Gibbs looked up at the tall redbrick three-story house. He was too close to see into the windows on the top two levels. A white ceramic sign screwed to the brickwork beside the front door told him that this was 76 Gaywood Road. The numbers and letters were fussy and old-fashioned. Chosen by a woman, thought Gibbs.

On the phone this morning, Tasker’s literary agent had used words like “dedicated” and “committed” to describe Jane Tasker. He’d made Reuben Tasker sound more like a good cause than a man.

Gibbs turned around to see what was happening on the other side of Gaywood Road. It was nowhere near as busy. That was where he needed to be, to get a better view of the top part of the house. He decided to give it a couple more minutes, then cross over again once the last of the uniformed stragglers had slouched through the school gates to be penned up for the afternoon. If Tasker was in and not opening the door, he wouldn’t be able to resist looking out of a window eventually to see if all was clear, and he was more likely to pick one on a higher floor to avoid a face-to-face encounter.

Gibbs walked around his car, which was parked on the paved area that would once have been number 76’s front garden, and waited for a gap in the traffic. There wasn’t one, so he crossed anyway, raising his middle finger at a driver who used his horn to protest. Seconds later, he regretted his overreaction. He ought to buy a punching bag—set it up in the spare room at home. Maybe it would help to sort his head out if he could spend an hour a day beating the crap out of something he couldn’t hurt.

On the pavement opposite Reuben Tasker’s house, he looked up and made an involuntary noise as he saw a face framed in the single dormer window at the top. It was Tasker: gaunt, black-haired, bare-chested. Gibbs recognized him from the photograph on his website, and waited for him to pull back from the window, fearing he’d been spotted. Tasker stayed where he was. Staring.

So he’d been in all along. And wanted it known that he could have come to the door but had chosen not to.

Tasker’s gaze was neutral rather than actively defiant, but Gibbs felt the defiance all the same. There was something chillingly arrogant—no, something more chilling than arrogance—about looking at someone so expressionlessly, as if nothing they could do or say could have any effect on you, positive or negative. Tasker was watching the world in the way that a ghost separated from the living would watch.

He did it. He killed Damon Blundy. And he thinks he can get away with it.