Then Hitchens had deliberately let a silence develop. Cooper had felt he was being watched for a reaction, much as the DI might watch a suspect in the interview room. Almost everyone showed physical signs of their state of mind, no matter how hard they tried to conceal them. And Cooper knew he was no exception.
‘Sir, does this mean that you think … ?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hitchens. ‘I don’t know what Mansell Quinn has in mind. He might come looking for me, but I doubt it. I was only a junior DC - he probably wouldn’t even have known my name. I didn’t get any publicity, or any of
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the credit. You don’t, as a detective constable. I’m sure you know that, too.’
Hitchens smiled, but Cooper found he couldn’t work his face muscles sufficiently to respond.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Obviously, I’ve had to mention this to DCI Kessen,’ said Hitchens. ‘In case it’s relevant to the current enquiry in any way.’
‘I understand.’
‘Quinn had been in trouble prior to the murder, you know. In fact, your father had arrested him twice before - once for receiving stolen goods at a building site he was working on, and the second time for an assault in a pub. There was a general punch-up, and both Quinn and Thorpe were involved.’
‘Will Thorpe was there, too?’
‘They were good friends, don’t forget.’
‘Right.’
‘Quinn was charged with assaulting a police officer, among other things. Do you want to guess who the officer was?’
‘I remember it,’ said Cooper. ‘Dad had a black eye and a foul temper for weeks afterwards.’
‘But he didn’t take even a day off work, which the defence made use of at the trial, in an attempt to minimize the injuries.’
‘He could have lost an eye. Quinn used the thick end of a pool cue.’
‘That was denied by the accused, and there were no eye witnesses willing to confirm it. In fact, it was never really clear whether Quinn or Thorpe was nearest to Joe Cooper at the time. The court had no choice but to acquit Quinn on that charge.’
‘And then there was the Carol Proctor case.’
‘Yes. I always thought it was a bit lucky myself, the way Quinn’s case fell apart before it even came to a trial. But we were more than happy to get a conviction, of course.’
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‘In what way did you think it was lucky, sir?’
‘The whole alibi business. Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe alibi’d each other, and Quinn’s wife was at work. So the only person without an alibi was Mansell Quinn himself.’
‘Right. The obvious suspect - the one found at the scene.’
‘The clincher, though, was the knife. It had Quinn’s fingerprints on it, and Carol Proctor’s blood. Also, the blade matched several of the wounds on her body. According to the postmortem report, some of the wounds couldn’t be conclusively matched to the knife, but some were definites. Quinn said he had never touched the knife, hadn’t touched the body, hadn’t walked in the blood.’
‘He might have been in a state of shock and not aware of what he was doing.’
‘That one was tried by the defence.’
‘It’s possible, sir.’
‘They only tried it out of desperation. They could see their client was going down for life.’
Hitchens passed across a file. ‘I’ve dug out the interview transcripts. Why not read them, Cooper, and see what you think?’
Cooper took the file reluctantly. ‘But this was in 1990,’ he said.
‘Yes, 1990. You won’t remember those days, Cooper - you haven’t been in the force long enough. PACE and tape recorders were still quite a new thing then, and some officers regarded them as a nuisance. But it’s much better the way it is now. All open and above board, and no chance for some clever defence lawyer to claim you tricked his client into confessing to something he didn’t do.’
‘Are you saying -? Was there anything wrong with Quinn’s conviction?’
‘God, no.’ The DI shook his head. ‘I’m not saying that at all. Nobody doubted it.’
‘Except Mansell Quinn.’
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‘Well, that’s the point.’
Hitchens sat back in his chair and swivelled towards the window. Looking past his shoulder, Cooper could see mould on the roof of the football stand. It seemed to symbolize the stagnation of Edendale FC, permanently stranded in the lower division of one of the pyramid leagues, forced to sell off their best players to pay their debts, with no money to buy new ones and match-day attendances dwindling to hundreds. Or maybe it just symbolized the damp weather.
‘Quinn’s opinion wouldn’t matter ordinarily,’ said Hitchens. ‘At the time, he was just another violent thug caught bang to rights. And now he’s another embittered old lag. But in view of what happened to his wife, it looks as though he could be an extremely dangerous old lag. You get my meaning?’
‘He claimed he was innocent at first, but put in a guilty plea,’ said Cooper. ‘Then he changed his story again in prison.’
‘Can you think of any reason for that?’ said the DI carefully.
