‘Like disturbing me when I’ve got work to do, to demand proof that I’m not a bibliophobe? Billy said I am, so it must be true! Naturally, you believe the man and not the woman, even when the man’s a multiple murderer. I’m wrong and mean and a bitch to say he’s a misogynist, but he has authority – he’s male! – so he must be speaking the truth!’

‘No, I don’t think he is,’ said Simon.

‘He damn well isn’t! I love books. I love their yellowed pages and their old musty smell. I’d bottle it and wear it as perfume if I could. I used to have fantasies of opening an antiquarian bookshop.’

‘I think the bibliophobia thing is Billy’s idea of a joke,’ said Simon. ‘He might think anyone who has a double-bladed axe as their Twitter avatar is tough enough to take a bit of teasing.’

Sellers’ throat was dry. There had been no offer of a drink. He’d have to make an effort not to keep looking at the carton of apple and raspberry juice he could see through the plastic of one of the Sainsbury’s bags.

‘Billy’s being disingenuous,’ Simon told Halliday. ‘He knows you’re not a book-hater. He’s giving you a taste of your own medicine, saying, “How do you like it when I make up obviously untrue things about you and spread them around, the way you’ve been doing to me?” He’s saying – subtly – that for you to call him a woman-hater is as far off the mark as him accusing you of bibliophobia. Two can play at that game, that’s his message.’

Halliday considered this for a few moments, head down. ‘You know, you’re probably right. He can’t admit to himself that I’m right about him, so, yes, consciously, he might well be doing what you say. In one sense, you’ll inevitably understand him better than I ever can, since he’s one of your own.’

‘One of our own?’ Sellers laughed. ‘That’s a bit rich, even from you.’

‘He’s a man, Conkers. You and DC Waterhouse are both men. It matters, however much you’re all pretending to be enemies and enjoying your game of cops and robbers. Your true enemy – that’s “you” plural, all three of you – is, was and always has been women who challenge the oppressive hierarchy that ranks men above women.’

Sellers would have loved to be able to say, ‘Actually, we know Billy Dead Mates is a woman.’ Or to hear Simon say it. If it weren’t for Sondra’s husband’s recipe book muddying the waters …