The Trail Killer

Four

Oh, she'd always known when he was being deceitful, right from the start. Their very first meeting back in Kanpur.

She recalled that nervous wait out in the hallway. How her mother had eventually ushered her through the living room door, nodded in encouragement. Now Advika. They're ready for you now. And a moment later suddenly there he was, sliding into view beneath her raised dupatta - an elegant figure over in the corner chair in a grey kurda shirt. A fast bowler for his local cricket team, she'd been informed, but he was even taller than she'd imagined. More slender and athletic. Crucially, much more handsome than she'd dared hope.

Oh, how her heart had leapt! Without doubt, it had been the most wonderful moment of her life.

Her joy had proven tragically short-lived however.

"So, Shivay," her father had enquired, "are you content?"

"Yes sir," he'd replied, "I am most content."

Despite the accompanying smile he flickered in her direction, on some subconscious level she'd known that those words - the very first she'd ever heard him utter - had been mired in falsehood and mistruth.

That half a second's hesitation before he'd replied.

That veered-away gaze.

He just couldn't help himself. Did it every time.

*

Shields and Bridcutt took their seats in front of the inspector's desk with a certain air of trepidation, like a couple about to plead a bank manager for a mortgage.

"The original's on its way to the forensics office as I speak."

Gooch nodded out through the to the CID room where the petite, grey-haired figure of WPC Hunter could be seen at the spare desk, a phone clamped to her
ear, a pen scribbling furiously at a notepad.

"Before I bagged it up though, I got Gloria to copy it out word for word."

With a solemn nod, he handed the sheet over to Shields. In order that he too could take a look, Bridcutt was forced to drag his chair sideways a little, crane his neck over.

Before reaching the end of the first paragraph, Shields let out an involuntarily gasp, a hissed blasphemy. The words read like punch to the stomach, a hand around a throat.

Bridcutt - a much quicker reader than herself, it seemed - straightened up once more in his chair. "Any chance this is a prank you think, sir?"

"Very much doubt it. Arrived in the second post yesterday morning." The inspector nodded towards the window to his left. "Judging from the frank, the postmaster says it must have been dropped it into the box right there across the road at some point between six and half past ten. Apart from ourselves and Renshaw's friends and loved ones, no-one else knew she was missing at that point."

Bridcutt nodded in sad reflection. "Other than the murderer himself."

"Other than the murderer himself, yes." Gooch swept a hand over his balding dome, grimaced himself to his feet. "The county dog team are already there sniffing out the area of woodland described."

He stepped over to the window, stood with his shoulders to them as he reached into his breast pocket for a Benson & Hedges. Washed in the morning sunlight, his flesh tone was lent added vividness. Electric pink rather than prawn pink.

"Still no-one has come forward about the white Astra. Might be nothing in it, but I thought it wise to get word out that patrol cars across the jurisdiction need to keep their eyes peeled." He glanced back through to WPC Hunter. "Gloria's setting up an index file. "