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typical high school jock. Maybe even captain of the football or the wrestling team.
    ‘But he didn’t,’ Hunter continued. ‘In fact, it was because of him that I didn’t get picked on as much as I would have. We became best friends. When I started going to the gym, he helped me with workouts and diet and all.’
    ‘And how was he on a day-to-day basis?’
    Hunter knew that Taylor was referring to Folter’s inner-character traits.
    ‘He wasn’t the violent kind, if that’s what you’re asking. He was always calm. Always in control. Which was a good thing, because he sure knew how to fight.’
    ‘But you just said that he wasn’t the violent kind,’ Taylor said.
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘But you’ve also just implied that you’ve seen him in a fight.’
    Half a nod. ‘I have.’
    Taylor’s eyes and lip-twist asked a silent question.
    ‘There are certain situations that, no matter how calm or easy-going you are, you just can’t get out of,’ Hunter replied.
    ‘Such as?’ Taylor insisted.
    ‘I only remember seeing Lucien in a fight once,’ Hunter explained. ‘And he really tried to get out of it without using his fists, but it didn’t work out that way.’
    ‘How so?’
    Hunter shrugged. ‘Lucien had met this girl in a bar at the weekend and spent the night chatting to her. As far as I am aware, that was it. There was no sex, no kissing, nothing bad, really, just a few drinks, a little flirting and loads of laughs. On the Monday after that weekend, we were coming back from a late study session at the library, when we got cornered off by four guys, all of them pretty big. One of them was the girl’s “very pissed off” ex-boyfriend. Apparently, they’d split not that long ago. Now the thing about Lucien was that he’d always been a great talker. As the saying goes: He could sell ice to an Eskimo. He tried to reason his way out of that situation. He said that he was sorry, that he didn’t know that she had a boyfriend, or that they had just split. He said that if he’d known, he would’ve never approached her and so on. But the guys didn’t want to know. They said that they weren’t there for an apology. They were there to fuck him up, full stop.’
    ‘So what happened then?’ Taylor asked.
    ‘Not much. Until then I had never seen anything quite like it. They just went for him. Me? As skinny as I was, I wasn’t about to sit and watch my best friend get beat up by four Neanderthals, but I barely got a chance to move. The whole thing was over in ten . . . fifteen seconds, tops. I couldn’t really tell you what happened in detail, but Lucien moved fast . . . too fast, actually. In absolutely no time, all four of them were on the floor. Two had a broken nose, one had about three or four broken fingers, and the fourth one had his genitals kicked to the back of his throat. After we got out of there, I asked him where he learned to do that.’
    ‘And what did he say?’
    ‘He gave me a bullshit answer. He said he watched a lot of martial arts movies. One thing I had learned about Lucien was that there was no point in trying to push him for an answer when he didn’t want to give you one. So I just left it at that.’
    ‘You said that he’s a great talker,’ Taylor said with a slight lilt in her voice. ‘Well, he hasn’t made that much conversation in the past few days.’
    ‘When did you last see him?’ Kennedy asked.
    ‘The day I got my PhD diploma,’ Hunter explained. ‘In college I graduated a year before him.’
    Taylor knew from Hunter’s résumé that he had sped through his college years as well, condensing four years into three.
    ‘But I stayed in Stanford,’ Hunter said. ‘I was offered a second scholarship to carry on studying for a PhD So I took it. Lucien and I continued to share the dorm room for one more year, until he graduated. After that, he left Stanford.’
    ‘Did you keep in touch?’
    ‘We did, but not for very long,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘He took a few