Review: Archie Henderson

London Falling: A mysterious death in a gilded city and a family’s search for truth, by Patrick Radden Keefe (Picador) 

What made Zac Brettler, a privileged 19-year-old, jump to his death from the fifth floor of a glitzy London block of flats on the north shore of the Thames?

Who knows?  Scotland Yard bungled the investigation and the coroner appeared indifferent to the anguish of a family seeking answers. Not even the notorious London tabloids, who would usually smell out a story like that quickly, got a sniff.

By a set of coincidences, the story instead fell into the lap of reporter Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker, a serious magazine that doesn’t go in for Second Coming-type headlines or lurid, racy, demotic copy. No Rich Kid dies in Upmarket Apartment Plunge for him or his magazine. The tabloids might even have had a strapline: MI6 saw death fall – and did nothing.

The facts of those imagined headlines would not have been wrong. Zac fell to his death, his thigh clipping part of the building close to where he landed. Did the injury on the way down render him unconscious, did he drown in the Thames? Or was he still alive when he landed? None of those questions were answered by those investigating his death.

There was also evidence of his fall: across the river on the south bank, cameras in the MI6 spy headquarters captured the fall, but that would only emerge much later – and there was no sign of his being pushed.

The Brettlers began to worry when Zac had not made contact for a few days. They started to search, seeking help from the police. The hunt led them to a mortuary. Concerns about their erratic son, who had an extraordinarily vivid imagination and a talent, from a young age, of dissembling, turned to agonising grief.

Matthew and Rachelle Brettler are rational people and believed they could assuage some of their inevitable guilt by finding the reason for Zac’s death. They set about it in an amateurish way (which parent, after all, knows how to go about such a lugubrious task?)

Their hopes were raised when the Metropolitan Police took up the case, then dashed when the cops lost interest. But the parents did find clues: Zac had been living in a fantasy, in an entitled and delusional world.

Zac, who appears to have been something of a talented mimic, ingratiated himself with people in their London neighbourhood. One the few clues the Brettlers had was Zac’s cellphone and his iPad. They began to find out who Zac’s new friends had been. It emerged they were the wrong kind of people.

The biggest shock turned out be Zac’s double life: he’d been pretending to be the son of a Russian oligarch.

The Brettlers live in what seemed to be a safe part of London, but some of the people living there were suspicious. The square mile known as the City of London is known for its virtually impenetrable high-rises, offshore accounts, tainted riches, shell companies and amoral businessmen. There are also mobsters and gangsters.

Keefe, who met the Brettlers through a friend, persuaded the family to let him write the story of their son. It is a compelling and disturbing read in which he brilliantly captures a world inhabited by people who would have regarded a Russian oligarch’s kid as a soft touch.

The mystery of Zac’s death has not been resolved and questions remain: did he jump off the balcony because he was frightened of something, or someone? Of the two characters who could have provided police with answers, one of them – a brutal gangster – died of an overdose while the other, a sleazy operator still lives in comfort. Neither was closely questioned. Many who have since reported on the case, believe it is one that could still be solved.

What made Zac jump? There are some who believe it was murder and not a suicide.

Keefe is also the author of Empire of Pain, an account of the Sackler family and their trade in OxyContin, which led to the opioid crisis in the US, and Say Nothing, which deals with two young women in the IRA during Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” and begins with the search for a mother who mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps in telling the story of Zac and his family, he might have raised a new awareness to solve the case.