This was the best time to think. The dark and the warmth, and that soft bridge between consciousness and sleep, was a safe place to look at hard things. Thoughts were like runny syrup in this cocoon of heat, dark and quiet. Must buy cat food; Sylvia; is it still snowing?; that dumb TV show about a news crew; what’s it called? ENG? blonde woman camera operator my ass; Sylvia; haven’t bought any clothes for about six months; Daniel Hawk should be more than a constable; mouth ulcer again, just under my tongue; Sylvia; that kid.

That kid.

His thoughts were focused involuntarily.

What, apart from a blade the size of a sword, could have chopped half his head off so cleanly? How the hell did a man escape without leaving foot or ski prints in that thigh-deep snow? The animals couldn’t do it. There were deer prints all round the carcass like it had come sniffing round to see what all the mess was, but not a single mark from a human foot. He’d gotten the trees checked out. No broken branches, and the snow was found to be undisturbed on all the branches. Any aerial escape, any monkey-like acrobatics would have left a trail in the trees that would have been easier to see than prints on the ground. And the brains and the blood. Jesus. So much blood.

In other words, the atrocity was impossible. It couldn’t have happened without breaking the laws of physics. It made him feel cold as he admitted it to himself for the first time. Just like Joe’s death. Impossible.

Deer prints. Would a deer come near a carcass? A crow maybe. But a deer? And when was the last time anybody saw a deer on the ski-side of the mountain? Craig thought he would like to have another look at where those tracks started and ended. The team had photographed the whole area in the trees for at least a five-hundred-yard radius, so tracking the animal’s progress should be easy.

A murderer walking on sticks with deer print shoes was crazy, but it wasn’t as crazy as a murderer who could fly. He realized he was clutching at thin air and squirmed in frustration beneath the covers, remembering that the whole preposterous case was out of his hands.

Fuck Edmonton. He’d look at the photos anyhow. A long look at them later with Hawk. Craig turned over in bed and stared at a ribbon of orange light on the wall that had sneaked through his curtains from the street lamp outside.

There was no such thing as an impossible crime. He tried to sleep some more on that thought, but sleep was tricky with both your eyes wide open and staring.