The Trail Killer

Twenty-one

"How's it going, detective? Heard the canteen's putting on lamb chops and roasties today. Telling you, can't wait till my lunch break." There was a regretful closing of his eyes as he suddenly remembered. "Oh Christ, forgot you're not exactly into that kind of---"

"That Bryan Dixon I just saw pulling out the car park?" Bridcutt interrupted. "You know, the wool factory guy?"

Walsh glanced behind him at Sergeant Brown occupied at the comms desk, then at the member of public seated in the waiting area behind Bridcutt. Lowered his voice.

"Yea, came in around half an hour ago. Said he needed to talk to Inspector Gooch, so I escorteď him up."

Bridcutt suspected he already knew the answer, but asked the question anyway.

"What was it about?"

After checking that no-one was approaching in either direction, Walsh lowered his voice still further.

"Guy told me it had to do with the Gupta case."

Could Shields really have been right, Bridcutt wondered? Her hypothesis that Gupta and Melanie Dixon had been having an affair. Had she hit the nail right on the head?

Raising a palm in gratitude, Bridcutt bounded off to the staircase leading up to the CID room. Looking upwards, he caught sight of Gooch waddling himself down the upper flight- a somewhat laboured and slow-motion process given the enormity of the paunch he was obliged to carry. Turning onto the midway landing, the inspector spotted Bridcutt there below, paused with his hand clasped to the rail.

"Constable! How'd the stake-out go?"

Bridcutt skipped himself up to a couple of steps beneath, shook his head regretfully. "Nothing yet."

Gooch nodded. "These things require patience." His subsequent smile communicated a tingling sense of anticipation. "Lamb chops and roast potatoes for lunch, I've heard." As PC Walsh, it seemed the fact of Bridcutt's veganism had temporarily been forgotten. "Was just off to The Mason's Arms," Gooch continued, his smile growing wider. "You know - a liquid appetiser, let's say. Care to join me?"

But Bridcutt was keen to broach the subject immediately, the wording of his question a deliberate ploy. An opening challenge. A verbal litmus test.

"Was that Bryan Dixon I just saw heading out of the car park?"

The inspector observed him thoughtfully for a moment, as if contemplating a denial. Perhaps grasping the potential futility of it, there came a grudging nod.

"Yes, he just popped by for a quick chat."

By lumbering back into motion, dragging himself past Bridcutt onto the steps below, Gooch communicated his reluctance to enter into any kind of detail.

"What did he say to you?"

The question was directed to the broad, jacketed expanse of the inspector's back as he continued to heave his way down the steps.

"Oh, nothing of any great consequence."

Bridcutt hesitated for a moment before coming out with it. Unlike the previous Friday when he'd taken the cowardly option of offloading his reservations to a journalist, this time he was going to take inspiration from that glorious shard of granite which was Diane Shields. Tell it to Gooch's face straight and true, and to hell with the consequences.

"Gupta was having an affair with Dixon's wife, wasn't he?"

He watched as Gooch paused his step beneath, slowly turned himself around. The revealed expression was scowled and unimpressed, intimidatingly so.