Edwin clicked off the shears and came around to face Gavin, holding a long black lock of hair in his hand. “I take great offense at that, Gavin. Certainly the pervert part. My interests are much nobler.” He draped the hair on the workbench. “When this has been dyed and cut into the proper lengths, it will look very realistic. Have a look.”

He pointed to the grasses on a hillside on the railway. “See what I mean? Now sit still. The less fuss you make, the faster this will go.”

He powered up the shears again and went back to it, cutting one path after another across Gavin’s scalp, the man trembling throughout.

“You’re a sick fuck, that’s what you are,” Gavin said.

Edwin faced him, smiled, and took a moment to reflect. “What I am, Gavin, is . . . I am happenstance.”

“Happen what?”

“I suppose, more accurately, I am the opposite of happenstance.”

“You’re a fucking loon, that’s what you are. In your stupid engineer hat and stupid vest with railroad badges all over it. A certifiable lunatic.”

Edwin ignored the outburst. “You know how people will say something happened just by chance? Someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were looking one way when they should have looked the other, and wham, the bus hit them. A hunter walking through the woods trips on a tree root and shoots his buddy in the head. Someone’s walking along a slippery sidewalk and a sheet of ice falls off a building and slices their head off. What were the odds? What dumb luck?”

“Please . . .”

“And the truth is, in a lot of cases, that is what happens. Dumb luck. Fate. Their number was up. But it doesn’t happen that way often enough. Bad luck sometimes needs a helping hand. It needs to be enabled. Hold still. Just a little more off the top.”

He ran the shears over Gavin’s head, more lengths of hair landing on the floor. He turned the shears off, stood back, and admired his handiwork.

“If I had a mirror I would hold it up for you,” Edwin said, “but it’s as neat a job as I’ve ever done, which is odd, considering that the others were in a more compliant condition at the time. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at something. You can always improve.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Gavin asked.

Without hesitation, Edwin nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“If you let me go, I won’t tell anyone. Nobody, I swear.”

“But Gavin, I need you. You’re material. It’s a two-step process, you see, and it’s ongoing. The layout there loses its potency without new material.”

“What were those bones? In that bin?”