‘No.’
Fry looked up. ‘Did you believe him, Ben?’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Cooper without hesitation.
‘OK. He might still be worth a visit. A surprise visit. Especially if he thinks he’s convinced you.’
‘Right.’
It was easy for Fry to suggest that old Jim Thorpe could have been lying. She hadn’t been the one to speak to him. Cooper had flinched at the undisguised venom in the old man’s voice when he talked about his son. The wouldn’t have the bugger in my house’ was only the half of it.
‘What about the prison end, Diane?’
‘Well, the most interesting interview I had was with Richard Wakelin. Or Rick, he prefers to be called. He’s a convicted burglar, released from LIMP Sudbury at the same time as Mansell Quinn. They walked out of the gate together. They were supposed to catch the bus together to Burton on Trent.’
‘Supposed to? That sounds like the crucial phrase.’
‘Quinn didn’t get on the bus. But we figured that out, didn’t we? The thing is, the two of them had never met before, but they did talk a bit on the way to the bus stop. Wakelin says that Quinn was in “a strange mood”. Not as happy as you might expect someone to be who’d just been let out after a life sentence.’
Fry remembered how depressed she’d felt after her visit to the prison, and her walk through the smelly underpass to the
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bus shelter with the broken glass. Perhaps, after all, she had managed to catch a bit of what had been going through Quinn’s mind.
‘What about Quinn’s visitors? Did he have any?’
‘Official visitors,’ said Fry. ‘His probation officer, a solicitor.’
‘No journalists, no campaigners for miscarriages of justice?’
‘Not in Manscll Quinn’s case. lie wasn’t of any interest to them.’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to be.’
Fry nodded. ‘In fact, he had only one other visitor in the last couple of years while he was in Sudbury. But that one is of interest to us.’
‘Someone we know?’
‘Someone whose name we know, anyway: William Edward Thorpe.’
‘Now, that is interesting.’
‘Quinn managed to get in contact with Thorpe via their old regiment. Thorpe was still living with his friends in Derby at the time.’
‘But he went AWOL shortly afterwards, didn’t he?’
‘Yes. Remember Thorpe’s drunk-and-disorderly charge in Ashbourne? I pulled up the date, and it turns out the offence was committed on the same day as a visit to Quinn in Sudbury.’
‘Even more interesting.’
‘Oh, and I checked with the prison library,’ said Fry.
‘You did?’ Cooper looked at her in surprise. ‘That was my idea.’
‘Yes. And it was a good idea, Ben.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Has your ego been massaged enough now? Would you like to know what I found out?’
‘Sure.’
‘It seems Quinn favoured books about caving, particularly the Castleton system.’
‘Peak Cavern?’
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‘I guess so. His number one favourite was a book called Death Underground. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn’t it?’
‘Have we found a copy?’
‘Not yet. But we just had a call from a Mr Henry Marrison. Know him?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He works at Wingate Lees, the Proctors’ caravan park.’
‘Oh, the maintenance man?
‘That’s him. He seems to have overheard some of what Mr Proctor told us yesterday.’
Till bet he did,’ said Cooper.
‘He says X^ill Thorpe was staying at the site much more recently than April. Up to last week, in fact. So that gives us another excuse to visit Mr Proctor, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.’
They joined the rest of the team to watch the tape from the security camera at Out and About. Most of the officers watched in silence, squinting at the jerky footage.
When it was finished, Cooper asked for the tape to be rewound and played over again. He watched the
