For a while, Cooper found himself waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. A major murder enquiry was a rigid bureaucracy, with clearly defined responsibilities and not much chance for anyone to work outside the system. As a divisional detective, hed be allocated to the Outside Enquiry Team. Somebody had to do the physical part of the investigation, even if the SIO opted for HOLMES.
Of course, Cooper regretted that hed have to let Amy and Josie down and skip the visit to the caverns. But they would understand they always did.
Finally, he saw Diane Fry walking between the desks in the CID room.
Youre supposed to be on a rest day, arent you, Ben? she said.
Yes, but
You might as well take whats left of it off.
Dont you need me? said Cooper, hearing his own voice rising a pitch in surprise. And sensing, perhaps, that sinking feeling of disappointment.
Not today. It looks like a self-solver. We just need to get some leads on where Mansell Quinn is and catch up with him.
Are you sure, Diane?
Thats what theyre saying further up.
Well, I dont mind, because Ive got things planned. It just doesnt feel right, thats all.
Fry shrugged. We just do what were told, dont we?
It felt strange to Cooper to be leaving the office and going home when a major enquiry might be about to start. But, if he stayed, hed become eligible for overtime. Somebody was making tough budget decisions in an office upstairs, gambling on an early conclusion.
Before Cooper could escape from the building, DI Hitchens put his head round the door and caught his eye.
DC Cooper.
Yes, sir?
Have you got a few minutes? Just before you go.
Hitchens inclined his head to his office, and Cooper followed him in.
Shut the door.
Hitchens looked serious more serious than Cooper could remember seeing him for a long time, not since the DI had failed his interview for a chief inspectors job. He also seemed a little uncomfortable, hesitating at his desk as if about to sit down, but then remaining where he was at the window. Apart from the football ground, there was nothing for him to look at outside, only the roofs of houses in the streets that ran downhill towards the centre of Edendale.
Cooper waited until the DI pulled his thoughts together.
I thought Id tell you this privately first, Ben, he said, rather than during a team briefing.
Now it was Cooper who was starting to feel uneasy. He could sense bad news coming. Was he going to be reprimanded for something? Had he committed a serious enough offence to face a disciplinary enquiry or worse? Cooper swallowed. He knew that he had. But time had passed, and hed become convinced that he was safe. There was only one person who might have shopped him.
He studied the DIs face to try to gauge how serious it was. Hitchens hadnt even bothered to use the positive-negative-positive technique that was taught to managers. He ought to have praised Cooper for something first before he tackled the difficult subject, so as not to destroy his morale. Maybe that meant it was something else. A transfer, perhaps. Cooper had a few years of his tenure in CID to go yet, but that didnt mean they couldnt dispense with his services sooner.
Its the Mansell Quinn case, said Hitchens, taking Cooper by surprise. I mean, the murder of Carol Proctor.
Yes, sir?
Its funny that you should be the one to raise the point about the professionals involved in the case being at risk. Im thinking about the police officers particularly.
You were one of the officers involved, sir.
Yes, I was, Cooper.
But how does that affect me? Is there something you want me to do?
Hitchens smiled.
You think I might be asking you to protect me? Thats very good of you, Ben. But Ill take my chances.
Then the DI sat down at last and folded his hands on the desk, intertwining his long fingers nervously.
This is a bit difficult, Cooper, he said. But, first of all, youve got to remember that the Carol Proctor killing was nearly fourteen years ago. I was a divisional DC then, much like yourself. A bit younger, in fact, but every bit as keen. Anyway, it was my first murder case, so I remember it well. I made notes of everything. Of course, things were done a bit differently in those days.
Cooper nodded. He had run out of things to say.
All the senior officers on the case have long since retired, said Hitchens. The SIO died three years ago. Heart attack.
Im sorry. Was he a good detective, sir?
Cooper knew that the first Senior Investigating Officer you worked for on a major enquiry could make a lasting impression, like an influential school teacher. He still thought fondly of DCI Tailby, who hed worked for a couple of times.
A good detective? Not particularly, said Hitchens. He was an old school dick some of them were still around in the early nineties. He had his own ideas about how things were done. Well, he wasnt the only one, of course.
No, sir.
My old DS is still around, but hes a training officer at Bramshill now, Hitchens continued. That only leaves me from the main enquiry team that put Mansell Quinn away. However, the actual arrest wasnt made by CID but by uniforms. The suspect was still at the scene when the first officers arrived and so the FOAs arrested him. They found the knife, too. Obviously, Quinn hadnt given any thought to concocting a story before the patrol turned up.
