The Trail Killer

Nine

It was a pensive DS Shields who swung her Marina to a halt in the station car park following her trip out to Dunwick. Her head brimming with uncertainties and misgivings, she began heaving her way up the entrance steps, only to be obstructed by a figure launching himself out in front of her.

"Sergeant, is it true that you've pulled someone in for the murder of Joanne Renshaw?"

The crime correspondent from the Wymnouthshire Evening Echo she'd run into a time or two during her CID career - short, sneaky-looking, terrible breath. Redfern, his name. Word had obviously got out.

She manoeuvred herself around him. "Can't comment, sorry."

"Some Indian guy I've heard," came the call behind her.

Her palm prodded open the entrance door. "Can't comment," she repeated.

As she nodded a greeting to Sergeant Brown at the front desk and sloped off along the main corridor, she wondered if any of the national press were lurking in the vicinity too. Oh, there was no mistaking it - this was high-profile alright. The biggest case to hit the rural county of Wynmouthshire in decades. One which given the dynamics of its white female victims and male Indian chief suspect would stoke the basest instincts of the tabloid press. She could already feel it in the pit of her stomach: not just locally but on a national level too, all hell was about to break loose.

She found Gooch and Bridcutt near the coffee machine, polystyrene cups in their hands. Upon becoming aware of her approach, the inspector directed her an inquisitive gaze.

"Well?"

She shook her head. "Nothing sir. Absolutely nothing."

Gooch seemed neither particularly surprised nor disappointed. "Probably dumped it somewhere straight after he wrote the letter. Tossed it off a bridge into the river Wyn."

Shields fished into her shoulder bag for her purse, rooted out a ten pence piece. "Maybe," she conceded, slipping the coin into the slot. "But there's another possibility too, don't you think?" She waited for the machine to rattle out her cup of drinking chocolate before turning back to Gooch. "What if it wasn't Gupta who wrote the letter?"

At this, Gooch almost spluttered into his tea. "You're kidding, right?"

She glanced across at Bridcutt, then back at the inspector. "Not really, no."

Bridcutt downed the last of his tea, crunched the cup into his fist and tossed it into the nearby bin. "But sarge, by saying that it wasn't him who wrote the letter, you're effectively saying it wasn't him who killed Joanne and Kirsty. Only the murderer himself could have been so precise with the geographical details."

Shields blew onto her drinking chocolate, took a first sip. "Well yea, that's exactly what I'm saying, I guess. I don't think it was him. Us women, we're not stupid. We understand the non-verbal much better than you men, believe me. His wife and daughter would have had suspicions, not clumsily tried to cover for him like they did."

Gooch too had meanwhile downed the last of his tea; the toss of his cup towards the bin was less successful than Bridcutt's however. He wasn't the sort of man to worry about such trifling matters though; given his paunch, would anyway have struggled to reach down and pick it up.

"You heard Professor What's-His-Face earlier. The chap clearly stated that it was his belief the letter was written by an Indian."

"No sir, he said it was possible an Indian person had written it, that's all. I mean, all this business about the missing a's and the's - how many times have you read through a report you just typed up to find you've skipped a few short, basic words?"