Both his hands laden with the detainees' breakfast trays he'd brought over from the canteen, PC Wakelin was forced to push open the door of the custody office with his boot.

"Couldn't give me a hand, could you, sarge?"

Sweeping closed the tabloid he was reading, Sergeant Gibbs gave a nod. "Story's front page, no less." Even upside down, Wakelin had little difficulty deciphering the headline.

 Indian Monster.

"Thought you were only interested in page 3, sarge."

Unloading one of the trays from his subordinate, Gibbs frowned at the culinary offering there under his nose. Burnt toast and a lump of grey mush which bore a vague resemblance to scrambled eggs.

"Let's just say there's a couple of things I like to check out on that particular page each morning."

With an exchange of smirks, they set off down the corridor.

"They tell me old Bert was at it again last night," muttered Wakelin.

"Banged and screamed till well past one. His age, heaven knows where he gets the energy from."

As they approached the cells, Gibbs hushed his voice a little.

"Heard Dunwick station had to get a patrol car to sit in front of Gupta's house all night. Broken window, apparently. Graffiti on the front wall."

"As I was coming into the station just earlier," responded Wakelin, "I saw that one of the curry houses along Cranwell Road had taken a hit. They said on the news there'd been similar incidents up and down the country last night."

Gibbs gave a shrug. "Serves 'em right, you ask me. Should never have come over here in the first place." He nodded to his left. "You serve the Paki bastard, I'll see to our friend Bert."

Wakelin thrust down the flap, plonked the tray onto the ledge.

"Wakey, wakey Gupta!"

It was only then that he took a glance inside the cell.

Only then that he noticed the toppled chair by the far wall, Gupta's feet dangling a yard above the floor.

*

That first moment of consciousness after waking. Trying to bring it all back, reel it in. Who she was, where she was, what point the mile-o-metre of her life was at. Then it came: the profound disappointment of realising she was Diane Shields.

The phone down in the hallway was ringing, she also realised. Creaking open an eyelid, she glanced at the bedside clock: not even half past seven. Didn't whoever it was on the other end of the line know that in Diane Shields Land before half past seven didn't exist? She just wasn't an early morning person. Not particularly a mid- or late-morning person either, but definitely not an up-with-the-rooster sort.

Sighing, she flapped back the bedsheets, hauled herself upright. As her bare feet padded down the stairs, she had the sinking feeling it would be Jessica on the other end of the line to communicate some last-minute complication which meant she wouldn't be able to make it over that day.

It was a surprise therefore to hear the chain-smoker's wheeze of Inspector Gooch.

"Any chance you could start a little earlier today, sergeant?"

"Well I... I could call my babysitter, I suppose. Had a new one start yesterday. She seems to be pretty flex---"

"It's a job for a female, see," Gooch interrupted. "Just there aren't any WPCs on duty over at Dunwick at the moment, and we really should inform them in person before we release it to the press."

Dunwick? A press release?

"And what with you having already established a bit of a rapport with them, I thought it might be better if... you know..."

Shields had awoken fully enough by this point for her voice to rise to a loud, urgent rasp.

"Want to tell me what the bloody hell's going on here, sir?"

*

PC Wakelin waited patiently and just a little nervously in the CID room outside Inspector Gooch's office. It had been a hell of a morning already; he could only wonder as to the reason he'd been called up there.

The inspector was on the phone at his desk, a hand gesturing as if attempting to placate whoever it was on the other end of the line, a cigarette wedged between index and middle finger. Only a few months into his career, Wakelin had never even set foot in the CID room before. Judging by the number of empty beer bottles strewn around all over the place, it looked as if there'd been quite a party the evening before. He had little doubt that once news of the morning's development got through to the outside world, there'd be yet more clinked toasts of celebration. Justice had been done, had it not? A dark, evil stain scrubbed away from the world.

Through the glass, Gooch had meanwhile finished his telephone conversation. Stubbing out his cigarette, he gestured that Wakelin step inside.

"Please, take a seat, constable."

As Wakelin did so, Gooch himself lumbered upright, waddled over towards the window. Outside, it was a grey and drizzle-spotted morning which had recently dawned.

"Today was your first sight of a dead person, officer?"

Wakelin found himself having to twist around awkwardly in his chair as he directed his words towards the inspector's back.

"Yes, it was, sir."

"Must have been quite a shock."

It hadn't been pretty, no. The noticeable bloating of the face. The way the skin had paled a shade or two, and the lips instead darkened to fresh-bruise purple. Enough for the coroner who was quickly called out to conclude that Gupta had hung himself several hours before Wakelin had found him. It was believed he'd used the banging and carrying on from the opposite cell as cover while he shredded the polyester bedsheet and subsequently perched himself onto the rickety metal chair to thread the twisted rope of material through the bars in window at the top of the external wall. His natural height had helped - an inch or two shorter and he wouldn't have been able to reach so far.

