The Trail Killer

Twenty

Following the dismal episode there on the doorstep. it took a bit of Abba on the tape deck and a cheeky glass of wine - just one, albeit a generous juice glass full - for Shields' state of mind to return to anything approaching functional.

To the soul-restoring soundtrack of Dancing Queen, she finally got back to the task in hand: the remaining ads on the Branstead page of the Echo job section.

It was the final of them which proved the most interesting. The regional headquarters of Let's Go! Tourism Agency required a new member of its office team to liaise with High Street branches regarding transport and accommodation options. Unlike the marketing agency ad she'd seen earlier, no minimum number of O' Level passes was required. The only specification was that applicants should possess a French O' Level - and hey presto if one of her four exam successes hadn't been in that elegant Gallic tongue spoken there across the Channel!

Bien, bien, bien...

To say she was a little rusty was to put it mildly, but she figured that were she to be offered the job she could always see if there were any evening courses at Branstead Tech, or else just hunt out some kind of self-study book from WH Smith's.

It was decided then - she was going for it. But oh hell - a CV and a covering letter...

As someone who'd spent all of her adult life in the force, she'd had unlimited access to reasonably up-to-date typewriters and much more recently those damn blasted Macintosh computers which were all the rage. Had never had any need to actually buy a writing machine.

Sighing in resignation, she scraped back her chair, padded through to the living room where the boys were yelping and squealing at the invading tides of alien spacecraft they sought to heroically repel.

"Time to turn that bloody thing off boys."

She tried to imbue her voice with a sense of jauntiness, as if inviting them somewhere fun rather than the place which in their eyes was the dullest and most godforsaken in the entire town.

"Shoes and jackets on this minute. We're off to the library!"

*

The detective inspector seemed even larger in real-life than he did on the television. Flabbier, more swollen. A wobbly, juddering pool of excess there on the other side of the desk framed by the muddled contents of the bookcase behind him. For Bryan Dixon, a stark visual warning of what might become of he himself were he not to moderate certain lifestyle choices over the coming years.

There was a wince-inducing squeak as the inspector settled himself more comfortably in his swivel chair, the screws and mechanisms beneath him struggling to support his weight.

"I was very sorry to hear about... you know..."

With a sad nod, Dixon indicated that it wouldn't be necessary to finish the sentence. He wished people would just stop it. Saying that they were sorry. As if it was somehow their fault.

Gooch attempted a brief smile. "So, how can I help you Mr Dixon?"

But no, that wasn't the relevant question. There was nothing Gooch could do to help him. Nothing anyone could do, not really. More the pertinent question was how Bryan could help himself, and in doing so help the honour and memory of Shivay Gupta.

He reached into his breast pocket for the small, folded piece of paper Rose had handed him half an hour earlier. With a calm, determined voice, he began to read the list of dates there neatly scribbled. The first of them: Wednesday, January the 8th. The last, the day of Joanne Renshaw's murder: Tuesday, March the 25th.