The scent of sea-water rushes through The intern’s nostrils. The soft, continuous sighing of the surf, hypnotising in its perpetuity, lulls him into a day-dream. He should be holidaying here, not working.

He has been told that he should start searching for former-officer Gavin Watkins on this beach, which lies along Goslington City’s eastern fringe. His brief is to return him to the local police station immediately. It sounded easy enough back at the station, except that the station’s captain had not told him what Watkins looks like.

“You’ll know him when you see him,” was the only clue given. “He’ll be the only person not having fun at the beach.”

When the intern arrived at the beach, he found something far worse than massive crowds hiding his target: there was no one there at all. No tourists, no local families, no frolicking lovers… no Watkins. He checks his watch, and then looks up at the sky. It feels strange and joyless out here, not the way that he’s certain the beach is supposed to feel. The sunset, which usually stains the darkening sky a brilliant molten-orange, instead has a copper-like dullness to it, the faded kind that becomes difficult to polish on old trophies.

He’s waited for near an hour already but it is getting late and, what with the cooler winds of twilight beginning to blow through, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be arriving soon.

He hauls himself up from his seat upon the sand and stretches. It is time to return to the precinct. The captain certainly won’t be pleased.

As he makes ready to leave, a small movement some distance down the beach flashes in the corner of his eye. He passes a glance. It is nothing.

No, wait…

There it is. On the very edge of his visibility is a tiny human figure. After a brief observance, it becomes clear that it is coming this way.

He hurries as best as he can but cannot avoid waddling in a rather ungainly fashion as his feet slide in the sand, forcing him to shift his whole body from left to right in order to keep momentum.

“Officer Watkins?” he calls. Nothing. He calls again, huffing from his exertion. No response. He advances further and tries again. Nothing again. Perhaps the waves are muffling his voice. Deciding that calling from a distance is useless, he resumes his walking.

As the figure draws nearer – in no great hurry – faint details become visible in the fading light. He (as it is now clear that it is a man) is ambling slowly, his head bent so that he seems to be staring just a little bit ahead of his feet. He is surprisingly young for n ex-policeman, appearing no older than twenty-six. This is promising. The intern asks the man again if he is Watkins.

“Nice beach, isn’t it?” the man asks. He looks up and out over the sea, his sandy hair whipping about in the wind. This takes the intern by surprise; the man had hitherto never shown any signs of noticing that he was present. “It’s always quiet here,” he continues, “No lifeguards, so most people are afraid to swim in case something goes wrong. They stick to the tourist beaches because of that.” He shakes his head disapprovingly. “Awful, crowded places those.”

Uncertain whether the man has yet noticed him, the intern asks, once again, “Are you officer Watkins?”

The man finally turns his gaze towards the intern, and immediately the boy regrets asking the question. His eyes fix on the boy’s and do not move. They search and they pry, making him feel like he's stumbled into a silent interrogation.

“Chief sent you?” The words are spoken with urgency, hidden until now.

“No sir, Captain Reynolds did.”

The man looks away again, much to the intern’s relief.

“Reynolds? Can’t be. You’re obviously mistaken,” the man says. A silence ensues, broken only by the crash and fizz of the surf.

“It is very important that you come with me to the station, sir,” the intern says, in an attempt at authority.

Watkins lowers his face, shrouding it in shadow, giving his next words a more foreboding ring.

“Something’s gone horribly wrong, hasn’t it?”

This isn’t helping. The intern does not know why he has been sent to fetch Watkins, only that he is meant to do it quickly, and that every second he wastes chatting will count against him when he finally reaches the station.

“Why do you say that?” he asks the man.

“Well,” he says with a bitter grin, “Reynolds and I have a… complicated history. Even if this was judgement day and I was the only one who could stop it, I’m sure he’d think twice before calling me.”

The intern makes a rather inarticulate attempt to respond. Flustered due to his lack of adequate information and confused by Watkins’ disjointed ramblings, he is only able to make a series of gasping movements with his mouth akin to those that fish are known for. 

Watkins’s eyes stop their prying when he realises that this poor young man knows nothing about his errand. He takes several strides towards the intern’s car and speaks as he walks:

“Typical Reynolds. Never tells anyone anything until he has to. Alright. Take me to him. I wouldn’t want you facing him if I didn’t show.”

Watkins pats the intern on the shoulder and trudges to where the car is parked. In what the intern is sure is only a nervous tick, Watkins balks sideways as if to avoid walking into someone. He recollects himself, shakes his head to clear it, and enters the car.

