Following the bizarre telephone conversation which had taken place, Bryan had flopped down onto the settee and had yet to lift himself back off it. There was little need to - the whisky decanter and glass were right there within easy reach on the coffee table before him. So much was going through his head, a gale-like swirl. Most particularly, where the hell was Melanie?
Finally, a full forty minutes since she'd left, the Renault hatchback flashed back into vision through the bay windows. He considered actually getting off his backside, confronting her out in the garage. Something held him back though. A weariness both mental and physical of nature. The decapacitating effect of half a bottle's worth of single malt. A combination of both.
Her approach was sound-tracked by a successive banging of doors, finally the swoosh of limbs, the audible hiss of breath.
"Didn't even cross your mind to clean up these peas then."
She was in the doorway behind him, her words directed to the back of his head.
"Might have known it," she added.
Still he didn't twist his neck towards her. "Where have you been, Melanie?"
"Nowhere."
"Well you must have been somewhere."
She paused a moment, as if she were considering telling him. In the end she decided against it however, changed the subject instead.
"What did you talk about then, you and Shivay?"
"Can't tell you." He finally shuffled himself round to her. "Why do you care so much anyway?"
But she just turned, stepped away. A few moments later, he heard the pop of a wine cork from the kitchen.
After pouring himself some more whisky, he lifted his glass in silent toast.
Looked like dinner was going to take liquid form for both of them.
*
Gooch's press call at the entrance steps proved timely enough for the national broadcasters to hastily put together reports for their evening bulletins.
And thus it was that the fuchsia-toned, double-chinned face of the inspector was beamed into millions of homes. So too his words of pride at the swift efficiency of his officers, and his solemn assurance that unaccompanied women could once more enjoy the natural beauty of the Cranwell Tors without worry.
Though not a man normally noted for acts of generosity, the successful resolution to the highest-profile case of his career was cause for celebration. With money from Gooch's own pocket, an officer had been tasked with a visit to the local Co-op: a couple of crates of best bitter for the gentlemen, a bottle of white wine for the ladies. Shields was not the sort to conform to tired chauvinistic stereotypes however, and instead popped open a beer.
The celebrations took place in the CID room, the guests numbering a dozen or so. Other than Gooch, Bridcutt and Shields, there was Sergeant Hodge, WPC Hunter and assorted other uniformed officers who'd had some direct role in investigations. Not everyone was officially off-duty, but given the enormity of the occasion it would have taken a particularly odious superior officer not to have turned a blind eye.
It didn't take long for noise levels to begin to rise and for the whole thing to resemble some raucous, late-evening pub scene - albeit it one featuring desks and Macintosh computers and filing cabinets, the framed crest of the Wynmouthshire constabulary on the wall.
Though not entirely anti-social, neither was Shields ever the life and soul of any party she attended. She preferred more intimate social occasions - three or four friends around the table of some dimly-lit pub or restaurant. She just felt more at her ease like that.
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.
There was no cure for it. No magic pill one swilled down with the morning coffee. It was what it was, as simple as that.
And so that Thursday evening as he switched off the news bulletin and Billy asked him if he was sorry for the Paki guy, he wasn't sure what to say. What did being sorry for someone actually feel like? Guilt, remorse - were they concepts that even still existed? They seemed anachronistic somehow, buried in time. Something he used to do, like lick the bowl of his mother's cake mixtures. Like run up a hill and barely break sweat. Like sleep well. Like breathe easily. Like hope.
"All I know is that in life there are winners and losers," he replied. "That Paki guy, he's one of the losers. Just the way it went."
Although uncertain of his feelings towards the day's dramatic events, Pitman at least understood the significance of them. As such, instead of ordering Billy to get off his arse and head back outside to work, he found himself shuffling over to the sideboard and fishing out a bottle of gin and two glasses.
"Not a good idea to drink this stuff too often, Billy. Can mess a man's head up." He sloshed out two generous measures, passed Billy his glass over the back of the settee. "Best save it for special occasions only, like today." Sitting himself back down, he clinked his glass to Billy's. "To you, son. Don't reckon they'd have got a confession out of him if it hadn't been for you."
Billy took a wincing sip, spluttered repeated coughs into his fist.
"Ah God, it's horrible!"
"You just keep thinking like that lad and you'll be fine."
After the worst of the coughing fit was over, Billy looked back at his father.
"You've got to make sure it doesn't happen again. Promise me, dad."
A supplication to which Pitman responded with the most solemn of nods.
"I promise, son."
*
Though Bridcutt had some weeks earlier been forced to act as Shields' personal chauffeur for a couple of days as the local mechanic had worked on the numerous flaws flagged up by a recent MOT, Shields had never actually passed by his place of residence before. She was surprised that the first floor flat he'd indicated that she pull up outside was above a butcher's shop.
