The man who stood like a block of grey stone at the edge of a belt of elm trees was looking down a gentle slope towards his intended victim. For several minutes he had not moved, partly to make sure that he was quite alone but also because he was absorbed by the technical side of the problem.
There was the possibility of incidental death, which would be rated as murder, but this was no longer a deciding factor. He had already balanced risk against precaution, penalty against reward and now after days of waiting the odds were in his favour.
The night wind was blowing in gusts from the southeast, the perfect direction for his purpose. It made the evergreens in the garden below him chatter together: they and the outhouse doors nagging at their latches would conceal any betraying footfall.
