Out there in the darkness, a shape shifted behind the glass.

Chapter Two

Drat!

He’d sliced it. Idiot!

He kept his eyes fixed on the ball as it curved off to the right, and studiously ignored the gleeful remarks of this morning’s companion.

“Look at it go! Water, water, water!”

There was a distant ker-splunk and a sound from behind him that was a cheer disguised as a commiseration.

“Aw, bad luck, Boyley-ma-boy! You’ll no’ be getting that one back without a wetsuit and snorkel.”

Rufus Boyle scraped his vibrantly white top teeth across his bottom lip, bit down for a moment until the urge to swear had passed, then turned to his opponent and smiled.

“Ah well. Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose,” he said, playing up his privately-educated Edinburgh twang just enough to remind the other man who his betters were.

“Seems like you can’t win any this morning, can you?” his opponent replied, grinning like the proverbial idiot. He was a local man. Mid-fifties, so around Rufus’s own age. Worked in the aluminium factory half a mile down the road. John, or Bob, or something equally as mundane.

The club had matched them up based on both ability and availability. Rufus liked to play early, but not too early. Mid-morning worked best for his schedule, as it allowed him a leisurely breakfast—either in the downstairs snug, or out on the balcony on the rare occasions that the weather allowed—and an hour or two to get the day’s business out of the way.

John, or Bob—Billy, maybe?—worked late shifts at the factory, so mid-morning was a good fit for him, too. And they were, though Rufus hated to admit it, well-matched opponents.

Handicap-wise. There, besides gender and approximate age, any and all similarities ended.

“How come you’re doing so shite the day? Something on your mind, Boyley-ma-boy?”

Rufus detested the name the other man had given him, but had made a point of not letting on, in case his protests served as some sort of encouragement.

He’d much have preferred ‘Rufus’ or, ideally, ‘Mr Boyle.’ But Boyley-ma-boy? God Almighty. It was how John, or Bob, or whatever his name was always addressed him, and each time he did, it brought him one step closer to having his head caved in with a pitching wedge.

“I’m going to play again,” Rufus stated, fishing another ball from the pocket of his gaudy tartan breeks and setting it on the tee at his feet.

“Of course. Go ahead,” the other man said. “Just mind and write down the one-stroke penalty.”

The sudden jerk of Rufus’s hand knocked the ball off the tee and onto the grass. “I meant I’ll just write off that last attempt entirely.”

“I know you did. But it’s a one-stroke penalty. Them’s the rules, Boyley-ma-boy.”