The Trail Killer

Twenty-four

"What did the sod say to you?"

Billy took a step backwards, as if hammered by a gale-force wind. "That he hurt his ankle in the woods, needed to use the phone."

"Anything else?"

"That he got that black eye of his playing football."

"That all?"

"Well, he... he asked about mum."

"Your mother? Jesus!"

And that was it, all the confirmation Pitman needed. An act of undercover subterfuge, that's what it had been. A worm slithering to the surface after a downpour.

"I told him she slipped," Billy added. He then frowned as if trying to remember something else. "Oh yea, said he was an ambulanceman."

Pitman let out a bitter snort. "An ambulanceman! He was playing us for complete fools. Guy's a copper."

"A copper?"

Pitman slapped his palms to his son's shoulders with such ferocity that the plate tumbled from his hands, cracked against the stones below.

"Anyone else comes sniffing by, you just tell 'em to bugger off.."

Billy nodded in apology. "Sorry, dad."

That word, sorry. It sounded odd coming from Billy's mouth. A twisting of reality, like a sheep that barks or a dog that bleats. If anyone should be uttering the word - repeating it with every successive breath - then it was he himself.

"I won't let it happen again. I promise."

Billy's gaze then focused on a point somewhere behind Pitman's shoulder.

"The cousin or whoever it is who's picking him up, looks like they've arrived."

Turning, Pitman squinted down to the bottom of the dirt road. The sun had moments earlier slipped between the clouds, rendering the Morris Marina a bright, unmissable red. As quiff guy strode crutch-less and without difficulty to the passenger door - he must have chucked the tree branch over the dry stone wall on the other side - the blob of blonde hair visible at the driver's window was also vivid in the sunlight.

Oh, they were a sly pair alright.

*

Shields had just never felt comfortable on country backroads. That narrow stripe ahead which every few seconds disappeared behind curves, dry stone walls, thick overhanging hedgerows. That constant fear that at any given moment some complete bloody idiot was going to come screeching into view in the opposite direction, send her to an early grave. With her eyes thus fully focused on the road ahead, she crunched the gearstick into first, set them into gentle motion.

"Well?"

As her hand reached to turn down the volume knob of the radio, she could sense Bridcutt tilt his head upwards beside her, puff out his cheeks in frustration.

"I was so close. So damn close."

"So close to what, Jonah?"

The interior of the car wobbled a little as he shifted himself more comfortably in the passenger seat.

"So Pitman's not there, right. Just Billy. I feed him all the crap about having twisted my ankle and needing to make a call, and bingo! - he invites me in. Tells me the phone's in the sitting room, meanwhile he stays in the kitchen to make himself some toast. So I scamper to the sitting room to take a quick peek - no sign of any typewriter. And this is where my soft tread plimsolls come in handy, right. I go charging up the stairs at the speed of light and---"