The Trail Killer

Eight

They'd been the longest two hours of Shivay's life - a cruel, grim eternity of nervousness, chest-crushing tension.

The lawyer guy had introduced himself as Edward Willis, then smiled and said Shivay should just call him Ed. Like it was all going to be just some big matey chat. Football, cricket, DIY tips. The guy had one of those fleshy, soft-featured sort of faces, like some twelve-year-old boy play-acting at being a grown up. Could barely have graduated from law school, let alone had experience of defending someone accused of murder.

After an initial discussion in which Willis had attempted to ascertain the salient facts of the case, he'd flitted off to use the payphone in the corridor outside. Shivay had been left to watch the endless succession of minutes tick themselves down on the wall clock to his right. Ponder what else Gooch had on him, or at least thought he had on him. What manner of accusatory barbs had been scavenged from the crumbled soil of gossip and half-truths? Which investigative bullets had been forged in the furnace of groundless assumption and racial prejudice?

An officer had at one point slunk into the room and with an unveiled glare plonked a plate and a cup down in front of Shivay. What might have been tea, and a sandwich with what might have been shrimp paste.

He'd gulped all down through sheer necessity. The will to stay alert, maintain his focus.

His fears had then grown ever sharper with the whole ridiculous charade of the ID parade. None of the others in the line had even been nose high to him. And who was it on the other side of the one-way glass, he'd wondered? Who the hell was claiming to have seen him anywhere in the vicinity of Joanne after she'd set off in that red Mini of hers? Yet another of those arrows to be slung - one which had materialised out of thin air and thin air alone.

No, even as the juddering form of Inspector Gooch finally lumbered through the door, Shivay already knew.

The grey, featureless surrounds of the interrogation room were like the mouth of whale, ready to swallow him whole.

*

Her mother nodded encouragingly across the table, forced a smile. "Go on Prisha, just a mouthful."

Prisha looked down at the bowl of aloo gobi beneath her. Moving a sluggish hand to her fork, she lifted it a couple of inches above the table top. There it remained, frozen like a winter icicle dangling from a drainpipe. How had her mother even found the mental wherewithal to have spent the last half an hour in the kitchen preparing the dish? As if everything was normal, just another day like any other. Didn't she understand? Her husband, Prisha's father, might never walk free again. Be forced to spend the rest of his days cooped up like some chicken unable to strut more than two paces forward and two paces back, left to uselessly flap its wings. An Indian man, a Hindu. Oh, there was little doubt about it - those bastard white cops would have already made up their minds, be right at that moment inventing whatever lies and subterfuge were necessary to send him down.

Yet still her mother persisted. "You need to eat, Prisha. Keep up your strength."

"Just stop it, mum!"

The words screeched from her mouth before she had chance to fully consider them, analyse their appropriateness. Words which were accompanied by the metallic thud of the fork cascading back to the table.

Her mother's facial muscles seemed to loosen, collapse suddenly downwards in defeat.

"Stop what, Prisha?"

"Acting like a mother from the old country. Like as long as there's food on the table, nothing else matters."

A tear had started to bulge in her mother's eye. "It's the only way, Prisha. Being your mother. It's the only way I'm going to get through this."