Headlights and Hindsight

"Control is a small mercy when everything else has already slipped through your fingers—but sometimes, it's the only mercy you get."

As I turned the corner and eased down the street, my headlights swept across the darkening road ahead in twin beams that caught dust motes and early evening insects. The amber glow illuminated a familiar figure walking along the narrow footpath, caught in harsh relief against the lengthening shadows.

Karl.

Recognition hit me before conscious thought could catch up—the particular set of his shoulders, the way he moved, the silhouette I'd followed through countless crime scenes and corridors becoming suddenly, uncomfortably foreign.

He was walking fast—too fast for someone with nowhere urgent to be, for someone who'd left a vehicle behind and chosen foot travel instead. His pace spoke of flight more than journey, of putting distance between himself and something unbearable rather than moving towards any destination.

His shoulders were locked in a rigid line, pulled back and up with tension that looked painful even from this distance. Arms stiff at his sides rather than swinging naturally with his gait, movement mechanical rather than fluid. Fists clenched so tightly I could see the white of his knuckles even through the twilight gloom, hands balled into weapons or shields depending on perspective.

That posture spoke volumes without requiring words. Volumes I could read fluently after months of partnership, of learning his physical language, of understanding what his body communicated when his mouth wouldn't.

Rage radiating from every locked muscle. Shame curving his spine despite the rigid posture trying to deny it. Or maybe the same confusion that still churned in my own chest like storm-tossed waters—questions without answers, actions without explanations, violence without comprehensible cause.

The sight of him struck me with unexpected force—harder than I'd anticipated, hitting somewhere below conscious preparation.

Not like simple recognition of a colleague encountered unexpectedly. More like recoil, like flinching from something that had burned you once and might again.

A reflexive twist in my gut, sharp and involuntary, my body responding before my mind could formulate rational reaction. Adrenaline spiked immediately—fight-or-flight chemicals flooding my system in response to perceived threat.

Despite the residual haze of the shiraz still softening the sharper edges of my thoughts—warm fuzz around my cognition, slight delay in processing, the pleasant numbness alcohol provided—the heat of earlier anger flared back to life beneath the surface with surprising intensity.

Not gone, I realised. Just banked. Waiting.

The wine hadn't extinguished it, had merely covered it temporarily. And now, seeing Karl walking alone through Hobart's suburbs with his body broadcasting distress, all that suppressed fury returned with renewed force.

Anger simmered low in my belly, steady and undeniable. Not the explosive rage that came from immediate provocation but something slower-burning and more dangerous. It wasn't a fresh spark struck from flint—it was coals left smouldering beneath ash, maintaining heat through time, ready to ignite with fresh fuel.

He'd pushed me.

The fact repeated itself in my mind with the insistence of intrusive thought, refusing to be dismissed or rationalised away no matter how I tried to contextualise it.

No matter how accidental it might have been—though could you truly call intentional physical contact accidental even if the target was wrong? No matter how frantic he'd been in whatever delusion had gripped him in that bedroom, whatever madness had convinced him Luke Smith was present in rubbish bags.

He'd struck out. Connected with force. Sent me crashing into walls.

And that changed everything between us.

My grip on the steering wheel tightened instinctively, knuckles going white, fingers digging into leather-wrapped plastic. The bandages around my injured palm pulled with the pressure, gauze shifting against tender flesh, adhesive tugging at skin. The wound throbbed beneath the dressing with renewed insistence—a dull ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat like a secondary pulse point.

Throb, throb, throb. Each beat a reminder.

It wasn't just pain registering through nerve endings to brain. It was memory made physical. Proof written in torn flesh and dried blood. A physical echo of everything that had unravelled back in that house on Berriedale Road, of a partnership fractured and trust shattered and safety compromised.

I slowed the car as I drew closer to Karl's walking figure, foot easing off the accelerator with gradual pressure. The engine note changed, dropping in pitch, becoming quieter as momentum decreased.

