“Nobody’s that good,” Kim said flatly. “He has a history—got arrested for assault a few years ago, though Father saw to it the charges were dropped. He had a recent public quarrel with Fairfax. And the order to apologise or be forced out of the Club would have sent him into a frenzy. I think he went into the billiard room, saw Fairfax in a vulnerable position, and let his temper rule his actions.”

“That’s not temper,” Will said. “Temper is when you get into a shouting match and whack the other fellow one. Picking up an ice pick, sneaking up on a man who’s concentrating on the billiard table, holding his head down—that’s not temper.”

Kim exhaled. “No. No, it’s premeditated murder, isn’t it?”

“Sorry.” Will needed to ask the question nagging at him, even if it wasn’t the most pressing right now. “Is your brother always like that?”

“To other people? Yes. Or if you mean, does he despise me and make sure the world knows it, also yes.”

“Because of what happened with your younger brother?”

“Oh, long before that. He’s loathed me since birth, I think.” Kim gave a mirthless smile. “And I’ve loathed him ever since I was old enough to hate. Many people would say we deserve each other. Jesus wept, a second homicidal Secretan within a few months: Father will go mad. So will the Press.”

Will hadn’t thought of the Press. He should have done. The fuss around Cheveley’s death had been pretty awful: he’d had reporters in his shop and his face in the papers, albeit in small blurred images that were mere afterthoughts to the far worse pieces on Kim. And that had merely been an inquest, with no official fault attached. This was a murder, so the papers would drag it all up: Kim’s Bolshevik past, his martyred younger brother, and if they got wind of Kim’s private life—

“Hell.”

“Quite so. And that isn’t the worst of it, not by a long chalk. He killed Fairfax and he’ll hang for it, and I will be fucked. Christ!” Kim jammed his hands in his pockets with the sort of jerky movement that suggested he wanted to punch a wall, or kick furniture. Will had always considered himself the furniture-kicker of the two of them.

“Why?” he asked. “What’s worse than the papers?”

“For God’s sake, Will. You do realise what will happen when Chingford swings?”

“No.”

“He will no longer be my father’s eldest son, that’s what.”

“So?” Will said before it dawned. “You’re the next in line. You’ll be the new Chingford?”