‘It seems a good bet. Looks as if DI Hitchens was right - Quinn has got a list.’
‘Thorpe was the odd one out, though,’ said Cooper.
‘How do you mean?’
‘We know where all the others on the list are.’
‘Always assuming,’ said Fry, ‘that Quinn’s list is the same as ours.’
‘But this one doesn’t feel right,’ said Cooper.
‘Why?’
Cooper was looking at the map showing Quinn’s appearances in the Hope Valley. ‘It’s in the wrong place somehow. But then, the pattern is probably just accidental.’
‘Of course it is. Quinn isn’t planning all that carefully, is he?’
‘No,’ said Cooper doubtfully.
He remembered descending Siggate into Pindale from the field barn. He’d been able to see all the way to the top end of the Hope Valley, where the yellow street lights glowed along the A625. He’d made out the dark belt of trees that marked the route of the railway line from the cement works.
348
It passed Hope Valley College and swung towards the main line near Killhill Bridge.
A little to the east, he’d seen the lights of the Proctors’ caravan park, Wingate Lees. But the lights had looked dimmer there. They were half hidden by the railway embankment and the slope behind the site, as if trapped between the shadows.
‘What arc you reading that’s making you look like that?’ said Fry.
Her voice sounded nasal and muffled. She had a tissue pressed to her nose, and her eyes were red.
Cooper showed her Rebecca Quinn’s statement.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Quinn’s wife said he was the kind of man who stored things up.’
‘For days, she said. Not fourteen years.’
‘It might have been a shorter time if he’d had the opportunity to get the anger out of his system. But he didn’t have the chance on the inside. He has now, though. Now that he’s out.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘It still doesn’t feel right, Diane. Tracking people down one by one isn’t an explosion of rage. It’s far too calculating. Too cold. Exactly the things Rebecca said Quinn wasn’t.’
‘Ben, nobody doubts Quinn’s guilt.’
‘Don’t they?’
‘The evidence was pretty convincing - at least, the jury must have thought it was.’
‘It’s all circumstantial,’ said Cooper.
‘One piece of evidence wouldn’t have been enough to get a conviction on its own, I grant you. But, taken as a whole, there was enough to make a substantial case. The jury decided it went beyond the possibility of coincidence. Quinn was there, Ben. Right on the spot. He had Carol Proctor’s blood on his hands.’
‘But what exactly is the evidence that Quinn killed his ex-wife on Monday night?’
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‘There were no signs of a breakin. Somebody came into the house who knew her, or who had a key. Unless she left the back door unlocked.’
‘There’s no way Quinn would’ve had a key to Parson’s Croft.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Are there any traces that identify him?1
‘You know we don’t have his DNA on record, Ben. There are some fibres at the scene that might be from his clothing, but until we locate him, we can’t attempt a match.’
‘It’s all conjecture, isn’t it?’
‘He’s a convicted killer, Ben. He was released from prison that morning, and promptly disappeared. We know he turned up shortly afterwards in the Hope Valley area - we have plenty of hard evidence for that. There are witnesses, we’ve got him on film. And then his wife is killed within a few hours. He came back to the area for a reason, Ben.’
‘Like I said, it’s conjecture.’
Fry sighed. ‘Rebecca Lowe knew she was at risk from him. She had a phone conversation with her daughter about it that afternoon.’
‘Actually, Andrea said that her mother insisted she wasn’t worried.’
‘And she went on to say that her mother was just putting on a brave face for her benefit.’
‘It means nothing either way. Not as evidence.’
‘Ben, your trainspotter got a photograph of Quinn within half a mile of Parson’s Croft that evening. Does that mean nothing?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘All this will become academic when we find Quinn himself.’
‘You hope,’ said Cooper.
