05.One Last Breath Read online

  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.’

  46

  Beyond the railway line it wasn’t much of a road, more of a dirt track. But it had been well constructed, and it didn’t have too many potholes to gather mud when it rained. It passed a farm entrance and skirted the edge of Win Hill before petering out in a gateway. From there, the route marked on Ben Cooper’s street atlas was actually a public footpath that crossed a stile and ran along the edge of a field, where it was barely visible but for a line of flattened grass.

  ‘OK, the times fit all right,’ said Diane Fry. ‘Ten o’clock at the Cheshire Cheese, and the journey between the two locations is what – fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘And it’s only a short walk from here.’

  ‘It’s been too long to get any impressions from the track, Ben.’

  ‘And too wet. Shall we walk to the house?’

  ‘What about your leg? Are you sure you can manage?’

  ‘Well, that’s part of what we’re trying to find out.’

  They followed the faint outline of the footpath, keeping a few yards to the side of it. And within ten minutes they’d reached the hedge of elm saplings.

  ‘Do we have to push our way through it?’ said Fry doubtfully, looking down at her clothes.

  ‘No need. There’s a little gate, look. I never knew that was here.’

  ‘It doesn’t appear to have been used much.’

  Cooper eased open the gate in the hedge, wincing as it creaked on its hinges. ‘It needs oiling,’ he said.

  ‘OK, so we’re in the garden. What now, Ben?’

  ‘This way.’

  Fry followed him as he walked round the side of the house. Cooper crossed one of the lawns, then stopped.

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘The concrete heron,’ he said.

  ‘We came all this way to look at a concrete heron? Why? You don’t even have a garden of your own, Ben.’

  ‘No. I wonder if it was made out of cement from the Hope works, though.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  Cooper put on a pair of latex gloves and grasped the heron’s head. It took the indignity with a stony glare.

  ‘Ben, what are you doing?’

  ‘If I take the weight a bit –’ he said. ‘Diane, I can’t bend too well at the moment. Could you …?’

  Fry crouched to look.

  ‘The base is hollow,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute …’ She reached out a hand.

  ‘I shouldn’t touch it. Fingerprints, you know. But I take it there’s a key under there?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the back-door key, I suppose. But this means somebody could have used it to get into the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fry shook her head. ‘No, Ben.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘If somebody used the key to get in and kill Rebecca Lowe, why would they put it back?’

  Cooper gently lowered the heron back into position and removed his gloves.

  ‘Habits die hard,’ he said. ‘If you’re used to handling keys all the time, it’s important to get into the habit of putting them back exactly where you got them from.’

  Fry nodded. ‘All right. I’ll get someone up here to check for prints.’

  ‘I think the concrete is probably useless for prints, especially after all the rain.’

  ‘But the key is perfectly dry.’

  Slowly, Fry walked back to the hedge and looked through it at the path they’d used to cross the field.

  ‘And you’re right,’ she called. ‘If he came under the railway bridge and parked where we have, it’s just a short walk.’

  ‘I had no trouble, despite my injured leg.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘So it would be easily manageable,’ said Cooper. ‘Even for a man with a touch of arthritis in his knee.’

  Fry nodded again, and Cooper went to stand alongside her at the hedge. Below the embankment of the distant railway bridge, he could see a row of static caravans, and the rustic log walls of the nearest holiday lodge.

  Then Cooper saw what he hoped for. He saw Diane Fry smile for the first time in days.

  ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this bit,’ she said.

  And then, after all that, she sent him back to the office to put his feet up and rest his leg. He wasn’t even allowed to be present at the arrest or take part in the search. Ben Cooper had never taken inactivity well. Now he felt like an invalid who had to be kept out of the way. A liability.

  Somebody had brought him a coffee, but he let it go cold on his desk while he sulked. He didn’t want to appear to be enjoying himself when they came back from the caravan park.

  Then, when he finally saw Diane Fry coming through the door, Cooper threw his legs off the desk and couldn’t suppress a small gasp of pain.

  ‘Well, we found the knife,’ said Fry. ‘Do you want to guess where?’

  ‘In one of the old caravans,’ said Cooper, rubbing his leg. ‘Did he try to blame it on Iraqi refugees, by any chance?’

  ‘Not this time. But you’re right. Connie seems to have watched him like a hawk, so his options for disposing of it would have been limited and I suppose the old ’van seemed as good a place as any to hide it. Nobody else went there except him.’

  ‘And Will Thorpe, when he was staying at the site. And us, when we asked to see inside them.’

  ‘Poor Mr Proctor – he must have been sweating bricks for days. Well, it was obvious all along that he was frightened. But it wasn’t Mansell Quinn he was frightened of. He told us that himself, several times.’

  ‘I don’t know if you noticed,’ said Cooper, ‘but when we were in the office that day he made a bit of a fuss about finding the keys for the old ’vans.’

  ‘So he did.’

