Sam smiled weakly, saluted and walked away. No prints. Shit. Why did that make him feel cold? He had planned to take his Coke and get back out to the snow fence he was fixing, but now he wanted to sit down and think. In fact he needed to sit down. He wandered over to the packed seating area to search out a space.

Behind him the woman approached the till. Neil grinned as he rang up the mound of food and drink.

‘Okay. That’s a big fifteen dollars twenty-five.’

She fumbled in a black bum-bag, pulled out the notes and paid him. Neil handed her the change and looked past her at the next tray. The woman clutched at his arm. ‘Could you give that Indian boy this for his trouble please? I know every penny counts for them and how proud they are.’

She handed Neil fifty cents. Neil concentrated very hard on not throwing back his head and laughing. Sure he could give Sam the money and watch an old lady fly backwards through a plate-glass window. Instead he said, ‘Sure’, waited until she’d gone then dropped it in the till with a delighted chuckle. That was a woman who would never know how close she came to a Native Canadian fist. Neil composed himself and reached out for the next tray full of crap.

Sam was having trouble finding a seat. Any gaps he spotted had the old hat and glove reserved sign on them when he approached. Pissed him off, that trick. Sit down, take off anything that comes off and lay it on all the seats around you. Sorry, seat taken. No room. Didn’t you see the goggles? He tried a few more spaces, then with a sigh, backed away from a clothing-strewn bench and walked round to the window area from where he could see the whole seating plan of the restaurant.

It was real busy. A weekday like a weekend, not even lunchtime and nearly the end of the day. Murder was obviously good for business. He scanned the crowd for a gap, his eyes skimming the bobbing heads.

It was like a jagged fingernail catching in fabric, the way his eyes went back to that face in the crowd. No reason to single it out, and no reason to notice it. But Sam Hunt was now standing staring at the blond man sitting half-way along a bench who was returning and holding his gaze as though it were a solid column of steel between them connecting their eyes.

The clattering of boots and cutlery, the babble of conversation, the whooshing rush of the cappuccino machine, were all one vicious, buzzing white noise in Sam’s ears as those eyes held him. His breathing was cancelled and his hand was dripping with the Coke that was being forced from its crushed waxed cup as Sam’s fingers involuntarily closed round it into a fist.

‘Hey buddy! Your soda!’