As always, he was more interested in what he could imagine than in what he could see. The props still present in the room—the knife sharpener, the can of red paint, the brush—no longer held his interest. Even the photograph that the killer had sent to Damon Blundy, the password painted on 8½" x 11" paper and left beside Blundy’s laptop to ensure the police would find the email containing the photograph . . . Simon could happily have spent days pondering the meaning of these two things in combination, but he felt no need to look at either one again. Why waste his time? Sam and the rest of the team could scour all that was clearly visible while he looked behind and beyond, trying to coax hidden motives and grudges out of the shadows.

“I see what you mean. A ‘less’ implies a ‘than,’” Sam sounded relieved to have finally worked it out.

“He is no less dead than what, though?” said Simon. “Whoever painted those words knows the answer, and chose to be cryptic instead of letting us in on the secret. Which means either he wants us to work it out or he wants us to fail. If we fail, he gets away with it, proves he’s cleverer than us.”

“And if we succeed?”

“Then he’s going down for murder.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “All these . . . weird features might be clues to something—to motive, perhaps, or something about Damon Blundy—but not necessarily to the killer’s identity.”

“Joking, aren’t you? Crime scene like this”—Simon gestured around the room—“motive’s going to be as unique as a fingerprint. Soon as we know why, we’ll know who.” How soon? Simon could feel his impatience overheating already, and this was only day one.

Not knowing the answer always put him in a foul mood, especially in the hours immediately following a murder. The disappointment of arriving at the scene and not being able to work it out straightaway, the feeling of failure, the fear that he’d never get to the truth if it didn’t leap out at him in the first five minutes . . . He clung to the hope that it would happen to him one day, the ideal scenario he always prayed for: a revelation in those first few precious moments, before all the major and minor players started chucking their lies at him.

He walked over to one of Damon Blundy’s overcrowded bookshelves, half pulled out a pale-blue-spined paperback—P. G. Wodehouse—then pushed it back in again. The sight of so many books made Simon think about authorship. “This killer’s invested a lot of time and effort, planning and execution,” he said. “He’s proud of his handiwork. Wouldn’t want us to work out why in isolation, without knowing who—that’d feel like Mr. Nobody getting the credit.”

“So he wants to be caught?”