Fry tried to dial her home number, but eventually her own voice cut in on the answering machine. That didnt mean Angie wasnt there, just that she wasnt bothering to answer the phone. She ought to have a mobile of her own. For a moment, Fry thought of buying her one she had a feeling she could add an extra handset to her account quite easily. But that would be like treating her sister as a child.
Like a neurotic mother, Fry found herself imagining the worst: Angie still sitting in the armchair at Grosvenor Avenue, heating white powder on a piece of tin foil and inhaling the fumes through a tube. Chasing the dragon was that still what they called it? Heroin dealers existed in Edendale, of course, as they did in every market town in England, cutting their product for sale on the street with glucose, flour, chalk or even talcum powder. But in E Division they werent quite such big business or so well organized as the city operations, where Asian gangs had been moving in recently to compete with the East Europeans.
Clean, Angie might be. But most worrying of all for Fry was the question of where her sister might have been getting a hundred pounds a day or more to feed her habit. And who shed been scoring the smack from.
Ben Cooper stood over the grave and read the inscription: Here lies buried it began. But thats what they all said. In this case, was it true?
Its ten feet long, if its an inch, said Gavin Murfin. I dont believe it.
Old churchyards always filled Cooper with a sense of history. It was the thought of generation upon generation of the same families mouldering together under his feet. According to the memorial stones around him, scores of Eyres and Thorpes, Proctors and Fieldings had been buried here over the centuries. But this churchyard seemed to have mixed history with folklore.
A thirty-inch thigh bone is impossible anyway, said Murfin. It must have been an elk or something.
An elk?
A reindeer. A moose. God, I dont know. Something big, anyway. Something that lived around here in the Ice Age.
The Church of St Michael and All Angels stood high above Hathersage next to an earthwork built by Danish invaders. Transco had dug a hole in the road outside the church gates, and the smell of gas was strong when they got out of the car. But at least mobile phones worked up here. In many areas of the Hope Valley it was impossible to get a signal.
Murfin had produced a ham sandwich from his pocket. He brushed some crumbs on to the grave, as if he were a grieving relative scattering the first handfuls of soil at a funeral, paying tribute to the dead. The plaque on the grave was quite specific: Here lies buried Little John, the friend and lieutenantof Robin Hood.
Is there any evidence? said Murfin. I mean, have they done the DNA?
Among the newer graves to the west of the church, they could see a figure in a red T-shirt, with short blonde hair. She was wearing yellow rubber gloves, and she was dusting a headstone with what looked like a hearth brush. She bent occasionally to pull at a few weeds.
You definitely think thats her? said Murfin.
Theres no one else here. And she answers the description the neighbour gave.
OK, lets talk to her then.
No, we ought to wait until shes finished, said Cooper.
Why?
Shes tending her husbands grave, Gavin.
Right. And you dont want to interrupt her while shes enjoying herself. I suppose shell start singing in a minute, and do a little dance.
Gavin
Yeah?
Are you having trouble with your marriage, by any chance?
Trouble? No, everythings going according to plan. Ill be dead in a year or two, and Jean and the kids will get the insurance money. Then everybody will be happy.
The woman in the red T-shirt straightened up, brushed off her hands and began to walk back through the rows of gravestones. From the front, she looked more her age, which must have been approaching seventy.
Whos going to take the lead? said Murfin.
I suppose Id better. She might need to be handled sensitively.
Thats what I thought, too.
As the woman came nearer, she looked across at the two detectives, probably aware that theyd been watching her. She was only a few paces away, clutching a plastic bag with her gloves and brush in it, when Cooper raised a hand to stop her.
Excuse me Mrs Enid Quinn?
Can I help you?
Cooper showed his warrant card. Detective Constable Cooper and Detective Constable Murfin, Edendale CID. We really need to talk to you, Mrs Quinn. You havent been answering your phone.
She was a slim woman with pale skin like lined parchment. Liver spots freckled her bare arms and thin hands. She looked up at Cooper with a faint smile, ironic and resigned.
Police? Well, I wonder what you could possibly want to talk to me about, she said.
Enid Quinn took Ben Cooper and Diane Fry into her sitting room. Inside the house, her red T-shirt made her look even paler. She settled on a sofa and sat very primly, her hands folded on her knees, as she listened to Murfin and the two PCs trampling up her stairs.
Do I have to tell you anything? she said.
Were hoping for your co-operation, Mrs Quinn, said Fry.
The woman looked at Coopers notebook. My son isnt here.
Where is he, then?
I cant tell you. Sorry.
When you say you cant tell us ? said Fry.
I mean I cant. I dont 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 hasnt visited you? Or phoned you?
No. I dont 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 hed feel safe?
I dont think theres anywhere safe for him, said the woman calmly.
Cooper realized that Mrs Quinn had a slight Welsh accent. It wasnt 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. Were not from Derbyshire originally. Both my family and my husbands are from Mid Wales.
We know of two friends of your sons, said Fry. Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe.
Im aware of the names, said Mrs Quinn. Thats all.
Can you name any other friends of his?
No. I dont believe he has any remaining friends. Not in this area. I dont know what acquaintances he might have made in prison, of course.
Cooper wasnt 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 shed be more at home sitting in a grand drawing room at Chatsworth House or one of the countys other stately homes.
You were visiting your husbands 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 hed been planning to ask. But Fry either didnt notice or didnt care about such things, because she stepped in with exactly the right question, as if theyd 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 didnt always use it.
Why not?
I dont think thats 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 couldnt afford taxi fares and a hotel overnight. But then she gave another version. She said she couldnt 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 dont think I understand what you mean, Mrs Quinn.
I mean that she couldnt 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?
Thats right.
And then they divorced.
She couldnt wait, I imagine. Thats the way things go these days. Couples dont stand by each other, not like we used to do in my day. When we made our marriage vows, they counted for something. Now, theyre planning the divorce before theyve swept up the confetti. Its utter hypocrisy, in my view.
You dont think much of your former daughter-in-law?
Its not obligatory, is it?
Well, no
I didnt think she was bringing the children up very well, if you want the truth.
Thats not an unusual view for grandparents to take, said Fry.
Thats 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 hed been a more stable, disciplined child, like his sister, it might have been different. But hed 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 sons fault, I suppose? He was Simons 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 sons 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 didnt use it except to twist it in her fingers.