‘If you can call it escaping. He was on an unsupervised work party on the prison farm, and never went back to his cell at the end of the day.’
‘I don’t know why they bother doing it. I mean, those open prisons are a cushy number. And he’ll only get sent back to somewhere worse when he’s caught.’
‘If he’s caught.’
‘Come on, sir. When did we not catch someone who’d walked out of Sudbury? These blokes always go straight home. The poor sods don’t know what else to do.’
Cooper put his hand up. ‘Gavin has a point, sir. Mansell Quinn didn’t escape, but his thinking could be the same. He might just have been going home.’
‘Damn right. He turned up at his wife’s house and killed her.’
Cooper shook his head. ‘That wasn’t his home. He never lived there.’
‘No, you’re right. His previous address was in Castleton. But somebody else lives there now. Complete strangers, I assume. Check on it, would you, Murfin.’
‘Quinn’s mother lives in Hathersage,’ said Cooper. ‘That will be the place he thinks of as home.’
‘We’ve talked to her, haven’t we? DS Fry?’
‘Yes, sir. But I don’t think she was being entirely open with us.’
‘Put a bit of pressure on, then. Get some officers into the area to talk to all the neighbours. See if we can get a sighting of Quinn. OK, Paul?’
Hitchens had no choice but to nod.
‘Somebody look into public transport,’ said Kessen. ‘Is there a railway station near Sudbury?’
‘We’ll check, sir.’
‘He might have hired a car,’ said someone. ‘Or stolen one.’
‘We should look into it,’ said Hitchens. ‘Right.’
‘If Quinn does have a car,’ pointed out Kessen, ‘it’s going to make it much less difficult for us. A known vehicle will be easier to locate than an individual who may or may not be on foot, and who has the whole of the Peak District to wander around in.’
‘We hope for the easy option, then,’ said Hitchens.
‘Obviously. So we want sightings of vehicles in Aston, near the victim’s home.’
‘And appeals, sir?’
‘The press office are already on to that. They’re fixing up a press conference later this afternoon. We aim to get Quinn’s photograph on the local TV news tonight. We need as many members of the public looking out for him as possible.’
‘I got chatting with some of Mrs Lowe’s neighbours at Aston this morning,’ said Murfin. ‘They said they were just passing, but of course they’d come for a nosy around to see what was going on.’
‘The next-door neighbours?’
‘No, further up the village. They didn’t see anything last night, but they volunteered Mansell Quinn’s name themselves. They’d heard he was due out.’
‘Where did they hear that from?’
‘They seemed to think it was something everybody knew.’
‘The Carol Proctor killing is a case everyone in that area will remember,’ said Hitchens. ‘At least, everyone who was living around there in 1990. But we have to reach the others as well – the newcomers, and all those thousands of visitors, too.’
‘If necessary, we’ll spend some money on distributing posters. Anything else, Paul?’
‘I think that’s it for now, sir.’
But Cooper raised a hand. ‘Sir, if Quinn is looking for revenge for some perceived injustice at his trial, I wonder if he might also go after the professionals involved. For example, the judge, the lawyers –’
‘– or the police officers,’ said Kessen. ‘Yes. Specifically, the officers who worked on the Carol Proctor case and put the evidence together that got him sent down.’
The DCI looked at Hitchens. ‘You’d better add looking up the investigating officers to your list of tasks, Paul,’ he said.
Hitchens looked more uncomfortable than ever. ‘No, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t need anyone to look them up.’
Kessen smiled at him. ‘Perhaps you’d better tell us why, DI Hitchens. I think some of us here don’t know.’
‘Well, one of those officers,’ said Hitchens, ‘was me.’
Rebecca Lowe might have lived alone, but she had an active enough life. Analysing her diary, address books and other material that had been taken from her house, the incident room staff had already begun to piece together her movements, her regular activities and closest contacts. Later, her phone records would be gone through, her letters and bank statements read in the hope of tracing connections that might point to a motive, a suspect, or a possible witness.
Along with the forensic examination and the postmortem, it was all part of the routine that had to be observed to demonstrate that things were being done properly. But everyone knew that a separate operation was going on at the same time – the effort to find the man already identified as the prime suspect: Mansell Quinn.
Ben Cooper found himself with an interview to do almost immediately. At least once a week, Rebecca Lowe had attended a gym located on an industrial estate in Edendale. Her sister Dawn said that she’d been talking about joining a new fitness centre at Hathersage instead, because it was nearer. But changing your gym was a bit like converting from one religion to another. You risked being told that everything you’d done so far in your life was wrong. Perhaps Rebecca had been a bit set in her ways, after all. She’d stayed at the Edendale gym.
‘One of our more mature ladies,’ said the trainer at Valley Fitness. ‘But she was in better shape than most. In fact, she could outlast a lot of the younger women on the bikes. Also, she wasn’t afraid to try new things. She’d put her name down for a trial Pilates class.’
‘Did she ever talk about her ex-husband?’
‘Wait a minute – he died, didn’t he?’
‘Sorry, I mean the husband before that.’
‘An earlier ex? No, I didn’t know she had one. She’d lived a bit then, had she, Rebecca? Seen off two husbands, but still kept herself in condition? Well, good for her.’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Monday morning. She always comes in for a session on Monday morning. Never misses.’
That checked with the photocopy Cooper had of a page from Rebecca Lowe’s week-to-view diary.
‘And she was definitely there yesterday morning?’
‘Yes, ten o’clock to eleven. She made a joke about working off the excesses of the weekend. She liked a bottle of wine now and then, I think.’
Cooper looked at the entries for the previous two days. Lunch with her sister on Saturday. A dinner party with some friends on Sunday night.
‘And did Mrs Lowe seem her normal self?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Did she seem worried about anything? Did she mention anything that was bothering her?’
‘I didn’t talk to her that much, but she seemed perfectly happy. Just as usual. Wait a minute, though …’
‘Yes?’
The phone was silent for a moment. Cooper could hear a series of strange noises in the background, and imagined the running and