One Last Breath

In Cancer Research, by the delivery entrance to the Clappergate shopping centre, he found exactly the right thing. It was a black Wynnster stowaway smock, waterproof and breathable, but light enough to roll up and carry. It had a peaked hood and a velcro fastening at the back, a storm flap that buttoned up to his face and a drawstring to pull the hood tight. It must have cost about thirty or forty pounds new. This one had a slight rip down one side and the lining was worn inside the collar, but that wouldn’t bother him. It smelled faintly of oil, as if someone had worn it while working on a car engine. That didn’t worry him either.

And then, at the back of the shop, he came across a small rucksack. It was a dark khaki, not the useless garish colours that he’d seen in the shop windows. This one might have been army surplus stock at some time. It looked as though it dated from the 1950s, but it was well made, sound enough for the use he had in mind.

‘It’s a bit warm for hiking, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

Quinn had his cash ready in his hand, having worked out the total amount before he went to the till. He expected to be able to hand over the money, take his purchases and go, without giving the woman behind the counter anything to remember him by.

‘Hiking,’ she said. ‘Your rucksack and waterproof – I assume you’re going hiking?’

The woman was folding the smock and finding a plastic bag to put it in. She was only making small talk, and Quinn knew there ought to be an answer he could give that she’d think was normal.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But not here.’

She looked up at him then, and smiled. Quinn felt she was forcing him to fill the silence.

‘Wales,’ he said.

It was the first place that had come into his head. But he knew immediately it had been the wrong thing to say. If there were reports about him in the newspapers, they might mention he was from Wales.

‘We went there last year,’ said the woman. ‘Aberystwyth. I wouldn’t go hiking in Wales, though. There are far too many mountains for my liking. I’m getting too old for all that.’

She gave him a quizzical look. Quinn knew she was trying to assess his age, and soon she’d be wondering why he was going hiking on his own with an ancient rucksack and a ripped waterproof.

He could feel himself getting angry. The tremors were starting in his hands, his temples throbbed, and he could hear the hissing inside his head – the sound of blood rushing to his brain.

‘Are you going to take the money?’ he said.

He put his notes on the counter and picked up the carrier bag.

‘Wait. You need some change,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Quinn paused outside the shop to check his purchases, afraid that he might have left something behind. Instinct made him look back through the plate-glass window, where the woman who’d served him was standing at her counter. She was watching him. Her look made him feel as if someone had seen straight through him and knew exactly what he was planning to do.

He walked quickly away from the shop. She probably wasn’t even looking at him at all – she was more than likely staring at something behind him across the street, or admiring her own reflection in the window. Then Quinn remembered that it didn’t really matter anyway. By the time he was a hundred yards away, he had calmed down; he began to walk more slowly.

The Vine Inn was still here, anyway. He’d drunk in the pub a time or two, but it was done up now to attract a better class of customer. It had been re-painted, and the chalk boards outside offered specials from a food menu.

Then Quinn noticed the brass plaque fixed to one of the stone flowerbeds outside the pub, and the lettering caught his eye. In memory of SergeantJoseph Cooper. He stared at the wording, reading it over to himself several times before he looked up and remembered where he was. In memory ofSergeant Joseph Cooper.

At least he could get out of the town now. The last few items on his list wouldn’t be found in any charity shop, so he’d have to go elsewhere. But he had to move on. There were things he had to do. And there wasn’t much time.

On the last leg of his journey, Quinn closed his eyes and tried to rest. By the time he looked out of the window again, he was already in the Hope Valley. The familiar hills gathered close around him, welcoming, drawing him in.

The familiarity of it caught at Quinn’s throat as he got off the bus and walked through a field towards a line of trees. Tiny flies rose from the seedheads of the long grass as he brushed through it. He broke off one of the heads and put it in his mouth to chew. It tasted nutty, but reminded him of oats, too. He thought of a bowl of muesli, and then of sitting at the kitchen table in the morning, pouring milk, smelling coffee, listening to the children getting ready for school.

And then somewhere he heard a gate creak. He was supposed to have fixed the gate. More than fourteen years ago, he’d promised to oil the hinges. That sound alone was enough to take him back to 1990, to wipe away the intervening years as if they’d never existed. The side gate creaked, and here was Mansell Quinn standing listening to it, expecting at any moment to hear his wife’s voice reminding him that he’d promised to attend to it.

