05.One Last Breath Read online

  The cat was sitting quietly near his bowls, but he wasn’t eating. His long, black fur was gummed up on one flank. Randy kept himself very clean usually, and was never happy when he couldn’t untangle his coat.

  ‘Blimey, you’re a bit of a mess,’ said Cooper. He put his hand to the patch of fur, and it felt sticky. It also glistened strangely in the kitchen lights.

  Cats might be intelligent, but they hadn’t learned the basic rule of forensic science: Locard’s Principle, the fact that every contact left a trace. A snail had left its slime on Randy, and no doubt had taken away a few cat hairs sticking to its mucus. If it was dead, its murderer could be identified by the traces they’d left on each other.

  As he cleaned the cat, Cooper’s thoughts turned to DNA, the holy grail of trace evidence. The national DNA database had gone live in 1995 and every week now the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Birmingham matched more than a thousand profiles taken from crime scenes, solving crimes up to thirty years old. Soon, the database would hit its target of three million profiles.

  Like many police officers he knew, Cooper was in two minds about the development of such a vast database. There was no doubt it was a valuable tool for catching criminals, but it was too easy to believe that DNA evidence was foolproof. The larger the database, the greater the chance of somebody being wrongly linked to a crime. And for Cooper, it felt a little too much like the beginnings of a Big Brother society he didn’t really want to be part of.

  He gave Randy a quick rub with an old towel and let him go. The cat looked clean, but he probably still carried minute traces of snail, if anyone cared to look closely enough. The lab needed only tiny amounts these days.

  Cooper wondered what it had been like in 1990, before the DNA database was created. Frustratingly, the practice of routinely taking buccal swabs from charged suspects hadn’t been adopted until 1995, so Mansell Quinn hadn’t been sampled when he was charged with Carol Proctor’s murder. Even a recent Home Office ‘sweep’ to collect samples from convicted prisoners had come too late. It had never reached Quinn as he waited for release in his cell in HMP Sudbury.

  Whatever the value of the national database, it didn’t help in this case. Mansell Quinn’s profile wasn’t on it.

  Back in his sitting room, Cooper stood in front of the photograph over the fireplace. He was familiar with every face in the neat rows, even with the texture of the wall behind them and the concrete yard beneath their boots. Without looking, he could have described the way each man held his arms, which of them was smiling, who looked suspicious of the photographer, and who hadn’t fastened his tie properly that morning. He also knew the exact feel of the mahogany frame in his hands, the smoothness of the edges, the slight scratch in the glass that was almost hidden by the shadow of the chair one of the sergeants was sitting in on the front row. If you turned the picture towards the light, the scratch became obvious. He couldn’t remember how it had happened. Somehow, it had always been there.

  Diane Fry had chosen the Italian restaurant on Eyre Street, Caesar’s. She had never been inside it before, but from standing on the outside, looking through the window and reading the menu, she’d assessed it as smart and interesting, without being too up-market. Now that she was sitting at a table in the far corner, with her confit of duck on its way at any moment, she thought she’d been right.

  Even so, Fry felt uncomfortable. It was true that she didn’t go out often, but at least she’d made an effort. She was wearing her cord blazer over a hand-knitted alpaca cotton top that she’d bought in Bakewell and never worn before. Angie had made do with the usual jeans and vest; and when she reached for the butter to spread on her bread roll, Fry noticed that her fingernails were none too clean. She hoped the waiter didn’t look too closely.

  The waiter was making his way from the kitchen now. Fry didn’t think he was Italian, more East European – perhaps an Albanian. But then, confit of duck wasn’t an Italian dish either, was it?

  ‘You never really want to talk,’ said Angie, after they had been served.

  Fry paused with a forkful of duck on the way to her mouth. ‘Talk? We’ve talked a lot. Ever since you came to stay, we’ve done nothing but talk.’

  ‘Do you think so, Diane?’

