‘Why do you say that, Ben?’

‘He did last time I was here.’

‘Robertson quoted the Bible? He didn’t strike me as religious. Not Christian, anyway. Quite the contrary.’

‘Well, it was a passage from the Old Testament. Everyone uses the Old Testament for their own purposes.’

‘What part of the Old Testament was he quoting?’ asked Fry.

‘Why?’

‘It might be relevant. What was he trying to tell you?’

Cooper cast his mind back to the conversation with Robertson. ‘Something about death.’

‘Naturally. But what?’

‘Ecclesiastes, he said it was. That’s right. Ecclesiastes 3.’

Now Fry looked interested. ‘The famous part?’

‘Famous part? I suppose so. It was the bit about “dust to dust”, but it wasn’t quite worded like that in the quote.’

‘Oh.’

‘That wasn’t what you were thinking of?’

‘No. Something a little earlier in Ecclesiastes.’

‘Diane, I didn’t know you were so familiar with the Bible.’

‘It must be a sign of my misspent childhood.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s due to one of my sets of foster parents. Everybody has their obsession, and theirs was the most depressing, pessimistic book in the whole of the Old Testament. But everyone knows the verse I’m thinking about. Even you, Ben.’

‘What do you mean, “even me”? I went to Sunday school.’

‘“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,”’ said Fry.

‘Ah. The Pete Seeger song, “Turn, Turn, Turn”. Some hippy sixties band had a big hit with it, didn’t they?’

‘I don’t know about that. The words are from Ecclesiastes. Don’t you remember the next part? “A time to be born …”’

Cooper remembered. Whether from his Sunday school lessons, or from the old pop song, he couldn’t be sure. But the words came almost unbidden into his head. A time to be born …

‘“… and a time to die,”’ he said.

Fry paused at the passenger door and studied Cooper across the roof of the car.

‘Professor Robertson is enjoying himself too much, don’t you think? This is the way he gets his kicks.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your work, I suppose. Some of us do.’

Cooper got into the car and started the engine. Fry fastened her seat belt and turned to him.

‘Will you turn into a Freddy Robertson when you’re retired, Ben? I can just picture you constantly hanging around the door at West Street, volunteering your services free and gratis in the public interest.’

‘I’ll probably be glad to get away from the place by then. Won’t you?’

‘You bet,’ said Fry. ‘Besides, what special expertise would I have to offer?’

Ben Cooper didn’t possess a Bible. At least, he hadn’t brought one with him to the flat when he moved out of Bridge End Farm. There had been one he’d won as a prize for regular attendance at Sunday school when he was ten years old. But that had been a children’s edition, with illustrations of a handsome, golden-haired Jesus walking on water and feeding the five thousand. Cooper wasn’t sure it had included the Old Testament. Probably not. There was far too much begetting and Sodom and Gomorrah for the trendy curate who’d been in charge then.