One Last Breath. Stephen Booth

you say you can’t tell us … ?’ said Fry.

      ‘I mean I can’t. I don’t know where Mansell is.’

      ‘Has he been here?’

      Mrs Quinn unfolded her hands and folded them again in the opposite direction. She gazed back at Fry steadily. ‘When?’

      ‘In the past twenty-four hours, perhaps?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘He hasn’t visited you? Or phoned you?’

      ‘No. I don’t know where he is.’

      ‘Nevertheless, we hope you might have some suggestions about where he could be heading. What friends does he have in the area? Is there somewhere he might think of going to stay – a place where he’d feel safe?’

      ‘I don’t think there’s anywhere safe for him,’ said the woman calmly.

      Cooper realized that Mrs Quinn had a slight Welsh accent. It wasn’t so much the way she pronounced the words as the intonation, the unfamiliar pattern of emphasis in a sentence.

      ‘Do you have any other sons or daughters?’ asked Fry.

      ‘No, Mansell is my only child.’

      ‘Any other relatives in the area?’

      She shook her head. ‘We’re not from Derbyshire originally. Both my family and my husband’s are from Mid Wales.’

      ‘We know of two friends of your son’s,’ said Fry. ‘Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe.’

      ‘I’m aware of the names,’ said Mrs Quinn. ‘That’s all.’

      ‘Can you name any other friends of his?’

      ‘No. I don’t believe he has any remaining friends. Not in this area. I don’t know what acquaintances he might have made in prison, of course.’

      Cooper wasn’t writing very much in his notebook. He looked at the old lady with her dyedblonde hair, and thought she seemed out of place. Despite the trellises and patios and dormer windows of the estate outside, Mrs Quinn had a sort of poise that suggested she’d be more at home sitting in a grand drawing room at Chatsworth House or one of the county’s other stately homes.

      ‘You were visiting your husband’s grave at the church earlier?’ he said.

      ‘Certainly. He died many years ago.’

      ‘Before your son went to prison?’

      ‘Yes, thank God. The trial would have killed him.’

      Cooper was so thrown by the unconscious irony that he forgot the next question that he’d been planning to ask. But Fry either didn’t notice or didn’t care about such things, because she stepped in with exactly the right question, as if they’d been thinking along the same lines for once.

      ‘Did you visit your son in prison very often, Mrs Quinn?’

      The hands moved again. They stayed unfolded this time, and instead tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. Her neck was slightly red from her exposure to the sun on the hill above the village.

      ‘He got them to send me a visiting order sometimes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t always use it.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’

      ‘And what about his wife?’ asked Fry.

      ‘Rebecca? What about her?’

      ‘Did she make a good prison visitor?’

      ‘She visited him a few times, but she went less and less often, and eventually stopped going altogether.’

      ‘Why do you think she stopped, Mrs Quinn?’

      ‘At first, Rebecca said it was too difficult getting there by public transport, and she couldn’t afford taxi fares and a hotel overnight. But then she gave another version. She said she couldn’t keep up the pretence any more once Mansell was inside.’

      Cooper looked up and saw Gavin Murfin go past the front window. He waved, shrugged, and signalled that he was going round to the back of the house.

      ‘Pretence? What pretence?’ said Fry.

      Mrs Quinn shrugged very slightly, as if merely settling her T-shirt more comfortably around her shoulders. ‘Well, marriage,’ she said. ‘You know.’

      ‘I don’t think I understand what you mean, Mrs Quinn.’

      ‘I mean that she couldn’t be bothered making the effort to keep their marriage together.’

      ‘Ah. Not if it meant putting herself out to visit her husband in the nick?’

      ‘That’s right.’

      ‘And then they divorced.’

      ‘She couldn’t wait, I imagine. That’s the way things go these days. Couples don’t stand by each other, not like we used to do in my day. When we made our marriage vows, they counted for something. Now, they’re planning the divorce before they’ve swept up the confetti. It’s utter hypocrisy, in my view.’

      ‘You don’t think much of your former daughter-in-law?’

      ‘It’s not obligatory, is it?’

      ‘Well, no …’

      ‘I didn’t think she was bringing the children up very well, if you want the truth.’

      ‘That’s not an unusual view for grandparents to take,’ said Fry.

      ‘That’s as may be. But I was convinced it was the reason Simon went off the rails the way he did when the murder happened. If he’d been a more stable, disciplined child, like his sister, it might have been different. But he’d already been allowed to get into bad ways by the time he was fifteen. He was mixing with the wrong company, missing lessons at school. Drinking alcohol, even.’

      ‘None of that was your son’s fault, I suppose? He was Simon’s father, after all.’

      ‘I have my own views,’ said Enid Quinn firmly. ‘I know where I put the blame.’

      Fry paused. Out of the corner of his eye, Cooper saw her give him a slight nod.

      ‘Mrs Quinn, your son’s former wife, Rebecca Lowe, was attacked and killed last night at her home in Aston,’ he said.

      Enid Quinn could no longer keep her hands still. Unsteadily, she felt in her pocket for a handkerchief, but didn’t use it except to twist it in her fingers.

      ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Andrea called me this morning. That’s my granddaughter. She still keeps in touch. But Mansell can’t have done that to Rebecca. He wouldn’t.’

      ‘Why not?’

      She didn’t answer, and Fry began to get impatient.

      ‘You realize we have to take this very seriously, Mrs Quinn,’ she said. ‘It’s no use protesting that your son is innocent. He was convicted by a court and served his sentence. And now we think he’s a danger to more people. We need to find him.’

      Mrs Quinn seemed to gain a little more dignity.

      ‘I was not going to protest Mansell’s innocence,’ she said. ‘On the contrary, I’m quite sure that he was guilty of murdering Carol Proctor.’

      ‘You are?’

      ‘Yes. But you see, whatever I think, it won’t stop my son from seeking what he wants.’

      ‘And what’s that, Mrs Quinn?’ said Fry.

      ‘Retribution.’

      9

      Adopting his best manner with grieving members of the