Bridcutt had spent his morning in an area of Branstead known locally as 'The Bronx'. Though of course a far stretch from the darkest criminal excesses of New York, it was true that the tight huddle of terraced streets which surrounded the Recreation Ground represented a significant proportion of all petty crime committed in the jurisdiction: joyriding, vandalism, ABH, cannabis dealing and countless other legal indiscretions aside. Recent rumours that someone was peddling the new in-vogue drug called ecstasy to kids as young as 12 though - no, this went well beyond any reasonable definition of 'petty', veered into the blackness of pure and untrammelled evil. Only the previous week a 14-year-old up in Manchester had died of a heart attack after taking one of those damn pills. It had to be stopped. Whichever lowlife of a dealer it was rattling his wares before the eyes of pre-pubescents like a bag of sweets needed to be cuffed up and banged inside the county prison for as long as legal precedent allowed.
And thus Bridcutt had remained in a sedentary position for the entire morning, a zoom lens camera on the passenger seat beside him ready at any moment to be swept into action. As he'd pretended to flick through the previous evening's copy of the Echo, the rollers of the tape deck had been in constant motion: The Smiths' eponymous first album, then Meat is Murder, then a bit of Echo and the Bunnymen, then The Smiths again. Every 20 minutes or so he'd stirred the Capri into life, swung round a couple of streets and tucked back onto the curb-side of the Recreation Ground in a different position. His centre of attention remained the same: the play area at one end of the park featuring swings, a slide, a see-saw and various other rusted, rickety rides. It was here where the local kids gathered, teenagers principally. Bored, restless, still on their Easter holidays. Some swaying on the swings, others lazing around in a group under the slide. A few boys had idly kicked an empty beer can around for a while. Over on one of the park benches a young couple had attempted to enter the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest and most vomit-inducing snog. Elsewhere an occasional spliff had done the rounds, a couple of bottles of Strongbow too.
Bridcutt had found it difficult to concentrate, however. Remain focused, primed for action. Shields' visit the previous evening had been chastening, the weight of guilt which was now pressing down onto his shoulders quite unbearable. All those things he'd told the Echo reporter at the entrance steps of the station the previous Friday morning, the pair of them huddled there under the drizzle, Redfern struggling to keep his umbrella above him with one hand and scribble down the details into his notebook with the other. At the time it had felt liberating, like clearing a wardrobe of threadbare jumpers and never-worn shopping mistakes and jeans which just didn't fit any more. Only, it was his own conscience he'd been attempting to scour and unfetter.
Had it been the tipping point, he wondered? For Chief Constable Grayson and whoever had been alongside him in the commission at Shields' hearing. Had their belief that it had been her who'd ratted to the press outweighed her screeching confrontation with Gooch? Had she effectively been thrown off the force for an indiscretion that belonged entirely to he himself?
It was a question which continued to heavy his mind as he jerked the ignition key, set off back towards the station. It had gone midday by this point, the horde of teenagers over by the swings much reduced in number as they began slouch off home for lunch. With such a reduced potential market, it was unlikely that the ecstasy dealer would slither onto view any time soon.
As he was pulling back into the station car park a couple of minutes later, he noticed a sleek Alfa Romeo heading out the other way which seemed vaguely familiar. He squinted his eyes at the figure behind the wheel as they passed in close proximity...
Jesus! Was that him? Was that really him?
Within seconds, Bridcutt had screeched the Capri into a vacant parking space, was scampering up the entrance steps. Behind the front desk awaited the smiling, rotund face of PC Walsh.
"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.
"Hope you've not been letting Shields get inside your ear, lad."
PC Wakelin had at that moment appeared at the foot of the stairs, began scampering upwards. The two detectives were forced to nudge themselves sideways to allow him room to pass. The constable swerved a wide-eyed glance at Bridcutt as if aware of the air of heavy tension he'd just sliced through.
Gooch waited until the upwards thud of Doc Martens had faded before fixing Bridcutt once more in a glare.
"An affair, yes. That was the theory Dixon came here to... to spout. But a theory is all it is, constable, and a very fantastical one at that I have to say."
Bridcutt shifted back down a couple of steps, his body angle turned fully towards his superior.
"But it would explain everything sir, don't you see? Not just the confession but all those minor details too. Why Gupta was headed in the direction of Southwold that morning. Why he called in sick to the factory from a phonebox rather than from home. Why he didn't need to look up Dixon's number in the phonebook in the custody office but just knew it off by heart."
Beneath him, the glower lingered.
"The case is closed, constable."
Words which emerged from the inspector's mouth as a slow, unambiguous hiss.
"Unless you want to end up like that blonde crush of yours," he continued, "I'd strongly advise you to remember this. Now, I think it best if our paths were not cross again for the rest of the day, don't you? Grab yourself some lentils or whatever it is you bloody veggies eat, then get yourself back over to the Rec."
