‘And murder isn’t?’ said Simon. ‘We all think it is.’

‘Rhian and Marion were the same – bought e-readers as presents, while not thinking much of them. I had it from their own mouths – all the evidence I needed. Rhian used to come into Rudolphy’s with Linzi whenever she stayed with her. She didn’t like e-readers and didn’t want one herself, but an acquaintance from work had told her that Linzi might like one if she was a book-lover – so Rhian listened to this acquaintance instead of to her own instincts. And Marion didn’t seem to care that she’d bought Kim something she herself thought was a waste of space – nor did she give two hoots that Kim had stuffed it in a drawer, unimpressed, and never once used it.’ Isobel turned on Kim. ‘So why not throw the damn thing in the bin? Why not destroy it, instead of letting it stay and destroy everything else?’

‘You need help,’ Kim told her.

Isobel turned her attention back to Simon. ‘It has many names: Nook, Kobo, Kindle. It tries to fool us with all its aliases, and it succeeds. I couldn’t do nothing and live with myself.’

‘But you also couldn’t allow yourself to kill Sondra Halliday,’ said Simon. ‘She didn’t qualify as one of your targets, did she?’

‘No – if I’d killed her it would have been murder. That’s the part you don’t foresee: that once you’ve killed four, then five, it’s not so hard to keep on and on if you allow yourself to. But I didn’t let myself touch Sondra Halliday, and I’m proud of that.’

‘Why did you accuse her of bibliophobia?’ asked Sellers.

Isobel looked confused for a few seconds. Then her face changed and she said, ‘She kept accusing me of things that had nothing to do with me, things she’d made up. I thought I’d show her how it feels to have that done to you.’

Exactly as Simon had suspected.

‘Sondra Halliday didn’t write the column I read to you this morning,’ he said. ‘I did.’

Isobel shrugged. ‘I don’t care. She could easily have written it.’

‘What I wrote as Sondra is true, you know. Books are the words, the stories, the facts, the knowledge, the imagination. They’re not the paper they’re printed on.’