vigorously. Arthur hated physical contact of this nature, and found himself surreptitiously wiping his fingers on his jacket. ‘Mark Garrett,’ said the estate agent. ‘I’m at number 7, the one on the end. The houses get larger as they go up the street because the shape of the plots is dictated by the line of the alley behind them. Dunno why. It’s the way the property was parcelled back in the 1850s.’
‘Take no notice of him-that’s shop talk, he’s in real estate,’ Lauren explained. ‘Mark’s idea of fun is to spend the weekend poring over an ordnance survey map, looking for bits of land to buy. He knows everything there is to know about this area.’ She didn’t make it sound like a good thing.
‘When are you deserting us, Benjamin?’ asked Garrett. There was no politeness in his voice, and since the sale of number
‘Tomorrow, and I am not sorry to go,’ replied Mr Singh. ‘There is nothing left for me in this city.’
‘Please spare us your this-country’s-gone-to-the-dogs speech again,’ said Garrett, looking to his girlfriend for approval and failing to find it. ‘We know what you think of the people around here.’
‘It’s not safe any more, Mr Garrett. You know that. You sell properties in the area but you never tell anyone how dangerous it is.’ His voice overrode the agent’s protestation. ‘Six brutal killings in as many weeks in the borough of Camden-this is why they are calling the High Street “Murder Mile”.’
‘Only the tabloids call it that, Ben, and the murders are mostly teenagers invading each other’s territories.’
‘So that makes it all right, I suppose? The police are too busy with these gang wars, they have no time to deal with muggings and burglaries. Yet there are flats being built on every piece of waste ground. You and your friends in the council, encouraging so many people to live on top of each other. Things will keep getting worse. Why not build a park or plant some trees?’
‘What’s the use of parks?’ Garrett demanded to know. ‘Look, I’m not personally responsible for the neighbourhood. I’m making a living, and if I didn’t try to increase my turnover I wouldn’t be very good at my job, would I?’
‘My sister stayed in her house for fear of going outside,’ said Mr Singh. ‘Somebody was sending her-’
‘Look, nobody ever saw these so-called racist notes she received.’
‘That’s because I burned them, as any decent person would have done.’
‘I’m sorry she died, but it’s nothing to do with any of us, all right?’
The evidence had been destroyed, and so it was an argument no one would win. Bryant dropped back from the group and found himself beside strangers. He had never possessed a facility for small talk, but having been unable to settle Ruth Singh’s death comfortably in his mind, regarded this evening’s gathering as a chance to meet the few people who may have known more about her than they were telling. He was studying the guests, his sharp crow eyes searching for detail, when a balding cherub dressed in black tapped him on the shoulder.
‘You think there was something odd about Mrs Singh’s death, is that it?’ he asked, holding out a ringed hand, so that Bryant was forced to shake it. ‘I mean, why else would a detective be here?’
‘We do occasionally come off duty, Mr-’
‘Avery. Call me Jake. This is my partner, Aaron.’
Does he mean business partner or
‘Forgive me, I suppose it’s like teachers,’ Jake apologized. ‘You know how surprised you are to see a teacher in the supermarket when you’re a kid, and you have to reconsider them as a human being. Aaron teaches-he’s at the primary school in the next street.’
‘That’s handy for you,’ said Bryant to Aaron. ‘Tell me, how do you find children these days?’
‘People always ask me that,’ Aaron replied, ‘as if they should suddenly have undergone transformations, but I don’t suppose they’re much different at the age I teach. They still play games and form alliances and elect leaders, and hero-worship and bully and get picked on. My classes are pretty young, so I don’t have the kind of trouble teachers face with older age-groups. You wouldn’t catch me teaching over-tens. The little ones watch too much TV, of course. They remember every character they see on their favourite shows, but won’t recall the names of people they meet in the street.’
‘Perhaps they don’t know the difference.’