"This is where you live! But aren't you a vegetarian?"
"Vegan, actually."
She wasn't sure what the difference was precisely, just knew that she herself would never, not for all the money in the world, give up on her sacrosanct right to gobble down a ketchup-splurged bacon sandwich on Saturday mornings.
"But no," Bridcutt admitted "it's not ideal to be confronted by chunks of dead, industrially-farmed animals there in the shop window every time I return home."
Shields imagined that should she live above a butcher's shop, it would do very good trade indeed - to the extent that she and the boys would be eating chunks of dead, industrially-farmed animals seven days a week.
"Flat's pretty nice inside though," Bridcutt continued. "Modern furnishings - you know, all quite minimal and Scandinavian. That's why I chose it - more than made up for the mecca of animal torture on the ground floor."
She could feel it coming, had sensed it ever since he'd asked her to taxi him home.
"Why don't you come on up and have a look?"
But even though she'd been expecting it, now the moment had arrived she wasn't sure how to react. Part of her - that unanalytical, devil-may-care part which she suspected made up the majority of her being - was of course very much open and willing. What 38-year-old woman who slept alone each night wouldn't be tempted to inspect the private quarters, so to speak, of a tall, dreamy-eyed, 28-year-old man?
"Need to get back to the boys."
Damn it if that correct, prissy and self-dignified version of herself hadn't won!
"Half an hour, that's all I'm asking."
She shook her head. "Really shouldn't make the babysitter wait any longer."
She was surprised by the hand which then settled on her thigh, the delicious charge of electricity it emitted. He'd hunched his shoulders round to her, his gaze focused and unwavering. Behind him, the darkening street was quiet, only a single, slinking passer-by visible on the opposite side of the street.
"You know I'm crazy about you right, sarge?"
His words surprised her too. A bit of a crush like she had for him - yes, this she'd suspected for quite some time by then. But crazy about her? Wow, that was pretty big stuff.
But most shockingly of all were the lips she now felt caressing her own. The experience was not altogether unpleasant however - quite arousing, in fact - and it took several seconds for her to summon the mental strength to push him back away.
"Sorry, I just think it would be..." - she tried to find the right word - "unprofessional of us to go there right now."
More than disappointment, his expression was one of offence. "Unprofessional! Is that the best adjective you can come up with?"
Without swallowing the Oxford English dictionary first, pretty much it was, yes.
"This isn't some teacher and student type thing," Bridcutt went on. "We wouldn't be breaking any taboos, let alone any actual rules. It wouldn't be much of a world if two work colleagues weren't allowed to..." - for a moment Shields feared some less than gentlemanly language was about to escape his lips - "get intimate with one another. That's how my parents met - their work desks were right next to each other at Wynmouth City Hall."
Shields had little doubt that a romantic liaison between two civil servants was potentially far less problematic than one between two detectives whose role was to discuss strategies and bounce ideas off each other, but deemed it wise not voice her thoughts out loud.
"The moment," she instead murmured. "It just doesn't feel right."
"Has this got anything to do with the age difference between us?"
"No!"
A little, maybe. Quite a lot, in fact.
"The moment," she repeated. "It's just not the right moment."
"But it'll come along at some point, you think, this right moment?"
"Maybe."
"And if it does, you'll let me know?"
Once again: "Maybe."
"You certainly know how to keep a guy hanging eh sarge"
With a resigned sigh, he opened up the passenger door. Before he could step outside, she brushed a hand to his arm, forced him to turn back her way.
"When we see each other tomorrow morning, we have to pretend this conversation never happened."
"We can pretend it never happened, sure. But that doesn't mean that it didn't actually happen."
She nodded. "I know, I know."
He attempted a farewell smile, one a little squashed and deformed by the weight of disappointment.
"Well, thanks for the lift."
She watched as he stepped across the road, for a fleeting second was tempted to fly out after him, tell him that she'd changed her mind. Just for once allow herself to live the moment and to hell with the consequences. She of all women - the Lord alone knew she deserved it.
Instead, she found herself twisting the ignition key.
Set off home to her two sons.
*
The holding cell was even smaller and more claustrophobic than Shivay had imagined. Little more than a grey-walled coffin, one equipped with a concrete-hard bed, a filthy toilet bowl and a rickety desk. The faintest wash of natural light was provided by a tiny barred window at the top of the exterior wall. His only source of entertainment had been to watch the late afternoon sun deepen and dim, gradually fade completely. It had seemed significant somehow, a visual simulation of his life's course.
