The Trail Killer

One

"Hardly the first time, is it now?"

He waited a moment before continuing, as if giving her the opportunity to contest the incontestable.

"Oh, I know it must be difficult bringing two kids up on your own and balancing that with the working life of a detective."

He knew? Really? She bet the sod had never done the weekly shopping or hoovered up or ironed a load in his whole sad self-centred life.

"No-one's forcing you to do this though. Don't see anyone with a pistol pressed against your temple saying 'Diane Shields, you have to be a CID officer, you've got no other option.' Why not get all those ex-husbands of yours to---"

Now it was her turn to interrupt, her tone pitched somewhere between affront and defiance.

"Two, sir. I've got two ex-husbands, not an army of them."

At this, Gooch's unkempt eyebrows jerked upwards in theatrical exaggeration. He took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled a slow curling plume. "Just two, eh. Well, that's two more ex-husbands than my missus has got. Two more than my sister. Two more than my daughter. Two more than the vast majority of women, in fact."

Did he really have to needle her like that? Keep repeating that same damn number? Two.

"Get 'em to stump up their dues," he continued, "that's all I'm saying. That way all you'd need to get by is some part-time number. A checkout girl or some such."

A checkout girl! Was she hearing this right?

Oh, there was so much she could have said to him in that moment. A raging verbal tsunami peppered with the most colourful of word choices. Insubordination could be deemed grounds for a disciplinary hearing however, and she needed to tread carefully. Like smoking and unhealthy, doomed relationships, it was best just not to get started.

"I'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again, sir."

"Better had do sergeant, better had do, else next time I'll be referring matters to the Chief Constable. Am I making myself clear?"

There was little she could do other than offer a solemn nod of the head.

The inspector's tone then softened a little.

"Just got a call about a young woman who's been reported missing over in Dunwick. Forty-eight hours not yet passed, possibly nothing in it. But, well..."

He didn't need to say it out loud. The famous media shot was already there projected onto Shields' mind - that pretty, raven-haired university graduate smiling shyly beneath her ribboned mortar board. This plus the terrible memory of the ravaged corpse on that desolate, godforsaken hillside.

Ten months had now passed since the tragic June morning when Kirsty Hollister had decided to take a solitary stroll among the Cranwell Tors. Ten months of fruitless investigation. Of troubled, haunted dreams.

Gooch observed his subordinates sombrely. "You don't need me to tell you how careful we have to be with these things. Want you both to take a ride over there, check we're not dealing with anything sinister."

*

With his breath sucked in and his face scrunched into a grimace, Billy tossed the contents of the bucket onto the manure heap at the side of the pen shed.

"Come on Queenie," he then called. "Snack time!"

Once out of stink range, he took a moment to catch his breath, enjoy the warmth of the early spring sunshine on his face. Like every morning during lambing season, it had been a hell of a busy one. Up at first light to check for overnight births, then bottle feed the weak and abandoned lambs, fill the water troughs, top up hay racks, finally muck out the pens. All that didn't matter though. Despite the sweat and hard work, the truth was that it was one zillion per cent his favourite period of the entire year. The reason was right there before him - all those little white dots on the surrounding hillsides scattered around the slightly larger white blobs of their mothers. The way all of a sudden they'd leap as high as their little legs could blast them, as if to say 'yipee, I'm alive!' And why wouldn't they be happy? They got to spend all their days just frolicking around without a care in the world. No first or last or in between, all of them equal. No-one laughing at them, sniggering, whispering behind their backs. Just run and play, run and play. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to be a lamb?