Viktor watched Kyle walk down the hill until he was nothing but a dark coat moving between the trees.
He lowered the small pair of binoculars and tucked them back into his pocket. Birdwatcher binoculars. Cheap. A tourist had dropped them by the bench he had been sitting on near the bottom of the slope, three hours ago, and Viktor had decided they were his now.
"Good glass," he muttered. "Bad for birds. Good for watching."
He had arrived before either of them. Before the girl with her sketchbook. Before Kyle with his careful little steps and his eyes that checked every jogger and every dog and every woman with a pram.
Kyle had looked straight at him twice.
He had not seen him.
Viktor found that very funny. A man of his size, sitting under a tree in a long black coat with a newspaper he was not reading, and Kyle, clever as he was, had looked right past him. People always did. They looked for danger in the places they expected it to be. Never in the obvious places.