  ‘I’ve told you everything I’ve done since I saw you last.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true, in a way.’

  ‘In a way? I’ve given you all fifteen years of it. I’ve told you what I did at school, how I managed to get my “A” levels and scraped a place at university to do my degree.’

  ‘I liked the bit about you getting drunk at a student party and being sick into somebody’s window box. I can’t imagine you doing that, Sis.’

  ‘I didn’t do it often.’

  ‘No, I bet you were a real hard worker. Studious.’

  ‘I wanted to get an education.’

  ‘This steak is nice,’ said Angie. ‘A bit underdone in the middle, but I don’t mind a bit of blood. How’s the duck?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Fry, putting her fork down. ‘And I told you about our parents coming to the graduation ceremony.’

  ‘Our foster parents.’

  ‘And how they got lost in Birmingham, so they arrived late.’

  ‘And you didn’t think anyone was coming, I know. If the duck’s wonderful, why aren’t you eating it?’

  ‘Then I went back to Warley and joined the police.’

  ‘Which is where you lose me a bit. You really did change somewhere along the way, didn’t you, Sis?’

  ‘It’s an interesting job,’ said Fry. ‘Challenging.’

  Angie nodded. She poured two more glasses of wine, but Diane ignored hers.

  ‘And I told you about the incident – I mean, what happened to me in Birmingham …’

  ‘Incident? That’s a mealy-mouthed police word for it, if ever I heard one. You mean the rape.’

  Fry looked around the restaurant. The other tables were a little too close for her liking. But the restaurant wasn’t full on a Wednesday night, and there were no shocked expressions to deal with.

  ‘Yes, I know all that,’ said Angie. ‘You told me.’

  ‘Don’t minimize the things that have happened in my life,’ said Fry. ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Angie took a drink of her wine. She smiled at a man a couple of tables away, causing his wife to glower back.

  Fry hesitated, watching her sister, reminded again how much of a stranger she’d become. As children they had been so close that she felt she always knew what her sister was thinking. But not now.

  ‘Is there something else you wanted to tell me about yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Fry speared the piece of duck again with her fork. She cut it into two, then cut it again into smaller pieces. ‘I know about the heroin, of course.’

  ‘I’m off it now. I had treatment. It’s not an experience I recommend.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘And there was a man?’

  Angie shrugged. ‘Quite a few men. They come, and they go. There’s always somebody else.’

  Fry put her fork down with a clatter, tired of pretending to eat. Even the small piece of roast duck felt like dust in her mouth, and she had to force herself to swallow.

  ‘So what then?’ she said. ‘What do you mean we haven’t talked? I’ve told you everything. And you say you’ve told me everything – at least, everything that matters.’

  Fry regretted sounding so abrupt. She could hear the tone of her voice echoing in the corner of the restaurant – the tone she used when she was irritated by one of her colleagues at work, when Ben Cooper or Gavin Murfin had been particularly annoying.

  Angie’s eyes clouded and she began to sit back in her chair as if withdrawing from contact with her sister, deliberately distancing herself from the moment. Diane leaned forward, reaching to touch her sister�
��s hand, to prevent her from pulling away too far.

  ‘Sis? What is it?’

  But Angie was reluctant to speak now – afraid, perhaps, of people overhearing her, after all.

  ‘We haven’t talked about before,’ she said.

  Fry felt a chill go through her. For a moment, it was as if someone had opened a freezer cabinet door just behind her, loosing an icy draught that penetrated her shirt and raised goose pimples on her skin.

  ‘Before?’ she said. But she knew what Angie meant.

  ‘What happened before I left home,’ Angie said. ‘What happened to me – and to you.’

  Raymond Proctor opened the door to his office, and stopped. At first he thought one of the visitors from the caravan park had walked in of their own accord, taking liberties because he wasn’t there to deal with them. What a bloody cheek, he thought. Here’s some oik with a short haircut sitting at my desk, bold as brass, as if he owns the place.

