The murder of Advocate Norman Ware caused great consternation among the residents of the exclusive San La Mer eco-estate. This was not because Advocate Norman Ware was a particularly well-liked man, nor was it because he held any sort of standing in the San La Mer community, despite the fact that he was a renowned and highly regarded advocate. The murder of Advocate Norman Ware (and he was never called anything other than Advocate Norman Ware: never simply Norman, or Mr Ware, or even, in the private-school manner, Ware) caused a furore in the luxurious gated community because it was not supposed to happen. The residents of San La Mer paid steeply but never reluctantly to ensure that such things did not happen. Their collective, exorbitant levies subsidised the electric fence around the perimeter of the estate and the infrared beams that sensed any human movement where it should not be. They paid for the security guards who patrolled the estate twenty-four/seven and manned both of the entrance gates, carefully screening access to the estate. The pay- off for the residents of San La Mer, the pay-off for the expense and for the hassle of phoning the control room for a unique access code every time one of their friends wanted to pop in for coffee or sundowners, was that they were assured that they would not be murdered in their homes. Advocate Norman Ware’s death both made that reassurance extremely tenuous and devalued their properties overnight. Of course, it was also the manner in which Advocate Norman Ware was murdered that caused alarm.

But the residents of San La Mer were needlessly worried. They could have gone back to their marble and cherry- wood mansions, their sedate games of golf, their gin-and- tonics and tipsy trivia-quiz evenings, without another thought of Advocate Norman Ware. Their contained, carefully constructed lives of illusion need not have been disturbed. And perhaps, after the dissipation of the hype surrounding the murder, they would not be. Perhaps the disquiet surrounding Advocate Norman Ware’s untimely and ignominious death would be transient, like a ripple on a lake, disturbing the still, glassy surface for a few seconds and then disappearing completely, leaving behind no trace of its source. Because the fact was that Advocate Norman Ware’s murder was the culmination of a series of seemingly unrelated, purely random events. The chance of something like it ever happening again was infinitesimal. Besides, the motive for Advocate Norman Ware’s murder – if indeed something so at the whim of coincidence could be labelled a murder – was not armed robbery or hijacking. His death was not the result of a paid hit; he was no corrupt mining magnate or overly inquisitive journalist. The motive for his murder was the oldest and purest motive, one repeated throughout history; it was an inexplicable, unreasonable motive; a lonely, private and desperate motive. The motive behind Advocate Norman Ware’s murder was, quite simply, love. But none of the residents knew that when his body was found by one of the groundsmen near the communal swimming pool early in the morning of the third of November, and so there followed among the residents of the estate an inordinate amount of distress, frowning, hand wringing, and phoning of financial advisers and lawyers.

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