‘Morning!’ A passing jogger. Dover’s promenade was steady with them. Each trying to get their exercise in before the day started. Danny would do the same in the off-season; he always felt better about a day that started with a run. But not today. He hadn’t slept, not a wink. Hadn’t even tried. He had gone back to the final page in the folder. It had been instructions for him, a short word on what should happen next. The only part that had sunk in was that he needed to leave and the rest would be sorted. Sorted? He didn’t even know what that meant. He had watched enough cop shows to have a guess: Cleaned up, wiped down, dismantled. The body dumped where it would never be found. The body dumped!

He was a murderer.

He had left quickly, still in a haze of confusion that was made worse when there wasn’t the release he had expected. He hadn’t felt elated or happy or free. He thought he knew all about revenge, he had thought about it enough, but revenge isn’t an emotion, it’s an act, and he hadn’t considered what should follow.

It just felt like nothing.

And he was still terrified, only now he was scared that no one had done anything since he had left that place last night. That the scene he had hurried away from was still there. Marcus Olsen had barely moved when he had pulled that trigger, the tethers were too strong and tight for that. But the back of his head had. Most of it was missing. A large volume of his blood had moved as well, thrown against the wall behind him to drip and run down over the scars left by the shot.

And now Danny was surrounded by the beauty of an early morning by the sea, with cheery joggers wishing him a good day like he was one of them: a normal member of society. But he wasn’t. Everything had changed.

He turned away from the sun rising over the water to make his way to his car. He felt drawn back to that building site; he could barely picture what it might look like in the daylight. The only image he could conjure now was of a brilliant white wall with streaks of different shades of red running down it. He didn’t know what he could do there, he knew he should stay away, but he just wanted to see it.