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credibility weren’t threatened by it so far as she could see. Delusional men from Hitler to Gadhafi had risen to lead entire nations in relatively recent times. Ordinary people fell for all sorts of lunatic theories about everything from illness to aliens without their beliefs impinging very much on their professional or their personal lives.
    She thought about the Whitechapel killer, the subject of her own very hasty recent research. Had he gone around like Mr. Hyde, they’d have very likely apprehended him. She was sure he had managed to act most of the time much more like Dr. Jekyll.
    She said, ‘Was there a single thing that cost you your vocation?’
    He smiled. ‘There was a single moment,’ he said, ‘quite a small event really, in the scheme of things. It was the South-East Asian Tsunami of a decade ago.’
    â€˜That was hardly a small thing, Mr. Prior.’
    â€˜It was hearing about the details of the death of a single victim, a five-year old British girl on holiday with her grandparents. They were spared to endure the living death of guilt and regret for the miserable length of the lives left to them.’
    â€˜You stopped believing in God?’
    â€˜I still believe in God. But I couldn’t serve a capricious God. Not in the way the Church demands, I couldn’t.’
    She liked him. She thought he was a good man, intelligent and sensitive and probably much too sentimental ever to make anything of himself in such a heartless world. She thought he could be useful to them and at the same time hoped he wouldn’t have to be. Her greatest wish was that the Scholar’s killing spree would just stop. But she didn’t think that was going to happen. This was her first conversation with Jacob Prior. It was highly unlikely to be the last they would share.
    â€˜Am I right in thinking there’s a conflict between Christ and Antichrist at the End of Days?’
    â€˜There’s more to it than that. All the scribes who referred to it agreed that the conflict would take place and that Christ would triumph. But they were peddling Christian propaganda and risking accusations of heresy if they said anything different.’
    â€˜What more is there to it?’
    â€˜There’s the collateral damage. The Son of Perdition will claim to be God and empires will fall.’
    â€˜Which empires are those?’
    â€˜That part can be read as metaphor. The Devil is sometimes known as the Lord of Misrule. His son will rob humanity of hope. Civilization will fail.’
    â€˜Is there anything else, Mr. Prior?’
    â€˜I’d be more comfortable if you called me Jacob. The only people who refer to me as Mr. are call-centre staff phoning about overdue credit card repayments.’
    â€˜Fine,’ she said. ‘One on one I’m Jane. In the presence of other police officers, it should really be Ms. Sullivan.’
    â€˜I’m sure I can manage that.’
    â€˜On a subject adjacent to overdue credit card repayments, Jacob, we will need you to sign a confidentiality agreement. It’s a sort of contract. And it’s binding.’
    â€˜What does it bind me to?’
    â€˜You can’t blog about this case.’
    â€˜I don’t blog.’
    â€˜You can’t tweet about it either.’
    â€˜I don’t have a Twitter account.’
    â€˜Most importantly, you can’t talk to the press about it. You might get offers from one or two of the tabloids. I’d say it’s likely and I’d predict that if there’s another murder the offers might start to get generous.’
    â€˜By generous, you mean tempting?’
    â€˜I suppose I do. But we can’t let the killer know anything about the progress of the investigation. He’s leaving clues. We haven’t interpreted them successfully yet, but I wouldn’t want him to stop leaving them, not if he goes on killing. Do you appreciate that?’
    Prior looked at