By Will Hodgkinson

I don’t know how long I have been following the man on the beach. And I don’t know why I am following him. But reasons no longer matter—if they ever did. It is enough that we are the only two people on this beach, alone together in the white mist which has erased the outside world.

Outlined black against this whiteness, he remains the sole constant of my perspective, as permanent in his motion as I am. We move in tandem, he a hundred yards ahead: the quarry, Mr. X. Me striding behind: the hunter, the murderous stalker, the grim detective, avenging his partner’s murder. I adopt each of these roles in turn, then shed them one after the other. None fits. Playacting cannot justify our chase. It has become its own justification, its own base arithmetic, one stride matching the next.

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