Gibbs shook his head and swore under his breath. Who did he think he was, Simon Waterhouse? Most people’s hunches were worthless, and Gibbs was realistic enough to include his own in that category. Tasker was a weirdo, but that didn’t make him a killer. “Not the easiest man in the world to deal with,” the literary agent had said. Neither was Gibbs, so the two of them were well matched.

Gibbs pointed in the direction of Tasker’s front door and mouthed, “Come down and let me in?” He pulled his ID out of his pocket and held it up.

Tasker disappeared from the window. Gibbs wove his way through the heavy traffic of Gaywood Road again. Why did the detective cross the road? To talk to a weed-addicted horror writer. It wasn’t much of a punchline.

He didn’t see the point of ringing the bell again, so he waited, listening for the sound of feet on the stairs.

Nothing. Once he was certain he’d waited long enough, he knocked loudly on the door, then opened the letterbox and shouted, “Mr. Tasker! DC Chris Gibbs, Culver Valley CID. I’ve sent you several emails. Can you open up? I’d like to talk to you.”

The bastard wasn’t coming to the door. Gibbs pressed his finger down on the doorbell and kept it there for a good minute and a half. Then, too angry to stay where he was, he marched back out into the traffic, attracting multiple horn beeps. This time he managed to resist making any obscene gestures.

He’s going to be back in the window again, staring blankly out as if nothing’s happened.

On the pavement opposite, Gibbs looked up and got a shock. Tasker had reappeared, but only partially. His hairless bare chest was visible, and the bottom of his neck, but not his face. Tasker had stuck a large square of black paper to the window—with Blu-Tack by the look of it; Gibbs could see four pale dots, one at each corner—and was standing behind it.

“What the fuck . . . ?” Gibbs murmured.

He watched as Tasker did the same with a second square of black, fixing it beneath the first so that the edges lined up. Now hardly any of him was visible—only his right arm.

“Detective Gibbs?” A woman who looked somewhere between thirty and forty was standing beside him.

“Detective Constable. DC Gibbs.”

“I’m Jane Tasker, Reuben’s wife.” She was holding the handle of a black, waist-high shopping cart. A loaf of bread and a packet of raspberry-flavored popsicles poked out of the top. Didn’t she drive? Or use the Internet? She seemed to have been to the supermarket on foot with what was effectively an open-topped suitcase to wheel her groceries home in. Bizarre.