The headmistress' office was wood-panelled, musty-smelling and decidedly claustrophobic. Apart from the addition of a Macintosh computer on the desk, it was in fact little changed from how Shields recalled it from all those years earlier. Third year juniors, she and Emily 'Egghead' Peters seated there at the centre of the headmistress' arrow-like glare. Their class teacher, Mr Talbot, had found it strange that both of them had achieved scores of 27 out of 28 on the end-of-term mental arithmetic test, particularly so as they'd been sitting next to each other and the one question they'd got wrong had been the same. For Shields it had proven a formative lesson in the power of justice: given the weight of evidence contained in Mr Talbot's mark book with regards to a similar test at the end of the previous term, she'd had little option other than confess.
Though the current headmistress had of course changed from the late-50s version, the glare was just as piercing.
"Malcolm was escorted to A & E by Mr Harding the caretaker."
The glare shifted from Shields across to Lee in the seat beside her. His chin was dug into his chest, his cheeks flushed with shame.
"He rang just a couple of minutes ago to inform us that - an unsightly black eye aside - the boy hasn't suffered any significant injury."
"Oh, well that's something at least," Shields found herself murmuring.
The glare shifted back again.
"Given the gravity of the incident, Mrs Webster---"
"I already told the secretary, my surname's Shields."
But the headmistress seemed not to care one hoot what her bloody name was.
"Given the gravity of the situation," she repeated, "I'm afraid it is beholden on me to issue your son a week's suspension from school. I very much hope that it is a period of time he will use to reflect on the...."
But Shields was no longer registering the headmistress' words.
A week's suspension!
So much for the liberating effect of the start of the new school term! Looked like she'd have to give Jessica a call already.
*
As Claire summited the hill, the breeze became a little more blustery, flapped irritatingly at her raven hair from a variety of angles. Pausing for a moment, she slipped her backpack from her shoulders, stooped to fish out her hair grip. As she did so, she took the opportunity to glance back along the trail, was this time surprised to see a figure following a little behind - a dark trudging silhouette framed by the rolling green hillsides behind. Squinting, she tried to ascertain some basic generalities. A man it seemed despite the bushy outline of light-coloured hair. Middle-aged perhaps. Neither bulky nor frail.
And that was when she noticed it - a detail so chilling it froze her blood, caused her to snatch her breath.
In his hand was the sharp, pointed outline of what very much looked like a knife.
She was back on her feet in an instant and to hell with the hair grip. Oh Christ, what if Sharon had been right all along? The Indian guy who'd hung himself - what if he'd been innocent, had felt forced into making his confession? What if the Trail Killer really was still out there? Was just a hundred yards behind her, in fact?
The backpack bouncing over one shoulder, her breath coming in wheezed, desperate pants, she scurried away along the path.
Far behind she could now hear a dog barking. A voice then called out - young, male.
"Dad! Dad, what are you doing? You need to turn back now! Dad, just come back alright!"
Risking a backward turn of her neck, Claire could make out a distant figure running out from one of the outbuildings behind the farmhouse, the dog beside him. The nearer figure had meanwhile halted his step, had turned himself around.
She continued to hurry along, paused to catch her breath only after cresting the next hill.
Only when she felt safe once more.
*
"Why, Lee? Why?"
The words were accompanied by an admonishing slap to his upper arm - one strong enough to cause him to rub at the sleeve of his school sweater, scowl across at her.
"Why?" she repeated, her tone this time stripped of anger, more an uncomprehending maternal murmur.
They were in the street outside the school, the Marina gently vibrating from the turned ignition key but yet to pull off from the curb-side.
"You've said it so many times, mum. Someone shoves you, you shove 'em back twice as hard."
"Give 'em a shove, yea, but I didn't say punch 'em in the bloody eye!"
She heaved out a sigh.
"You know I'm going to make you write this Malcom boy a letter of apology, right?"
Lee gave a reluctant nod.
"And if anything of the sort ever happens again that Atari console of yours is going to end up in the council skip?"
There was a second nod of the head: chastened, regretful.
"And that during this self-imposed week off of yours you're obliged to finally to get round to reading that Roald Dahl book grandma Irene got you for Christmas."
At this, he turned her a horrified glance.
"But---"
"No buts Lee, no buts. Only thick people never read books. Don't want to end up thick, do you?"
After receiving a murmured, grudging promise that he would read it, Shields softened her tone a little.
"So this Malcom fella, what exactly did he say to you that wound you up so much?"
Lee looked out of the passenger side window at the passing traffic, as if contemplating whether to tell her or not.
