The Trail Killer

Ten

A strange air of calm had once more settled over the interrogation room. Several passing seconds of truce-like wordlessness - a brooding, ominous silence like a fast bowler turning into his run up, poised to rip one low and hard, bullet it straight towards the batsman's head.

"Where were you on the fifth of June last year, Gupta?"

It took Shivay a moment to realise the possible significance of the date.

"When the other girl went missing?"

Gooch veered his cigarette towards the ashtray, prodded it with his index finger. "Kirsty Hollister, yes."

Once again, Shivay felt that now-familiar squelch of fear in the pit of his stomach. Just where the hell was Gooch headed this time?

"Well I... I can't really remember." It was the truth.

"Let me try to help you then. It was a Wednesday."

Shivay shrugged. "Well in that case I'm guessing I was at work."

The inspector's smile was the smugly victorious one of a poker player slapping down a royal flush. "Wrong, Mr Gupta. You phoned in sick that day too. Something else we checked."

Just how damn unlucky could a man be, Shivay wondered? The whole sorry mess seemed destined somehow, pre-ordained. A celestial conspiracy of the gods.

"That time of year, I suffer from a bit of hay fever. Sometimes gets so bad a day at work's impossible." And yes, now that he thought about it he seemed to vaguely recall having taken a day off around that time.

"Got anything you can back this up with? A visit to your GP, something like that?"

"Well no... I mean, my daughter, Prisha, she knows what medicine I take. Whenever I get struck down bad, she just gets it over the counter for me at the chemist's round the corner." He reflected a moment longer. "I'm pretty sure she and my wife will remember. They could testify for me."

The inspector's smile was pitying this time, as if regretful of Shivay's naivety. "Oh, come now Mr Gupta, after the cock and bull story they fed DS Shields and DC Bridcutt earlier today, do you really expect us to believe a single word your wife and daughter say? In fact, there's nothing stopping me sending an officer over there right now and charging them both with perverting the course of justice. Nothing at all. We could be talking six months imprisonment for your wife and a suspended juvenile sentence for your daughter."

And the terrifying thing was, Shivay wouldn't have put it past the bastard either.

He glanced desperately across at Willis, sought counsel.

"Perverting the course of justice is unlikely," came the hand-shielded whisper into his ear. "Wasting police time's a possibility though. Would carry a court hearing and some sort of fine."

But even that would be too much for Advika. A public shaming, a battering of her sweet Hindu soul.

Oh, that day - that cursed, regrettable Thursday. It was destined to be the defining chapter of his life, there was no doubt about it by that point. But if he could edit out just one paragraph, banish it forever from history, then it would be exactly that - the rash, ill-considered call home he'd made from the payphone in the factory canteen. Even though at the time there'd been no way of predicting just how wildly and completely events would spiral out of control, he should never have involved Advika and Prisha in the whole self-created mess.

"We had an officer call in at Dunwick clinic," announced Gooch. "You know, check your blood group. A plus - the same as that extracted from the semen stains on Kirsty Hollister's corpse. The same, I have absolutely no doubt at all, which will be extracted from the semen stains on Joanne Renshaw's corpse."