One Last Breath. Stephen Booth

she’s not my cup of poison. And I know about poisons. You’ve met my wife, have you?’

      Diane Fry had seen DI Hitchens arriving at the scene. He had to park his car outside in the lane because the driveway was already full of vehicles. As Hitchens headed towards the crime scene van, he looked worried. But he noticed Fry and signalled her over. Then Mr Kessen climbed stiffly out of the van.

      ‘What is it, Paul?’

      ‘I think we have a suspect, sir,’ said Hitchens.

      ‘Already? How come?’

      Fry watched the DI run a hand across his face. Tonight he was looking tired, even before the enquiry had got properly under way.

      ‘You know Mansell Quinn is out,’ said Hitchens. ‘He was serving a life sentence for a murder in Castleton back in 1990, but he reached his automatic release date and left Sudbury Prison this morning.’

      ‘Yes. So?’ said Kessen.

      ‘He hasn’t turned up at his accommodation, and he missed an appointment with his local probation officer this morning.’

      ‘So he’s broken his licence,’ said Kessen. ‘It’s a stupid thing to do, but so what? A domestic killing fourteen years ago doesn’t put him in the frame for anything that’s going off in a fifty-mile radius.’

      ‘No. That’s not it, exactly.’

      ‘You’d better explain.’

      Hitchens took a deep breath and looked at the house across the garden. The helicopter support unit were just beginning a sweep to the north, their thirty-million candlepower searchlight probing the open ground behind Aston. It wouldn’t achieve much, except to annoy the residents.

      ‘The victim here – Rebecca Lowe,’ said Hitchens. ‘She’s the former Rebecca Quinn. At the time of the Proctor killing in 1990, she was married to Mansell Quinn.’

      8

      In Hathersage, it was Gala Week. The village’s main street was decorated with bunting, and a caravan parked on the pavement had been covered in posters advertising the week’s events. Cooper quite liked village galas. He saw that they’d missed the brass band concert, but if they waited until Saturday they could go to a ceilidh and watch the fell racing.

      ‘We’re looking for Moorland Avenue,’ said Diane Fry from the back seat of the car. ‘I thought you knew your way around every town and village in this area, Ben.’

      ‘If we can pull in somewhere, I’ll check the map.’

      For some reason, Gavin Murfin was driving this morning. He wasn’t the best driver in the world, having a tendency to brake suddenly whenever he saw a chip shop. But maybe it was Fry’s strategy to stop him eating in the car while they travelled.

      Murfin drew the car into the kerb. A few yards away, dozens of white-haired ladies were getting off a coach opposite the George Hotel. Hathersage was mostly a tourist stop on the way up the Hope Valley these days, and the village centre seemed to consist mostly of outdoor sports specialists, tea rooms and craft shops. Cooper wound down the window to get some air, only to let in the scent of candles and aromatherapy oils. And, strangely, the smell of fish.

      ‘Remember, when we see old Mrs Quinn, she’ll probably need sensitive handling,’ said Fry. ‘Every mother thinks her beloved son can do no wrong.’

      ‘In this case, her beloved son is a convicted killer,’ said Murfin, tilting his head to see her in the rear-view mirror.

      ‘It makes no difference, Gavin. She’ll be the only person in the world who thinks the bastard’s innocent.’

      Looking around for the road they needed, Cooper noticed various forms of what he supposed would be called community art. A bus shelter had been converted into the ‘Hathersage Travel Machine’, decorated with wheels and photographs of exotic locations. Across the road, cut-out figures had been lined up against a garden wall. They made him think of targets at the police shooting range. Then he saw that some of the people near the bus shelter were actually queuing at a fish van. A bowl under its tailgate was catching the run-off from thawing ice that had kept the fish fresh on its way from the East Coast docks at Grimsby.

      ‘Wind up the window, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘There’s a stink of haddock.’

      ‘Sorry. I’ve got it now.’

      Food was a dangerous topic with Gavin Murfin around. Cooper had already noticed the balti restaurant across the road. He fancied a Chicken Dhansah, but he kept the idea to himself.

      ‘OK, I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to turn round, Gavin.’

      Enid Quinn lived in a small estate off Mill Lane. The old mill itself was still largely intact, though elder saplings were growing out of its chimney. Cooper recalled that Hathersage had once been a centre for the needle-and-pin industry, with local people working at grindstones that filled their lungs with steel dust. The industry was remembered now only because conditions in the mills had led to legislation against children being employed as grinders.

      The original Mill Cottage stood among stone troughs full of geraniums, with climbing roses hanging from its walls, and pink and yellow petals drifting on to a stone-flagged path. Ash trees swayed and creaked in the breeze as a string of cement tankers rumbled over a nineteenth-century railway bridge.

      And then there was the Moorland estate. The houses weren’t particularly new – not built in the last couple of decades, anyway. So the estate had been there most of Cooper’s lifetime, without him suspecting its existence. He’d only ever seen what the tourists saw of Hathersage – the historic buildings, the spire of the church, the gritstone edges in the distance.

      ‘It looks as though we’re in right-to-buy country,’ said Murfin.

      ‘How can you tell?’

      ‘Those first two places had dormer windows. You wouldn’t do that in a council house.’

      A man in blue overalls was smoking a cigarette in the cab of a pick-up truck with the name of a property management company painted on its cab door. Murfin was right – this must be only partly a council estate these days, if at all. Many of the tenants would have bought their cement-rendered semis when the right-to-buy policy came in during the 1980s.

      They parked near a patch of grass on Moorland Avenue, and Murfin stayed by the car as Fry and Cooper walked up the path to number 14. While Cooper rang the bell, Fry looked with amazement at an ornamental pig squatting by the doorstep. She gave it a tentative kick to see what it was made of. It didn’t budge.

      ‘Cement,’ said Cooper.

      Getting no answer to the bell, he knocked. His knock created a hollow sound that echoed through the house.

      ‘It doesn’t look as though she’s in,’ called Murfin, who had been watching the windows.

      ‘Thanks a lot, Gavin,’ said Fry. ‘We’ll take a look round while we’re here. Ben, why don’t you check out that alley by the side of the house?’

      Cooper looked where she was pointing. ‘A gennel, we call it.’

      The gennel ran alongside the garden of number 14 and past a row of houses set at right angles to it. Money had been spent on some of these properties: porches had been added, and driveways opened up. Satellite dishes sat under the eaves. Over here was an imitation wishing well, and there a few square yards of paving for a caravan to stand on.

      Cooper could see into Mrs Quinn’s garden from here. The flowerbeds contained more ornamental concrete figures: squirrels, rabbits, a badger, an otter and a giant frog. At the end of the path he came out almost opposite the railway station. He could see Hathersage Booths and Throstle Nest on the long incline towards Surprise View in the east.

      He turned to walk back and saw Fry beckoning to him. A patrol car had pulled up and two uniformed officers had stationed themselves outside number 14. They’d be attracting