***

During the trip to Reynolds' precinct, Watkins has time to think about the possible reasons why Captain Reynolds would be looking for him. What he told the intern was not necessarily an exaggeration. He was suspended from the police force about five years ago for “culpable homicide via criminal negligence”, and Reynolds thought that the official label was a flaccid description of the events. Reynolds’s version read more like, “Your reckless incompetence has finally led to the death of an innocent civilian”, albeit with a few curse-words thrown in at maximum velocity. Anger was Reynolds’s way of handling things, and holding grudges came with that territory. One of those grudges was attached to Watkins’s friendship with Richard Wilson, the man who is currently chief of police. It was never clear why, but Reynolds resented the two of them being together. Perhaps he felt like Watkins got too much attention.

They are nearing the station, now. It is situated in one of the more affluent outer suburbs, where the wealthy keep beach houses that they only visit at week’s end. It being a dreary Monday evening, nearly all the occupants have returned to their inner city dwellings and the villas sit vacant, their windows dark and gaping. There is something vaguely unsettling about these sometimes-houses, with all the lights switched off and the iron gates shut. They seem vacuous, ornamental; as if the only thing that makes them real is their sometimes-occupants. Now, they are little more than discarded shells, waiting for passing crabs to wear them, to give them purpose for a little longer.

They exit the car and Watkins looks up at the station. It is a fairly nondescript building when compared to its upmarket surroundings, being a simple red-brick block with a lone flagpole beside it. He smiles.

The intern looks at him in confusion. 

“It looks smaller than I remember it,” Watkins explains. “Reynolds does brag about it so very much.”

As they near the building, muffled shouts leak through the walls. The intern hesitates at the door and glances nervously at Watkins, who shakes his head impatiently and opens the door himself.

Inside is a large, middle-aged man in black police uniform. He paces back and forth, gesticulating wildly with his hands, shouting at the top of his voice. A group of other police officers are sitting disinterestedly in chairs around the room, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be the reception area.

“That lazy little shit!” the man howls, “This is the last fucking time that I let him screw around on the job! I swear by the fires of a billion burning Hells, when he gets back, I’ll-”

“Hello, Captain,” - Watkins grins sheepishly - “It’s good to see that your management style has not undergone any drastic changes.”

Indeed it had not. Watkins’s memories of Captain Hector Reynolds largely consist of a sequence of lectures conducted at an unnecessarily high volume. The man had famously been bullied at school, and so it followed that he would take his chance at receiving authority… enthusiastically. He has acquired such a bad reputation, in fact, that his station is often referred to as the “Rum Bucket” on account of the uncanny rise in alcoholism among officers assigned there.

The Captain’s face reddens (a typical sign of an impending blast of expletives), but he restrains himself enough to simply mutter, “Oh good, you’re here” in a way that sounds blatantly insincere. He scowls, motions for Watkins to follow him, and then turns and walks toward his office. Once they’re both inside, the big man slumps into a chair opposite Watkins and gives him a long, venomous glare.

“So,” he grumbles. “We’re here again, after all this time.”

Watkins refuses to look Reynolds in the face. He holds his hand over the arm of his chair and taps his finger down against it to emphasise his words.

“Five years, six months, two weeks, eight days. I had it down to the hour until your intern interrupted me.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Reynolds shakes his head, a bitter cackle escaping his sneering lips.

“You’re still a snarky little turd, boy. You aren't making it easy for me to keep my cool around you.”

The room feels so taut that any wrong move from either man could trip a wire and trigger a bomb.

“And you’re still just an angry little man hiding in a big man’s body,” says Watkins, meeting Reynolds’s fuming glare with a grin that is at once roguish and, somehow, also subdued. “Look, Captain, I want to know if you’ve brought me here to trade insults or to actually discuss something important.”

This pushes the trip-wire to the brink of snapping. Reynolds rises from his chair and juts a stubby finger towards Watkins.

“Today is not the day for your shit, boy.” he growls, the sense of menace in his voice the most real that it’s ever been. “What we’re dealing with is serious. This is possibly the worst thing that the department has ever had to handle in its entire goddamn history, so you’re going to pay attention to what I give you right now.”

He reaches into the drawer of his desk and pulls out a thick, brown envelope, slapping it down on the desk. Written on it, in a familiar flowing script, is Watkins’s name. He picks it up to examine it more closely, and then looks up at Captain Reynolds, brows contorted in reluctant recognition.

“It’s from the chief.” Watkins says, visibly alarmed. “What’s going on?”

Reynolds’ face darkens in a way that Watkins has never seen before, and the answer comes like a fallen rock.

“He’s dead, Watkins.”

He nearly drops the envelope but clenches his hand and gathers himself. The young man is almost physically unsteadied. His breath is ragged and strained, like he's fighting something inside of himself. It’s not a joke anymore. The chief is dead? He can't be dead. There has never been a Goslington Chief of Police in living memory that has died before retirement. It's a joke. An unpleasant, unnecessary joke that Reynolds has obviously pulled for some perverse laughter…

But Reynolds isn't even smiling.