"What was it, Lee?" she insisted.
He finally turned back to her.
"It was break-time. Him and a couple of other boys were laughing at me. You know, sniggering like a bunch of girls. When I asked them why, Malcolm said that you got sacked from being a pig because---"
"I told you not to use that word, Lee!"
"From being a policewoman," he corrected, "because you tried to defend that Paki who---"
"Okay, two things, Lee. First, the guy was from India, alright. Second, somebody who actually is from Pakistan is known as a Pakistani, not a 'Paki'."
Lee blew out a sigh, as if frustrated by the constant interruptions and linguistic corrections.
"Because you tried to defend that Indian guy," he continued. "And I... I just thought it was wrong of him to say that. You did what you did because you thought it was right. So I told him to shut it, okay. But he just kept going on about how you defend Paki killers, and so in the end I had no other choice than give him a good one."
Though secretly glowing with maternal pride, Shields continued to observe him disapprovingly for some moments. She then shuffled the gearstick into first, slipped out amidst the traffic.
"Promise me you won't tell Jamie about what we're about to do," she instructed.
"Why, what are we about to do?"
She smiled across at him.
"How about Wimpy's for lunch?"
*
Billy's father seemed different somehow as he trudged back towards him. Older, slower, more plodding. A confused frown on his face like some OAP who wasn't sure what day of the week it was. What his name was. Who the monarch was. Dazed. Wide-eyed. Not quite there.
"Dad, what the hell were you doing?"
It took him a moment to register the question.
"I... I just wanted to warn her, Billy. Tell her not to come this way again. Not on her own."
"But the knife, dad! The knife!"
His father looked down at it in there in his hand as if for the first time becoming aware of it.
"I was about to castrate one. It was just there in my hand."
His father then trudged past him, began heading back to the pen shed.
Billy turned his gaze towards the tiny, hurrying figure in the distance. Wondered what the hell she must have made of it.
*
Gooch was at his desk flicking through the sports pages of the Daily Mail. As he skimmed an article about the winning jockey of Saturday's Grand National, his concentration levels were somewhat dimmed however. As always when the wall clock began ticking towards half past twelve, his mind was consumed with thoughts of food, the weighing up of that same all-important daily question: the baker's up the road or see what the station canteen had to offer?
The sudden trill of the desk phone was an unwelcome distraction. Shuffling the newspaper to one side, he lifted the receiver with a similar air to picking a squidge of chewing gum from the sole of his shoe.
"Gooch, yea."
"Sergeant Brown here inspector. We've just had a call in at the front desk from some young woman at a phonebox out on the hiking trail not far from Southwold. Says she wants to speak to you. Says it's urgent. Do you want me to put her through?"
Oh Lord, what was all this about, Gooch wondered?
He sighed in irritation. "Alright, put her through. But sergeant, this stays between you and me, okay? Been far too much gossip-mongering around the station these last weeks."
"Course inspector, you have my word."
Gooch had little doubt about it: Sergeant Brown was a wily old sod, the same generation as himself. He knew how these things worked, was no blabbermouth like some of the younger ones.
As a series of connecting hisses and beeps emerged from the other end of the line, the inspector glanced through the opened window blinds into the CID room. Given the unsightly black eye, he'd thought it best for Bridcutt to spend his day catching up on paperwork and other bureaucratic duties rather than be out in the field. He was content to see the constable over at his desk, his gaze focused on the computer screen, completely unaware of the nature of the call which was about to be received.
The phone line had meanwhile cleared to a faint expectant hiss.
"Detective Chief Inspector Gooch here. Who am I speaking to please?"
"My name's Claire," came the reply. "Claire Golding."
Her voice was a little rushed and ragged, as if in the aftermath of an accident or some other perturbing event.
"You're the inspector I've seen on the TV?" she asked. "The officer in charge of the Trail Killer case?"
Gooch couldn't resist a smile - that of a man very much enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame. It had happened on numerous occasions over the previous few days that complete strangers had stopped him in the street and complimented him on his success in nailing Gupta before he had the chance to strike again.
"Yes, that's me," he replied.
The young woman's voice grew ever more urgent. "Listen, I'm calling from a phonebox at the edge of some village I don't know the name of. Starting to run out of change."
In response, Gooch too skipped his voice into a hurry. "Tell me Miss Golding, what is it you would like to share with me?"
"After the woods where the second victim was killed, there's a hill with a farmhouse on top."
"Yes, I'm with you." She was clearly referring to the Pitmans' place.
