For Bryan Dixon, it had been one hell of a tough morning. Not just the unfortunate scuffle at the end of his stairway speech and having to deal with its aftermath, but his general fatigue, his inability to concentrate. The pile of papers in his in-tray represented an unscalable, soul-crushing mountain.

On a sudden impulse, he lifted up the phone, tapped in his home number. Knowing that Melanie wasn't always the most reactive, he waited a full minute before slamming the receiver back down. No answer, a shame. He wasn't sure what exactly, just knew there was something he desperately needed to tell her. She was probably upstairs or out at the supermarket or some such. He'd try again later.

He attempted once more to concentrate on matters in hand. All those words and numbers there on those sheets of paper beneath him, they just didn't make any sense however. A headache-inducing swirl, that was all.

It came as a mild relief when he heard that polite, familiar double tap at the door.

"Enter!"

In stepped the petite figure of Rose the secretary, the expression on her wrinkled face tentative, uneasy.

"Hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr Dixon."

"No, no, not at all." He forced a smile. "So what it is, Rose?"

She took a moment before responding, as if uncertain of how to word things. "Given the... the, er... unfortunate circumstances of the last twenty-four hours, I was just wondering... well, how you wish to proceed with the matter of Mr Gupta's loan?"

Bryan refocused on the papers there on his desk. "What loan?"

He could sense Rose still there in the doorway, her body momentarily frozen by confusion and shock.

He turned his gaze back over to her. "What I'm saying is that I'd like you to write it off."

There was no visible sign of protest, but neither did she promise to get round to it immediately. He'd worked with her long enough to know that any disapproval of the decisions he made or tasks he delegated to her was communicated via an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm.

"Look, I'm not doing it for him, okay Rose. I doubt Satan makes his subordinates stump up mortgage repayments down there in hell."

The subsequent nod was dutiful if not entirely convinced.

"Oh, and Rose, I'll need you to keep quiet about this of course."

Following a second dutiful nod, she stepped off away, clicked the door closed behind her.

Bryan swivelled his desk chair around towards the window, angled his gaze up towards the white late-morning sky. Tried to picture Gupta's wife and daughter huddled up together in the oppressive silence of the family home.

For them, he reminded himself. He was doing it for them.

*

There'd been no real need for Jessica to stay, but she herself had insisted. The least she could do given the circumstances, she'd said, was to make sure Shields didn't have to bother thinking about lunch.

The boys were delighted. Unlike their mother's tendency to savagely overcook, the sausages were perfectly browned and succulent, the accompanying mashed potatoes soft and buttery - a generous pinch of grated cheddar lending them a vein of heightened deliciousness. Due to their gloss of melted butter, even the side of peas was gratefully shovelled into both young male mouths - a decidedly unusual occurrence for anything green of colour, nasal content aside. Satisfied, and after a stern maternal reminder that they were to pay their compliments to Jessica, the pair scampered off into the living room to play with their Atari console.

There'd been half a bottle of white wine in the fridge for the two adults. Shields now poured the final drops into her and Jessica's glasses.

"To the chef!". It was difficult to find an appropriate smile in accompaniment, but she tried her best. "Quite some talent you've got."

"Ah come on, we're only talking a bit of sausage and mash. Hardly cordon bleu!"

"Yea, but even so." Shields nodded to her sons' empty plates. "Rare sight that, believe me."

Jessica took a sip of her wine. "The thing about cooking, it's not really a talent - it's just about following the rules, that's all. You know, the right temperatures, the right timings, the right measurements, that sort of thing."

Shields' smile was unforced this time: self-mocking, wry. "Following the rules. Not exactly my forte, it would seem." The call had already come: the hearing would take place at Wynmouth station the following Thursday morning.

"A gentle slap on the wrists," soothed Jessica. "That's all it'll be, you'll see."

But Shields shook her head, far from convinced.

"You know when I first decided I wanted to become a copper? When I was seven, straight after my dad took his life." As earlier with the surprise Easter message the boys had been painting, she felt a tear bulge in her eye. "The first patrol car that made it out to the Wyn suspension bridge that afternoon, it was young constable inside."

