“I wouldn’t put it that strongly.” It bothered Simon that Sam was treating his ill-thought-out ramblings as statements of fact. He was too proud to say, “I’ve no idea if I’m right—this is pure speculation,” so said instead, “He doesn’t want to be caught, no, but he’s prepared to be. He wouldn’t bother with the cryptic clues if he didn’t want to give us a chance of working it out, however unlikely he thinks it is that we will. No fun for him to outwit us if it’s a foregone conclusion.”

“Couldn’t he outwit us more easily if he didn’t leave us any clues at all?” Sam asked.

Simon nodded. It was a good point. “But he also wants acknowledgment—of his grievance as well as his cleverness. So maybe he does want to be caught—maybe I got it the wrong way round and getting away with murder would be the consolation prize. Or he might be equally happy with either outcome: win-win for him. Either we’re too stupid to interpret his clues and he gets away with it—massive ego boost—or he has the consolation of police and media attention for his cause, whatever it is—political or personal.”

“Political?” Sam sounded surprised.

“Could easily be,” said Simon. “I’ve been working my way through Damon Blundy’s columns from the Herald. His vocation was pissing off as many people as possible: women, Jews, Muslims, atheists, pro-choicers, left-wingers, right-wingers, journalists, dog-owners—you name it. Someone’s going to have to read every word he’s ever published, and all the comments threads online. We’ll probably find at least five hundred people who’ve threatened to kill him at one time or another.”

“I’ve been assuming this is personal,” said Sam. “The strange quirks of the murder scene . . .” He ran his gloved hand over the jukebox in front of him. It was impressive. Simon had never seen one close up before. If Sellers were here, he’d suggest they take turns to choose songs.

“What if all the cryptic stuff’s a smokescreen?” Sam said. “Designed to look as if it means something when it means nothing at all?”

The idea turned Simon’s stomach: deliberately staged false significance. It was a possibility he couldn’t bear to consider, let alone discuss, but since Sam had raised it, he had to conquer his phobia and answer. “No. If the killer wanted to send us on a wild-goose chase, he might have left us one cryptic mislead—the words on the wall, or the photograph . . . One. Not this many. The paint, the brush, the knife sharpener . . . It’s too much to be fake. And we know one thing the killer left us was genuine: the password for the laptop. It got us into Blundy’s email. He wants us to know he knew Blundy well enough to know his password.”