They'd told him that the following morning he'd be transferred to Wynmouthshire County Prison, where he'd be held until trial. He wondered if the cells were slightly bigger there, the bed mattresses a little more comfortable, the volume of natural light a tad more generous. He wondered too if inmates were permitted to have radios, or if there was some kind of library where they could borrow books. Just something, anything, to break the crushing weight of boredom.
But then, maybe there was something he could do. A minor task he could put his mind to.
Creaking himself off the mattress, he banged his palms to the bolt-lock door, called out at the top of his voice.
"Officer! Officer!"
A few moments later he could hear the approach of footsteps along the corridor. With a sudden thud, the door flap was thrust down. The officer framed in the opened square was the same pale, balding type who'd slammed a tray of food through a little earlier - a hunk of stale bread, and a pile of cold peas heaped on top of a leathery disc of a hamburger. For the love of Ganesh, didn't they know anything about what being Hindu meant?
"What's up, Gupta?"
"I need a pen and paper."
The officer smirked. "Going to write your autobiography, are you? 'Memoirs of a Murderous Dirty Paki'."
The flap slapped back upwards without further words, leaving Shivay to wonder if his request would be granted. The fading footsteps however quickly morphed into approaching ones again.
"An hour till lights out," the officer grunted as he shoved through a black biro and a sheet of lined A4.
Shivay wouldn't need that long though. Just a couple of minutes, that was all. He'd already worked out the words he was going to write in his head.
He clattered himself onto the wobbly-legged metal chair at the wobbly-legged metal desk. Uncapped the biro, pressed the nib to the sheet.
Dear Inspector Gooch
*
Unlike the previous evening, the scene which awaited Shields upon opening the back door was one of pristine spotlessness. It was a refreshing sense of order which extended beyond the kitchen and continued throughout the entire house. An unprecedented magical spell which had bewitched even the boys, both already in their pyjamas and sporting freshly cleaned teeth.
"Nothing short of a miracle," Shields beamed at Jessica. "Really."
They left the boys in the living room to play with that damn Atari console thingy Zach had bought Jamie for Christmas. Heading back through to the kitchen, they sat themselves down at the table.
"Was following events as best I could on the news," Jessica remarked. "Can't even begin to imagine what a stressful day you must have had."
Shields attempted to make a joke of it. "Oh, I'm sure you can. You've just spent ten hours in the company of Jamie and Lee, after all."
Jessica began rooting around inside her shoulderbag which hung from the chair frame behind her. "Got a box of herbal tea bags somewhere in here. You know, anti-stress. Will help you sleep."
Shields raised a palm to indicate that she needn't bother herself. "Thanks, but think I've got a much better idea."
Scraping her chair back, she headed over to the drinks' cupboard, lifted out a bottle of vodka.
Jessica smiled. "Much better idea, yes."
After clinking out a couple of glasses from the next cupboard along, Shields sloped back to the table, plonked herself heavily down.
"What's it to be then? Single measures or doubles?"
"How about trebles?"
Shields nodded. "The lady's wish is my command."
After sloshing out appropriately hearty measures, Shields clinked her glass to Jessica's.
"To us. After the days we've had, I'd say a little mild inebriation can be permitted."
During the subsequent conversation, Shields would learn that Jessica was a Coronation Street fanatic, had a 15-year-old daughter called Becky, was addicted to chocolate in general and Rolo's specifically, preferred dogs to cats, and had worked for several years at food processing plant at the edge of town before the recession had sparked a series of lay-offs. Since then, she'd done whatever she could to get by. Cleaning, babysitting, dog-sitting, incontinent-grandparent-sitting. Fed up of merely scraping by, she'd enrolled on an Open University course the previous September to qualify as a nursery school assistant, hoped by the autumn to have embarked on a worthwhile and dignified career.
"Not many nights go by when I don't still have the reading light on in the early hours trying to make sense of some overly wordy academic text," she smiled. "But you know, despite all the stuff to read and essays to write, I haven't felt so good about myself for a long time. Feel like I've got some direction back in my life, you know."
It was as Shields splashed out top-ups for them both that the subject of conversation turned suddenly to herself.
"I was just wondering about Lee and Jamie's other grandparents."
"Let's just say Lee's dad's mum and I don't exactly see eye to eye, never have done. Somehow, she seems to blame me for the fact her husband's a lying sod of an alcoholic who can't hold down a job."
"Yes, Margot mentioned something about how you and Lee's gran don't get on. But what I meant was..." - Jessica hesitated a moment, as if unsure it was wise to bring up the subject - "well, your parents actually."
Oh.
"I mean, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to." She'd obviously perceived Shields' sense of discomfort over the matter. "I didn't mean to, you know..."
"No, no, it's okay."
