‘Bullshit,’ Silas thought. It's always something or someone else who's responsible, a ‘larger scheme of things’ that exonerates people from taking responsibility for the things they do.

Silas watched the man, the strands of thinning hair combed all the way across his head to hide his baldness, the powdery residue of dry and dying skin on the collar of his jacket, the slight paunch, the grey Pick ‘n Pay shoes, the matching grey socks. The man leaned forward to push something along the check-out counter, and turned his face towards where Silas stood, holding a can of tomatoes in his hands like an arrested gesture. Yes, it was Du Boise. François du Boise. The same alertness in his blue eyes. A bit slower, though, Silas thought, as Du Boise moved his head from side to side, watching the cashier ring up his purchases.

Silas went closer, accidentally jostling a woman in the queue behind Du Boise. Silas watched him pushing his groceries along, even though the cashier was capable of doing this on the conveyor belt. Typical pensioner's fare. ‘No-name brand’ cans of beans, tuna, long-life milk, sliced white bread, instant coffee, rooibos tea, denture cream.

So the bastard's lost his teeth.

Silas pictured Lydia's angry face, were he to return home without groceries. Today's Sunday and the shops are open only until one o'clock. She'd suppose out loud that she'd have to do the shopping the next day, because his job was too important to allow him to take time off from work. All the same, he abandoned the trolley and followed Du Boise out of the store. Halfway down the length of the mall, past shop windows that Du Boise occasionally stopped to look into with familiar ease, Silas began to ask himself what the hell he thought he was doing, following a retired security policeman about in a shopping centre? What Du Boise had done, he had done a long time ago. Nineteen years. And Silas had learned to live with what Du Boise had done, had absorbed that moment's horror into the flow of his life, a faded moon of a memory that only occasionally intruded into his everyday consciousness. Why did it matter now, when the situation was reversed, and Silas could use the power of his own position to make the old bastard's life hell?

The man's smell, a faint stench of decaying metabolism, was in Silas's nostrils, as if he were a hunter come suddenly upon his wounded prey. Du Boise stopped at a café, pulled a chair out from under the table, ready to sit down. Silas stood close to him, facing him, and suffered a moment of uncertainty. Shit, this man looked so much older than the Du Boise he remembered. Then he looked – startled – into the man's equally startled eyes.

‘Du Boise? Lieutenant Du Boise?’