"Seen nicer things," Wakelin admitted.

Gooch glanced back at him. "The career you've chosen for yourself, won't be the last. Car accidents, house fires, tramps frozen solid in the snow."

Wakelin nodded: being a cop wasn't just about keeping your boots nice and shiny, no.

"My advice," continued the inspector, "is not to dwell on these things. Just try to forget 'em. Bury 'em."

Easier said than done, Wakelin imagined, but he gave a dutiful nod anyway.

Gooch had meanwhile stepped back away from the window, lowered his considerable weight down onto the edge of the desk. Wakelin found the physical dynamics of it all quite unsettling - the inspector there looming above him less than a yard away, forcing him to tilt his neck upwards. He felt like a naughty schoolboy in the headmaster's office about to get his backside stung by a firm swipe of the cane.

"There's something else you need to forget about, constable. Another thing to bury."

Gooch reached behind him, pulled the sheet of lined A4 paper from the desk. He then wafted it in front of Wakelin's face.

"The suicide note or whatever you want to call it. The desperate last words of a desperate, evil man."

Ah, so that was what this was about, Wakelin thought to himself.

"I've already had firm assurances from Sergeant Gibbs that he'll keep his mouth shut about this. Now I need to hear it from you too, constable. Other than yourself and Gibbs, I don't believe anyone else saw this nonsense." Gooch gestured towards the window. "If this gets out there, it risks damaging public trust in us. Maybe not everyone, but there'll be a few idiots prepared to take the word of a double murderer over ours. We just cannot afford to take the risk, constable."

The inspector heaved himself upright once more, wobbled back round his desk, squeaked down into his swivel chair.

"Of course, there's always a good career waiting for a young officer who knows how to keep secrets, know what I'm saying?"

Wakelin thought he did, yes.

"So what's it to be, constable? Are you going to give me your word?"

What other choice did he have, he reasoned.

"Yes sir, you have my word."

The inspector beamed with relief. "Good lad, good lad." He reached over for the sheet once more, theatrically tore it into halves, then quarters, then eighths. The pieces were tossed into his ashtray, whereupon he sparked the flame of his lighter and set them alight. He watched for some moments as the paper browned and curled, then smiled back up at Wakelin again.

"There, see. Gone, forgotten. Never even existed."

Gooch squeaked back out of the swivel chair, extended a hand across the desk. For Wakelin, the experience was akin to inserting his hand into a packet of shiny, plump Lincolnshires.

"Well, I thank you for your cooperation, constable. If you ever feel your future might be in plain clothes, you just come up and see me and I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, I'll be sure to let the superintendent know what a fine young constable we've got on our hands here."

It was only as he was stepping back out of the door that Wakelin remembered. He'd told that chubby git PC Walsh about Gupta's letter as they'd relieved their bowels at the urinal wall in the gents a few minutes earlier.

Bang went any chance of him making sergeant any time soon, he guessed. Look up the word 'blabbermouth' in any dictionary and there would be a photo of a beaming PC Walsh.

Hell, the news would have been all over the station by that point.

*

It had been a long and terrible night. A time of cowering, of prolonged, sobbing sorrow. Their stomachs squeezed by tension, the fear that at any moment something else might happen.

They'd cleared up the shattered glass as best they could, both taken nasty cuts to the fingers as they'd done so. The window would need to be boarded up until when, if ever, the pane would be replaced. In the meantime, they'd draped towels onto the windowsill and the carpet beneath, had only been able to hope that the drizzle outside wouldn't stiffen into a downpour.

The police car had arrived around ten minutes later. The officer who'd knocked on the door to check they were okay had informed Prisha that there was graffiti daubed onto the bricks between the front door and living room window. She hadn't bothered stepping outside to see for herself; it didn't take a genius to imagine what kind of message the brainless vandal had painted up. Neither had she bothered to mention it to her mother. Tomorrow. There was so much which would just have to wait until tomorrow.

Stubbornly, unwantedly, tomorrow had now arrived...

Prisha opened her eyes, squinted them immediately half closed against the dull light of day. They'd decided it best to spend the rest of the night together in the living room, she in the armchair, her mother on the settee. With the police car in residence along the curb outside, it had seemed the safest option.

A palm rubbed against her neck as she lifted herself upright, hobbled over to the window. She could hear voices outside; it was this which must have woken her. Glancing over to the settee, she could discern the slow rise and fall of her mother's ribcage beneath her nightdress. Still blessedly asleep. Yet to break the surface of consciousness, be forced to snatch her breath amidst the tossing violent waves of reality. It would have been pointless to wake her. As cruel as trapping a butterfly in a net.

Peeking through the curtains, Prisha's heart lifted as she saw the blonde-haired detective from the day before, Diane. She was leaning into the driver's side of the patrol car talking to the officer on guard, her face tilted up towards the smashed bedroom window. Perhaps they'd been a development, some uncovered piece of evidence which proved her father's innocence.

