age.’
Mrs Cottrill’s voice faltered. She brushed a nonexistent strand of hair from her forehead. Her hand was very slender, too - the veins and tendons showed clearly through the skin.
114
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been such a difficult time. Thank goodness the children are old enough to cope with it better. They were both worried, you know, about their father coming out of prison. More worried than Rebecca was herself. She was obviously much too trusting.’
‘Did Mrs Lowe say why she stopped visiting Mansell Quinn in prison?’ said Fry, sticking to her line of questions.
‘Why? It was understandable, wasn’t it? The divorce was going through. She had her own life to lead.’
‘But the children - Simon and Andrea. He was their father, after all. It meant he didn’t see them again.’
‘They were teenagers,’ said Mrs Cottrill. ‘Old enough to make up their own minds. They could have gone to visit their father, if they’d wanted to. But they never did, not since then. You couldn’t expect Rebecca to force them to go, if they were frightened.’
‘Frightened?’
Dawn Cottrill looked at her. Fry realized that the woman hadn’t really been focusing on her until now. Her gaze had been fixed somewhere over Fry’s head, at the trellising on the wall of the house.
‘I imagine you’ve been inside a prison,’ she said. Tn your job.’
Fry felt suitably put down. Mrs Cottrill’s tone of voice suggested that her job made her almost as bad as the prison inmates.
‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘It isn’t pleasant for visitors. Especially for children. But, as you say, Simon and Andrea were teenagers by then. They were old enough to know what was going on.’
Mrs Cottrill considered for a moment. She looked at Gavin Murfin, who had sensibly chosen to remain silent, taking notes. He took a drink of the fruit juice, which Fry hadn’t tasted. She saw him look around the table, as if hoping for some home-made cake to go with it.
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‘Rebecca once said that Mansell had started to be rather strange when they visited him.’
‘Strange in what way, Mrs Cottrill?’ said Fry.
‘He used to grab at the kids, wanted to hold on to them too tightly, tugged at their hair even. Well, Simon in particular. He was always especially fond of Simon, and I suggested to Rebecca that it was just the frustration of not being able to hold his own children, you know, that made him a bit rough. The lack of physical contact. Anyway, the children didn’t like it, and they were frightened.’
‘I see.’
‘I said they were teenagers, but I recall now that Andrea must have been about twelve at the time. She’s nearly three years younger than Simon. You can’t imagine what might be going through a child’s mind at that age.’
‘Would you have said Mansell Quinn was a violent man generally?’
‘Actually, no I wouldn’t. No one was more surprised than I was when he committed that dreadful act. I didn’t know Mrs Proctor, so I can’t say what their relationship had been to have provoked that kind of outburst from him.’
‘And now?’
‘This? I can’t explain it. I have no explanation for it at all.’
Fry detected a slight break in the woman’s voice. She might not have much longer before the interview began to slip away from her.
‘It’s Simon I’m mostly worried about now,’ said Mrs Cottrill.
‘Why?’
‘I had Rebecca and both the children to stay in my house for a while after it happened. I mean, the first time. They were dreadfully shocked and upset, of course. We all were. But Simon went completely in on himself. Rebecca took him to see a counsellor at one stage, when he was having problems at school. I don’t know what this will do to him now.’
‘We will need to talk to him, I’m afraid,’ said Fry.
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‘I suppose so. But you’ll get more out of Andrea. She spoke with her mother on the phone shortly before it happened. She might be able to give you an idea of what Rebecca was thinking in the last hour or so of her life.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Fry.
‘You know, I’ve thought about Mansell Quinn quite a bit over the years,’ said Dawn. ‘We have to make an attempt to understand what goes on in the mind of someone like that especially if we’ve become their target. We always want to know “why”, don’t we?’
‘Sometimes you can ask “why” for as long as you like,’ said Fry, ‘but there’s never going to be an answer.’
She pushed herself out of the settee and left her drink sitting on the table on the warm veranda.
At Wingate Lees caravan park, Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin found that the Proctors lived in a large house that stood a little way back from the site itself, sheltered by a line of dark conifers. Leylandii, in fact. They had grown fast, and would soon be so big that they’d block off the light from the windows of the house.
Thanks to the Victim’s Charter, a probation officer should have contacted the Proctors to let them know when Mansell Quinn was being moved to an open prison, and when he came due for release. Maybe Raymond Proctor had even been allowed to give his views to the parole board when Quinn’s review came up. At least it ought to mean that their news wouldn’t come as too much of a shock.
The man who answered the door looked suspicious, though - even more suspicious than most citizens would on finding Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin standing on their doorstep. He was reluctant to open his door fully and peered at them in irritation.
‘Don’t worry, sir, we’re not more of those flamin’ Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ said Murfin cheerfully.
