05.One Last Breath by Stephen Booth

Author:Stephen Booth
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780007290598
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2005-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

23

Mansell Quinn leaned his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. He was sitting in one of the cubicles at the men’s toilets in the main Castleton car park. He’d managed to get a wash, and had even shaved himself as he sat in the cubicle, using the safety razor and mirror he’d brought with him from prison. Looking grubby would draw too much attention.

The car park had two blocks of toilets, so there were plenty of cubicles for the people he could hear coming in and out. No one would trouble him for some time, unless a cleaner came by later in the day. He’d seen police walking the streets in Castleton, mingling with the visitors, wanting to be noticed in their yellow reflective jackets. For now, the car park was the safest place for him to be. Though it was right in the centre of Castleton, the only people around were tourists. They’d stay in town for a few hours, thinking of nothing but visiting the caverns, or the castle or the gift shops, and having lunch in one of the pubs. And then they would leave again, off to their homes miles away. They wouldn’t know Mansell Quinn, or even be familiar with the name. As far as they were concerned, he was just one more person with a rucksack among hundreds.

But Quinn had picked up a copy of a Sheffield newspaper that somebody had left in the bin outside. When he unfolded it, his own photograph had jumped out at him. He’d known it would happen, and that wasn’t a problem. It was the picture of Rebecca that had hit him hardest. He hardly dared to read the story that went with it.

The door of the toilets banged open, and he heard the voices of two or three boys entering and using the urinals. Quinn thrust his hands into the pockets of his waterproof and kept quite still. His fingers found some of the seedheads he’d pulled from the long grass growing near the river. He waited until he heard the taps running and the hand driers blowing before he took one out and chewed it. He’d found it gave him a bit of comfort. It produced a little surge of satisfaction as his teeth bit down on the hard kernel, cracking it with a tiny explosion in his jaw.

Quinn was trying to hold in the rage, the way he’d been taught on the anger-management course. He knew that if he let it out, it would burst from his mouth like fire. With an effort, he forced it to disperse through his body. He could feel it seething in his guts and seeping out through the pores of his skin, until it seemed to shimmer around him in the cubicle like an aura. By the time the anger had died down, he was hot and sweating, and his palms left wet marks on the walls when he steadied himself to stand up. Finally, he dared to release a breath.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.