The Circle

'To your right, above the dictionaries of quotations. Now, at the risk of being impolite, my time is precious. Why don't you take a seat and put me through the third degree? I assume that's what you came for?'

Thomasine said in a low voice, 'Did I spot a hanging participle?'

Anton managed a smile and said, 'Mm culpa.'

He listened in silence to Bob's account of his escape from the boat house. 'No offence,' Bob went on, 'but I'm seeing each of the men in the circle just to clear the air, so to speak.'

'Clear the air' was a cliche, and Anton was gracious enough to let it pass with no more than the lifting of an eyebrow. 'But why confine your enquiries to the men?'

'The phone call Miss Snow took last night. She said it was a man's voice.'

'Didn't she recognise it?'

'Disguised, she thought.'

'Far be it from me to complicate matters,' Anton said, 'but it wouldn't be a huge technical problem for a woman to make her voice sound like a man's. You can buy a simple voice synthesiser in a toy shop.'

Thomasine turned to Bob. 'He's right. My girls at school played tricks on me with one. Why didn't I think of that?'

'Okay,' Bob said, 'thanks for that, Anton, but would you mind telling me where you were this morning between eight and nine?'

'Here, doing the crossword.'

Another bullseye from Thomasine.

'How did you get on?'

Anton reached for the newspaper and held up the back page, showing the corner clipped out. 'It's in the post.'

'Finished already?'

'Come, come. I wouldn't send it incomplete.'

'So you've been out already?'

'A fair deduction, Holmes. The post office is only five minutes away. Oh, and you're going to tell me the boat houses by the canal are almost as near. I can't deny it, but the paper was delivered as usual at seven fifteen and I took just under an hour to complete the crossword — by which time you were limping home covered in soot by your account.'

'True,' Bob said, crushed.

Thomasine came to his rescue. 'We'd also like to ask about Edgar Blacker.'

'What about him?'

'Did you know him before he visited the circle?'

'No. Why should I?'

Bob said with more bounce, 'Well, if you're the killer, we have to find the reason. You didn't send in a piece of work for him to comment on.'

'True.'

'And one mixed metaphor isn't enough to justify murder,' Thomasine said.

'Possibly not.'

'So you'd need some stronger motive.'

'Such as a long-standing grudge because he bullied me at school?'

'That might qualify.'

'Or stole my girlfriend, or bumped my car?'

'Yes.'

Anton's eyes shone. He was well on top of this exchange. 'Sorry to disappoint, but I'd never set eyes on the man before that evening. If I were you, I'd try one of the others. You're wasting your time on me.'

'Why do you bother with the circle?' Bob asked. 'I was told you don't often read things out.'

He thought about that for a moment. 'I'm fascinated by people with creative minds. I don't have any imagination whatsoever. Give me a blueprint, a map, and I can work from it, but I can't start with a blank sheet. Most of them can, with varying degrees of success. That's a great gift, and I suppose I secretly hope it will rub off on me. It hasn't yet.'

'What you've done on that computer is creative,' Thomasine said.

'No. I only copy what exists already. Ask me to plan a new street of shops and I'd be stumped. The brain refuses to cooperate. So I envy anyone who produces original work.'

'Okay,' Bob said. 'How about giving us some advice? You go there to watch and listen, right? You know them all. What's your verdict? Is one of them a murderer?'

'I expect so.'

'Who is it then? Have you ever found yourself thinking this one or that one could do it?'

Anton had a pained expression. 'I don't look at other people wondering if they are murderers.'

Yes, but if one of them is. .'

'They're all capable. If it was a crime requiring great strength or coolness under pressure I'd say certain people could be eliminated, but this was the simplest of methods. Some inflammable material pushed through a letterbox and ignited. A little old lady could do it as well as a man.'

'Cherchez la femme,' Thomasine said.

'I wouldn't discount any of you ladies. That's all I'm prepared to say'

'Sitting on the fence.'

'Sitting on the fence was my profession.'

Afterwards, over their second coffee break — americanos, croissants and a smoke in the Caffe Nero — Bob and Thomasine took stock.

'Creepy, that computer programme,' Thomasine said. 'I mean, it was fun to try, but when you think about it, what kind of person wants to look inside every shop in town?'

'I'd say about half the population.'

'Chauvinist.'

'If it amuses him, I don't see the harm in it.'

'He's a weirdo, Bob, you've got to admit.'

'All right. He's a weirdo, but clever with it.'

She shook her head. 'I feel uncomfortable with him, as if he'd like to put us all in his computer and control us.'

'He was honest about why he joined the circle.'

'Because he likes to be with creative people?'

'Yes, I believed that bit,' he said. 'You're a mystery to him. He'd like to get some ideas of his own and turn them into words, and he can't. The best he can do is pick holes in what you come up with, find faults in the grammar and stuff. That makes him think he's superior in some way, but deep down he knows he can't hack it as a writer.'

Thomasine brightened up. 'Bob, have you got us all summed up so neatly? This is how you're going to get to the truth of this mystery.'

'Oh, yeah? All I've managed so far is to get myself trapped in a burning shed.'

'We're picking up clues. We found out that some of these guys had links with Edgar Blacker we didn't know about. Tudor sold him some insurance and doesn't want to talk about it. Zach was in touch with Blacker before that meeting, being sounded out for a vanity publishing deal.'

'It doesn't amount to much.'

'It's more than the police have got.'

'They'll have got the video by now. Miss Snow was taking it into the nick this morning. They could follow up, find out things, same as you and me.'

'But they won't, because they've pinned it on Maurice.'

He said with a smile, 'What they need is someone like you to crack the whip.'

She gave an even broader smile. 'But because I've got such faith in you, I'm going to crack it specially for you. Are you ready for Basil?'

'Basil I can handle,' he said. 'Naomi is something else.'

Basil and Naomi lived east of the city in Whyke Lane, beyond the scope of Anton's map. Fate decreed that it was Naomi who opened the door of their Victorian semi and said an unwelcoming, Yes?'

She had her hair scraped back from her forehead, gleaming black, as if she was in the middle of washing it in sump oil.

'Hi, Naomi,' Thomasine greeted her. 'Perhaps this isn't a good moment? We were hoping to have a word with Baz, if possible.'

She said, 'I won't have him called that. His name is Basil. He's extremely busy just now. What's it about?'

'Circle business.' Thomasine summarised the morning's events, finishing with, 'So it's only fair that we speak to Basil now that we've seen each of the other men.'

'He wouldn't harm a fly,' Naomi said. 'He's in the back garden spraying his roses.'

'Harming the greenfly,' Bob murmured.

Naomi hadn't heard. 'You'd better come in. I'll see if he can break off for a few minutes.'

They were shown into the front room by way of the hall. To Bob's eye it seemed dark and Victorian. There was an upright piano. Old photos in gilt frames, clearly of Naomi's ancestors, stood on top. The women all had eyes like hers that expected hostility and returned it fivefold. Yet someone must have got close, he found himself thinking, or they couldn't have passed on the gene that glared.