  ‘I thought it was odd, because the rest of the keys were all neatly organized and labelled on their hooks. But there was one key that he had to get out of a drawer. That’s why he made a performance of it.’

  ‘I thought he was just being awkward.’

  ‘Also, Proctor tried to pretend he didn’t know Quinn was coming out of prison last Monday. But he must have known – he’d spoken to Rebecca Lowe earlier in the day. I checked the phone records – it was the office number at Wingate Lees that Rebecca rang, not the Proctors’ home number. It would have been Ray she spoke to.’

  ‘It seems likely. Connie told us he kept her out of the office.’

  ‘And it wasn’t a short call. So I wondered what else they might have talked about.’

  Fry took off her jacket. She looked warm, but not dissatisfied with the day’s work. ‘Sounds as if you’ve been doing a bit of thinking while we were out, Ben.’

  ‘There wasn’t much else to do.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think that when Rebecca Lowe phoned, she told Ray Proctor she knew about Alan, and that she was going to tell Quinn the truth, if he came back.’

  ‘Tell him that it was Alan who killed Carol? But Quinn had already figured that out for himself years ago, thanks to Simon.’

  Cooper nodded. ‘Yes. But neither Rebecca nor Proctor knew that.’

  ‘Are you sure?�
��

  ‘How can I be? We’ll never know what was going through Will Thorpe’s mind, or how much he told Rebecca. This is total conjecture, Diane, but it’s the only way it makes sense.’

  ‘You mean Ray Proctor had no reason to shut Rebecca up? It achieved nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cooper. ‘If only Will Thorpe had told her the whole truth, it could have saved both their lives.’

  Fry sat down suddenly and stared at him. ‘But, instead, Rebecca’s threat must have upset Proctor badly.’

  ‘So badly that he needed a drink. We know Ray Proctor drank at the Cheshire Cheese. He always has done, and he’s never altered his habits. Some people never do. He was out drinking that Monday night – Connie mentioned it. She said he came back late.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘The landlord confirms Proctor was in the Cheshire Cheese that night. Which means he’d have seen Quinn – remember, Quinn was in the bar from about ten o’clock.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he did see him,’ said Fry.

  ‘Yes, I think he did. Quinn checked in and went up to his room, then came back down to the bar later. I think Proctor saw Quinn come into the pub, and so he made a quick exit.’

  ‘And he went to Parson’s Croft?’

  ‘To see Rebecca Lowe,’ said Cooper. ‘He thought that’s where Quinn would go, so he wanted to get there first.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out.’ Fry looked at him. ‘It’s almost like the Carol Proctor case all over again, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’d been drinking heavily for a while by then. And he was desperate to stop Rebecca telling Quinn the truth.’

  ‘But the boot impressions, Ben – they matched the prints at the field barn where Will Thorpe was killed. Quinn was definitely at Parson’s Croft that night. You can’t escape that fact.’

  ‘Yes, he was there all right. It’s ironic, but by the time Proctor saw him in the pub he’d already been to Parson’s Croft. And Rebecca was still very much alive when he left. I’m sure he just stood at the bottom of the garden and never even approached the house, let alone went in.’

  ‘But why?’

  Cooper remembered the images of Quinn captured on the security cameras at Hathersage and Castleton. His expression had been difficult to read at the time, but it came back to Cooper now.

  ‘I think he was frightened,’ he said. ‘His courage failed him. I think he couldn’t face Rebecca after all that time.’

  ‘He couldn’t face her sober, you mean?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So Rebecca was alive, you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cooper. ‘If his courage hadn’t failed him at that moment, Mansell Quinn might have saved her life.’

  Fry was silent for a moment. ‘It remains to be seen how co-operative Raymond Proctor will be. Without his prints on the back-door key for Parson’s Croft, we’d have had no evidence to justify the search. We knew Rebecca Lowe made a phone call to Proctor that day, but so what? They’d known each other for years. OK, so Proctor was drinking at the Cheshire Cheese that night, where he might or might not have seen Mansell Quinn, and he might or might not have left the pub when he did. Again, so what? Why shouldn’t he get out of the way rather than risk a confrontation? We have no witnesses to say Proctor went to Parson’s Croft, no one who saw his vehicle on the farm track, and no tyre impressions. There was no DNA at the scene, nothing. If Proctor had used a bit of logic and kept the key, or just wiped it, or worn gloves, he’d still have been waiting for the right moment to dispose of the knife.’

  ‘Logic doesn’t necessarily work at a time like that, does it?’

  More members of the team were arriving back in the office now. Their voices could be heard in the corridor, loud and excited. Downstairs, Ray Proctor had been processed, booked in and allocated his cell. Cooper wondered whether he’d be sent to Gartree to start his sentence. And whether, in fourteen years’ time, he’d find himself walking out of the gates of HMP Sudbury, abandoned by his family and about to slip through the cracks in the system.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Fry. ‘Proctor must have been really worried about Will Thorpe. Full marks to your persuasive powers for getting him to take Thorpe back again, Ben.’

