‘We’re hoping for your co-operation, Mrs Quinn,’ said Fry.
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The woman looked at Cooper’s notebook. ‘My son isn’t here.’
‘Where is he, then?’
‘I can’t tell you. Sorry.’
‘When you say you can’t tell us … ?’ said Fry.
‘I mean I can’t. I don’t know where Mansell is.’
‘Has he been here?’
Mrs Quinn unfolded her hands and folded them again in the opposite direction. She gazed back at Fry steadily. ‘When?’
‘In the past twenty-four hours, perhaps?’
‘No.’ ‘He hasn’t visited you? Or phoned you?’
‘No. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Nevertheless, we hope you might have some suggestions about where he could be heading. What friends does he have in the area? Is there somewhere he might think of going to stay - a place where he’d feel safe?’
‘I don’t think there’s anywhere safe for him,’ said the woman calmly.
Cooper realized that Mrs Quinn had a slight Welsh accent. It wasn’t so much the way she pronounced the words as the intonation, the unfamiliar pattern of emphasis in a sentence.
‘Do you have any other sons or daughters?’ asked Fry.
‘No, Mansell is my only child.’
‘Any other relatives in the area?’
She shook her head. ‘We’re not from Derbyshire originally. Both my family and my husband’s are from Mid Wales.’
‘We know of two friends of your son’s,’ said Fry. ‘Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe.’
‘I’m aware of the names,’ said Mrs Quinn. ‘That’s all.’
‘Can you name any other friends of his?’
‘No. I don’t believe he has any remaining friends. Not in this area. I don’t know what acquaintances he might have made in prison, of course.’
Cooper wasn’t writing very much in his notebook. He
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looked at the old lady with her dyed-blonde hair, and thought she seemed out of place. Despite the trellises and patios and dormer windows of the estate outside, Mrs Quinn had a sort of poise that suggested she’d be more at home sitting in a grand drawing room at Chatsworth House or one of the county’s other stately homes.
‘You were visiting your husband’s grave at the church earlier?’ he said.
‘Certainly. He died many years ago.’
‘Before your son went to prison?’
‘Yes, thank God. The trial would have killed him.’
Cooper was so thrown by the unconscious irony that he forgot the next question that he’d been planning to ask. But Fry either didn’t notice or didn’t care about such things, because she stepped in with exactly the right question, as if they’d been thinking along the same lines for once.
‘Did you visit your son in prison very often, Mrs Quinn?’
The hands moved again. They stayed unfolded this time, and instead tugged at the hem of her T-shirt. Her neck was slightly red from her exposure to the sun on the hill above the village.
‘He got them to send me a visiting order sometimes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t always use it.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’
‘And what about his wife?’ asked Fry.
‘Rebecca? What about her?’
‘Did she make a good prison visitor?’
‘She visited him a few times, but she went less and less often, and eventually stopped going altogether.’
‘Why do you think she stopped, Mrs Quinn?’
‘At first, Rebecca said it was too difficult getting there by public transport, and she couldn’t afford taxi fares and a hotel overnight. But then she gave another version. She said she couldn’t keep up the pretence any more once Mansell was inside.’
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Cooper looked up and saw Gavin Murfin go past the front window. He waved, shrugged, and signalled that he was going round to the back of the house.
‘Pretence? What pretence?’ said Fry.
Mrs Quinn shrugged very slightly, as if merely settling her T-shirt more comfortably around her shoulders. ‘Well, marriage,’ she said. ‘You know.’
‘I don’t think I understand what you mean, Mrs Quinn.’
