‘I found him on the Internet,’ I said.

‘Looking for a date?’

‘He’s a little old for me, although I bet he cleans up nicely.’

‘Euclid’s not very popular in this town.’

‘He wears it as a badge of pride. In his place, I might do the same. Are you aware that he’s been threatened?’

‘He’s always being threatened. Doesn’t do much good, though.’

‘You sound almost as though you approve.’

‘He’s one stubborn man standing in the way of the expansion of a town and the money that would bring into the local economy.’

‘As you yourself said, there’s nothing likely to make a certain kind of man more resolute than to find himself threatened for his beliefs.’

‘I don’t think the First Amendment guarantees your right to be an asshole.’

‘I think that’s precisely what it does.’

Morland threw his hands in the air in despair. ‘Jesus, if I closed my eyes I could almost be talking to Danes himself, and you don’t know how unhappy that makes me. So you talked to Danes? Go you. I’ll bet he told you all about how rich old Prosperous is bad, and its people are jerks just because they look after their own. I could give a fuck what Danes says. We’re weathering the recession, and we’re doing okay. You know why? Because we support one another, because we’re closeknit, and that’s helped us get through the bad times.

‘In case you haven’t noticed, Mr Parker, this town has taken a kicking recently. Instead of busting into old cemeteries, you should go to the new one and pay your respects to the two boys we just buried there. Their crosses won’t be hard to find. They have fags beside them. Close by you’ll find fresh earth over Valerie Gillson’s grave, and the messages her kids left on it for her. Look to your right and a pile of flowers marks where Ben Pearson is resting. Four dead in twenty-four hours, a town in mourning, and I have to deal with your bullshit.’

He had a point. I just chose to ignore it.

‘I’m looking for an older couple,’ I said, as though he had never spoken. ‘Sixties at least, at a guess, although you know how young people are: when you’re in your twenties, everyone over forty looks old. This couple owns a blue car. I saw a few blue cars during my ride through your very clean town, but I resisted the impulse to start knocking on doors until we’d spoken. You could save me time by giving me the names and addresses of anyone who might ft the criteria.’

I took a small hardback notebook from my pocket, slipped the minipen from the spine, and waited. I felt like a secretary poised to take dictation.

‘What are you talking about?’ said Morland.

‘I have a witness who says that the people who took Annie Broyer to this town were an older couple in a blue car. I thought I might try talking to older couples with blue cars. Sometimes the simplest options are the best. You’re welcome to come along, unless you’re preparing some more stump speeches.’

There was a knock at the door behind me.

‘Not now,’ said Morland.

The door opened a fraction. I turned to see one of the secretaries poke her head in.

‘Chief, I—’

‘I said, “Not now!”’

The door quickly closed again. Morland hadn’t taken his eyes from me throughout the brief exchange.

‘I told you when you came through last time that there’s no evidence the woman you’re looking for ended up in Prosperous.’

‘I think she did.’

‘Has she been reported missing?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘So you’re looking for a street person, a former junkie, who has probably fallen back into her old ways, and you want me to help you accuse seniors of kidnapping her?’

‘Seniors, and younger,’ I corrected. ‘And only ones with access to a blue car.’

‘Get out.’

I closed my notebook and restored the minipen to the spine.

‘I guess I’ll just have to go through the DMV.’

‘You do that. Nobody here fits your bill. That girl is not in Prosperous. If I see you within the town limits again, you’ll be charged with trespass and harassment.’

I stood. I’d filled my aggravation quota for the day.

‘Thank you for your time, Chief,’ I said, as I left the office. ‘You’ve been a big help.’

He took it as sarcasm – I could see it on his face – but I was speaking the truth.

I had never told Morland that Annie Broyer was an ex-junkie.

The wolf continued to circle the town. He had returned to the place in which he found the store of meat and bone below ground, but only the scent of it remained now. For a time the streets had been filled with even more light and noise and men than before, and the activity had caused the wolf to fee into the woods, but his hunger had driven him back. He tore apart a garbage bag and fed on the chicken carcasses he smelled inside before slipping back into the woods. He remained thin, and even through the double layer of his fur his ribs shone sharply carved. The temperature had started to drop again: that night it would plummet to -7 degrees. The wolf’s thick sub-cuticle of fat had become depleted over the winter months as his body fed upon itself. The food from the town was sustaining him, but the damage had already been done. Instinct warned him to seek shelter from the cold, to find a dark hidden place with warmth. In his youth, members of the pack had sometimes colonized abandoned fox dens, and the wolf now sought a hole in the ground in which to hide. The pain was spreading through his body, and he could put no weight on his damaged limb.

South of the town, he picked up the smell of a deer. The spoor was old, but the wolf identified the pain and panic that had marked the deer’s final moments. He paused, wary now. The deer had died in terror, and beneath the sweet stink of prey the wolf could detect another smell, one that was unfamiliar and yet set his senses jangling. The wolf had no predators, aside from man. He would even take on a grizzly in a fight for food, and his pack had once come upon, and consumed, a hibernating black bear. The fear that the wolf now felt reminded him of his fear of man, yet this was no man.

But the scent of the deer drew the wolf on. The wolf fattened his ears against his head and arched his back as a car passed. The light vanished, the sound faded, and he continued to pick his way through the trees until at last he came to a clearing.

In the clearing was a hole. Beside it, almost hidden by roots and branches, lay the deer. The wolf narrowed his eyes and pulled back his ears. His tail pointed straight out, parallel to the ground. The threat came from the hole. Now the wolf snarled, and his fur bristled. He crouched in anticipation of an attack. His senses were flooded by the smell of the deer. He would fight to eat.

And then the wolf’s tail moved, withdrawing fully between his legs. He thrust out his tongue and lowered his hindquarters, his eyes still fixed on the hole but his muzzle pointing up. His back arched again, just as it had when the car passed, but this time it was a gesture not of fear but of active submission, the respect that one animal pays to the dominant other. Finally the wolf approached the deer while maintaining a careful distance from the hole. Briars entangled around the deer’s hind legs came away easily as the wolf pulled at the remains. Despite his weariness and hunger, he did not start to feed until he had managed to drag the deer as far from the hole in the ground as he could. The smell of danger grew fainter. The threat from the dominant animal was receding, moving farther away.

Moving deeper into the earth.

The doorbell rang in Chief Morland’s house. Morland’s wife went to answer, but he told her that he would take care of it. He had barely spoken to her since coming home, and had not eaten dinner with the family. His wife said nothing, and did not object. Her husband rarely behaved in this way, but when he did he usually had good cause, and she knew better than to press him on it. He would tell her of his troubles in his own time.