  ‘What the hell –’ he started to say.

  Then his mouth hung open in mid-sentence as the figure at his desk turned, and he recognized the profile of a man he’d hoped never to see again.

  ‘Hello, Ray.’

  Mansell Quinn’s face was wet. He’d come straight in from the rain, taking the trouble only to throw the hood of his waterproof back from his head. Water was running off him and gathering on the carpet around the chair he was sitting in. Proctor could see the drips from Quinn’s sleeve landing on the polished mahogany of his desk.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say hello to an old friend?’ said Quinn.

  ‘Mansell –’

  ‘Not going to ask how I am? Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing with myself all these years?’

  Quinn smiled. Proctor felt a cold shudder go down his spine.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said feebly.

  ‘Oh, and where should I be, Ray? Back inside?’

  Proctor shut the door behind him nervously. He walked across the office and opened the inner door, which led into a short passage between the back door and the kitchen. He looked up and down the passage, listened for any noises, and closed the door again quietly.

  He turned to find his visitor watching him with that same chilling smile.

  ‘Why don’t you make an effort, Ray?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you tell me that I haven’t changed much since you saw me last?’

  ‘You haven’t changed all that much,’ said Proctor.

  ‘Good. Because you’ve changed, Ray. I can see that you’re not the man you were fourteen years ago. I wonder why that is?’

  Proctor tried to speak, but found his mouth too dry. He went round his desk and fumbled in a bottom drawer. He produced half a bottle of malt whisky and a glass.

  ‘Hospitality at last,’ said Quinn. ‘I take it you can run to two glasses?’

  ‘Not without going to the kitchen.’

  ‘And you don’t want what’s-her-name …’

  ‘Connie.’

  ‘And you don’t want Connie to know you have a visitor? Pity. You looked as though you could have done with a drink.’

  Proctor poured some whisky. His eyes met Quinn’s and tried to hold his stare. Finally, he passed the glass across the desk, splashing the liquid on to the mahogany in his haste to get rid of it.

  ‘You’ve got a bit nervy in your old age,’ said Quinn, running a finger through the spilled whisky, creating a pattern on the polished surface with an air of concentration, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Proctor watched him, keeping the open bottle still in his hand, trying to gather the courage to speak. He noticed that Quinn was chewing something, his jaw muscles clenching as he bit on it with his back teeth.

  ‘I don’t want you here,’ said Proctor. ‘It’s not right.’

  Quinn stopped moving the amber drops of whisky and looked up. ‘Not right, Ray?’

  ‘It’s not fair. We’ve got children in the house, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Not your children, though, Ray. They’re what’s-her-name’s children.’

  ‘Connie’s. From a previous marriage. Two teenagers, Jason and Kelly.’

  ‘From a previous marriage. Yes.’

  ‘Mansell –’

  ‘I used your bathroom, Ray. I hope you don’t mind. I needed a wash and a shave, and there aren’t many places I can get them.’

  ‘God, how long have you been here?’ said Proctor.

  ‘A few minutes, that’s all. The door was open.’

  ‘Connie is bound to have heard you. But she probably thought it was me.’

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ said Quinn. ‘Pity. I don’t get to talk to many people.’

  Quinn smiled, and Proctor saw bits of brown seed stuck between his teeth.

  ‘I used to be an outgoing sort of bloke,’ said Quinn. ‘Do you remember, Ray?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not now. Not any more. And you know something else, Ray? When you’re in prison, you can’t help thinking you’ll be able to come out and go back to your life, and things will be exactly the same as they were before. No matter how many years have gone by in between, that’s what you believe. It’s something to hold on to, if nothing else.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I come back here, and Castleton looks pretty much the same. Except somebody else is living in my house. A complete stranger. It’s bloody weird, Ray.’

  ‘It must be.’

  ‘And you. You married again.’

  Proctor nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still trying to pass your genes on to a son then, Ray?’

