The Lazarus Prophecy Read Online Free

go public on this one?’
    She glanced at the Deputy Commissioner, sitting beside her. His expression said this was her ball to carry, or drop. She said, ‘We didn’t have a choice. Someone leaked it. And frankly the high profile of the victim and nature of the murder gave us no real option. The man responsible will derive gratification from what you people write and say on-air. He might feel in some way vindicated. But going public was inevitable.’
    â€˜Because this victim mattered, because she wasn’t on the game?’
    â€˜That’s a gratuitous assumption.’
    â€˜It seems a fairly obvious assumption. It also seems quite reasonable.’
    â€˜We haven’t caught him. We have no suspects. The situation has escalated. Women living alone need to be warned and vigilant. And we could do with the help of the public. I doubt a man who kills four times in seven weeks in the manner he has behaves normally otherwise. Someone will suspect something and if they do, I’d implore them to call us.’
    â€˜Is it true you call him The Scholar?’
    She smiled and looked down at the desk in front of her. ‘It’s easier to say than perpetrator,’ she said. ‘I look forward to calling him by his name, when I identify and arrest and charge him.’
    â€˜You’re confident you’ll catch him?’
    â€˜I am and we will.’
    â€˜Before he kills again?’
    â€˜That’s what we’re all striving to achieve.’
    After the conference, she called Dominic Carter, the professor of ancient languages at Oxford helping them decipher the Scholar’s messages.
    â€˜This one’s different from the others,’ he said.
    â€˜Different in what way?’
    â€˜It’s quite fundamentally distinct in idiom, grammar and expression, Ms. Sullivan. The others were formal in the way that they were couched. This has much more of a vernacular character.’
    â€˜Do you have a plain way of putting this?’
    â€˜Yes, very. Anyone could have written what he wrote in the other languages. Well, any classicist familiar with those languages could. They don’t tell you anything about the character of the writer. This Hebrew text is different.’
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜He sounds the way a Nazarene might in Judea at the time of the life of Christ.’
    â€˜You’re saying it’s impersonation?’
    â€˜Impersonation or parody, yes.’
    â€˜What would be the point of that?’
    â€˜I haven’t the faintest idea.’
    â€˜How about the subject matter?’
    â€˜More End of Days stuff. I’ll provide you with a translation later today. But I really think you might require a theologian at this stage.’
    â€˜Because impersonating Jesus Christ is deliberately blasphemous?’
    â€˜And because there might be clues as to his motivation I’m missing that will be more obvious to someone schooled in Christian theology.’
    It seemed a stretch to Jane. It seemed an even bigger stretch than the copycat link the guy from The Sun had tried to make at the conference. But it also seemed a potentially careless omission. They’d had the first of the texts for seven weeks. She wondered where you got a theologian from. It wasn’t like they advertised their services on Gumtree or in the Yellow Pages.
    To Carter, she said, ‘Can you recommend anyone?’
    â€˜As a matter of fact, I can,’ he said.
    At the conclusion of their conversation she rang the contact number he had given her. It was for a man named JacobPrior. No one picked up and so she left a message, requesting that Prior call back, stressing it was urgent. Urgency was a growing feature of this case because the crimes were escalating in both savagery and the frequency with which they were being committed.
    She looked at her watch. It was now one o’clock. She could grab a sandwich in the canteen or she could access the Met file on the