The really don’t understand what you mean, Detective Sergeant. This is all too much to take in.’
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Fry knew it was time to leave, and she studied the Lowes for the last time. The brother and sister always looked so close that it made her wonder what it would take to split them apart and set them against each other. There’d be something, no doubt. There always was.
‘What I mean, sir,’ she said, ‘is that DNA isn’t everything. As Raymond Proctor said to me himself only yesterday, blood doesn’t always have to be thicker than water.’
When he saw Ben Cooper back in the office, Gavin Murfin was the first to slap him on the back, as if he were some sort of hero. But Cooper knew perfectly well that he wasn’t anything of the kind.
‘Well, we don’t need to do a DNA test on you, Ben,’ said Murfin. ‘There’s no mistaking who your father was. You’re so like him it’s unbelievable.’
Cooper smiled. It was the reaction expected of him, and he’d practised it.
‘So they tell me, Gavin.’
‘I don’t mean just the way you look. It’s the way you go about the job. Joe Cooper was the same - he wanted to know everything about everybody. Who was doing what to who, how often and what with. It seems a bit of an old-fashioned idea to us modern coppers, but I suppose it has its advantages. He knew Mansell Quinn. And I’ll bet he knew Alan Proctor, too.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘I gather he was a bit of a teenage tearaway, always getting into fights. I wonder if your Dad ever pulled him in for anything?’
‘I don’t know, Gavin.’
‘Away, when he was nineteen the magistrates finally lost patience and he got sent down for twelve months. He was past the age for youth detention centres by then, so he got a spell in Gartree. And guess who he ran into there, among Her Majesty’s guests?’
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‘Mansell Quinn.’
‘Right in one. And it was Quinn who knocked Alan Proctor’s front teeth out. He had to wear dentures after that. It must have been a right bugger for a lad in his twenties. According to the records at Gartree, Quinn would never give a reason for the assault. But they obviously had something between them. Who says they don’t let men form close relationships in prison?’
Cooper could see Diane Fry busy at her desk. She seemed to have shaken off the hay fever, or at least the drugs were working. She looked less tired this morning than he’d seen her for days. At Simon Lowe’s house, Fry had been very much back on her old form - combative, direct and getting results. But missing all the subtleties.
‘Thanks for letting me come with you this morning, Diane,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘That’s OK, Ben. As long as you don’t take it into your head to have any more outings. You need to rest that leg. Stay in the office. Do some paperwork.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Simon Lowe is coming in later on to make a formal statement and have a chat with the DI. You can bet Lowe wasn’t very happy about it, but that’s too bad. I thought we got a lot out of him, didn’t you? It seems to tie up a loose end or two, anyway.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cooper. ‘That’s what it does.’
Fry looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a pity we can’t interview Will Thorpe again, though. He was very important in all this, wasn’t he? Thorpe felt under an obligation to Quinn.’
‘Of course he did, Diane. He made a choice fourteen years ago - Quinn hoped Thorpe would lie for him, but he didn’t. Even when you’ve made a right decision, you can still feel guilty about it. That was why he agreed to do favours for Quinn when he was due out of prison.’
‘Right. For a start, he got addresses for him. But when
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Thorpe actually saw Quinn, he started to worry about what he’d do when he got out. So Will Thorpe must have told Rebecca Lowe the truth, mustn’t he?’
‘All of the truth?’ said Cooper, frowning. ‘Everything that he knew from Quinn - including about Alan Proctor having killed Carol?’
‘Yes, why not? He was trying to clear his conscience, I suppose. He knew he hadn’t got much longer to live.’
‘Let’s hope it worked, then.’ He frowned again. ‘But wait did Will Thorpe die knowing that Rebecca had been murdered, or not?’
‘Oh yes, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Don’t you remember? We told him ourselves.’
Cooper closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes, we did.’
He’d been standing at the window of the CID room, but now he limped back to his desk. His leg wasn’t too painful, but he was resigned to being stuck on desk jobs for a week or two. He wondered about asking Fry if he could move his desk next to the window, so he could get a bit more light.
Cooper was well aware of his own role in the death of Alan Proctor, and it didn’t make him a hero. The only reason that Alan had entered the cavern that night was because his elderly neighbour told him Cooper had gone there to look for him. Maybe the old girl really had thought he was a suspicious character, and had laid it on a bit thick. Otherwise, Mansell Quinn might well have waited in vain for Alan to appear on his security check, thanks to the false alarm at Speedwell.
It was nothing if not ironic. At one stage, Cooper had imagined that Quinn was trying to draw him into the cavern. But he had never been Quinn’s intended victim. Alan Proctor had. And, in the end, Cooper had made it possible for Quinn to achieve his aim.
And now where was Quinn himself? It seemed as though the caverns had simply swallowed him and digested him.
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Cooper looked at Gavin Murfin. What was it Murfin had said a few minutes ago? ‘Like father, like son.’ Quinn had used the same words that day in Peak Cavern. At the time it had seemed he was talking about Cooper and his father, and he’d meant it as a compliment.
He thought about fathers and sons while he tried to clear up some of the stuff that had gathered in his trays.
