One Last Breath

Still, he couldn’t help the rush of pleasure when the first thing he saw as he entered the flat was a black cat coming towards him from the kitchen, its fur warm and its yellow eyes gleaming expectantly. Randy had changed into his summer coat, and now he was sleek and dark, and obviously not as big a cat as he’d have everyone believe.

The rumbles Cooper could hear now weren’t really a storm, more of a warning that the rain was coming. And come it did, within a few seconds. Instantly, the downpour was so heavy that it sounded as if the river had burst its banks and was surging across the gardens, threatening to flood the houses at the bottom end of the road.

In the kitchen, the noise of the rain was deafening as it fell on the glass roof of the conservatory. Above the sound, he heard the wooden frames of the windows cracking as they cooled and contracted. Cooper fed Randy and walked back into the sitting room. After the cat, the second thing he saw in his flat that night was the green light flashing on his answering machine. It was blinking at him in a way that could mean only one thing. Yet again, a small piece of darkness was about to thrust its way into the daylight.

Raymond Proctor arrived home late that night. Before he locked up the house, he took a look around the caravan park. He prayed there wouldn’t be any last-minute arrivals tonight. Or if there were, that they’d find a temporary pitch without bothering him, and without making too much noise about it either. Let the buggers sort themselves out for once.

Proctor wanted to walk down to the pond and check the area round the old ’vans again. But not in the dark. The main lights only covered the central area of the site, around the office and shop. They made the log-cabin effect look grotesque and crumbling, like the set of a cheap horror film. Outside that pool of light, he could see only the glowing rectangles of curtained windows, where families were shut up in their little boxes for the night.

A car had come in through the main gate. It looked like the white Audi that belonged to the young family occupying one of the lodges. As it turned on to the gravel road, the car’s headlights caught the outline of a figure moving across the grass near the water taps. Proctor squinted at the figure, but the headlights had passed long before he could make out who it was. Male, he was sure. Probably one of the group of French teachers who were staying on the site for a couple of nights on their way to Scotland. On the other hand, it could have been anybody.

Proctor limped into the house and checked all the bolts on the doors and windows. He left a light on in the hallway and the outside light over the back door. Connie was in the sitting room watching TV. He could hear the noise of gunfire and screeching tyres as soon as he entered the house.

‘Turn it down,’ he called from the hallway.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Nothing. Just turn it down.’

Connie came out into the hall, which wasn’t what he’d intended. She was ready for bed, in her dressing gown and the slippers with blue fur round the edges. She stared at him and sniffed suspiciously.

‘Who have you been drinking with?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘I only had a couple.’

‘You’re sweating, Ray. You can hardly keep still. I know when you’ve had too much to drink.’

‘For God’s sake, get back to your telly. I’m sick of your yacking.’ A crashing noise made him jump. It was like a door being broken down, kicked in by boots. ‘And turn that TV down, will you?’

She pointed a finger at him, jabbing it towards his face. ‘If you speak to me like that again, Raymond Proctor, you’ll regret it. You know I wanted us all to be together for dinner tonight, but you had to go out boozing. Then Jason started playing me up again and now he’s sulking in his room.’

Proctor thought the idea of having family meals together was lunacy. He remembered that Alan had behaved exactly the same when he was about Jason’s age. Funnily enough, it had been harder to tolerate from his own son. It must have been something to do with the guilt.

‘I just want us to be a real family,’ said Connie. ‘Doing things together, getting on with each other.’

‘I’ve got news for you, Connie. Real families don’t get on with each other.’

She glared at him with sudden venom. ‘And you should know. You’ve already lost one family. A wife and son – that was careless, wasn’t it, Ray?’

‘Leave me alone,’ said Proctor.

She was right that he was sweating. The house felt ridiculously hot, but there was no way he was going outside again tonight.

‘And take my advice,’ said Connie as she turned to go back to her film. ‘Be more careful who you drink with. You’ve never had a head for beer. It always gets you into trouble.’

Raymond Proctor stood in the hallway of his house for a few minutes longer. He was watching the play of light and shadow on the glass panels of the front door. He was familiar with the effect, which was caused by the movement of trees in front of the lights on the main drive. But tonight, there seemed to be more shadow than light on Wingate Lees.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese stood on the main street in Castleton, close to the Peak Hotel. It was late when Mansell Quinn arrived there, not much more than an hour before closing time. But he managed to get a room overlooking the street, with a view into the car park – though he wasn’t worried about anyone coming to find him tonight.

Quinn felt so confident that he sat in the bar for a while and bought a tonic water. It was the first non-alcoholic drink that came into his mind, and he wanted to keep a clear head. The sweet smell of the beer was tempting, though.

‘On holiday, are you?’ the barman said, putting his drink down on the counter.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Doing a bit of walking?’

‘Yes.’

The barman was middle-aged – about the same age as himself, Quinn realized. He stared at the man for a minute, experiencing a sudden, terrifying urge to talk to him, to tell him everything that was in his mind. He threw some money on the counter, leaving the barman to gather the coins together, and retreated to a corner of the bar.

