One Last Breath. Stephen Booth

it wouldn’t be true.

      A party of hikers went by. Their clothes were dazzling, and their walking poles the latest anti-shock design. Getting kitted up for a day on the Derbyshire hills was becoming an exercise in fashion awareness, and all the accessories had to be exactly right. Soon, people would be choosing their rucksacks to match the colour of their eyes.

      A white-haired man walked towards them on the pedestrianized area. The first thing Cooper noticed was his comb-over. Every time he saw one, Ben prayed that he’d have enough sense not to do it himself when he was losing his hair. Be bald, wear a hat – anything but a comb-over.

      The man was wearing a silver-grey sports jacket and a blue silk shirt that hung outside his trousers. He had dazzling white trainers and a white toothbrush moustache that was probably the height of fashion when it had been black. His hair was long, too, even allowing for the requirements of his comb-over. He looked like an ageing British character actor playing the role of a faded gigolo.

      Cooper was so distracted by the shopper that at first he didn’t notice a man in a security company uniform gesturing to him from the doorway of W.H. Smith’s. He was a retired police officer who had moved into the expanding private security business, so now he got a better uniform to wear.

      ‘I think there’s a couple of those Hanson brothers just been in here,’ he said. ‘Right toe-rags, they are. There’s a warrant out for both of them. I don’t know them myself, but it looked like them from the pictures.’

      Cooper stopped. ‘I know them, but …’

      ‘You might want to keep an eye out for them. They’re probably somewhere down near the High Street.’

      Amy and Josie were looking at the man and listening with interest.

      ‘Look, I’m off duty,’ said Cooper.

      The security man noticed the girls for the first time. ‘Oh, right. You’ve got your kids with you.’

      ‘They’re not mine, actually.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘They’re my nieces. My brother’s children.’

      Cooper had realized before he even stopped to speak to him that the ex-bobby was just the right age to have worked with his father. He found himself fidgeting immediately, anxious to move on before the reminiscences began, the stories of late turns together as young PCs. Because they would be followed very quickly by the assurances of how much everyone had respected and loved Sergeant Joe Cooper, and how devastated they’d all been when it happened.

      It wasn’t so much of a problem at the West Street station in Edendale these days, but the retired coppers were the worst. These were the blokes who had been counting the days and hours until they could collect their full pensions after thirty years’ service. Yet now you would think they’d been forced to leave behind the happiest days of their lives.

      ‘Must get on,’ said Cooper. ‘Nice to see you.’

      ‘Hey, these must be Joe Cooper’s grandchildren, then.’

      But Cooper just waved and smiled as he put distance between himself and the doorway of Smith’s. Josie had to run to catch up with him.

      Cooper thought occasionally of his own old age, though it was usually a brief speculation about whether he would live longer than his father had. He didn’t feel any great desire to be a dad himself. Not just yet, anyway. But when he was old, when he was as helpless as his own mother was now, who would be there to look after him? At the present rate, there would be no one.

      But that day was decades away; not something to worry about now. It was only the approach of his birthday that was making him think about ageing. And it wasn’t just any birthday this time, either.

      Joe Cooper’s birthday had been in July, too. That meant they shared the star sign of Cancer, the crab in its shell. An astrologer would probably have been delighted that it had taken Cooper so long to move out of Bridge End Farm for a place of his own. A reluctance to leave the family home, a need to cling on to his shell. He would be thirty years old on Saturday, for heaven’s sake.

      As for his job, Cooper was sure he’d be asked one day soon to undergo a bit of lateral development and say goodbye to CID for a while. Somebody was going to turn up with a sharp knife to prise him out of his shell.

      ‘You should have introduced us to that man,’ said Amy. ‘He knew Granddad.’

      ‘I thought you wanted your lunch?’

      ‘It wasn’t very polite.’

      ‘You’re not polite either,’ said Josie to her sister. ‘You say “arse”.’

      Cooper wondered for a moment if he was being selfish. He hadn’t wanted to hear a retired bobby’s stories about his father. In fact, he’d been worried that this ex-copper might have been one of those called to the scene of Sergeant Joe Cooper’s death, and would therefore be carrying a picture in his head of the body lying in its pool of blood. He definitely didn’t want to go there.

      But Amy and Josie might want to talk about their grandfather with someone who’d known him, someone other than a member of their own family. It might help them understand what had happened.

      Cooper shook his head. That was something else he wasn’t going to take responsibility for. Matt could negotiate that minefield himself.

      At the corner of High Street and Clappergate, a few yards short of McDonald’s, Cooper saw two of the Hanson brothers across the road. He recognized them without any problem. He’d arrested them himself before now, and in fact had been to school with their oldest brother. These two had failed to answer to bail given them by a lenient magistrates’ bench and had been rumoured to have left Derbyshire altogether, for fear of ending up back inside. Cooper reached automatically for his mobile phone, only now realizing that he had forgotten to switch it back on after the cave rescue exercise.

      Then he noticed Amy watching him with the sort of expression that only a child could manage, an expression that came from her natural occupation of the moral high ground when dealing with adults.

      ‘You’re off duty,’ she said. ‘You’re not supposed to be finding criminals today.’

      Cooper looked at her, pausing with his finger on the first button. He was supposed to take the girls to McDonald’s and buy them a Happy Meal before he took them home to Bridge End Farm, preferably safe and uncorrupted.

      ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But sometimes they seem to find me. That’s just the way it is.’ And he continued to dial.

      5

      The bus from Ashbourne to Edendale was almost empty. Mansell Quinn took a seat near a back window, where other passengers couldn’t see him. He watched the scenery gradually change to the familiar White Peak pattern of fields and drystone walls, until a rash of limestone quarries erupted from the landscape near the A6. They were so noticeable on the edge of the national park that Quinn was surprised they were still working.

      In Edendale, he went to find the well in Spa Lane. The water still ran from its brass pipe, and people were queuing with plastic containers. A man with a tray of two-litre bottles was collecting gallons of it. Quinn waited until they’d all gone, then bent to take a drink in his cupped hands. He’d expected the water to be cold, like a natural stream. But it was strangely tepid and had a faint mineral tang – not as he’d remembered it at all.

      All the way from Sudbury, he’d been building up courage to enter a shop. He’d passed several charity shops on the way to the well, and had noticed that all the assistants were women. As were most of the customers. He was worried that women tended to notice too much.

      Then he saw a couple heading towards the door of the Oxfam shop in Clappergate, and he walked in behind them, almost hanging on to their coattails to help him over the threshold. He bought a faded check shirt for two pounds fifty. Encouraged, he moved on, and found a pair of jeans the right size for him in Scope a few doors away.