‘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 partner, Bryant asked himself, taking a slight fastidiousness of manner into account and deciding on the latter.
‘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: Randall and Kayla Ayson, children Cassidy and Madison. Randall looked fidgety and keen to leave. His children appeared hypnotized with boredom.
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.’