He probably covered his face with a balaclava and was an anonymous person anyway in the vicinity. It's very unlikely that even if someone had seen a person on a bicycle that morning they could have positively identified him.
Steve,,the area at the time sounded to me like a close-knit community one,,where people tended to be quite insular in their surrounds. Who knew every movement,and who was moving about at unearthly hours. I'd imagine that quite a few elderly people lived there,,who for obvious reasons would have to get up in the night,and while they're at it,,slide the curtain back just to look outside. It's all it takes to spot someone going past on a bike and before you know it,,everyone in the neighbourhood knows.So I'd imagine that nothing would have got past the curtain-twitchers.