  Then Proctor heard an intake of breath. He turned to see Connie standing in the passage, staring through the doorway at Mansell Quinn. He was amazed that he hadn’t heard the door open.

  But Quinn didn’t seem worried to see her. He even smiled as he raised the whisky to his lips.

  ‘Who’s he?’ said Connie.

  And Proctor remembered that she’d never seen Quinn before, that the man had never featured in her life the way he had in his. She would have seen the press photographs at the time of Carol’s death, but Mansell Quinn had changed since then.

  ‘I’m an old friend,’ said Quinn.

  Connie was no fool. She put two and two together quickly enough.

  ‘Get rid of him, Ray,’ she said. ‘Then call the police.’

  ‘That’s not very hospitable,’ said Quinn. ‘You must be Connie.’

  ‘Ray –’

  But Proctor didn’t move. He felt transfixed between the two of them.

  ‘I’ll phone the police myself,’ said Connie, and began to turn to go back across the passage.

  ‘No,’ said Proctor. ‘Leave it to me.’

  ‘I won’t have him in the house,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s just about to leave.’

  Quinn raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t as self-confident since Connie appeared. He got up, letting more water drip from his smock where it had gathered in the creases. Connie continued to stare at him, as if trying to drive him towards the door with the strength of her will.

  ‘Mansell, what are you going to do?’ asked Proctor.

  Quinn put his glass back on the desk. Proctor was surprised to see that his hand was shaking.

  ‘Later, Ray,’ said Quinn. ‘I’ll be seeing you later.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Diane Fry again as they came through the door of the flat.

  ‘But, Di –’

  ‘Angie, I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever.’

  ‘But you must think about it sometimes? You can’t wipe out memories completely.’

  ‘I can try.’

  Angie slumped on the settee while Diane hung her jacket carefully in the wardrobe.

  ‘Is that why you’re so obsessed with your job, so you can keep the memories away?’ called Angie from the sitting room.

  ‘Me? I’m not obsessed with anything.’

  Fry took off the alpaca top as well and folded
it away. She found a T-shirt thrown over a chair and pulled that on instead. She immediately felt more comfortable, more ready to defend herself.

  ‘Because I can relate to that, you know, Sis,’ said Angie. ‘That’s what an addiction is all about, in the end.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like heroin. When you start using, it’s all about the buzz you get at first. But after a while, you’re using it to take the pain away.’

  ‘I don’t want to know this,’ said Fry.

  ‘The point is – that doesn’t make a heroin user much different from anyone else, does it? We all need something to take the pain away now and then. Some of us need it more often than others, that’s all.’

  ‘There are better ways. Positive things that don’t damage your body.’

  Angie laughed. ‘I bet you’ve never taken anything in your life, have you, Sis? Not even a puff of cannabis?’

  Fry shook her head stiffly.

  ‘God, I can’t believe how straight you are.’ said Angie. ‘My little sister. It’s a scream.’

  ‘I’m glad you think I’m so funny.’

  Angie’s mood changed suddenly. ‘Look, there’s no need for you to get all snotty about it. I’m off the stuff, all right? I told you, I went through the whole detox business. Besides, don’t you know that in hospitals they use heroin as a painkiller? Only they call it diamorphine, which makes it all right because it has a posh medical name. They even give it to mothers in childbirth. Hey, Sis, you could hang around the maternity ward and nick a few new mums. Earn yourself another promotion, why not?’

  Fry stood. The conversation was making her too restless. She couldn’t bear to sit still and listen to what her sister had to say.

  ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Besides, it doesn’t do the body much harm,’ said Angie. ‘Provided you’re careful and don’t do anything stupid like overdosing. You probably lose a bit of weight, you get a bit of a tendency to infections and stuff, that’s all.’

  Angie looked sideways at her sister, and Fry became conscious of her running nose and itching eyes. She popped a couple of tablets of Zirtek from their package.