‘Ah, here we are.’
He pulled a magnifying glass out of a box containing a tangle of paper clips, leaking ballpoint pens and old business cards. He carried it back to his desk and looked more closely at the photographs of the footprints in the Quinns’ sitting room. Under magnification, the photos became grainy and the detail unclear. But there was something odd about the edge of one of the impressions - a blurring that was more than just the way the foot had been put down; a sort of halo effect, or a shadow of the footprint’s outline.
‘Interesting.’
Cooper went to find Li/ Petty in the scenes of crime department. The SOCOs occupied a small room that had been converted from some other use a few years ago, and its partition walls gave it an unfinished look. Liz’s computer had a row of yellow post-it notes stuck along the bottom edge. A small brown teddy bear wearing a BBC Radio Derby T-shirt sat on top of the monitor alongside a plastic hedgehog that bobbed on a spring with every movement of air.
Though a civilian, like the other SOCOs, Petty was wearing a navy-blue sweater with the Derbyshire Constabulary
313
logo. She looked at the photographs that Cooper had brought with him.
Cooper pointed out the area around the footprint. ‘I was wondering what you think of this.’
‘Mmm. It’s nothing you could draw a firm conclusion from. It could just be a trick of the light. When was this taken?’
‘October 1990.’
‘Ah. I don’t know what techniques they’d have been using at the time, or what light sources they had. No one could prove this was anything other than a shadow, Ben.’
‘OK. But what would be your guess?’
‘We don’t guess in this department.’
‘I’m not asking you to put in a written report, Liz. What’s your instinct?’
‘Well, I’d say there might be an earlier impression that’s 1
been almost covered by this one. At least, that’s a possibil ;|
ity - but only one possibility. It proves nothing, Ben. Whoever the footprints belonged to might have stepped in the same place twice.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. It was just an idea.’
Cooper took the photo back. Yes, Quinn had walked around the body, there was no dispute about that. And at some point he’d stepped in a footprint that had already been there. But whose? His own? Or had Mansell Quinn unwittingly obliterated the one bit of evidence that might have saved him?
‘Did you say 1990?’ said Petty. ‘Is this the Mansell Quinn case?’
‘That’s right, Liz.’
‘No DNA, then. Profiling hadn’t come into general use. In fact, the first conviction using DNA evidence was the year before - a case in Leicestershire. A bloke who was sent down for rape. And they got him because he persuaded a mate to give a sample for the DNA test in his place, which was a bit of giveaway.’
314
‘I know.’
‘So they wouldn’t have taken samples from a suspect in 1990, not even after he was convicted.’
‘Yes, I know, Liz. But
She looked up at him. ‘But what?’
‘I wondered whether there might be some exhibits still in storage from this case that could yield a bit of DNA.’
‘In storage? Have you seen our storage?’ Petty sighed. ‘Well, I suppose you might be lucky, depending on what it was and how it was handled. Now and then you can still come across something in an evidence bag attached to a case file.’
That’s the sort of thing.’
‘But, Ben, what good would it do? This bloke was sent down for murder, and he served his time. Are you trying to prove that he didn’t do it? I mean, what’s the point?’
‘I know, I know. I understand what you’re saying, Liz.’
‘You’ve got a sample from this bloke for comparison, have you?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ Petty handed him the photos back. ‘Ben, for heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.
‘We can’t work miracles, you know.’
‘Just forget it, Liz.’
Cooper began to walk away, regretting that he’d raised the subject at all. It had been a ludicrous idea. And worst of all, Liz Petty had asked the one question he didn’t know the answer to. What on earth was wrong with him?
Back at his desk in the CID room, Cooper saw Diane Fry leaving the DI’s office. He tried to catch her eye, but she looked away. He supposed she must have been talking to the boss about him again. But it didn’t really trouble him - she regularly told him to his face that he was too easily distracted. It was entirely his own fault, not hers.
315
‘What have you got scheduled, Ben?’ said Fry as she passed his desk. ‘Old Mr Thorpe - William’s father.’
