The sun sat bold in a cloudless sky, softening the breeze and warming the colours of the breaking season. A new beginning, was how a churchman had put it in his thought for the day: ‘The morning after the nightmare before.’ And it was indeed as though the city, the country, sensed it had been purged; rinsed clean of something distasteful. The effect, mercifully, did not seep beyond the doors of the detention centre. The mood within seemed more closely to match Leo’s own, though partly this may have been down to the pall Leo knew he carried with him. He saw it – had seen it since Ellie had been taken – cast back at him by everyone he encountered. He only had to enter a room and the light within would immediately seem to dim. He waited beside the security desk, the two guards on the other side of the counter conspicuously evading a collision of eyes. They were intimidated, Leo realised. By his presence. By the absence his presence brought home. He coughed and one of the security guards squirmed.
