Bealknap had always been thin, but the figure under the covers was skeletal, the skin stretched tight over his skull, his ears and big nose prominent, the hands that lay on the sheet like white claws.

‘I think he is asleep,’ Mistress Warren said quietly. She bent over the dying man. ‘Yes, asleep. Each time I think to find him gone, but he still breathes.’ For the first time I heard a note of human sympathy in her voice. She shook Bealknap’s shoulder gently. His eyes opened, those forget-me-not-blue eyes that had always roved around, never quite meeting yours. But today he stared right up at me, then smiled effortfully, showing his yellow teeth.

‘Brother Shardlake.’ His voice was scarce above a whisper. ‘Ah, I knew if I sent you the gold, you would come.’

I brought one of the chairs over to the bed. Bealknap looked at the nurse. ‘Go, Mary,’ he said curtly. She curtsied and left.

‘Is there anything I can get you?’ I asked.

He shook his head wearily. ‘No. I just wanted to see you one last time.’

‘I am sorry to find you in this condition.’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Let us speak the truth. You have always hated me, and I you.’

I did not reply. Bealknap’s breath rasped painfully in his chest. Then he whispered, his breath in my face stinking, rotten, ‘What is going to happen now?’

‘None of us can know that for certain, Brother Bealknap,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘We must all hope for God’s mercy on our souls – ’

His eyes stayed fixed on mine. ‘You and I know better than that. I think it is the one thing we agree on. We both know men have no souls, any more than cats or dogs. There is nothing afterwards, nothing. Only darkness and silence.’

I shook my head. ‘I am not so sure as you. There is no way to know for certain. I do not know what or who God is, but – perhaps he exists.’

‘No.’ Bealknap sighed. ‘I have had the rites, but only because that was necessary if my legacy is to be fulfilled.’ He smiled again, and a dreamy quality came into his eyes. ‘All my money, all my gold, is to go to the building of a great marble tomb in the Inn church, gilded and painted, with a stone image of me in my robes atop the tomb edged with gold so that all future generations of Lincoln’s Inn lawyers will remember Brother Stephen Bealknap. I have been arranging the details with the man who will build it.’ He laughed weakly. ‘Treasurer Rowland took much persuading, but gold won the argument, as it wins them all.’