‘Well, his mother doesn’t seem to have visited him very often,’ said Fry. ‘She was cagey about it when we spoke to her, but her name doesn’t appear in the visitor records at
156
Sudbury for the two years he was there. We’ve haven’t checked back any further than that, but if we need to …’
‘No, that’s enough.’
‘And the victim, Quinn’s ex-wife, hadn’t visited him for ten years. Though I got two different versions of why that was - one from his mother, and one from her sister, who both might be considered biased, I suppose.’
‘These two close friends of Quinn’s ‘
‘Former close friends,’ said Hitchens. ‘I think that’s how I described them.’
‘Don’t tell me - they were so close they couldn’t be bothered to visit him in prison?’
‘It’s true he doesn’t seem to have had many visitors to speak of.’
‘OK, the two friends … ?’
‘Raymond Proctor and William Thorpe. Proctor, of course, was the husband of Quinn’s first victim.’
Till grant you, that’s enough to damage a friendship. Your best mate kills your wife, it puts a bit of a dent in the old camaraderie.’
‘Not necessarily.’
Cooper turned to stare in amazement at Murfin. It was unlike him to offer constructive comments during a briefing. He was more the sarcastic muttering under his breath sort of man.
‘What do you mean, DC Murfin?’
‘Well, it depends on what sort of relationship you have with your wife. The state of your marriage, like. Some folk would be glad to get rid of their better halves. Grateful to the bloke who did her in, even.’
DCI Kessen looked at him silently for a moment, his mind almost visibly ticking over. Cooper reflected that this was one of the differences between working for Mr Kessen and their former DCI, Stewart Tailby. Cooper had liked Tailby, but he’d have put Murfin down within seconds.
157
1
‘Was this possibility looked into at the time?’ asked Kessen, looking towards Hitchens.
Hitchens hesitated. ‘I can’t remember, sir.’
‘Only, you never know whether it might have been a conspiracy between the two of them,’ said Murfin, sensing he was the man of the moment. ‘Proctor might have set Quinn up to do the business on his missus, but then backed out of the deal, like.’
‘Yes, I think we understood what you were suggesting,’ said Kessen.
‘Or something might have gone wrong. Maybe Proctor cocked up the alibi somehow. Hey, Thorpe could have been the spanner in the works - what do you think? He wasn’t supposed to turn up when he did, and Proctor couldn’t get rid of him. If Proctor had alibi’d Quinn then, Thorpe would have been able to scupper the whole deal.’
Fry looked from one to the other. Cooper could see her putting two and two together, and suspecting there was something she hadn’t been told.
Hitchens fidgeted. ‘We’ll check it out.’
‘All right,’ said Kessen. ‘What else do we have on the victim? It seems she had no visitors on Monday that we’re aware of?’
Heads were shaken, but Cooper raised a hand. He reported that he’d visited Rebecca Lowe’s near-neighbours that morning - the only house that was within sight and sound of hers, owned by a family called Newbold. The Newbolds had invited friends to their house on the night that their neighbour had been killed. After the heat of the day was over, they had spent a couple of hours in the garden, drinking wine and playing croquet on the lawn.
‘Croquet?’ said Fry. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘It’s quite a fashionable game in some circles these days.’
Fry nodded tiredly, as if she didn’t believe him but couldn’t find the energy to argue. ‘What time did they play croquet until?’
158
‘They say half past nine, which is probably about right. At this time of year, it’s still daylight at nine fifteen, but getting dusk half an hour later. They would have been complaining that bad light was affecting play by half past.’
‘OK. So they packed up the hoops and put away the flamingos at about half past nine. And after that? Did they stay oursicie drinking more wine and admiring the sunset?’
Cooper smiled, noticing her effortless reference to Lewis Carroll, surprising in someone who claimed not to read books. ‘They went indoors.’
‘So they’d have seen nothing outside after nine thirty, when the croquet finished.’
‘Well, not until one in the morning, when the first guests started to leave.’
‘That’s too late.’
“I know,’ said Cooper. ‘By the way, the Newbolds did report seeing a tramp in the area.’
‘A tramp?’ said Kessen.
‘Well, a vagrant they called him. They saw him on the road between their house and Parson’s Croft.’
‘No, no,’ said Kessen. ‘A passing vagrant as a murder suspect? That’s just too Agatha Christie.’
‘Actually, it was a couple of weeks before Mrs Lowe was killed that they saw him,’ said Cooper. ‘They just thought it was worth mentioning.’
