‘What exactly is wrong with Mr Thorpe?’
‘He has emphysema. It was diagnosed while he was still in the army. Too many cigarettes from too young an age, I suppose.’
‘Nobody can do anything to help him unless we find him,’ said Fry.
Proctor shrugged. ‘Try near the cement works. God knows why, but he hangs out up there.’
Fry nodded to Cooper, and they turned to go. Proctor watched them, clearing his throat and rattling his keys nervously. He caught Fry’s eye for a second.
The hope you haven’t forgotten our advice about taking precautions,’ said Fry.
The told you, I’m not frightened,’ said Proctor. ‘Not of Mansell Quinn. I’m ready for anyone.’
‘You don’t happen to have any unauthorized weapons on the premises, do you, sir?’
Proctor instantly looked capable of being belligerent again.
‘Oh, this is a different tune now,’ he said. ‘Well, don’t worry your head about that. I know all about what happens to people who try to defend themselves. Don’t we all?’
As they reached the car, Cooper looked up at the railway bridge and the embankment rising over the caravan park. The bridge had stones missing here and there, and thick clumps of weed grew on the parapet. It would be impossible to see if anyone was up there, unless they wanted to be seen. Cooper suddenly felt very vulnerable standing under such a perfect vantage point.
Fry followed his gaze. ‘Personally, I don’t think Quinn will still be in this area. He’s miles away by now. He has a head start on us.’
‘Where would he be going?’
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‘I’ve no idea. But he’d want to get some distance away from here, wouldn’t he?’
‘Only if he’d done what he came to do.’
‘Which he has, hasn’t he?’
Cooper felt the back of his neck prickle. He turned away from the viaduct. Trees and dense undergrowth climbed the banking behind the Proctors’ house. It was dark in there, even in the middle of the day. No sunlight penetrated the canopy. The ground would be dry and covered in dead leaves, an ideal place to lie in the shade, unseen, and watch what was going on down in the caravan park. But surely it must only be his imagination that made him feel as though he wTas being watched?
When Ben Cooper drove to the gate of the cement works, he was seeing it up close for the first time. The entire place was the colour of cement - pale, like a desert landscape. The girders and aerial conveyor belts, towers and silos, hangars and concrete tanks all blended into each other as if camouflaged. Above them rose the tall chimney that was visible from both ends of the valley. To the south, a huge fan of quarries had been blasted into the hillside. On the map, the cement works and its quarries looked as big as Hathersage, Hope and Castleton all lumped together.
He met Diane Fry and Gavin Murfin in a lay-by near the bridge. Another team of officers were on the older part of the site to the east, where exhausted quarries had been landscaped with trees and fishing lakes.
Murfin had been gathering information on William Thorpe, and he seemed to have brought it all with him. Thorpe had served in the local regiment, the First Battalion of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, referred to in the army documents as 1WFR.
‘Join the army and see the world,’ said Murfin. ‘According to the Regimental HQ in Nottingham, this battalion has spent
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the last few years serving everywhere from the Falkland Islands to Sierra Leone and Brunei. Me, I joined the police, and all I’ve seen is a selection of the worst shit-holes in Derbyshire.’
‘They wouldn’t have taken you in the army,’ said Fry.
‘You’re right. I had too many GCSEs. It seems you’re overqualified for the infantry if you can spell your name on the application form.’
‘So where’s the battalion now?’ said Cooper.
‘Back in their barracks after a spell in Northern Ireland. Did you know the squaddies get nine weeks leave and four long weekends a year? And the army pays to get them home, too.’
‘Nine weeks? So where did William Thorpe go all those times when he was on leave? He didn’t come home to Derbyshire - not to his dad’s place, anyway.’
‘Are you thinking of a change in career, Gavin?’ asked Fry hopefully, looking at Murfin’s copy of the army recruitment booklet.
‘I’m just amazed,’ he said. ‘Amazed how easy it is to get into the army. You don’t need any educational qualifications at all. You take an entrance test, but they give you a practice book beforehand, and you can have three goes at passing it. How difficult can that be?’
‘Well, I suppose you don’t have to be a genius to be a soldier. As long as you can fire an automatic weapon in the right direction.’
‘It says here Thorpe was in a mortar platoon.’
Cooper picked up Thorpe’s file and looked at the photos of him. The ex-soldier wasn’t a big man physically - only five feet six inches tall. As a recruit to the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, he must have been one of those soldiers who looked out of place marching in the ranks, with the peak of his cap a few inches below those of the men on either side.
But a photograph of him in a T-shirt suggested he must have spent time working out in the gym to make up for his lack of size. He would already have been in his forties when the photo
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was taken, but the muscles in his shoulders and upper arms were still firm, though the flesh was receding a little from his cheekbones, giving his face a sharp look, like an old dog fox.
In the picture, Thorpe wore a black beret at a jaunty angle, and his face was tanned. The narrowing of his eyes as he stared at the camera hinted at hostility. Cooper thought it might simply be a result of living outdoors, a physical reaction against exposure to wind and sunlight, or an effort to keep out the fine, hot sand that filled the