“I am sorry, boy." The tone of Reynolds's voice is unfamiliar to Watkins. It almost sounds sincere. There's even an odd look of pity in the gruff man's puffy face.

“What happened to him?” The question is laboured but it is as calm as Watkins can muster.

“Shot in his house. Happened a few hours ago. The body's even still there.”

Watkins drops his eyes to the floor and leaves them there. He nods lamely, his every action feeling automated, not his own.

“So what’s in this, then?” He holds the envelope up.

The captain’s stern personality is restored in a matter of moments. “Wilson had instructions for me to give it to you, not to read it myself. I wouldn’t look in on private mail. Not even yours.”

Watkins holds the envelope in both hands and stares down at it. What could the Chief have wanted to tell him? Watkins had failed him, as far as he was concerned. He was supposed to be the most brilliant trainee the Goslington police service had ever had, but he washed out. He made mistakes too big for himself to bear, and he left. Like a coward. Now, his mentor is dead. What a waste it all was.

“Did he have any instructions for me?” he asks Reynolds.

Reynolds breathes a heavy, reluctant sigh and he shifts his girth, much to his groaning chair’s dismay.

“I would imagine that they are in that envelope. It would do him little good to leave them with me.”

A silence drifts between the two of them. There is little that can – or should – be said. Nevertheless, Reynolds tries, uncomfortable with the quiet.

“Perhaps you’d better go home for now, boy,” he says, sounding almost sympathetic.

Watkins nods. He needs rest. This sort of news is a lot to process, and he should do it in the peace of his own home. He stands himself up and slowly heads for the exit, but Reynolds has one last thing to say.

“Watkins!”

He stops. Waiting. Reynolds seems to have all the possible expressions in the world fighting in his face. The Roulette slows down and almost lands on sympathy, but ticks once over into cantankerousness.

“Don't disappear this time."

Watkins inclines his head in understanding and leaves the office.

***

The key goes into the lock, turns, clicks. Watkins twists the handle, pushes, walks in, and closes the door. It all happens on its own. He is barely thinking about the action of it all. He moves to the lounge, and drops the envelope onto a large wooden table in the middle of the room. He collapses into a chair and stares blankly at the ceiling. It will take some time for all of this to permeate.

He had thought that his suspension from the police force was a gift, that it would let him escape the wrongs of his past and have a new life. It was not. If anything, it was precisely the opposite.

And now the chief of police is dead. The same questions from earlier in the day now return: How can he be dead? It’s not possible. The man was untouchable. There’s no criminal in the city who could have pulled the wool over his eyes. If Wilson has been killed, then that means that whoever did it is someone capable of things too terrible to imagine. The realisation creeps over Watkins that he may have spent too long hiding from his old world, that he has fallen out of touch with something that he should have known.

He sighs heavily and glances down at the envelope on the table. What could the chief have put in there?

Tentatively, he picks it up and tears the seal. He reaches inside and pulls out the contents: a photograph and a compact disk. Curious, he holds up the image of the woman. He nearly falls out of his chair.

He stares in horror at the red hair, the blue eyes, the broad smile… all features he knows so well. He looks closer, poring over that agonisingly familiar face. For years, he has seen it framed and enshrined in his memory. For the first time in such a long, long time, he sees it with his eyes.

Movement blurs the corner of his eye. He is suddenly aware of a presence sputtering into being close-by.

It's happening. He had been so good about his daily ritual until now. He was managing the symptoms. Even this kind of disruption shouldn't be causing problems. He shuts his eyes tightly, but he can still feel it, the other person growing and stuttering like static. The breathing exercises. He needs to do the breathing exercises. He straightens his back and draws air in through his nose until his lungs are bursting, then exhales it through his mouth until they are empty.

The growing slows down. good.

Again. In. Out. In. Out.

The presence sputters and shrivels, and with a few more breaths it is gone once again.

Relief. His chest loosens and his heart slows. That was close. He can't afford to have an episode. Not now.

He flips the photograph over so that it lies face-down on the table. Best to ignore it. Why the Hell would Wilson leave that photograph to him? What was he thinking? Doesn't he know what it does to him? Why is this all happening to him, now? He begins to wonder why Reynolds told him to check the envelope at all. He is more perplexed now than he was before he opened it. Perhaps the chief put this into this file by mistake. There is no logical reason for any of this to be in a message from his mentor.

There is the disk, though.

Watkins picks the disk up, putting the files aside. It is a DVD, he discovers, bought in the last day or so. He knows this because new disks always have a distinct smell. He turns the disk over, revealing that a portion of its surface is darker than the rest. It has been recorded on. This, he thinks, looks more promising. He moves over to the TV at the end of the room and inserts the DVD into the machine.

