Cooper was starting to feel much the way he had at school during lessons from one of his more pedantic history teachers.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Robertson, studying his expression. ‘I’m afraid I miss my little group of students, and I can’t resist an opportunity to lecture.’

‘That’s all right, sir.’

‘Anything else?’

Cooper still hadn’t been given a chance to hear the tapes of the phone calls that Fry was so worried about. But her hunt through the area for locations had left him turning over in his mind the possible meanings of the phrase the caller had used.

‘Yes. What does “the dead place” mean to you?’

Robertson gazed out of the window thoughtfully, took a sip of his Glenfiddich, and shook his head, stirring the wings of grey hair over his temples. He repeated the phrase silently to himself a couple of times, his lips glittering with drops of whisky as they moved.

‘It could mean anything, couldn’t it?’ said Cooper finally.

The professor jerked as if woken from a daze. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

Cooper closed his notebook. ‘Well, I think that’s about it for now, sir.’

‘Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need to talk again. It all sounds most intriguing.’

As he made his way back through the tiled hallway, Cooper passed under the coat rack. He wondered if the professor had shot the deer himself and taken its feet instead of its antlers as a trophy.

‘Fashions change,’ said Robertson, his voice echoing in the hallway. ‘But our deepest instincts don’t, I’m afraid. We’re fascinated by death, yet afraid of it. The enclosed coffin is a symptom of our refusal to accept the reality. Did you know the word “burial” derives from the Anglo-Saxon birgan, meaning to conceal. Personally, I’ve always felt the sarcophagus was a rather more civilized option.’

‘A sarcophagus?’ Cooper’s head was suddenly filled with images of Egyptian mummies, and a half-remembered kaleidoscope of pyramids, pharaohs and golden effigies of Tutankhamen.

‘At least we’d enjoy a bit of light and air,’ said Robertson as he opened his front door.

And Cooper was still shaking his head at the professor’s non-sequitur as he drove past the new houses, out of Totley, and back towards the Derbyshire border.

It was Graceless who lay dead on the boards of Mr Jarvis’s porch. As Ben Cooper walked up the steps, the first thing he noticed was the bloodstained patch of hair on the dog’s side, just behind her front leg.

‘Did you see anybody, Mr Jarvis?’

‘No. They were off in the woods somewhere. But I heard the shot.’