From across the table came an audible gasp. "The Wyn suspension bridge, but that... that's..."

"Huge," Shields nodded. "Ginormous."

As if in search of sustenance, she swigged down the last of her wine, thudded the glass back to the table.

"During the war, he was stationed out in Burma. Ended up in a Japanese POW camp."

Jessica raised a hand to her mouth. "Oh Christ."

No, thought Shields - one didn't need to be an expert on the history of the Second World War to comprehend the basic implications of this. It was enough to have a distant relative who'd suffered a similar fate, or, failing that, to have stumbled across the Alec Guinness classic Bridge On the River Kwai on TV one rainy Sunday afternoon. To Hirohito and his military subordinates, the Geneva Convention hadn't meant a damn bloody thing.

"Starvation diet, back-breaking labour from dawn to dusk. Was one of only a dozen or so of his entire platoon to make it through, so I've been told. Before they made it back to Blighty, were shipped off to Canada for a few months to fatten 'em up a bit. Government policy dictated it would have been too traumatic for their families and the local community as a whole to have seen them as walking skeletons."

Still the hand hovered over Jessica's mouth. "Jesus."

"I remember the way he used to... to just kind of drift away sometimes. Mum or me, one of the neighbours, whoever - we'd be talking to him about something and for a while he was right there with us. Engaged, cooperative. Then all of a sudden he'd be gone, off to some unimaginable place and time. As a little kid there was no way I could have known of course, but that's where he went - that hell-on-earth Japanese POW camp during the final years of the war."

She paused to suck down a couple of breaths.

"Another thing I remember is the beads of sweat that'd come tumbling down his brow even in the depths of winter. How my mum'd rub her hands over his shoulders, whisper soothing words into his ear, offer him a shot a whisky or some such. Post-traumatic stress disorder they now call it, I believe, but back in the early-fifties it was still just known as shell shock. Just this little 'thing' a few ex-serviceman suffered from. A minor side effect of war, that was all."

Jessica's question was intoned with a genuine sense of astonishment. "So they didn't they try to help him at all? You know, his medics or whoever?"

The vigour with which Shields nodded her head was entirely ironic of nature. "Oh yes, they tried to help him alright. Bit by bit stuffed him up to the eyeballs with drugs. Sodium pentanol it was called. Thing was, it only served to drag him ever further away from the here and now. Ever further away from mum and me."

The tear had now splattered down her cheek, another following close behind.

"Oh, we'll never know for sure - swept away out into the channel as he was, there was no post-mortem of course. The likelihood is though that that particular morning - the 15th of February, 1955, to be precise - he'd taken several doses' worth of those damn pills. Had as little idea of where he was and what he was doing as a new-born baby."

The feel of Jessica's hand wrapped supportively around her own was starting to feel familiar. As much a default setting of theirs as chest pushes and barbed insults were between Jamie and Lee.

"Anyway, this young constable who was first out there on the bridge that day was in his first year of service. PC Maguire, his name. They say he climbed over the railings next to where my dad was on the parapet, sat there with his feet dangling over the edge just a couple of yards away, tried talking him down. Fifty metres above the sloshing grey waters of the estuary, the wind buffeting him from all sides. Guy risked his life. The slightest slip and he'd have been a goner."

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, sucked down another breath.

"A few days afterwards, he came to see us, my mum and me. Apologised, can you believe it? Like it was his fault. And I remember that just before he left, he lowered himself down to me so we were on the same eye-level. And he said..." The tears exploded now, a sudden chest-shuddering surge. "He said that just before my father threw himself down into the water below, he shouted 'tell Diane I love her'".

A series of deep, stuttering inhales was required before she was able to continue.

"Now, I don't know if that was just something he made up to help a grieving little girl who would grow up to become a still-grieving middle-aged woman, but believe me, throughout all these years, the thought that it might have been true - that my father's last earthly thought had been of me - well, in some small way it's helped."

Jessica had stepped off for a moment in search of something, now returned with a paper napkin in her hand for Shields to properly dry her eyes. Once done, Jessica nodded that Shields should continue.

