to wonder whether his human approach to detective intelligence was less effective than Bryant’s lateral habits. He sighed and replaced his pen in his pocket. ‘Let’s assume for a moment that the assailant was unknown to Mr Avery. You’re sure nothing was taken from the house?’
‘Positive. You’ve seen how we live. Jake was into minimalism, couldn’t bear ornamentation, not even so much as a magazine lying about. We kept no money at home.’
‘You don’t think it was unusual for the back door to be unlocked?’
‘No. There are gardens on either side of us, and walls at the ends.’
‘And you can think of no reason—’
‘—why he was murdered? No, of course not, otherwise I’d tell you, wouldn’t I?’
They released the distraught Aaron in order to let him inform his partner’s relatives.
‘I still keep asking myself if it’s just an unfortunate series of coincidences,’ May admitted. ‘All kinds of tragedies occur in the average street. Couldn’t this be an extreme example? An old lady dies, a workman suffers an accident, an intruder kills a householder . . .’
‘There’s nothing coincidental about it,’ replied Bryant, pouring food for the cat. ‘The unusual configurations of London streets mean that there was always a lot of waste ground, and the Blitz bombs created more dead land than ever.’
‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘You always think these things are about love and hate, John, but they’re really about frustration and poverty and anger, and that has a lot to do with the land. The developers push up property prices, the land is built upon, density increases dramatically, people are thrust into each other’s paths, privacy is eroded, tension flares.’
May had heard this particular tune of Bryant’s often enough to raise his hand in objection. ‘London has a lower population now than it had in the 1950s,’ he pointed out.
‘But it’s become concentrated in city hotspots. Where there are too many people, lives are forced to overlap.’
‘This is a pretty affluent street, Arthur. Everyone has a garden, their own space. You’re searching for connections where there are none.’
‘I’d take your point, old fruit, but for two things. First, Jake was asleep when he was attacked. The bottom half of the bed wasn’t even disturbed, which suggests to me that he was taken by surprise. He didn’t even have time to react by trying to fend off his attacker and kick himself into an upright position. Second, the attacker knew he was in bed, because he came upstairs already armed with the roll of film. Ergo, someone entered the house with the intention of killing its owner. Jake knew something about the deaths of Elliot Copeland and Ruth Singh, and was silenced before he could tell anyone.’
‘You don’t know that. His colleagues reckon he didn’t leave the studio all day. When do you imagine he was the recipient of this blinding epiphany?’
‘I don’t much care for your tone.’ Bryant rooted through his drawer, and began assembling a favourite pipe. ‘We know he arranged to meet Kallie Owen last night, then failed to show up. I think he’d been about to tell her something, but was sidetracked by the killer.’ He sucked horribly at the pipe stem, checking airflow.
‘Why confide in her? Why not tell us?’
‘Perhaps his discovery was of particular relevance to her, or this missing partner of hers who was currently last heard from in—’ he consulted his notes, ‘Santorini?’
‘Let’s assume for the moment that you’re correct, and that this is some kind of domino effect, in which case Elliot Copeland dies to prevent the identity of Ruth Singh’s killer from emerging, and Jake Avery dies to keep Elliot’s murderer hidden. There’s no driving force to the hypothesis—no motive. None of these people had the usual family ties.’
‘You forget that following my theory, we only need a motive for the first death, and that could be something terribly mundane. We know that Ruth Singh had been the victim of racism from the tape Kallie gave us, if thirty seconds of guttural filth on a bad line can be taken as racism. We know that, despite Mark Garrett’s claim to the contrary, she was visited by him the night before she died. Let’s assume she made an enemy, someone who found a way to take her life—’
‘—by flooding her bathroom and quickly draining it.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, John.’
‘What’s wrong with a simple conk on the head? She was an old lady, all anyone would have had to do was push her downstairs. Why go to the