‘We did check out her phone calls,’ said Murfin. ‘Mrs Lowe seemed to spend a lot of time on the phone to family and friends. She did that generally, but on Monday in particular.’
‘Perhaps she needed to hear friendly voices for reassurance,’ suggested Fry.
‘She told her daughter she didn’t need reassurance. In fact, she could have had somebody with her if she was worried.’
‘Gavin, it’s perfectly possible to want your independence and still need reassurance.’
‘Well, if you say so.’
159
‘Yes, I do.’
‘No unusual calls then, Murfin?’ asked Kessen.
‘Family and friends, like I say. Everyone you might expect her sister, Andrea and Simon, a friend from the gym she goes to, the Proctors ‘
‘The Proctors?’ said Fry. ‘Was she still in touch with them?’
‘She’d known Raymond Proctor for years.’
Fry nodded. ‘Of course she had. So that call was probably mutual reassurance, despite what Mr Proctor tries to pretend.’
‘But there was no phone call that could possibly have come from Quinn himself,’ said Kessen. ‘So it seems reasonable to deduce that Mrs Lowe wasn’t expecting a visit from him that night.’
A few moments of silence followed. Kessen waited, but saw there was nothing else forthcoming.
‘OK, so until we have a clearer picture of Quinn’s intentions, we’re continuing to warn the relevant individuals of the potential risk.’
‘Is that all?’ said Cooper.
‘We’re offering security advice and alarms, too, if they want them. No one would expect us to provide full protection at this level of threat. We don’t have the resources. But there will be more uniforms on the streets in that area. Division is drafting in some extra bodies for visible reassurance.’
‘And, who knows, they might even stumble over Mansell Quinn,’ said Hitchens. ‘We’ve got lucky before.’
Diane Fry marched up to DI Hitchens as soon as the briefing meeting broke up. He looked as though he might have liked to escape to his office, but she was too quick for him.
‘Sir? A word?’
‘Yes, Diane?’
‘I’d be interested in going over the case notes from the original Carol Proctor enquiry, if you’d like somebody to take a look who wasn’t involved.’
160
‘Why, thank you, DS Fry. Tell you what, you handle it with DC Cooper.’
‘Ben Cooper?’
Hitchens smiled bitterly. ‘Yes. Let’s see what the two of you make of it together.’
A few minutes later, Fry and Cooper were both sitting in the DI’s office, looking at a heap of old files. Witness statements, forensic reports, crime scene photographs. Bits and pieces of the case that had put Mansell Quinn away for a life sentence. There would be a lot more documentation somewhere, dusty stacks of it, accumulated by all sides during the pre-trial stages of the investigation.
Fry looked at Cooper. Of the three of them, he seemed the most ill at ease. It was strange that every time something seemed to be going on behind her back, Ben Cooper was involved. She hadn’t yet got to the bottom of the connection between him and her sister, how he’d managed to find Angie when Fry had been looking for her for years. But since Angie was being evasive, the only way to discover the truth would be to talk to him, which Fry baulked at.
‘Mansell Quinn wasn’t considered ready for parole,’ said Hitchens, ‘because the prison authorities were concerned about the lack of family support. Quinn was a man on his own. And therefore a potential risk.’
Fry saw Cooper blink and open his mouth to speak. But the moment passed.
‘Of course, Mansell Quinn’s initial story was that he came home, went into the house and found the body on the floor,’ said Hitchens. ‘He said he thought at first that it was his wife who’d injured herself - cut herself with a carving knife or something like that. He didn’t even seem to recognize that the clothes she was wearing weren’t his wife’s.’
‘That’s no surprise.’
‘Right, Fry. Well, the first thing he said he did was to turn the body over.’
161
I
‘Getting blood on his hands in the process, of course.’
‘And on his clothes, and on his shoes. He said he touched her where she was injured, to try to help her. He said it didn’t occur to him at first that she was dying. But when he turned her over, the biggest surprise for him was that she wasn’t his wife.’
‘He recognized his mistress, though, I suppose.’
‘Oh, yes. But apparently not the fact that she was on the point of death. He started to pull at her clothes to get at the injuries, thinking that he could stop the bleeding.’
‘Hold on, what was Carol Proctor doing at the Quinns’ house?’
LWe couldn’t be sure. Qumn insisted there was no prior ,jj
arrangement to meet. But he admitted they’d been having an r?
