“Yes, to begin with, you could do all those things. But then I got to thinking: What if there was a way to help the young me change the eventline? How could I find a way to deliver a purposefully obscure message so I could do something about HR-6984?

I smiled at my future son’s resourcefulness. “Let me guess: You made totally outrageous union demands.”

He nodded. “I’m assuming this is the way it went: As chairman of the Swindon Branch of the Union of Federated Timeworkers, I insisted on the Letters of Destiny. I probably had to pout a lot, get annoyed and chuck stuff around—even threaten strike action, but I got my way. The eventlines were compared, the letters compiled and arranged to be sent.”

“Even if true,” I said, “what were you trying to tell yourself?”

“I don’t know, but muse on this: None of us live beyond the asteroid strike. Of the fifteen who die, seven are definitely murdered, five meet with accidents that might be murder, and only three die of natural causes. Someone is disposing of ex-ChronoGuard before the strike.”

I stared at the list of murders. The first one wasn’t to happen until 2040, almost thirty-six years from now.

“Makes it tricky to solve, doesn’t it?” said Friday with a sigh. “Crimes that haven’t happened, motive that’s not yet apparent and by someone who may have no idea he’s going to do it.”

“So what do you know?”

“I know three things for certain: I kill Gavin Watkins on Friday morning, and a cold-blooded killer is murdering ex-ChronoGuard thirty-six years from now. We know nothing about him except that he might be driving a Vauxhall KP-16, a car that hasn’t been designed yet, and he’s handy with a baseball bat.”

“And the third?”

Friday smiled. “I know that someone posted these letters from a Kemble mailbox only recently. Why wait until now to send the letters? The thing is that someone sent these letters— and whoever that might be could have an idea about what’s going on.”

“Okay,” I said, “I kind of understood that.”

Which was unusual, given the complex nature of the time industry.