Diane Fry didn’t even glance at the chart. No doubt she’d checked the new information already, before anyone else came into the office.
‘It’s a resources decision, Ben,’ she said. ‘Why should we commit staff to needless T/Is and chasing down witness statements when a ready-made suspect presents himself on a plate? It’s manpower on the ground that’s vital now. Quinn can’t be far away.’
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Cooper shook his head. ‘We’ll just end up doing the work later on.’
‘Let’s hope not.’
‘DCI Tailby wouldn’t have done it this way. He’d have made sure all the possibilities were covered.’
‘Yes, but that approach fills up the system with vast amounts of irrelevant data. There’s a lot to be said for being more focused.’
‘Provided you’re focusing on the right things,’ said Cooper.
‘Well, we’ll see who’s right, won’t we?’
To be fair, plenty of intelligence was available this morning - calls were flooding in from members of the public responding to the local TV news bulletins. A decision had been taken to release Mansell Quinn’s name as a person being sought to help with enquiries, and all the usual phrases. The broadcast of his mugshot had netted a shoal of potential sightings, even before the attack on Simon Lowe in Castleton last night.
‘Any news from the hospital?’ said Cooper.
‘He’ll be all right,’ said Fry. ‘A few cuts and bruises, that’s all. He’s lucky the people in that area take an interest in each other’s welfare. In a lot of places, he would have been left to bleed.’
‘I don’t suppose he saw anything?’
‘No. He was attacked from behind, in the dark. And it seems the resident who heard the disturbance and found him made a big performance of putting all his lights on and creating a lot of noise before he came out of his house, so the assailant was well away before he got near.’
‘Sensible.’
‘But not helpful to us, in the circumstances. Lowe’s attacker could have been anyone - an opportunist mugger, or just some drunk who thought Lowe looked at him a bit funny in the pub. Who knows?’
Cooper looked at the map again. ‘But the temptation is to chalk it up to Quinn, right?’
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Fry shrugged. ‘Scenes of crime are there, but I don’t think we should hold our breath for anything useful. If it was Quinn, he’ll be off to the next place by now. He vanishes too easily for my liking.’
‘He knows the area well,’ said Cooper. ‘But why would he attack his own son?’
But Fry had turned her attention to a call from a lady living on Moorland Avenue, Hathersage.
‘Near Mansell Quinn’s mother?’ she asked the actions allocator in the incident room.
‘That’s right. She’s lived there for a long time and knows Quinn by sight. But she wasn’t sure until she saw his photo on the news last night. Now she says she saw him in the street near his mother’s house on Monday afternoon.’
‘I knew old Mrs Quinn was lying,’ said Fry. ‘I just knew it.’
Cooper felt uncomfortable at the tone of her voice. He didn’t like being lied to himself, but it went with the territory. Some people lied to him automatically, simply because he was a police officer, and all he could hope for was an opportunity to expose the lie. Fry’s reaction sounded too much like gloating.
‘You’ll get a chance to ask her to explain herself, anyway,’ he said.
‘Damn right.’
A large-scale map of the Hope Valley had also been pinned to the wall of the incident room. Rebecca Lowe’s house in Aston was marked in red on the slopes of Win Hill, halfway along the valley, as was Castle Street, where a local resident had found Simon Lowe lying unconscious in the churchyard.
Blue stickers flagged Raymond Proctor’s caravan park outside Hope and Mrs Quinn’s home on the estate at Hathersage. A third blue sticker had been reserved for when they located William Thorpe. The bottom of the map reached as far south as Bradwell and Hazlebadge, and right up to the
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Camphill gliding club on Abney Moor. Just off the map was Bridge End Farm.
‘Damn it, the quickest and easiest way for him to get from Hathersage to Aston would be on the train,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘We need to talk to the station staff at both ends and see if they remember him.’
The railway line from Sheffield to Manchester, passing through Totley Tunnel and up the valley, with stations at Hathersage and Hope. The Sheffield stretch was also used by cement trains from the works. But what Hitchens had noticed was that Hathersage railway station lay right behind the estate where Mansell Quinn’s mother lived, while the stop at Hope was only a mile from the marker indicating Rebecca Lowe’s house at Aston. The red blobs made the connection obvious.
‘I think they’re both unmanned stops,’ said Cooper. ‘He’d have to buy a ticket from the guard on the train.’
‘Is that how it works? Well, check it out, Cooper. See if you can map his route to Rebecca Lowe’s house. Any sightings of him. You know the routine.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This is all very well,’ said DCI Kessen, settling the team down again. ‘But we’re only establishing where Quinn has been, not where he is now. Or at least where he might be heading next.’
‘With respect, sir, the key to his intentions surely lies in the past,’ said Fry. ‘Either with the circumstances of the Carol Proctor case fourteen years ago, or with what happened while he was in prison.’
The quite agree, DS Fry. So what about while he was inside? Any interactions with his family or other contacts that might cast light on his intentions?’