But Shields knew she was trying to assure herself more than Jessica. It wasn't okay, far from it.
"My mother died three years ago."
It was still a hard affirmation of fact to force from her mouth. A series of words she'd had to commit to memory like a Shakespeare quote from English Lit O' Level, through repetition had learnt to mechanically recite.
"Heart problems," she added.
Jessica's hand had reached across the table, brushed against hers.
"I'm so sorry, Diane."
In any other circumstances, the narrative would have ended there, A story devoid of its defining chapter, a little like Frankenstein without the creation scene.
Maybe it was the beer and vodka she'd drunk. More probably, it was the calm, reassuring presence of Jessica there across the table. But whatever the reason, she forced herself onwards. Heaved herself through.
"As for my father, he..."
She swallowed, took a deep breath. This was something she hadn't rehearsed, recited, learnt by rote. Other than her two ex-husbands, it was a fact she'd never shared with anyone, in fact.
"He committed suicide when I was seven."
There, she'd done it. Got it out.
It wasn't just a brush of her hand which Jessica this time offered, but a full-blown clasp.
"Oh God Diane. I... I'm so sorry."
Shields was surprised to see that Jessica's eyes had moistened.
"With me it was my sister. She... she was just fifteen, like my Becky is now."
It took a moment for the stark significance of the words to hammer into Shields' brain.
"What? Oh Jesus, Jessica. I don't know what to... what to say."
But Jessica shook her head as if to communicate that it was pointless searching for the right words because they simply didn't exist.
All four hands were now entwined on the table top between their glasses of vodka. The pair stared at each other for several moments, wordless, their mouths half open. It felt like some kind of non-verbal contract had been drawn. That at some undefined point in the future a conversation would take place, one most probably lubricated by even greater quantities of alcohol. A comparing of notes, a baring of souls.
"Margot was right," Shields finally murmured. "We've got a lot in common."
Jessica withdrew her hands, lifted her shoulderbag from the back of the chair. "Listen, I better get going. Becky'll be wondering where I am." She scraped back her chair, hauled herself upright. "Will you be needing me tomorrow?"
Oh yes, Shields thought to herself - she'd be needing her tomorrow. And quite a few other tomorrows after that too, no doubt.
*
The marital bed felt as vast as the Indo-Gangetic plain. As cold as the summit of the Kangchenjung. A limitless torture of a thing, a vast wasteland of crushed souls. It bruised Advika's heart to realise that it would always be so now, that she would never lay herself down next to her husband ever again.
Though her tears had now dried, still the rage fired her being. As such, sleep was proving difficult to find. She willed it to place its black-veiled truce over her eyes. For a few short, precious hours, to float her away from the here and now.
It came as a relief when she heard the knock on the bedroom door, heard Prisha's whispered voice.
"Mum, I can't sleep. Can I...?"
Like when she'd been a little kid. Ghosts outside the window, monsters in the wardrobe. Think sweet to dream sweet. This was what Shivay would whisper as she'd climbed in between them. And sure enough, in a matter of moments they they'd hear the contented breath of sleep.
"Of course, my sweet child. Come."
They were much longer arms which now wrapped themselves around Advika. No longer those of a child but of a young woman, one already so burdened and scarred. This thought too - yes, it was another to bruise Advika's heart.
"What are we going to do, mum?"
But the truth was, Advika didn't know. She just didn't know.
"Shush, Prisha. Think sweet to dream sweet."
And even after all those years the magic spell still worked. Soon, Advika felt the rise and fall of her daughter's chest against her back, could hear the faint rustle of snores in her ear.
And in those moments of sweet intimacy, Advika could feel her own consciousness begin to slip, glide away towards the shadows...
Then suddenly came a terrifying shatter of glass.
The dull thud of a stone landing at the foot of the bed, the ear-piercing cry of the voice out in the street.
"Dirty murdering Pakis! Sod off home!"
*
The commotion began not long after lights out. A swell of raised voices approaching along the corridor, loud and grizzly enough to interrupt Shivay's ever darkening thoughts, have him sit upright.
"What's this - second time already this month? We told you to lay off those whisky chasers, Bert."
"Get your hands off me, ya bastard copper!"
"You want us to add insulting an officer of the law to drunk and disorderly?"
"If it weren't for these cuffs I'd have ya on the floor, boyo."
"Steady now, Bert. Your age, you'll be giving yourself a heart attack."
The noise, the distraction - it was the perfect opportunity. As the old drunkard continued to shout and wail, and the officers laboured to steer him towards the cell opposite his own, Shivay set hurriedly to work.
Rising to his feet, he pulled the bedsheet from the mattress. With gritted teeth and tautened biceps, began to tear it into long, thin shreds.