Got to get ahold of myself, he thought. The man in the lift had been nowhere near his apartment. Nowhere near his Alisha. She was too afraid of him to bring other men to their bed. She did not know what he did for a living, but she suspected what was in his mind and what he was capable of. He’d taught her well what would happen if ever she betrayed him.

Paranoia is an ugly, debilitating thing. It was that damned phone call he’d made that had planted the seed of doubt in his mind. Where are you, Rickard? His failure to see through his plan to rape and then dismember Imogen Ballard had been unforeseen by both his employer and him. I expect more from people working for me. Yes, he thought, and so do I. I also expect more from the people around me.

“What are you doing out here, babe?” Rickard peered over Alisha’s shoulder at the Miami nightscape. It was still warm, and he could smell exhaust fumes and garbage on the trembling breeze.

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking.”

“About me?”

Alisha stirred and looked up at him with her big blue eyes. “Who else?”

He didn’t reply, but strong cologne was in his olfactory memory. He wound his fingers in her hair. “I’ve been thinking about you as well.”

Without releasing his grip, he led her back inside and down the short flight of stairs. Amy Winehouse had moved on to croon over someone called Mr. Jones. Rickard pictured the guy as a man in a suit, with short graying hair and a mobile phone in his hand. He turned off the CD as he passed, then steered Alisha toward the bedroom.

When he came back out of the bedroom he was on his own. Alisha was taking her second shower of the evening and tending to the welts on her arms. When he’d entered her he’d been thinking of Imogen Ballard and he wasn’t gentle then either. Behind the bathroom door she was sobbing and that pleased him.

Naked, he stood in the center of his apartment, surveying it with a perfectionist’s eye for detail. Alisha had kept the room almost as spic-and-span as he demanded. The pile on the carpet was crushed down in places and there was a copy of a Stieg Larsson novel open on the table next to the settee. He’d make sure that she tidied up once she was done making herself pretty again.

He was very hungry. He went to the refrigerator and scanned the contents. Settled on drinking milk direct from the carton, then grabbed a handful of roast chicken from scraps on a plate. He wolfed the food down. Voracious. But then, he thought whimsically, he was eating for two. He cleaned the grease from his fingers on a kitchen towel, then shoved it into the wash basket.