Chapter 11: Sable and the Werewolf Discuss Grief

The envelope had been in his coat pocket for six hours before he went looking for her.

He had not planned it as a hunt. He had planned, in the way he planned everything now — backwards from acceptable outcome to minimum necessary action — to go to the chemist on Cavendish Road, then to the corner shop for the rice he had run out of Tuesday, then back to the flat in time to take the second compound before his shift. Structured. Contained. A day that moved in one direction.

He saw her at the bus stop outside the off-licence on Ashmore Lane at quarter past two, and his body knew her before his mind caught up: the particular angle of her shoulders against the wind, the bag that sat too heavy on one side, the way her eyes moved over the street with the systematic patience of someone who had made a professional habit of looking. He had been watching people for three years. He recognised the practice in someone else the way one insomniac recognises another in a 4am waiting room.