“I used this sort of gloves at university for experiments in the lab,” she said. “Kloster’s fingerprints are on the page and it’s the only evidence I have against him. I don’t want them to get smudged with other fingerprints.”

I put on a pair of the gloves, with difficulty because they were too small, and swore to myself that it was the last favour she would get out of me. Once I had donned the gloves she slid the book towards me. It was an impressive volume, rather beautiful, with a tooled leather cover, gilded edges to the pages and a red ribbon as a marker.

“The night my parents died, when Bruno phoned, I remembered the Bible Kloster had returned to me at the conciliation meeting. After I’d hung up, before leaving for the hospital, I opened it at the page where the bookmark was. Kloster handed it to me as it is now, with the marker at this page.”

I opened the Bible at the marked page, near the beginning. It was the part in the Old Testament about the first murder-Abel’s death at the hands of his brother Cain-and Cain’s final plea, when God condemns him to exile. I read aloud, doubtfully, as I wasn’t sure it was the paragraph she meant:

Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

“A little further on: God’s promise to Cain.”

And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

“Vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. Do you see? That was the line Kloster wanted me to read. The line intended for me. When I was working for him he dictated a novel that was never published, about a Cainite sect that took this notion of proportion literally in avenging their own. Divine law, as laid down for them by God, wasn’t an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It was seven for one.”