“We have got an address for Brockbank,” Robin told Strike in a triumphant voice as the curtains swung closed again.

“What?”

“I didn’t tell you, because I thought Wardle would already have got it, but I thought, just in case—I’ve been ringing round the local nurseries, pretending I was Alyssa, Zahara’s mum. I said I wanted to check they had our new address right. One of them read it out to me off the parent contact sheet. They’re living on Blondin Street in Bow.”

“Jesus Christ, Robin, that’s fucking brilliant!”

When the dressmaker returned to her job at last, she found a considerably more radiant bride than she had left. Robin’s lack of enthusiasm for the process of altering her dress had been diminishing the seamstress’s pleasure in her job. Robin was easily the best-looking client on her books and she had hoped to get a photograph for advertising purposes once the dress was finished.

“That’s wonderful,” said Robin, beaming at the seamstress as she tugged the last seam straight and together they contemplated the vision in the mirror. “That’s absolutely wonderful.”

For the first time, she thought that the dress really didn’t look bad at all.

51

Don’t turn your back, don’t show your profile,

You’ll never know when it’s your turn to go.

Blue Öyster Cult, “Don’t Turn Your Back”

“The public response has been overwhelming. We’re currently following up over twelve hundred leads, some of which look promising,” said Detective Inspector Roy Carver. “We continue to appeal for information on the whereabouts of the red Honda CB750 used to transport part of Kelsey Platt’s body and we remain interested in speaking to anybody who was in Old Street on the night of 5^th June, when Heather Smart was killed.”

The headline POLICE FOLLOW NEW LEADS IN HUNT FOR SHACKLEWELL RIPPER was not really justified, in Robin’s view, by anything in the brief report beneath, although she supposed that Carver would not share details of genuine new developments with the press.

Five photographs of the women now believed to have been victims of the Ripper filled most of the page, their identities and their brutal fates stamped across their chests in black typeface.

Martina Rossi, 28, prostitute, stabbed to death, necklace stolen.

Martina was a plump, dark woman wearing a white tank top. Her blurry photograph looked as though it had been a selfie. A small heart-shaped harp charm hung from a chain around her neck.

Sadie Roach, 25, admin assistant, stabbed to death, mutilated, earrings taken.

She had been a pretty girl with a gamine haircut and hoops in her ears. Judging by cropped figures at the edges of her picture, it had been taken at a family gathering.

Kelsey Platt, 16, student, stabbed to death and dismembered.

Here was the familiar chubby, plain face of the girl who had written to Strike, smiling in her school uniform.

Lila Monkton, 18, prostitute, stabbed, fingers cut off, survived.

A blurred picture of a gaunt girl whose bright red hennaed hair was cut into a shaggy bob, her multiple piercings glinting in the camera flash.