  ‘Me too what?’

  ‘You’ll be getting some new clothes.’

  Quinn looked down at what he was wearing. One of the first things he should do was find one of those charit
y shops where they sold secondhand stuff for a couple of pounds – the places he’d seen on his escorted absences: Oxfam, Cancer Research, Help the Aged. In one of those shops, he could pick up some jeans and a couple of shirts, maybe an old jacket that smelled of fag smoke, and a pair of boots. Dead men’s clothes probably, but who cared? They’d make him less noticeable. He had his discharge grant in his pocket, but there were other things he might need money for. Dead men could provide his clothes for now. It would be appropriate, in a way.

  ‘I’ve even got a job lined up,’ said Rick. ‘What a stroke of luck, eh? My probation officer helped me. He’s a decent enough bloke. A bit of money in your pocket, that makes all the difference, doesn’t it? A home to go to and your family around you. I’m going to get my life sorted out, just you watch.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I mean, I’m only twenty-five – I’ve got my whole future ahead of me. Besides, you can’t waste your life away when you’re a dad. I want my two to be proud of me some day. I don’t want them to think they’ve got a dad who’s a waster because he’s spent most of his life in the nick, do I?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you got kids yourself, then?’

  Mansell Quinn grimaced, and his jaw tightened. He said nothing. But the young man hadn’t really been interested in an answer.

  ‘I want them to do better for themselves than I’ve done,’ said Rick. ‘I want them to work hard and get on in the world. So I’m going to set them an example from now on. I promised Sharon I would. My lad wants to be a doctor, and I’m going to help him do that.’

  The A50 was dusty, and the passing traffic stank of petrol and hot metal. Quinn had inhaled more fumes in the past five minutes than in the last fourteen years. He wished there had been poppies in the field. They would have been a good omen – blood in the fields matching the blood in his mind. But their absence made him uneasy. For the first time it occurred to him that life in the outside world might have changed in too many ways while he’d been gone.