But no, her soul then plummeted like a stone tossed down the deepest of wells. The grimness of the detective's expression as she lifted herself upright, the slowness of her step as she moved towards the front door, like someone charged with that most terrible of tasks.

Words wouldn't be necessary; Prisha could already sense what was coming next. Had already sensed it the night before when her father had called. The way he'd told her to look after her mother. To study hard, become a lawyer, devote her life to defending people like themselves.

And in that moment, it all became clear.

Those words of his which had caressed their way through the telephone line, they'd had been his way of saying goodbye.

*

It came as a relief when Melanie heard the front door slam closed and she could finally finish feigning to be asleep in the marital bed

Bryan had left a little earlier than usual. Wanted to stop off at the newsagents on the way to the factory, she imagined, scan every page of every national daily in search of any image-tarnishing reference to Dixon's Wool. Either that or had just simply wished to escape the strange, wordless atmosphere between them.

Slipping on her nightgown and slippers, she padded down the stairs, uncorked herself yet another bottle of wine.

Yes, her plans for the day were precisely that: to get slowly and steadily tipsy, remain so until it was bed time again. She imagined it would be that way for quite some time. Forever, perhaps.

But Lord, all those peas still scattered there in the living room doorway!

She stepped carefully over them to turn on the stereo, tune in to the radio. Total Eclipse of My Heart by Bonnie Tyler was playing. It seemed apt enough to thrust the volume up full blast, cause the speakers to vibrate and crackle. After hopping back over the squashed green dots in the doorway, she headed into the kitchen for the broom and dustpan, another cheeky gulp of wine.

"Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart."

Though toneless, her own rendition was no less impassioned than the original. But then, just as she crouched down to begin gathering up the peas, Bonnie Tyler's life-gravelled voice was suddenly cut short mid-chorus, replaced by the much more banal one of the DJ.

A newsflash.

Branstead police station had just released a statement.

*

It was approaching ten o'clock when Shields parked up at the station, dashed out into the drizzle.

She hadn't stayed long in Victoria Terrace; what was there she could have possibly said or done? She knew from bitter experience that the initial stage of grief was as black and crushing as the bottom of an ocean. A solitary, exclusive void. There was no means of transit for any kind of guide there. No anchor one could sink a map down with. Those first few hours, those first few days, a bereaved person had to accustom themselves to their new surroundings as best they could. Only when they began to look upwards, search for a hint of light beyond the surface, could an observer hope to offer their hand, help heave them back towards the air. Shields doubted that Prisha had even registered her promises that they'd have someone come to board up the bedroom window, that a round of door-to-doors would be conducted in an effort to identity the vandals, that a WPC would be over a little later to check in on them, that she herself would call by in a few days. The girl had looked lost. So terribly, tragically, without compass.

Christ it had been tough, the first time she'd had to perform that most gruelling of all duties since her uniformed days eleven years earlier. Doctors, nurses, whoever else by profession was forced on a regular basis to act as messengers of death - they all deserved a gold medal, really.

As the day before, Redfern the short-arsed crime correspondent from the Echo was waiting in ambush for her as she scampered up the entrance steps. He panted out a whiff of halitosis in her direction.

"What can you tell me about this morning's events, sergeant? Was there a suicide note at all?"

She bustled past him to the door without comment, blew a sigh of relief as she stepped out of the rain. The first figure she saw in the reception area ahead of her was that of Bridcutt preparing to open up his umbrella as he headed out in the opposite direction. The glance he turned towards her was sombre.

"How'd it go?"

Gooch had clearly informed him of the nature of her morning duties.

She shrugged. "About how you'd expect it to go."

He nodded. "Just off out to Cranwell Road to coordinate a door-to-door. One of the curry houses got done over last night, apparently."

"Just like 12 Victoria Terrace then. Smashed upstairs window. 'Pakis sod off ' daubed all over the front wall."

"Almost Shakespearean."

"What a crap-hole of a country we live in eh constable."

She stepped aside to allow an umbrella-shaking member of the public through to the front desk. As she swerved her neck back towards Bridcutt, he lowered his voice to a whisper.

"You probably won't have heard, but word has it he left a sort of suicide note on the desk of the holding cell."

Interesting.

She nodded that he should continue.

"And well, apparently it was directed to the inspector. Gupta wrote that he'd given Gooch what he'd wanted to protect his family, but that the man we're looking for isn't him."

Christ, this was huge. Enormous.

"The sod in his office?"

"Was a minute ago, yea. Listen sarge, about last night---"

"I thought we'd agreed to pretend that last night never happened."

"I know. I just wanted to say---"

But Shields had already bustled past him. A woman with a mission, her being thrummed by a swirling, brooding rage.

"Not now, constable, okay. Not now."