myself.’
‘Are you suggesting that Quinn would have told your son about the effects of radon just to cause trouble between you?’
Thorpe shrugged. ‘I never liked him, and he never liked me. He was always the one who got the others into bother. There were fights in pubs, sometimes. Trouble with the police.’
‘Yes, I know.’
The old man peered at him. ‘Yes, I suppose you would. But there, you see - you’ve learned to keep things to yourself in your job, haven’t you? You wouldn’t have let on that you knew that, if I hadn’t volunteered it.’
‘Did you ever meet Mansell Quinn, Mr Thorpe?’
‘Yes, once or twice. Before he went to prison.’
‘He’s out now.’
‘Yes, you said.’
‘Your son and Quinn stayed friends while he was in prison, didn’t they?’
Mr Thorpe moved his jaws thoughtfully - not chewing on anything in particular, except his own saliva. He ought to have produced some cud to munch on.
‘Maybe.’
‘Yet Mansell Quinn claimed your son as an alibi for the time that Carol Proctor was killed, and William gave a different statement.’
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‘I suppose he was just telling the truth,’ said Thorpe.
‘But Quinn might not have seen it like that. It would have seemed like a betrayal to him.’
‘I can’t help that. It happens.’
Cooper took a drink of his tea. There was no point in trying to rush somebody like Jim Thorpe. He watched the old man gazing out of the window, past the greying net curtains towards Mam Tor. Cooper waited. Mr Thorpe’s expression didn’t change, but his hand grew still, and he stopped stroking the cat. The animal looked up and met Cooper’s eye. He felt as though some communication had passed across the room at last - as if the cat, at least, understood something of the old man’s relationship with his son.
‘Are you going to be speaking to Will again?’ said Mr Thorpe.
‘Yes, I’m sure I will be.’
‘Tell him, then.’
‘Tell him what, sir?’
The old man swallowed convulsively, as though trying to shift something that had got stuck in his throat.
‘Tell him if he really wants to … he can come back here.’
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26
Castleton was one of the cleanest places Ben Cooper knew. The thousands of plastic bottles, aluminium drinks cans and polystyrene cups were actually in the litter bins rather than scattered on the grass or floating in the stream. Even the feral pigeons were more attractive than the dirty grey things on city streets. When he paused near the bridge at Stones Bottom, they flocked around his feet in seconds. Even though it was already dusk, they hadn’t given up hope of a tourist with spare bread from his sandwiches to feed them.
Cooper could still taste the dust from the cement works in the back of his throat. It made him unnaturally thirsty, and he’d have preferred to be heading for the Hanging Gate right now for a few pints of beer to wash the coating away. But he didn’t have time, if he was going to call on Alistair Page tonight. He knew Diane Fry would have said he’d spent too long at Rakelow House. But she’d wanted background on Will Thorpe, and he’d come away with plenty of that. She might see a reconciliation with his father as exactly what she needed to make Thorpe open up.
Knowing there wasn’t time for a proper meal either, Cooper called into a chippy on the hill near the Market Place and
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bought a jumbo sausage and chips, which he ate in his car. When he’d finished, he jammed the paper and wooden fork into a bin near the visitor centre, and went into one of the toilet blocks to wash the grease off his hands.
Returning to Castleton had reminded him of the two men he’d seen from the castle on Tuesday, when he’d been with Amy and Josie. Watching the tape from the outdoor shop, he’d been convinced that he recognized Mansell Quinn as one of the men who’d been talking in that secluded spot above Cavedale. But a few hours later, the memory was fading and he was less sure. No doubt it had been his imagination leaping into action because of the similarity between the black, slicker-type waterproofs.
Cooper was glad he’d said nothing - it would only have made him look a fool. He supposed it was the idea of Quinn in such close proximity to Amy and Josie that had frightened him beyond rationality.
Turning his hands in the stream of warm air from a drier, he wondered when these toilets were cleaned. Early in the morning perhaps, before the first visitors. Like the bins outside, the one in the toilet block was full. And there was something scattered on the floor near his feet, and on the edge of the washbasin, speckling the stainless steel.
Cooper looked more closely. The specks resembled the seeds that had fallen from the lime tree in Rebecca Lowe’s garden at Parson’s Croft. Under the waste pipe leading down from the washbasin, he saw a pale leaf lying in a small pool of water, as if it had dropped from someone’s clothes.
He felt a prickling in the small of his back, and turned sharply to look at the cubicles. Only one door was closed, down at the far end.
‘Paranoid,’ he said to himself. ‘Paranoid - that’s what you are.’
But still he pushed the door open, just in case. The cubicle was empty.
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Then Cooper looked at the floor. He crouched, felt in his pocket for some latex gloves or a plastic bag, but found nothing because he’d left his jacket in the car. He pulled a few sheets of toilet paper off the roll. It would have to do for now.
