Three Days Before the First Murder: Monday, 15 August 2005. List, Island of Sylt, 200 Kilometres North-West of Hamburg It was a moment he wanted to hang on to. His senses reached out into every corner of the land, the sea and the sky around him. He stood on naked feet and felt the texture of the dry sand that abraded his soles and squeezed between his toes. He felt as if this place, this time, was all he could remember of himself. Here, he thought, there was no past, no future, only this perfect moment. Sylt lay long and thin and low in the North Sea, offering no profile to hinder the hastening wind that pushed at the vast sky above, seeking out the more substantial flank of Denmark beyond. As he stood there, the wind protested at his presence by tugging angrily at the fabric of his chinos, snapping the loose tails and collar of his shirt and flapping the broken wing of blond hair that hung over his forehead. It scoured his face and pushed into the creases of his skin as he stood watching the scurry of the clouds across the impossibly huge pale-blue shield of the sky.
