He sighed and put the beer to one side. Randy positioned himself on the rug, intrigued by the unusual behaviour.

‘It’s the Bible,’ said Cooper. ‘You ought to read it – you might learn something. Thou shalt not kill, for a start.’

The cat blinked sceptically, and began to wash his whiskers with concentrated relish. They probably still bore traces of blood from his last victim.

And here it was – Ecclesiastes 3:1. Cooper read the first few lines quietly to himself, while Randy cocked an ear in case food was being mentioned.

To everything there is a season,
And a time to every purpose under the heaven,
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

It was appropriate, of course. But had Professor Freddy Robertson really been trying to draw his attention to this verse with his reference to the Book of Ecclesiastes, or was that simply Diane Fry’s unreasonable prejudice against him? If it was Robertson’s intention, it had proved a little too subtle. It meant the professor had assumed a greater knowledge of the Bible than Cooper possessed. And then, there was that discussion of body snatching they’d had in the churchyard. Robertson had thought that his comments about superstition had offended Cooper, though they hadn’t. The professor knew a great deal about a lot of things, but he wasn’t a terribly good judge of people, was he?

Cooper looked at the verse from Ecclesiastes again. A time for everything. So what was the time for right now? A time to kill? A time to die?

He suspected it was neither of those. Not yet. The mystery caller would be thinking of another part of the verse as he sat smug and satisfied in his lair somewhere. He would be considering the possibility of another message, something to keep the police on their toes, to point them subtly in the right direction, or in the wrong direction altogether. Or perhaps he’d be deciding whether he should keep quiet for a while longer and let them stew.

Cooper could almost read his thoughts now. There was a right time for all things, he would be thinking. As it said later in the same verse of Ecclesiastes 3:1:

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

Diane Fry watched Angie getting dressed. The flat was too small for her to avoid it, and in any case her sister had never bothered about modesty.

They’d been like that with each other as teenagers, so Diane knew she must be the one who’d changed in the last decade and a half. What was it that had changed her most, she wondered. Which aspect of her life had made her incapable of the closeness with her sister that she’d fought so long to recapture? She knew which it was that gave her the most nightmares and ruined her sleep, even now. Moving away from Birmingham couldn’t wipe out that pain; it had followed her in her dreams.