Cooper shook his head. I still dont understand, sir.
Hitchens sighed. I know how much the death of your father meant to you, Ben. I think it still bothers you a lot, am I right?
Yes, sir. The words hardly came out, because Coopers mouth felt numb. His mind had latched on to the acronym FOA first officers to arrive. A uniformed patrol responding to a 999 call. He had a sinking certainty that he knew what the
DI was going to say next. So in the Mansell Quinn case ?
Hitchens nodded. Yes. After Carol Proctor was murdered, he said, the arresting officer was Sergeant Joe Cooper.
11
Another enquiry team had been assigned the action on Mansell Quinns friend, William Thorpe. And good luck to them. According to the initial intelligence, he was living on the streets, as so many ex-soldiers did.
To Diane Fry, living on the street meant one of the big cities Sheffield or Manchester, maybe even Derby. Edendale didnt have many homeless people. Those who hung around the town were too much of a nuisance to the tourists to be tolerated for long. If Thorpe had been surviving locally, hed have been picked up by a patrol, but there was no record of it. The only leads were his drunk-and-disorderly charge in Ashbourne, thirty miles to the south, and the existence of an ex-wife, long since divorced. So that action was likely to tie up two unlucky DCs for a good while.
Fry was on victims background. The only trouble was, shed been teamed up with Gavin Murfin. Their first task was a visit to Dawn Cottrill, Rebecca Lowes sister, who had found the body.
Mrs Cottrill lived at the end of a modern cul-de-sac in Castleton. It was what the designers called a hammerhead close, opening out into two stubby arms at the top. Fry understood this to be something that the planners insisted on to provide room for fire appliances to turn round. Otherwise, the whole point of these modern developments was to allow people to feel they were out of the way of the passing hoi polloi, while still being handy for the shops.
As they drove into the road, two young men in dark suits and white shirts were walking up the drive of one of the houses. They had short hair and carried leather satchels.
Watch out, said Murfin. Jehovahs.
What?
Jehovahs Witnesses. Dont stand still when youre out in the open, or theyll get you.
Just concentrate on the job, Gavin.
By the time theyd found somewhere to park the car, the two young men had disappeared maybe somebody had actually let them in. As Fry looked around the cul-de-sac, she realized it must have been one of the last developments built in Castleton before the national park planning regulations were tightened. To stem the influx of affluent outsiders, the only planning permissions given now were to affordable homes for people whod lived in the village for at least ten years or had strong family ties with the area.
Well, Im not local enough, said Murfin when she mentioned it. And Im damn sure youre not. They probably lynch Brummies around here.
Im from the Black Country.
You sound like a Brummie, though. Maybe youd better let me do the talking, Diane.
What does Dawn Cottrill do? asked Fry.
Shes a lecturer at High Peak College. Economic history.
Educated, then.
Well, obviously.
Maybe youd better let me do the talking in that case, Gavin.
Dawn Cottrill had iron-grey hair in a bob. Her face was pale, and her cheekbones seemed very prominent. Fry could almost have believed that her hair had turned grey overnight since her sisters death, that her face had been sharpened by the pain.
It seems impossible to believe that something like this could happen again, said Mrs Cottrill. But this time
Yes, I understand, said Fry. When you think something is a long way in your past, its very shocking.
They had been ushered through the house on to a sort of wooden veranda overlooking the garden. The decking had been partly covered with rugs and set out with a table, on which stood glasses and a jug filled with fruit juice and ice. Fry and Murfin sat on a settee with a blue blanket thrown over it and cushions scattered everywhere.
Dawn Cottrill sat with her back to the sun, perhaps to avoid having the light in her face as she talked. With a steady hand, she poured them a drink. Fry was impressed by the womans composure, a reassuring sign when her job was to ask difficult questions.
Mrs Cottrill, do you happen to know when your sister last saw her ex-husband, Mansell Quinn?
It would be the final visit Rebecca made to him in prison. Not the open prison at Sudbury, but about two before that. Im sorry, but they seemed to keep moving him from one prison to another. I think this one was somewhere in Lancashire.
And that last visit was several years ago, I think?
Oh, yes. I cant remember how long exactly, Im afraid. But Andrea was still quite young.
Before the divorce and her new marriage, though?
Of course. Rebecca was only married to Maurice Lowe for eighteen months before he died. He had a heart attack, you know. Hed been playing squash. I always thought it was too energetic a game for a man of his age.