‘I couldn’t tell you that,’ said Fry. ‘There were quite a few people around.’
‘It’s a very seasonal business. If a caravan park isn’t full at this time of year, it never will be.’
Cooper found it impossible not to have some sympathy for people involved in the tourism trade - their livelihood was so unpredictable. Fewer retired people took trips to the Peak District since their savings and investments income had plummeted. Sixty per cent of visitors came only for a day and spent enough for a visit to a show cavern and an ice cream, or for a couple of hours’ parking and a Bakewell pudding to take home.
‘You know,’ said Cooper, ‘I wonder if Quinn understood why his wife stopped visiting him. The thing that often tips a prisoner over the edge is the belief that their wife or partner isn’t waiting at home for them to come out, but has met somebody else. It’s the most common reason for escapes. They get the idea into their minds that if they can just get home for a while they’ll be able to sort things out.’
‘Quinn’s wife got a divorce ten years ago, while he was inside,’ said Fry. ‘Besides, he waited out his full sentence. Or until his automatic release date, which is the same thing.’
‘Maybe he’s just the patient type?’
‘Possibly.’
Cooper thought about Quinn’s thirteen years and four months in prison. Many Category A prisoners were visited once by their families, and never again. The willingness of their wives and children to visit them didn’t survive the
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humiliation of the first strip search. Some children grew up being told their father was a monster, and learning to believe it. They developed the habit of concealing their identity, evading questions about their parents, escaping the shame.
And for a prisoner like Quinn, thirteen years was a long time to let the imagination work on why you came to be on your own. Much too long. In that time, a man could develop a vivid fantasy of what was going on in the outside world, and in his own home. Perhaps in his own bed. He might build a convincing conspiracy theory. He could certainly create enemies for himself in his mind - enemies that had to be destroyed.
But even worse was the idea that Quinn had waited patiently, nurturing his fantasy, waiting for the opportunity to take his revenge. Or retribution, as Mrs Quinn had called it. It was more than patience, though. It seemed like the single mindedness of a hunter, prepared to wait as long as necessary for prey to come within reach.
Cooper shuddered. He always found the slow, deliberate killers more frightening than those who killed in a sudden rage. They were a less understandable type of killer.
‘I’ve got to say, it sounds as if everyone was against Quinn,’ he said. ‘His wife, his friends - none of them did a good job of standing up for him.’
‘Maybe they were all glad to get him out of the way,’ said Fry. The think I would be, in their place. But no doubt Quinn thinks everything that’s happened to him has been somebody else’s fault. I bet he has a list of people to blame.’
‘So do you think he’s following a plan?’
‘There must be a reason he’s staying in this area. If it were me, I’d get as far away as possible.’
‘There are ties to a place like this that are difficult to break.’
‘Not family ties, in his case. Those have been thoroughly broken.’
‘But he’s not unique there,’ said Cooper. ‘Nearly half of prisoners lose contact with their families during their sentence.
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The prison population is what, seventy thousand? And mostly men. Yet they say a stable family life is the factor most likely to keep a prisoner from re-offending. So if they don’t have families waiting to be reunited with them, where do all those men go?’
‘There’s a system to deal with all that, Ben.’
‘The system is overloaded. Some of those men are just going to drop off the radar. A few might manage to get a job and settle down, perhaps even make new relationships. But the others … well, who knows?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, I think it does.’
‘Ben, 1 saw a social worker’s job being advertised last week. Maybe you should apply for it.’
Cooper flushed. ‘I’m just saying there could be a lot of Mansell Quinns around the country that we don’t even know about. It’s an inevitable outcome of the whole process.’
Fry seemed to be digesting what he’d said, but Cooper suspected she was merely filing away the statistics. Or was she actually relating them to an individual, the person who was somewhere out there in the Hope Valley, alone and possibly desperate.
‘Ben, could you put your foot down a bit?’ she said. ‘We don’t have all day.’
Cooper sighed. ‘No problem.’
Further on, he saw the Omega crew again, still training. Now they were practising parking at the kerb near the off licence in Hope.
‘I know one thing anyway,’ said Fry suddenly.
‘What’s that?’
‘We treated Enid Quinn too damn sensitively the first time.’
Going north from the village, they crossed over Killhill Bridge and turned past the cemetery into the valley of the River Noe. Cooper had to slow down to negotiate the unmade road,
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which must make the touring caravans bounce a little. Once they were clear of the railway bridge, he could see a number of mobile homes huddled close together, painted in shades of lime green and cream, with little chimneys and carriage lamps.
He parked on the grass and they walked up towards the house, past a chemical toilet disposal point. They found Raymond Proctor inside one of the mobile homes. According to the sign, it was a Westmorland 2000 two- bedroom model, a twenty-eight footer. Proctor was lying on the floor with his head in a cupboard under the sink