"And well, since that day, that's all I've wanted to be. A female version of PC Maguire, I guess. Someone hell-bent on trying keep families safe, tied together. Maybe it was naive of me, but I never expected that it would come to this - that I'd have participated in the needless tearing apart of a family. Asked to be complicit in a wrongful conviction. Act like nothing has happened."

Jessica's question both surprised and confused her: "Are you sure about this, Diane?"

"Sure about what?"

"That it wasn't him. The Indian guy."

Shields nodded. "Ninety-nine per cent sure, yes. As much as it's possible to be. There are too many questions left unanswered. Too much that just doesn't make any sense."

Jessica once more gripped her hand to Shields'.

"Then sod 'em, Diane. Sod the lot of 'em. You just keep on digging, girl."

She squeezed her lips into an encouraging smile.

"Do it for him. PC Maguire."

*

Following another unanswered call home, Bryan slipped from his swivel chair and headed out of the office. Rose had moments earlier tapped on the door to announce she was off to the canteen for lunch, her temporary absence allowing him the opportunity to take a sneaky peek down from the gantry to the reception area beneath. As he'd hoped, Yvonne was alone, her pretty young face a picture of boredom as she flicked through one of those glossy fashion magazines of hers.

He snuck down the stairs, loped over towards her. Looking up from her magazine, she flashed him exactly the sort of sly, mischievous smile he'd hoped she wouldn't. Enough to feel that familiar primal spark, make him momentarily reconsider his plan. Dear Lord, the girl was beautiful. Pure centrefold hormone overdrive.

"Hiya boss, how's it hanging?"

A question to which he never knew how to answer. The fact was, whenever in Yvonne's company, it was very rarely just hanging.

He settled for a simple nod.

"Been any more?" he asked.

"Few minutes ago there was a guy from the Daily Mail."

This in addition to interview requests from the Sun, Mirror and Daily Express earlier that day.

"You just keep turning them away, Yvonne."

There was another sly, mischievous smile as she recited the official line. "I'm afraid Mr Dixon is unavailable for comment at the moment." After a quick glance around to check no-one was approaching, the smile grew ever slyer. "I was wondering however if Mr Dixon might be available for... another of those... let's say, medical check-ups..."

Oh Lord, the nurse's uniform she'd bought from that dodgy shop just off the roundabout on the edge of Branstead! It was enough to give a middle-aged man a heart attack!

It took him a moment to shake the image from his mind, remember the reason he'd come down to see her.

"He knew about us, Yvonne."

In a finger-click, her expression changed from playful to serious.

"Who?"

"Shivay."

A frown wrinkled her brow. "How do you know he knew?"

But he didn't want to talk about that strange, pre-confession telephone call. How it had made him reflect on who he was, where he was, which road he wanted to go down.

"I just do, okay. Do you think anyone else knows?"

A question to which she tossed out a shrug. "Who cares? We're not doing anything illegal."

"Illegal, no, but a little... immoral, yes. I'm married, Yvonne. You seem to forget that sometimes."

She swept her blonde hair away from her eyes, her smile bitter this time. "Oh, believe me, Bryan, I've never for one second forgotten. It's the thing that keeps us from moving forward." Her eyes flicked once more around the immediate vicinity, checked that no-one was within earshot to hear the angry rasp of her voice. "You keep promising me you'll leave her, but when, Bryan? When? A girl can start to lose patience after a while."

He glanced down at his shoes, wondered how he was going to word this.

"Look, Yvonne... I..." He sighed, looked her directly in the eye. "I'm not going to leave her, alright? I'm still---"

"You bastard!" There was no precautionary glance around this time, just a dagger stare and high-decibel boil of rage. "You complete and utter bastard!"

But couldn't she see? That was the whole point of it, to stop being a complete and utter bastard. Melanie didn't deserve it. Yvonne didn't deserve it. Hell, even he himself didn't deserve it.

"I think it's better if we just---"

"You bastard." Softer this time, more heartbroken.

He turned, took a step away. Twisted himself back round to her.

"Oh, and if you value your job here you'll keep our little affair to yourself of course."

