The Trail Killer

Eleven

Following a third glass of whisky, Bryan finally scraped back the patio chair and sloped off into the house. Through the opened kitchen door, he glimpsed his wife as she rinsed a colander of potatoes at the sink. He paused his step for a moment to admire the still shapely behind and the loosely coiled auburn hair which reached down to the small of her back. What was that saying? You don't know what you've got till it's gone? Only, it wasn't true - not in his case, anyway. He knew full well he didn't deserve a wife as pretty and as smart as Melanie, had always known it, but a midlife crisis was just the most devilish of things. A hand which sneaked up behind you, shoved you off your chosen course. There was little a man could do about it.

He was resetting the whisky decanter onto its silver tray on the sideboard in the living room when the phone began to ring.

"I'll get it," he called.

As he headed over to the side table to sweep up the receiver, he wondered if it might be Oliver. That would be expecting too much perhaps. No, a much more likely bet was that complete cow of his mother-in-law, or else his secretary Rose to inform him of some late-afternoon hiccup in the supply chain.

It was a complete shock therefore - a veritable gob-smacker, no less - to hear the hushed, solemn and distinctly sub-continental voice of Shivay Gupta on the other end of the line.

"Good afternoon, Mr Dixon."

"Shivay! But what... I mean, what's going on? Have they.... have they released you?"

For a moment, his heart soared. Not only was the good name of the company untarnished, but he would no longer have to worry about the repayment of the loan he'd stumped up.

"Mr Dixon, I need you to listen, okay? To just shut up a minute and listen."

There was something to Gupta's tone - a hissed insubordination, an ominous sense of menace - which was quite unsettling. Those hard edges of reality once more sharpened through the whisky haze.

"What's going on, Bryan? Have they...? I mean, is he...?"

This second voice - its contrast in both tone and gender to Gupta's - was for a moment confusing. Lifting his gaze, Bryan located his wife there at the living room door - an opened bag of frozen peas in her hands, her expression one of tense engagement. She'd obviously heard him exclaim Shivay's name, had come scampering through from the kitchen.

He gestured with an urgent, flapping hand that she should shut the bloody hell up, let him concentrate.

"Okay Shivay, I'm listening, I promise. What's... I mean... where are you?"

"I'm still in custody, Mr Dixon. About to confess."

"About to confess?"

Over at the doorway came a dull thud as the bag of peas crashed to the floor, spilled its contents out across the carpet.

"He's about to confess!"

Bryan shot his wife an irate glower. "Just shut it, would you Melanie! Let me talk to him."

Gupta's voice hissed once more into his ear. "Your wife's there?"

"Yea, she's just here at the---"

"Tell her to go away. This needs to private. Just me and you, man to man."

Bryan turned back to her, screwed his face up in unambiguous irritation. His hand swept back and forth, his mouth silently repeating the same monosyllable: go, go, go...

Finally she got the message, turned on her heels, swept away from view. Left the spilled peas there all across the doorway.

"She's gone, Shivay, I swear. It's just you and me. But, I mean, you're... you're really going to confess?"