As quietly as he could, Thorpe slipped the carrying case out of the pack. The zip made a noise that sounded loud to him. But a few feet away, Quinn didn’t react. His concentration was entirely on the vehicle approaching up the hill.
Thorpe knew he couldn’t risk Quinn wandering around loose any longer. While Quinn was around, he would always be in danger. He’d never be able to sleep safely again for the rest of his life.
With a surge of excitement and fear that gripped his chest and made him gasp, Thorpe slid the crossbow slowly out of his pack. He had already snapped out the arms and unfolded the stock, and he was thankful that he’d left the weapon cocked before he went to sleep, with the automatic safety on. But when the string was pulled back and locked into the trigger, it made an audible click that even the sound of the car engine wouldn’t have covered. Quinn could have heard that.
Now Thorpe’s hand shook as he fumbled for one of the eighteen-inch bolts he’d taken from Ray Proctor’s house. It was a long time since he’d handled a crossbow, and he prayed his aim would be good. Relying almost entirely on his sense of touch in the darkness, he placed the bolt under the front sight bracket and on to the track unit, then felt for its fletches and turned one down into the track groove. Lastly, he slid the bolt back under the retainer and into the trigger mechanism.
The car passed by. Its headlights swung briefly across the front of the building, and Thorpe could see Quinn for a moment as a blacker shape in the darkness of the barn, a momentary
340
glitter of rainwater on his smock picking him out as a target.
Quinn raised his head only when he heard the safety button released on the side of the trigger. The noise was distinctive, and Thorpe could picture the puzzled frown on his face, perhaps even the first hint of fear.
Thorpe sighted into the darkness towards the low doorway, holding his breath and feeling for the trigger a little more quickly than he should have.
‘Mansell,’ he called. ‘I believe you.’
And Thorpe waited one second for Quinn to start turning, before he shot him.
341
31
Saturday, 17 July When Ben Cooper arrived at Siggate, a uniformed inspector from Traffic section was practically spinning on the spot. The reflective hoops and patches on his yellow jacket flashed and flickered in the lights as he paced along the tape. He was listening to the crackling voices from his radio, shouting instructions to somebody at the other end, then glaring at the field barn as if it had delivered a personal insult.
‘We can’t sustain this situation for long,’ he said. ‘We’ve had to close the road all the way back to Castleton and all the way up to Bradwell so we can operate diversions for the traffic. Highways have got the carriageway up in Castleton for repair work. I’m warning you, it’s going to be complete chaos for twenty miles in every direction in a couple of hours’ time. We’ll bring the whole of North Derbyshire to a halt.’
The inspector swore when he was ignored and went back to his radio.
The exact time a motorist had called in on his mobile phone to report the body had been logged by Control, but it wasn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of when the incident had occurred. The road was quiet at this time of the morning.
342
And even if other drivers had passed by earlier, they had either seen nothing or not bothered to stop.
The body was out of sight of the road, inside the abandoned field barn. The motorist might be wishing he hadn’t called it in, now that he was being asked to explain what he’d stopped for.
Cooper found himself quite by accident standing near DCI Kessen, who’d just arrived and was being briefed by the Crime Scene Manager.
‘There’s a good bit of blood inside,’ said the CSM. ‘And splashes of it in the nettles, and between the building and the gate over there.’
‘What about the road?’ said Kessen. ‘Traffic was still going through for a while - enough to contaminate the scene?’
T’m not too concerned about the road. It looks as though your man came and went on foot.’
‘Really?’
The CSM pointed towards the gateway. ‘We’ll be able to see things a lot better when it’s daylight, but Liz has found some traces leading off into the field there. The poor bugger inside obviously never made it as far as the gateway, so it seems a fair bet that it’s going to be your suspect’s exit route. The field is nice and empty, thank God. There’s nothing worse than a herd of inquisitive cows trampling a crime scene. They’re even worse than a bunch of heavy-footed coppers, and that’s saying something.’
‘Any ID?’
‘There doesn’t seem to be anything on him. You might have a better chance of identifying him when you get him to the mortuary.’
‘Sir, could I get a closer look?’ said Cooper. ‘I might recognize him.’
Kessen nodded. The CSM kitted Cooper out in a scene suit and guided him to a point where he could see the face of the dead man.
343
The body lay in the inner room of the field barn, sprawled on its back on the dirt floor. Cooper had to bend almost double to duck through the doorway on the stepping plates laid by the SOCOs. Lights had been set up in two of the corners, illuminating the victim like an exhibit in an art gallery. The floor around him seemed to glitter where flecks of quartz in the limestone reflected the lights. The smell was pretty bad in here. Cooper wasn’t sure how much of it was the effect of extreme violence and death on the body’s natural processes, and how much resulted from whatever had gone on in the field barn previously. Some SOCO would have the pleasure of analysing the screwed up tissues and crisp packets.
There were bloodstains, too, and a lot of disturbance of the ground. But Cooper’s attention was drawn to the face. It was dark red, almost purple in the artificial light. What he could see of the neck was marked by deep, black bruises, the result of far more violence being used on the victim than was necessary.
‘Any luck, Cooper?’
‘Yes, I know who it is,’ he said. ‘It’s William Thorpe.’
DCI Kessen sighed and turned to the officers waiting by their vehicles.