Immediately, the chief appears on the screen. He looks marginally older than he was when Watkins last saw him. His hair, which was jet-black in youth, is silvering, and that familiar, jovial face has the beginnings of wrinkles. When he looks at the camera, however, he does so with the same strong, commanding air that he had always been known for. When he speaks, it is evident that even his deep, baritone voice has aged slightly, as it is cracked and has lost some of its original sonorous boom.

“Hello, Gavin,” he says, managing a smile that he surely must have known would be unconvincing. “You probably know by now why you are viewing this, and I’d rather not insult you by spelling it out. We both know that wastes time, so I’ll be as brief as I can.”

Wilson smooths his thinning hair over with a shaky hand. He is flustered. His breathing wavers constantly and he shifts about in his seat, which Watkins recognises as the one from Wilson’s study.

“Someone is killing our boys, Gavin. Detectives have been turning up dead all over the place. The murders have been staged to look like accidents, and they’re escalating. What’s more, it has become obvious to me – never mind how – that I’m next.”

His voice falls here, and he is unable to look at the camera save for brief glances.

“I regret that I've taken far too long to gather this information, but I've had to be slow in order to keep unwanted attention away from this investigation. That's why I'm making a video instead of writing a letter. People ignore blank discs a lot more than important-looking pieces of paper. Anyway this all means that if I am right” – Wilson releases a heavy sigh – “and if you’re watching this, then I am, then I shall be unable to continue.

“I’ve been doing my level best to figure out who is behind this, but between trying to keep this hushed with the press and my day-to-day work… I’ve been stretched beyond my capabilities. I should never have tried this alone, but that is my mistake and I'll deal with the consequences of it. It does not, however, mean that I cannot try to fix the error I have made.

“That, as they tend to say, is where you come in. It is obvious that the guy behind this has grander plans in mind that he does not want exposed. You must be the one to chase after this bastard and fit the pieces together. I know this is a huge thing to ask, but it is my request that you take this case and finish it, without help from the police. You will work in secret, scavenging what you can as a civilian. I have done my best to lay down some structures for you, so you can have access to things you ordinarily would not have.

“I have arranged for you to have help. It’s unconventional, but I hope you will bear with it. I am a paranoid old man, Gavin, and I don’t trust the police, but there are two people who I do trust. You, and my daughter.”

Gavin pauses the video. Daughter? Wilson never ever mentioned children. Watkins didn’t know that Wilson ever had a girlfriend, let alone a possible wife. Why the hell would Wilson be bringing his daughter into the picture now of all times? Hoping for answers, he presses play.

“I have… not done terribly right by her, I have to admit. She has lived her entire life far away in England, without me. She’s a bright kid, and should be more than capable of helping you with this investigation. I left you a photo of her so you would at least know her when you see her. I'm sorry for the unfortunate resemblance. Both of you will be able to stay under the radar, and that’s important. I don’t want anyone else to know what has happened here. I know it’s going to be difficult, and by rights I should never have asked this of you, but if nothing else, humour me.

“I must go now, dear boy; time has run out on me. Gavin, I implore you, even if you did lose your way somewhat recently, you have not lost the path. It’s simply waiting for you to walk it again.”

Blank.

Watkins eyes remain on the television screen long after the video concludes. His empty face meets the machine’s. The two faces stare at each other with the same vacancy.

" I left you a photo of her so you would at least know her when you see her".

Watkins turns the photo over. He looks once more at the face he'd thought he knew so well. It is not the same person after all. Her nose is smaller. There are freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes weren't that shade of green. God, he feels so stupid. He tosses the photograph away and slumps backwards, deeper into couch, perhaps hoping that it would swallow him up.

He thinks back on Wilson’s words about his “mistakes”. He had trusted Wilson with everything in the days he had known him. He thought that trust had gone both ways. He had always seen Wilson as a kindly mentor, a pillar to hold up his shaky roof. He had thought that the two of them had shared a unique kind of trust, but clearly, he was wrong. Wilson did not trust him much at all, it seems. It stings. 

“So what now?” he would ask Wilson if he were here. “What do you expect me to do?”

He can hardly believe that Wilson would simply assume he would do this. The idea is ludicrous. He has a life beyond this. Is he supposed to just put it on hold? Is he meant to file his feelings away and just do the job? Where does he even start from here when he in all likelihood will receive no help from the police? They’ll definitely never let him back in. Not after everything that he has done. He has to deal with that for the rest of his life, except now he’s left without the one person who could have helped him to do so.

There is no way for him to know exactly what to do or where to go from here. He may as well go to see the body. Yes, he wanted to do that in the first place. That’s where he should start. It’s not like the day will get weirder from here.

He takes the disk out of the machine and places it back in the envelope, and then stares at the ceiling, as if an answer to all his problems might come from there.