"Well, I was just hiking up the trail nearby there when all of a sudden I saw this man was following me. And he..." Her voice rose at the still-raw memory of it. "Oh Christ, he had a knife in his hand."
"Can you describe him for me?"
"Well, I mean, I didn't let him get too close to me. Just turned and scarpered. But he was about forty, fifty, something like that. Average height. A full head of bushy fair hair."
Billy's father without question, thought Gooch. John, hadn't the chap said his name was?
"And when you hurried off away," Gooch enquired, "did the man try and chase after you?"
"Well no, thank God. A dog started barking behind him and someone was calling for him to turn back around. His son, I think it was. Tell you though, I'm certainly not going to be heading back that way. I'll have to see if I can thumb down a lift somewhere, get them to take me back to my car."
There was the audible clank of another coin being dropped into the slot.
"That's my last tenpence inspector. Line'll go dead in a few seconds."
Thank Christ for that, thought Gooch.
"Time enough hopefully for me to inform you, Miss Golding, that at this period of the year in particular, the sight of a sheep farmer walking across his land with some kind of knife in his hand isn't such a rare thing. Most of those lambs out in the fields need to be castrated, see. The meat tastes better that way I believe, and..." He smiled to himself. "Let's face it, if we left the rams to do their thing there'd be more sheep in the world than we'd know what to do with!"
"But inspector---"
"You really mustn't believe everything you read in the papers," he interrupted. "All these ludicrous conspiracy theories some of them are spouting. The truth is the Trail Killer is exactly where he deserves to be, Miss Golding - right down there in..."
But the line had now gone dead, he realised.
After rattling down the receiver, he clambered enthusiastically to his feet.
Maybe it was the talk of meat production which had helped him decide: one of those scrumptious steak pies from the baker's it would be.
*
Bridcutt's call finally came early evening.
"How was your day?" he enquired.
Shields searched for a neat phrase of summary. "More down than up," she finally offered. "And yours?"
"Boring as hell. Gooch had me in front of the Macintosh all day."
"That black eye of yours, don't blame him."
"It's starting to fade a little," he assured her. "More a sort of pinky-grey now rather than purply-black."
"Got a job interview tomorrow," she informed him. "You know, that tourist agency I told you about."
"Well that's a positive." He paused for a moment, as if in consideration of something. "How about we do a quick simulation? You know, that one question they're a hundred per cent certain to ask you."
Yes, Shields thought she knew where he was headed.
His voice took on a serious, formal tone. "So Ms Shields, we see from your CV that you spent x number of years on the force---"
"Twenty years," Shields specified. "My entire adult life."
Bridcutt cleared his throat, went again.
"So Ms Shields, we see from your CV that you spent twenty years on the force. We'd just like to know why all of a sudden you've decided to change your career path."
"I got sacked for insubordination. Am scrabbling around trying to find some mildly acceptable plan B."
"You can't say that!"
"Well if I say anything else I'll be lying then."
"Exactly Diane - you need to lie. The only people who don't lie in job interviews are people who don't have jobs. You need to say something that'll make it sound like an active decision. That you were in control, are still in control and will continue to be in control."
"That's a pretty big porky, Jonah. The biggest of the lot." She wheezed out a sigh. "Listen, I'll try and come up with something, okay?"
Preliminaries now over, it was time to get to the crux of things.
"Pitman," she began. "Any new developments?"
"'Fraid not."
Just as she'd suspected.
"Any ideas come to you?" she pressed.
"Half a one maybe," he answered. "What about if I went back there? On my own this time, say I lost my credit card and am wondering whether I it dropped out of my wallet near the desk while I was looking for my cousin's phone number I'd scribbled down onto a piece of---"
"Four things, Jonah," she interrupted. "First, you already took more than enough risks on Saturday. Don't push it, alright. Second, Pitman wouldn't let you back inside the house anyway. Third, even if he did that ball of paper has probably disappeared. Fourth, even if it hasn't it might be nothing anyway. In short, risk to possible gain ratio is through the roof."
"I said it was only half an idea," Bridcutt admitted.
"More like a quarter of a one. An eighth. A sixteenth."
"Listen," Bridcutt countered, "you need to stay patient, Diane. Keep the faith. Sooner or later, we'll work something out, you'll see."
But he'd said something similar on Saturday, she recalled. As a promise, it was starting to sound a little hollow now, a bit like telling Jamie and Lee that they were going to become astronauts or professional footballers or multi-millionaire businessmen.
An excess of optimism. A statistical improbability.