Chapter Two
THE BALMY WEATHER AND flower-strewn verges would have made for a pleasant drive out into the country surrounding the Essex market town of Elmhurst, but for what awaited Rafferty at journey’s end. Another person brought to a sudden and violent end.
He hated viewing the body of a human being that had presumably been breathing and walking about, enjoying their life and its pleasures, such a short time before being brutally murdered.
He wondered what the world would be like without him in it. He found it difficult to imagine himself not existing. But the world had gone on for countless millennia before he was born, and would doubtless continue after his death, strange as he might find the fact. ‘Joe Rafferty centre of the universe,’ he murmured to the empty car. ‘Not.’
After he