An order which once more sparked the b-word, the sparkle of a tear now forming in her eye.

*

As he was riding the tractor back up the hillside for his mid-afternoon cup of tea and biscuits, Billy became aware of his father bent and frenetic with a spade in his hands at the side of the pen shed. Rumbling to a halt, Billy jumped off the seat, patted away Queenie's affectionate advances and squelched on over. Though the earlier rain had now ceased, the sky above was still leaden and menacing.

"What's going on, dad?"

His father seemed only then to become aware of his approach, looked up in surprise. Swiping a forearm across his brow, he paused for a moment, propped himself over the handle of the spade. Beneath, the excavated hole looked large enough to bury a dog.

"Your mother's typewriter."

With a swish of his head, he indicated the dirty old canvas bag a couple of yards away, its sides stretched by its cumbersome load.

"Just a temporary measure, you understand. You know, in case there's any coppers come sniffing round our way. If Doug's right that there are question marks over the Paki guy's confession, then we need to be careful."

He thrust the spade once more into the moist soil. "Must be something to do with the way the letters look," he panted. "That's how they knew it was an old machine." With a large gulp of air, he tossed the spade to the earth, stepped over to grab the canvas bag. "Try to remember the location, Billy. In case..." - there was a turned glance - "you know, in case they ever come for me. I counted five paces from the corner of the shed, five more from the side wall."

Billy nodded, attempted to store the information away in his memory bank.

"I put the penknife in there too," his father added.

Billy didn't feel particularly reassured by this, however. They were sheep farmers, after all. Should those dark impulses once more arise, there were plenty of other lethally sharp objects lying around.

He tried not to dwell on it as he watched his father place the canvas bag into the hole and then shovel the excavated soil back over. It was almost as sad a sight as a year and a half earlier when the gravediggers had begun covering up his mother's coffin. Almost like he wanted to cry if only he knew how to.

That was the thing about life. The thing about death. Humans thought themselves superior to all other animals. More civilised and advanced, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day there was little difference between being a human and being a sheep. Humans still needed to drink water. They still needed to eat, shit, sleep. In order to have babies, do that strange sex thing - the male stick his private part up the female's private part. And at some point - all of a sudden, at any given second - a human would draw their last breath just a like a sheep would.

He remembered that burnt, ravaged corpse they'd found out in the fields one day when he'd been nine or ten. The morning after a summer night storm, the poor thing having been struck by lightning. One moment it had been munching at the wet grass, enjoying the coolness of the rain on its fleece, and then without warning in a finger-click was dead.

It had been the same with his mother. One moment she'd been heading down stairs on her way back to watching Emmerdale Farm on the TV, and the next...

And the next...

He'd been in the kitchen gnashing down the bacon sandwich she'd just made him. Upstairs he could hear the usual raised voices, then all of a sudden Queenie was barking with maximum loudness and agitation from the hallway.

Still he'd thought little of it as he'd wandered through from the kitchen. Just expected that a rat had got in the house or some such, and that was why Queenie was going so crazy.

But there she was, his mother - her legs strewn awkwardly over the bottom steps, her head resting sideways against the hallway floor. The pool of blood beneath had seeped slowly outwards, the dribbles turning off at perfect right angles in the grouting grooves between the tiles.

Queenie had stopped barking, was now lying stomach-down nearby, her paws either side of her snout. Whimpering, her expression never sadder.

Billy had sat himself down beside her, draped an arm over her back. Watched as the pool of blood had grown ever wider, more sickening. Above them, his father was seated at the top of the stairs, his face buried in his palms, shoulders shaking with sobs.

From the sitting room had come the theme music of Emmerdale Farm as the closing credits had begun to roll. For everybody else in the country, for everybody else in the whole damn world, just another dull midweek evening like any other.

*

Following fish, chips and mushy peas for starters, a Bakewell tart from the baker's for afters, then a couple of pints of mild in The Mason's Arms for after afters, it was a decidedly woozy Inspector Gooch who lifted up the receiver of his ringing office telephone that afternoon.

"Gooch here."

As was often the