So the sod did remember his food philosophy, reflected Bridcutt. Sort of at least, when the need suited him.
It seemed pointless to try and engage him further. As Bridcutt watched his superior drag himself down the remaining stairs and disappear off into the corridor, a thought had already begun to rumble inside his head like an emerging earthquake.
He too descended the stairs. Rather than veering left towards the station entrance, he instead turned right, ducked down the windowless stairwell which led to the Archives Office.
*
Lee's voice from the backseat of the Marina was sudden, loud and urgent.
"But mum, Wimpy's that way!"
Glancing into the rear-view, Shields caught sight of her son with his upper body twisted around, a frenetic index finger jabbing back to a just passed junction.
She'd hoped the boys had forgotten her earlier bribe. She might have known.
"Mu-um, you promised!"
It was Jamie's turn this time. The baby of the family, his whine softer and more endearing than his elder brother's.
"Well now I'm unpromising," Shields responded.
"Unpromise isn't even a word," pointed out Lee.
Shields smiled to herself. "Isn't it? Well, it damn well ought to be if you ask me."
"We made a deal, mum," Lee continued. "You said if we behaved ourselves in the bloody library we'd go to Wimpy afterwards. And we behaved ourselves, didn't we Jamie?"
"We did mum, I swear!"
Saying that they'd behaved themselves was putting an exaggeratedly positive spin on things, but yes - things could have gone worse perhaps.
"I just think that after scoffing all that chocolate down your faces last weekend it's not the right time to be scoffing greasy burgers down your faces too. Don't want to end up like Inspector Gooch, do you?" They'd bumped into him in the town centre one Saturday afternoon a few months earlier. "Oh, and Lee - it's just a library, okay, not a 'bloody' library."
"Pleaeese mum!"
Little baby Jamie once again.
As she veered left at the next junction and then took another left back towards Wimpy, she told herself that the reason for her U-turn was to offer the boys a maternal lesson in how promises made in good faith should always be honoured, no matter what. The stark truth however was that the morning had been a draining one, both physically and emotionally, and she just couldn't face the thought of having to cook. This plus the fact that - despite her own chocolate-scoffing excess over the Easter weekend - she too fancied indulging in a bit of greasy dead animal. A bacon double cheeseburger. The Lord knew, it was the very least she deserved.
Five minutes later they were seating themselves at a table by the window, a splurge of burgers, fries, milkshakes and ketchup sachets at their centre. A heart attack on a tray.
"Okay guys," beamed Shields, "let's dive in!"
As was often the case when the three of them were seated at a table together, their molar-mushing conversation took on the form of a series of questions beginning with 'why'.
Some were factual of nature, in response to which Shields attempted to assume the knowledgeable air of a primary school teacher.
Why are hamburgers called hamburgers when really they're made of beef, not ham?
Others attempted to flash a torchlight into the darkness beyond the boys' personal experience.
Why do gìrls play with stupid dolls when there are footballs and Atari consoles?
The one asked by Jamie as his brother snuck off for a wee meanwhile required Shields to interpret the sharp reality of adulthood into the cushioned language of childhood,
Why does Lee's dad sometimes shout so loud? It's scary.
The most complicated response of all however was to a question posed by Lee as they scrunched the now empty wrappers and cartons and sachets back onto the tray.
"Why haven't you been at work these last few days, mum? Do pigs get Easter holidays too?"
"Who told you to use that word?" she snapped.
Lee rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Okay, policemen then."
"And policewomen."
"So do you then? Get Easter holidays like us school kids?
A moment was needed to reflect on her answer. She hadn't told them yet - not explicitly, anyway. Perhaps the moment had now arrived.
"Well no. It's just that I... I'm not a policewoman any more, you see"
Lee paused from scrunching his burger wrapper into a ball, turned her a frowned expression. Perplexed, like trying to work out an equation for Maths homework.
"What are you then?"
Swaying her gaze out of the window, Shields observed the high street bustle for some moments. The swoosh of traffic, the scurry of passers-by. Felt herself a still-point without destination. Devoid of purpose.
Oh, those last dozen years or so - they'd been a knuckle-whitening rollercoaster ride of unimaginable highs and gut-churning lows. Yet through it all the needle of her inner compass had remained firm, without flicker. She was Diane Shields, officer of the Wynmouthshire Constabulary. To the maximum of her capabilities, an upholder of the law.
But now the needle had lost its magnetic field, was swinging randomly one way and the next like a pinball smacking between the bumpers. At 38 years old she was obliged to reinvent herself. Somehow, somewhere, find another pathway.
What are you, Diane?
What exactly are you?
As she turned back towards the boys, she could feel the prick of a tear in her eye.
"I... I don't know. I'm not really sure."
Had it not been for the cute beam Jamie at that moment flashed her, she feared she would have wilted. Melted into a deep well of tears.
"You're our mum, mum. That's what you are."