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man rather than a woman. We were barely twenty minutes into the case and we were already closing in for the kill. However, we were unable to immediately pursue our evidence further due to our pressing need to get back to the shop and open up after lunch. It was, in effect, a commercial break.

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    Or would have been, if there had been any customers waiting on our return. However, one must be open to the possibility of customers, so I flipped the Closed sign, paid Jeff for his assistance and sent him on his way back to college.
    I took my place behind the counter and stared for a while at the empty paint pot on it. The question was, had he bought it as part of a job lot for a client or this single pot purely for use as a phantom graffiti artist? If it was the latter, then the fact that the pot was empty suggested that it may have been used elsewhere for possibly similar nefarious purposes. I don't have that many customers, but the ones I do have, that is, the ones who actually buy books as opposed to those who merely browse for three minutes so that they won't feel guilty about asking to use my toilet, represent such a broad cross-section of our society, ranging across all class, political, religious and intellectual boundaries, that I was confident that they could help me establish if the serial painter had struck previously or indeed since. The simplest and most direct route was via the No Alibis internet newsletter, through which I more usually bombard them with once-in-a-lifetime offers for books they could easily purchase on Amazon for much less money and actually receive through the post the very next day, as opposed to my own more idiosyncratic service, which might take several weeks, or months, or, in one case, a year and a half. But I think they appreciate the human touch; instead of receiving some corrugated, machine-stamped package plucked from a mile-high shelf by a bibliographic robot, they receive a crumpled, torn and reused envelope personally licked closed by a fading member of Amnesty International. So it was that I sent out an appeal to my customers asking that they keep an eye out for other possible instances of name-and-shame graffiti painted in Dulux Red Devil Matt Finish.
    Meanwhile, I refocused on the paint pot and decided to call The Wholesale Paint Supply Company. I asked to speak to the manager and was immediately put through to a man called Taylor. As I like to keep a little separation between my detective work and my bookselling activities, I told him that my name was Walter Mosley and that I was an interior designer. I explained that I'd come across this simply divine shade of red paint, the Dulux Red Devil Matt Finish. It was glorious and warm and yet curiously violent, and it reminded me of my mother and the feast of the Passover and that warning they painted on doors about first-born sons or overdue rent. Perhaps, in retrospect, I sounded a little intense, but I believe that if you create a character you have to inhabit it and sell it, and I certainly did that. He responded with, 'It's only a friggin' tinna paint, mate.' I laughed heartily and told him I was interested in purchasing the DRDM Finish in bulk, but before I did I needed to know if it really was as vibrant as it looked in the pot and as mesmerising as it appeared on the colour charts; I wanted to see it in situ. To that end I asked him for the names of customers who had recently purchased it. He was a bit reluctant at first, but once I mentioned that I had the contract for the interior design of the new Titanic they were building next year and would be looking for a dependable supplier he changed his tune and quickly furnished me with the information I required. I jotted down the names of four decorating firms who had purchased the DRDM Finish in the past six months. Of these, only one had bought just a single pot. Dessie Martin and Son, with an address on the Ormeau Road. I asked if by any chance he kept a record of the serial numbers