  ‘Proctor made sure he didn’t stay, though.’

  ‘And Quinn finally sorted the problem out for him.’

  ‘I suppose we still haven’t located Quinn?’ said Cooper.

  ‘No. But he’ll turn up somewhere. Not even Mansell Quinn can slip through the cracks completely.’

  Gavin Murfin came in, smiling and sweating. ‘Hey, Ben,’ he said, ‘We don’t need to do a DNA test on you. Did I ever say that?’

  ‘Yes, you did say that, Gavin.’

  ‘I know, but it’s amazing. Did you check to see whether your Dad ever pulled Alan Proctor?’

  ‘No. But Dad would have given any fifteen-year-old boy a second chance,’ said Cooper. ‘He always did with youngsters.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that, too,’ said Fry.

  She’d perched on her desk as the room filled up, looking relaxed and enjoying the atmosphere. Or at least, that’s what Cooper thought she was doing.

  ‘I heard he preferred to take the initiative into his own hands and just give them a ticking off, or a bit of friendly advice,’ she said. ‘Like Gavin says, a real old-style copper. You wouldn’t get away with it these days. Not for a minute.’

  Cooper turned to face Fry. He managed to hold her gaze for once, despite the fact that he knew she could see straight through him.

  ‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ he said.

  ‘Not quite everyone, Ben.’

  He wasn’t sure who she was referring to. Who didn’t get a second chance? Mansell Quinn or Alan Proctor? Or was she referring to him? Or even to herself?

  It reminded Cooper that he’d come nowhere near to understanding Diane Fry the way she seemed to understand him. At times, he felt as though he was getting closer to an insight into her mind, but she always drifted away again, like something too fragile to be grasped in the hand.

  He couldn’t remember which of the Castleton show caves contained a well-known calcite formation – a stalactite and stalagmite that had grown towards each other until they were only four centimetres apart. Just four centimetres away from touching, and merging together. But geologists had calculated that it would take at least another thousand years before they finally met, if ever.

  Cooper cast around for something to say that would take her mind off the subject, something that might restore the personal understanding they came so close to now and then.

  ‘How is Angie, by the way?’ he said.

  Fry slid off her desk. She came towards him slowly and leaned her face towards his, touching her hand lightly on the sleeve of his shirt, where it lay like a branding iron against his skin.

  ‘Ben, did you happen to get any additional information out of Mansell Quinn, anything that would help us to clear his name and prove that it was Alan Proctor who killed Carol?’

  ‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘I didn’t.’

  She stared at him, and Cooper still couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  ‘OK.’

  Of course, the one mind that Cooper had no trouble understanding was his father’s. He and Joe Cooper were very much alike, as everyone pointed out. They both believed in a second chance. For Mansell Quinn and Alan Proctor, it was too late. But had Sergeant Joe Cooper attempted to conceal the presence of a fifteen-year-old boy at a murder scene? It seemed possible that someone had stopped the music, turned off the upstairs light and wiped the Coke bottle. Had those efforts been in vain? Cooper hoped not. And he didn’t know if he’d undo what his father had done fourteen years earlier, even if he could.

  He felt a sudden chill run up his spine and along the back of his neck, as if someone had opened a fridge door behind him, and he turned to the window. It was open, but the air coming in was no icy draught. What he’d felt was a gust of air from a world where it w
as much colder than a humid summer in Edendale.

  The window looked down on to the car park, and Cooper saw Simon Lowe walking to his car. He must have completed his formal statement, and had probably been kept waiting around for a while. Andrea was waiting in the car, and she got out of the passenger seat to meet him as soon as he appeared. There was another woman sitting in the back of the car, somebody Cooper didn’t recognize. The fiancée, Jackie, perhaps? They had a wedding planned for next April, and an awful lot of work to do on their new house if they were going to start a family.

  ‘Diane,’ said Cooper, ‘did you ever track down the teacher who caught Simon Lowe bunking off school and made him go back in?’

  ‘No,’ said Fry vaguely. ‘He gave me the man’s name, but it turned out he retired years ago, and has since died of a heart attack. Funny – it reminded me of your father’s partner, PC Netherton. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. It was just the last loose end, really.’

  ‘It’s good to clear up loose ends. But you were wrong about one thing, weren’t you, Ben?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘None of it had anything to do with your father. So that’s one problem out of the way.’

  ‘Yes, Diane.’

  But Cooper didn’t think that was right. For a moment, his father had walked back into his life, to remind him that he was dealing with people, and not with a sequence of numbers and chromosome locations on a DNA profile. He was in no doubt that it was Sergeant Joe Cooper himself who’d crept up behind him a second ago and breathed that icy breath on the back of his neck. His father had sent him a message with a single cold touch, an unspoken word in his ear.

  Cooper watched Simon and Andrea Lowe standing together for a moment by the car. They weren’t touching or speaking, just looking into each other’s faces, communicating the way you could with a sibling. Then they threw their arms around each other and hugged so tightly it must have been painful.