Quinn hid his hands under the table until they’d stopped shaking. He was angry again, but angry with himself. He looked around the bar, seeking something to distract him. There were so many things he didn’t remember. He wasn’t sure whether the place had changed or if it was just his memory at fault, a failure to reach back into the world he’d left behind fourteen years ago.

For a start, he couldn’t recall seeing the prints of ancient photographs on the wall, showing that the Cheshire Cheese had once been a busy coaching inn. But in the days of horse-drawn coaches the sign had just read Cheshire Cheese’. So ‘Ye Olde’ must have been a twentieth-century addition.

Over there, at the back of the room, was where he’d often sat with Ray Proctor and Will Thorpe. They’d been sitting there on that day nearly fourteen years ago, though the table and chairs had surely been replaced by now. Had there been four places at the table then? Quinn was amazed how hazy his memory was of that time. The events ought to be imprinted on his mind, but even now there were gaps in his recollection that he couldn’t fill. Some of it had come back to him almost randomly in the days and weeks following his arrest, with a sudden, sharp detail hacked out of his memory by a question from the police or a snatch of music in the next room. But not everything. A few of the triggers he needed were still missing, and he didn’t know where to find them.

Quinn eyed the barman to see if he was watching and took a drink of his tonic water, which tasted sharp and bitter, like acid. After a while, he regained his composure and noticed the smells of food drifting from the kitchen. He’d eaten nothing since breakfast at the prison that morning, before his eight thirty release. He found a menu on the table, and ordered scampi and chips.

‘Don’t panic,’ said the barman, when he brought the food. ‘But do you want tartare sauce?’

As closing time approached at eleven o’clock, Quinn finished his drink and went to his room. He paused in the passage to listen to the sound of staff chatting and clattering their cooking equipment in the kitchen, wondering if they were talking about him. On the landing, he walked under the lens of a security camera that pointed towards his room. He would pass it again tomorrow on the way out.

He’d started thinking about cameras in Edendale, when he noticed the CCTV system covering the shopping area. He had watched the cameras swivelling on their tall poles, and had pictured the operators in a room somewhere – a bit like the control room at Gartree, where they’d watched every move he made when he was out of his cell. But in Edendale they were watching everyone. And nobody seemed to mind.

Quinn counted the number of licence conditions he’d already broken. He hadn’t kept his appointment at the probation office, he wasn’t living where he was supposed to, and he hadn’t told his probation officer where he was going. There were people he wasn’t supposed to get in contact with, too. But what was the saying about a sheep and a lamb?

All the money he had was a bit of cash he’d earned working on the farm unit and his discharge grant. The grant was equivalent to a week’s benefit, and was supposed to cover him until he received Income Support or Jobseeker’s Allowance. At least he didn’t have to worry about gate arrest, as so many prisoners did when they were due for release. The police had shown no interest in him.

His room at the Cheshire Cheese was almost filled by a double bed. A shower cubicle stood in one corner, and a couple of steps led down to an alcove containing a toilet and washbasin. A small TV screen perched high up on a bracket near the ceiling. Quinn paced the room for a while. It was dark outside by now, so he drew the curtains. On the window ledge he found a small teddy bear sitting in a spindle chair with a black-and-white cat on its knee.

He played with a touch lamp on the bedside table, then he lay on the bed and pressed buttons on the TV remote. A game show appeared and he left it on, not listening to the voices but watching the faces of the contestants. They seemed to be family groups – mother, father, a couple of teenage kids. They smiled and laughed at the compere’s jokes. But Quinn knew there would be arguments in the car on the way home. Tears, accusations, the old resentments and insults dragged out and rehearsed all over again.

Soon, he began to feel tired. Anger tended to drain all the energy from him. He peeled off his charity-shop clothes and took a shower, knowing it might be the last he’d have for a while. The hot water felt good on his skin.

When Quinn got into bed, he could still taste the bitterness of the tonic water in his mouth, and the spiciness of the tartare sauce. The two flavours mingled in his thoughts as he drifted into sleep. Spice and bitterness, bitterness and spice. The taste of blood and kisses.

7

Tuesday, 13 July

No matter how many dead bodies he’d seen, Ben Cooper would never forget the first. He’d been thirteen years old at the time, a pubescent youth in baggy jeans. Until then, he’d been protected from most of the unpleasantness of the world. He was oblivious to the grubby human realities that were waiting to jostle him with their sharp elbows and breathe their stale breath into his face. He’d thought he was immortal then. He’d thought that everyone around him would live forever, too. But most of the things he’d believed were wrong.

It was shortly before Christmas, and the pavements in Edendale had been cold and wet. Ben and his mother had been shopping for last-minute presents and the vast amount of food involved in celebrating a family Christmas at Bridge End Farm. The young Ben had been tired and bad tempered, and he was sulking about being dragged round the shops. It was already dark by late afternoon and illuminated Santas hung from the lamp posts, while plastic trees twinkled in every shop window.