Most people saw the opportunity of the clocks being wound back to get in an extra hour of sleep or partying. I saw it as the perfect alibi.

There would actually be two hours between one and two am that if planned for could be used to deadly effect. For the hour first hour I went back and forth drinking at two different bars. I made sure to get the receipts from Mickey O’Flanagans at 1:13 and 1:37am and from The Rooster Club at 1:24 and 1:59am. I didn’t touch any of the drinks I bought and I made sure to hit on the waitresses and tip them generously so that I wouldn’t stand out. They might have remembered me the next day but they wouldn’t have been able to recall if it had been in the first hour or the second that they saw me. The receipts wouldn’t denote if I had been there before the clocks were turned back and the copies they kept were certain to end up in a pile that could easily be shuffled. There weren’t any security cameras at either bar so they couldn’t prove I hadn’t visited Mickey O’Flanagans for the first hour and then decided to move on to The Rooster Club.

I had kept my head low and just flashed my stamped wrist to the bouncers the second time I had entered each bar so they wouldn’t have recognised my face and realised I had been back and forth.

After buying the second drink at The Rooster Club I joined in celebrating with all of the drunks as the clocks hit two o’clock but were instantly wound backwards by the bar staff.

I abandoned my drink on a table covered with half filled glasses before slipping outside unnoticed. I weaved my way around the crowd outside the bar and ducked into the nearest alleyway. The motorbike I had parked there earlier in the night took me quickly across town via backstreets. I had ridden the streets every night of the previous week at the same time to find the quickest route and the one least likely to encounter the police or any red light and speed cameras.

I cut the engine and parked two blocks from my destination. I couldn’t risk any witnesses mentioning hearing a motorbike engine at about the time of death. Especially in a suburb where any noise at all let alone a motorbike after dark was highly unusual.

I kept my gloves on and cut across a park then snuck through the yard of an unoccupied house that backed onto my target. The fence was over ten foot tall and I had to climb onto the garden shed to get over it. On the other side I stayed low and used the statues and bushes in the ornamental garden to approach the house unseen.

The house was completely dark as I had expected but I still approached the back doors cautiously. I tested the handle and found the door unlocked. The upper middle class felt safe in their little private neighborhood and made simple mistakes that were life altering.

I slipped off my boots, opened the door and stepped into the house.

At 1:35am I walked out of the house with the man who had ruined my life asleep for good upstairs. I felt dirty but my kids deserved retribution for what he had done to them.

By 2:10am I was sitting at the bar of the Rooster Club trying to order a beer. According to the receipts it had only been eleven minutes since my last drink. The perfect alibi.