The Trail Killer

Twelve

As such, she gradually drifted off to the periphery of things. As she took an opening swig of her second bottle, she turned her back to the dodgy jokes and chinked toasts altogether, stared out of the window instead. Down in the car park a couple of news vans were still in attendance. Over near the entrance steps, a reporter was at that moment talking into the camera focused upon him - an update for one of the late evening bulletins no doubt.

Her gaze then shifted over the road to the red and yellow sign of the post office vivid in the slanted early-evening sun. Still the question refused to shake itself from her mind: if not Shivay Gupta, then who was it who'd slipped the letter into the box the previous morning?

"Get you another beer, sarge?"

She wasn't sure if it was something to be lauded or lamented, Bridcutt's ability to sneak up unnoticed beside her and interrupt her thoughts.

"Just opened this one," she indicated.

The constable gazed out of the window alongside her for several moments.

"Still thinking about the letter?"

His ability not only to interrupt her thoughts, but also to read them was most definitely to be lamented rather than lauded.

He took her lack of response as an affirmative.

"I think you should let it go, sarge. The guy confessed. Game over."

She turned to him, narrowed her eyes. "A game, yes. That's exactly what it felt like."

A sudden burst of laughter from the beer-loosened throng behind them forced her to pause a moment before continuing.

"The whole charade of the ID parade. A mere kid called in to defend him." She glanced back towards the merry, chuckling figure of Gooch there in his element at the centre of things. "Couldn't hear much through the glass, but the fat sod threatened him, I'm guessing. Charges of perverting the course of justice for the wife and daughter. Some imaginary friend who's high up in Immigration Control."

Bridcutt smirked. "Sounds like you know the inspector better than you know yourself."

"So I'm right then. Explains why he didn't want me in there next to him."

Bridcutt turned back towards the window. "It wasn't as bad as you're thinking, really."

Shields raised the bottle to her lips, took a hearty gulp.

"If you say so."

"I am saying so."

He swivelled around to her then, his demeanour suddenly sheepish.

"Listen, might have gone a bit over the top with the beer. Any chance of you driving me home?"

*

Just as his son had difficulty in deciphering written words, Pitman was dyslexic with regard to his emotions. He struggled to identify them, tie an accurate label around them. Was never quite sure when to reign them in or just let them breathe. Couldn't quite trace where they had come from or where they might lead him. What manner of rash consequence they could provoke.

Glenda had suggested on numerous occasions that he go and see one of those head doctor types. A psychologist or whatever they were called. But he was a sheep farmer, a Pitman, and as such just didn't do that kind of thing. Admit to weakness. Accept help. Throw his hard-earned money at some bespectacled townie to sit him down on a sofa and ask him about his childhood.

And what would he have said to him anyway, this damn psychologist? He was just as bad at talking as he was at understanding his emotions. The truth was, all that was inside of him was just grey, featureless mush. Everything and nothing all at once. It wasn't something to be analysed.