This last was indisputable, for radio music filled the archway, sometimes so loud that it drowned the noise of the band and circular saw, while Smithson had a small tape-recorder on the bench and tiny earphones; he listened to music of his own liking and contrived somehow to blot out the popular tunes from the radio.

Roger could also see him as a small, thin-faced, very lean youth of perhaps twenty-one.

“I’ve never been so surprised in my life. They flew into a temper, swearing at each other in Italian, I think, and Rapelli grabbed Verdi’s guitar and crowned him. Verdi went out like a light.”

Smithson had seemed so transparently honest.

So had Hamish Campbell.

Campbell was a pastry-cook at a large bakery at Bethnal Green, in the East End and right across London from Smithson. He had been in a kitchen leading off the main kitchen, with huge pans of dough, great electric ovens, and everywhere the rich, all-pervading smell of baking and new-baked bread. Campbell had been rolling pastry; another, older man had been operating a machine for cutting the pastry into shapes for tarts; these went on a conveyor and the tarts were carried away and filled by a feed nozzle. Roger could remember, fascinated, how the nozzles disposed different kinds of filling from strawberry jam to lemon curd.

Campbell, plumpish, fair-haired, fresh-faced and freckled, had honest-looking brown eyes.

“Rapelli just snatched the guitar away and biffed Verdi over the head with it—almost as if the music was driving him mad. Blimey I I can hear the bang now—broke the instrument and Verdi’s head.”

“Did Rapelli say anything?” Roger had asked.

“No,” Campbell had answered. “He turned and walked away. I could see Verdi’s head was bleeding something cruel, so I phoned the police and said they needed an ambulance. Wilf—that’s my mate—he gave Verdi some first aid. He’s a carpenter, see, used to people cutting themselves with chisels and saws. He’s got his first-aid certificate. If you ever cut yourself he’s your man.”