Quinn experienced a moment of confusion. He could see himself opening the door of the garage, sighing with exasperation because he’d been distracted from doing something more important. He could picture lifting a can of WD40 from the shelf, coughing at the dust as he moved a box of tools, brushing off an old spider’s web, and noticing the spare set of spark plugs he’d been looking for. He could even remember the texture of the breeze-block wall behind the shelf, and see its colour – pale blue, because they had some paint left over when the kitchen was decorated. He recalled spraying WD40 on the hinges of the gate, and watching the rusted metal darken as the liquid soaked in and began to run. He could smell the alcohol fumes as the spray drifted back into his face.

He’d fixed the gate. Yet still he could hear the creak. It was as if his life had re-started – not from the moment the police came to the house and arrested him, on his last day of freedom, but earlier than that. It was as though he’d walked back into his own life at a point before everything had started to go wrong.

After a few minutes, Quinn straightened up. It wasn’t the same house, or the same gate. His memories had confused him about what was in the past and what was right here in the present.

But there was one memory he knew was real – the one that hadn’t left his mind for the past fourteen years. This one was no mere trick of déjà vu. It was the memory of blood – blood pooling and streaming on a golden field.

It had begun to rain. He hadn’t noticed the clouds gathering, hadn’t even thought to look at the sky. He put on the smock and pulled up the hood. But his face was already wet, and more water dripped on him from the trees.

Quinn had started making his plans two years ago – on the day they told him he’d be making his final move. It had been a morning in early April, a day when the beech trees visible from the exercise yard at Gartree were starting to change their shape and colour, the outline of their naked branches blurring with the suggestion of spring.

‘You’re being transferred to an open prison,’ his wing governor had told him. ‘HMP Sudbury. It’s in Derbyshire. That will be a lot closer to your home, Quinn. It will make it much easier for your family to visit you.’

Quinn had stared at the man as if he were speaking a foreign language. He might as well have been, for all the sense he was making. Quinn waited for the translation, but none came. The governor looked at the file on his desk, but failed to see that Quinn had never received any family visits at Gartree, not once in eight years.

‘Well, aren’t you pleased, Quinn?’

‘Oh. Yes, sir.’

‘You’ll be glad to be out of this place. I know things haven’t always been easy for you here. You went through a bit of a rough patch, didn’t you?’ The governor flicked over a page of the file in front of him. He wasn’t attempting to read it. Not even pretending to. He was just flicking it with his long, white fingers, as if he could consign Quinn’s memories to the past by turning a page, closing a file, sliding it into a drawer of a cabinet. Was it all there, on that one page of his file, summed up in a few paragraphs typed by a Prison Service secretary?

‘A bit of a rough patch. Yes, sir.’

The governor looked at Quinn doubtfully, but relaxed when he saw the prisoner’s calmness.

‘You’ll find life an awful lot easier at HMP Sudbury. And, of course, it’s a step closer to your release.’

He smiled hopefully. But something was happening inside Quinn. His body seemed to be filling with a cloud of poisonous gas that rose from somewhere deep in his guts and coiled through his intestines. It flooded his lungs and seeped into his brain. He waited, terrified, for the cloud to dissipate before he could speak.

‘Thank you, sir.’

Another smile now, different. An ironic smile. ‘That’s provided you’re on your best behaviour, Quinn. You don’t want to end up back here, do you?’

The governor waited a few seconds for a response, then began to get uncomfortable. He closed the file with a little swish and a click. ‘Perhaps it’s something that will take a while to sink in. I understand that, Quinn. If you want to talk to anybody about it, just let Mr Jeavons know, and it can be arranged. You know there are counsellors available. A chaplain, perhaps …’

Quinn tried to shake his head, but the muscles in his neck would hardly move. He felt as though his face had swollen to a monstrous size and was swinging from side to side against the walls of the office, like a hot-air balloon. His skin was on fire and a curtain had dropped in front of his eyes, preventing him from seeing the governor clearly. Yet Quinn remained motionless in his chair, his hands resting on his thighs, as he listened to the sound of the man’s voice.

‘Well, your transfer is set for next week. You can let your family know where you’ll be, so they can visit.’

The voice was distant, like a voice in one of his dreams, the words muffled but menacing.

‘Are you all right, Quinn?’

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

‘That’s it, then. You can go now.’