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what could he do about it? Track the Carver down? No—because nobody has been able to. He cared . . . but then he didn’t care. The anger just drained away. The Old Him—the Old Him would have fired up, would have topped the rev counter, would have exploded.
    More of the conversation. The prime minister. Did he like the guy? He was fine. Fishing. They should go fishing sometime, like they used to. Did he remember that time the fishhook went through his ankle? The rugby season was over and had he seen any of the cricket? He should get out more, should try to get away, should try to do this and try to do that—and he nodded some of the time and some of the time he didn’t, he just stared ahead, waiting to bealone. Travel. Gardening. New restaurants opening and old restaurants closing. A new mall was being built. Extensions to the prisons were almost complete. Dwight Smith was released two weeks ago.
    Another jump start. Something inside sparked.
    Did he remember Dwight Smith? Yes, he did, and wasn’t it early for Dwight Smith to be released? Why yes, it was, six years too early. Why was that, he’d asked? Why was anything, he’d been told.
    So something had sparked and it had caught. And why? Looking back, he thinks because Dwight Smith was somebody he could do something about. The Christchurch Carver—nobody knew where the hell he was, what he was doing, whether he was dead or alive or even still in the city. But Dwight Smith? Well now, Dwight was an entirely different kettle of spiders.
    The conversation ended and he was alone again and on the couch he didn’t like or dislike, and the motor was running. There were hiccups and moments where it almost stalled, but it was running.
    Dwight Smith was free.
    Dwight Smith was a dog who had tasted blood.
    The Old Him had been about men like Dwight Smith. The Old Him had been about getting up every morning at seven a.m. and getting to work by eight, about fighting a never-ending fight, about dedicating himself to the cause. It had been about sitting at his desk with a coffee and catching up on paperwork, about taking orders, about giving orders, about often being somewhere in the middle of the chain of command. It had been about knocking on doors, interviewing shop owners and bank tellers and people whose homes had been broken into. It had been about interviewing family members and victims and suspects. It had been about seeing the good in people and the bad in people, but mostly about the bad. He would spend his days putting bad people away, and they would do their time and they would come back out and he would spend more days putting them away again. It was simply how the worldworked. From eight o’clock to five o’clock, five days a week—that was his life, often with overtime. A never-ending cycle. Of course old age and karma caught up to some of those bad people so he never had to see them again, and occasionally they either gave up the life of crime or got so good at it they dropped off the radar, but there were always more being produced in the white-trash factories of the city, a production line of meth manufacturers and sociopaths and rapists and shoplifters and arsonists and people who just didn’t give a shit. And of course the Old Him stopped being the Old Him because of people like Dwight Smith and the Christchurch Carver, and why should—
    Why should.
    There they were Two small words. Why should, and a future opened in front of him, just like that, a doorway to a world of possibilities. That was the moment he realized he was a man searching for something. That’s what man did. If man didn’t search, the world would not evolve. The world would not be explored. People would still be living in caves and killing lizards with rocks.
    Why should a guy like Dwight Smith get a second chance at hurting people?
    Why should Dwight Smith get to be happy? Should get to carry on? Should get to be free?
    He didn’t care. And at the same time he did care.
    He