‘Were the chicks turned to stone, too?’
‘I don’t know, boy. We never opened the eggs to look.’
The thought had repelled Quinn but fascinated him at the same time. They told him at school that eggs were supposed to represent new life. But here, life had been snuffed out at the moment of birth, turned to stone for the amusement of day trippers. It had symbolized the Peak District for him then - a place where his spirit had been stifled, forcing him to fight his way out into the world all over again. He felt crushed by the weight of the stone he could see in the hills all around him.
‘What sort of bird made the nest?’ he would ask his father, needing the specifics to make sense of the story.
But there was only one answer he ever got: ‘Well,
‘A blackbird, Dad? A starling? Something bigger?’
‘I’ve no idea. What does it matter, for goodness sake?’
‘What did Grandma have the nest for?’
‘She just had it, that’s all.’
Then his father would get irritated and go back to his newspaper, or he’d walk out into the garden to look at his vegetables. And next time he told the story, it would be exactly the same. He never saw his son’s need for explanation.
Quinn thought there ought to be ways of making sense of his petrified memories, of forcing them out into the open and letting the sun pierce the calcified layers to find the original shapes underneath.
But memories seemed to become attached to personal possessions, and he had very few of those. For years, his life had been measured by prison service regulations. The possessions he’d been allowed in his cell had been subject to what they called ‘volumetric controls’, which meant everything he
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possessed had to fit into two boxes. At intervals, his cell was inspected to make sure he hadn’t broken regulations and created a private life for himself beyond his battery radio and his statutory three books and six newspapers.
Many of the permitted items held no relevance for him anyway. Diaries and calendars had seemed like self- inflicted torture, and he had no family photos for his locker.
After a while, Quinn became aware that his lack of personal items might reflect badly on his suitability for parole. He’d placed a subscription for Peak District magazine and Birdwatching, and he’d asked the library for more books on natural history and geology. One of his magazines came with a calendar featuring scenic views of Derbyshire, which he taped to the wall of his cell. One day, an officer on lockup had pointed out that he hadn’t turned over the page, even though the old month had finished six days ago. But the old month had been January. It showed a snow scene over Castleton to the slopes of Win Hill.
A movement caught his attention. A couple of golfers were walking across a green on the golf course to the north of the fishing lakes, but they were too far away to see him. Quinn scanned the anglers again, then lay back down in the bracken.
It had been in Peak District magazine that Quinn had found the article about the Castleton caves. He’d read about cave breathing, the movement of air in and out of a cave entrance. It could draw in small creatures, leading them away from their natural environment into the depths, from where they never returned. Accidentals, they were called. Creatures drawn in by cave breathing.
Mansell Quinn liked that idea. He thought he could be called an accidental himself. He had been drawn into the darkness. But he was on his way out now. He’d learned to control the breathing.
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17
Standing outside 14 Moorland Avenue, Ben Cooper noticed that Millstone Edge was visible from the estate, too. He’d done a bit of rock climbing up there a couple of years ago. The long cliff face lay partly in shadow, producing a corrugated effect like the edge of a pie crust. The ancestors of men who lived in Hathersage now would have worked up there on the gritstone faces, cutting the millstones the area had become famous for - the same millstones which now lay abandoned in heaps on the slopes.
Not bothering with the bell this time, Fry pounded on the door of Enid Quinn’s house with the knocker. It sounded hollower and more echoey than ever. But now Cooper knew it was due to the bare walls of the empty hallway.
‘I suppose my neighbours have been sticking their noses into things that aren’t their business,’ said Mrs Quinn, when she let them in. ‘They tend to be like that around here.’
‘One of your neighbours saw your son near here on Monday afternoon.’
‘Oh?’
Mrs Quinn settled herself down on the settee in the same position she’d occupied last time they visited her. She had her
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back to the window, her fair hair framed by the light. Rather than stand over her, Fry sat in one of the armchairs and motioned Cooper to do the same. He saw she’d assessed Mrs Quinn as someone who couldn’t be intimidated.
‘Mansell came here, didn’t he?’
‘I suppose there’s no point in denying it now.’
‘Not now that he’s got well away/
Enid Quinn waited impassively. Fry had not asked her a question, and she wasn’t going to be tempted into volunteering information.
‘Why didn’t you tell us before, Mrs Quinn? Why did you lie to us?’
‘As I said yesterday, people of my generation don’t walk away from things as easily as they do these days.’
‘You were talking about marriage.’