‘Oh, they know the difference, all right,’ said Aaron. ‘It simply isn’t in their interests to bother remembering. Children are merciless that way, almost entirely lacking in sentiment. I’m sure it’s one part that hasn’t changed at all. As soon as they hit ten some kind of switch turns on. They suddenly learn attitude and duplicity. It’s a survival mechanism, of course, probably an essential weapon when you’re forced to walk around the neighbourhood with no money in your pockets.’
Bryant found Aaron’s honesty encouraging. ‘Do you teach any of the children in this street?’ he asked, wondering if it was worth interviewing them. He had no fondness for modern children; their motives were sinister and obscure. They became blanker and more alien with each passing generation, probably because they saw him as impossibly decrepit.
‘We’re a working-class Catholic primary, Mr Bryant. The houses around here were constructed to provide homes for the Irish labourers who built the railways, and many of them are still lived in by their descendants. The area is split into original working-class inhabitants and new arrivals from the middle classes.’
‘And how do you tell them apart?’ asked Bryant.
‘The middle-class couples never have a granny living in the next street. They’d hate to be thought of as economic migrants, but that’s what they are, nesting in the upcoming neighbourhoods, quietly waiting to turn a profit, moaning about the lack of organic shops in the high street.’
‘Do you teach the Wiltons’ son?’
‘No, Brewer goes to a private school in Belsize Park. That family over there-’ he pointed out a West Indian couple with two Sunday-dressed children ‘-send their kids to a Church of England school with a three-year waiting list. Among the working-class Catholic families, religion still plays a part in choice of education.’
‘You surprise me,’ Bryant admitted. He made a mental note, ticking the family off against Longbright’s interview register:
Paul had recognized the estate agent as soon as he entered the room, and suddenly understood how Garrett had got in on the deal for number 5 so early-he lived in the same street. No wonder he’d been annoyed by his failure to secure the house. He knew so much about the value of the property, it was almost like insider trading. ‘That fat bastard is the one who tried to warn us off the place,’ he whispered to Kallie. ‘Where do estate agents buy their shirts? There must be a special store that caters for them.’
Mr Singh was refusing to drop his argument with Garrett. ‘I heard that you are trying to purchase the waste ground in front of the builders’ merchant. Don’t tell me you’re planning to squeeze another house on to the site.’
‘I’ve never announced any intention to buy the land.’ Garrett crushed a beer can and set it down, an act of vulgarity that did not pass unnoticed by the hosts. ‘Nobody even knows who owns it.’
‘You know the old man who lives there,’ Mr Singh accused.
‘Which old man is this?’ asked Bryant. Tonight he was wearing a hearing aid, not because he needed to, but because it amplified all sounds equally, so that he was able to catch several conversations at once.
‘There’s a tramp-he uses the waste ground to sleep on sometimes,’ said a large Egyptian man who was listening in. ‘Omar Karneshi. My wife Fatima and I live at number 4.’ Bryant received another damp handshake. ‘If you buy the land, he’ll have nowhere to live.’
‘Bloody hell, why is everyone having a go at me?’ Garrett complained to his discomfited girlfriend. ‘How come I’m the bloody villain? Look, pal, no one can put in a bid for the land because the builders are planning to expand, so get off my back and give them a hard time instead.’ Lauren quickly placed a fresh beer in his hand.
Tamsin mouthed ‘Mingle and replenish!’ across the room at her husband, pointing to various low-levelled glasses. She knew they should have hired someone to do the canapes, but had been worried that it would seem pretentious in a property of this size. They would save caterers for the house in Norfolk, a Christmas party perhaps, where waitresses could glide in unnoticed from the kitchen. Tamsin would never admit it aloud, but she hated spending her weekdays surrounded by Greeks and Africans and Irish Catholics, and groups of black teenagers who shouted and laughed in incomprehensible argot. Oliver had adopted the role of betrayed socialist, refusing to buy a place in Islington because Tony Blair had lived there. Kentish Town, he felt, was ‘more real’, although he was
