‘It’s wet outside again,’ she said.

‘Yes, it is, Annie,’ said Jarvis.

‘I’m lucky, then, to get these visitors coming out in the rain to see me.’

Cooper looked round the room. And only then did he see the other man, who was sitting very still in an armchair, partly hidden by the open door. He was about the same age as Tom Jarvis, but smaller and more worried looking, with a green cardigan bunched around his middle and a tweed hat clutched in his lap. He gave Cooper a small, apologetic smile, but said nothing.

‘This is my brother Maurice,’ said Mrs Jarvis, without turning her head fully.

The effort seemed to exhaust her energy, and she closed her eyes. Her husband hovered uncertainly, and the dog looked anxious. Cooper bit his lip. Every moment he stayed here, he was being reminded more and more of his mother and her hospital bed.

The brother stood up and touched his arm. ‘Time for us to go, I think. Annie’s tired.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Cooper felt himself coming properly alert again as they stepped out of the overheated sick room. He looked at Mrs Jarvis’s brother. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your last name, sir. Mr …?’

The man nodded. ‘Goodwin,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘Maurice Goodwin. Pleased to meet you, I suppose.’

Lucy Somerville had the air of someone who had never been inside a police station before and was afraid of being contaminated if she touched anything. She sat with her knees tight together and her coat pulled close around her chest, shaking her head when she was offered tea or coffee.

‘The thing is, I’ve been worried about Dad for a while,’ she said. ‘He and Mum were very dependent on each other. When Mum was gone, he didn’t seem grounded any more. His interests started getting more bizarre. Just bit by bit – I don’t suppose it was ever any big decision on his part.’

Fry estimated Mrs Somerville’s age at about forty-five. She looked comfortable and affluent – the coat was good-quality wool, the scarf silk, though that was all that could be seen of her clothes.

‘What sort of things do you mean, Mrs Somerville?’

‘Well, until then his research had been factual. It was a specialized branch of anthropology, nothing more than that. Dad studied cultural attitudes to death, the traditions and rituals of burial, and so on. A bit morbid, I suppose, but at least it was an academic interest. Once Mum died, he started drifting into areas that were more … esoteric. The internet made it easier. He found all kinds of things that I would never have suspected existed.’

Fry nodded. She could believe anything of the internet. All the most illegal and unpleasant things in life seemed to thrive there. ‘Anything specific that you can remember?’

‘Oh, I once saw a reference on his computer to something called “Corpse of the Week”.’

‘What on earth is that?’

Mrs Somerville shuddered a little at the memory. ‘I didn’t look. The name of it was enough to trouble me.’