He didn't turn to look. Didn't acknowledge my presence even though the car must have been audible, must have been visible in his peripheral vision as headlights approached from behind.

Didn't even glance in my direction—no turn of his head, no shift of shoulders, no indication he was aware of anything beyond his own thoughts and the pavement beneath his feet.

Just kept moving forward with determination, jaw set in a hard line I could see even in profile. The world blocked out by whatever storm he was walking through, whatever internal chaos consumed his attention completely.

For a moment—brief but genuine—I considered stopping.

The possibility formed itself fully in my mind with seductive clarity. Pulling up beside him on the kerb with a screech of brakes. Rolling down the window with an electric whir. Confronting him right there, point-blank, without preparation or preamble.

Demanding an explanation in the middle of a residential street with curtains twitching and neighbours pretending not to watch. Making him look me in the eye and answer for what he'd done.

For the fury that had overtaken him without warning. For the frenzy that had driven him to tear apart rubbish bags like a man possessed. For the blow that had knocked me off my feet in more ways than one—physically into walls, metaphorically into confusion and betrayal.

Making him account for the breakdown I'd witnessed, for behaviour so far outside his normal parameters it felt like watching a stranger wear Karl's face.

I could picture it clearly: his startled expression as I pulled alongside, the defensive posture he'd adopt immediately, the excuses and explanations that would tumble out whilst we sat in a car on a darkening street with the engine idling.

But I didn't do it.

Didn't pull over. Didn't slow further. Didn't call out his name through an open window.

Because the truth was—and I had to be honest with myself even when honesty was uncomfortable—I wasn't ready.

Not ready for the conversation that would inevitably follow confrontation. Not ready for the answers he might provide that would either justify nothing or explain everything. Not ready for the inevitable justifications that would come with them, the rationalisations and contextualisations that would attempt to transform the inexcusable into the understandable.

Not ready to hear whatever demons had been chasing him, whatever had triggered such complete loss of control. Not ready to decide whether any explanation would constitute excuse, whether understanding would require forgiveness.

So I drove on instead.

Let him walk alone through suburbs that were darkening with each passing minute, street lights beginning to flicker on in preparation for night.

Let him stew in whatever thoughts were clawing at him from inside—regret or confusion or continued anger or all three simultaneously.

The car picked up speed as I pressed the accelerator again, engine responding with increased revs. The distance between us stretched quickly in my rear-view mirror—Karl's figure growing smaller, less distinct, finally disappearing entirely as I turned another corner and he was lost to sight.

The silence inside the vehicle grew heavier by the second, pressing down with almost physical weight. No radio playing. No conversation filling the space. Just the hum of tyres on asphalt and the engine's steady drone and my own breathing slightly too loud in the enclosed space.

I didn't feel better for leaving him there. Not really. No satisfaction in the choice, no sense of righteous vindication or justified abandonment. Just a hollow feeling where resolution should have been, emptiness where confrontation might have brought clarity even if painful.

But I did feel something else beneath the hollowness.

In control.

If only for now. If only in this small way. If only temporarily before the situation demanded decisions I couldn't avoid.

It was a small choice in a day that had spiralled wildly and comprehensively out of my control—starting with traffic stops that became missing persons leads, escalating through Karl's violent breakdown, ending with me bleeding in a stranger's bathroom whilst drinking wine I shouldn't have accepted.

A day where everything had gone wrong in ways I couldn't have predicted or prevented.

But this choice—driving past rather than stopping, continuing forward rather than circling back—was mine. Deliberate. Conscious. An assertion of agency in circumstances that had stripped away most of my power.

And I didn't look back in the rear-view mirror to see if he was still visible behind me, didn't check whether he'd stopped walking or changed direction or done anything except continue his solitary march through Hobart's suburbs.

Just kept my eyes forward on the road ahead, on the route that would take me back to the city where paperwork and questions and consequences waited with patient inevitability.