‘I asked you what you’d call him. A loner, an outcast, a tramp?’
‘No, sir. He was just a man who was lost without an institution to look after him.’
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Cooper said it without having thought the idea through. But it sounded right. Leaving the army, Will Thorpe had been like a prisoner released after a long sentence, with his carrier bag full of clothes and no idea how much a bus fare home was. Thorpe and Quinn hadn’t been all that different.
As they left Rakelow House, Cooper noticed one more thing. The house stood on the western side of the hill. It meant that old Mr Thorpe would always be able to see the weather coming off the moor, if he took the trouble to look.
Gavin Murfin had been teamed up with a PC in plain clothes, and they had toured shops in Castleton with their photos of Mansell Quinn. Old-fashioned legwork, Murfin called it. He looked more exhausted than Ben Cooper had ever seen him, and he was stuffing a beef and mustard sandwich into his mouth with an air of desperation. Yet Murfin also seemed remarkably pleased with himself as he patted the PC on the arm like a friendly uncle and sent him to fetch the coffees.
The reason soon became obvious. Murfin had brought back another CCTV tape, and officers were gathering round the screen as he slotted it in.
‘This is from one of the craft shops in Castleton. It’s on the main street, near the car park.’
‘Near the bottom of the riverside walk to Peak Cavern?’
‘You got it. The staff recognized Quinn from the print we got off the camera at Hathersage. They remembered him coming in the shop on Thursday afternoon.’
Somebody leaned forward to press the button and run the tape, but Murfin wanted to do it himself.
‘Here we go.’
The view showed the interior of a small shop, crowded with shelves and display cases. The dark shapes glimpsed through the glass were objects made of Blue John, the spectacular mineral that was found only in one hill above Castleton. In the foreground, small items of jewellery glittered
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under a glass-topped counter. There were other kinds of stock, too: mugs and aprons, tea towels and postcards, the inevitahle tourist stuff.
A group of girls were in the shop. They were jostling around the cabinets in a scrum of bare arms and white hips, with small rucksacks hanging from their backs. But after a moment or two, the crowd cleared, and a solitary figure was revealed behind them.
Murfin froze the picture. He approached the screen and pointed a finger at the figure.
‘Here - see?’
When he took his finger away from the screen, it left a greasy smudge of butter obscuring the very area he’d been trying to draw their attention to.
But Cooper had no doubt at all that he was looking at Mansell Quinn. The man was standing right at the back of the shop, completely still, so that the throng of girls seemed to break like a wave against a rock, passing on either side of him. Quinn was dressed only in shirt and jeans, his shirt open across his chest. Cooper thought he could see a scatter of thunder flies in the sweat on his throat and along his collar bones. Two straps could be seen under the folds of shirt, as if he were carrying the rucksack, too. Quinn wasn’t looking at the Blue John or other items displayed around him; he was staring straight ahead, as if his attention was fixed on something underneath the camera lens.
‘They’re only those tiny cameras,’ said Murfin. ‘You know the ones - like a little eyeball on a bracket? So the quality isn’t too good.’
There were a few mutters, but the conversation died down as Quinn’s gaze moved. He looked up slightly, and was staring directly at the screen. There was no doubt this time.
‘He’s a cocky bugger, isn’t he?’ said someone.
‘You can say that again,’ said Murfin. ‘Very sure of himself.’
Cooper saw a member of the shop staff move across in
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front of Quinn and pause for a moment. She must have spoken to him, because Quinn turned to look at her. She was probably asking him if she could help. Was there anything he was looking for in particular? He looked at her as if he didn’t understand, and shook his head. She spoke again. Perhaps she spoke more slowly and clearly this time, taking him for a foreign tourist. Quinn turned away from the assistant towards the door, and the rucksack became visible on his back.
Despite the grey, grainy nature of the image, Cooper felt he could read Quinn’s expression. Not cocky or sure of himself. Not that at all. Quinn looked like a man who was looking for something. But it was something he knew perfectly well he’d never find.
The moment DI Hitchens returned to his office, Cooper knocked on the door and asked to speak to him.
‘What is it, Cooper?’
‘The Carol Proctor case, sir.’
‘Look, I thought we agreed ‘
‘It’s only one thing. I just wondered - were there no other suspects considered?’
Hitchens sighed. ‘Well, the husband was looked at, obviously. Especially when some of the victim’s friends said there had been arguments between the couple.’
‘Arguments? What about?’
‘We don’t know. But all married couples have arguments at some time, don’t they?
‘I suppose so.’
‘Anyway, it wasn’t considered significant enough to follow up. If there had been any evidence against the husband, it might have been different.’
‘It might have been,’ said Cooper.
Hitchens looked at him closely. ‘I know, I know. It sounds as though we had our sights set on a likely suspect
