‘And nothing remains?

‘The prison was completely demolished so they could build the Old Bailey on top of it. There’s a plaque on the wall of the Old Bailey. But Newgate was essentially wiped off the face of the earth. The theory was that they were replacing one kind of brutal British justice with another more enlightened kind of justice. There were no executions at the Old Bailey.’

We stopped at the white tent.

Inside, the Tyvek-suited CSIs in their blue gloves, baggies and face masks photographed and filmed and dusted, moving with a kind of insatiable curiosity, determined to record absolutely everything, like tourists on some hostile planet.

I looked at Hitchens.

‘And are you really going to help me, Professor? Don’t waste my time, Hitch – may I call you Hitch?’

‘Please do, Detective.’

‘If you’re just looking for a few juicy anecdotes to share with your colleagues over sherry evenings back on campus, then you can bail out now. You don’t have to like me. But if you stick around, you do have to help me.’

‘I want to help you. I truly do.’

I looked at him for a while.

Then I nodded and took him inside to see the body.

Hector Welles.

What remained of his neck was a pulp of raw and bloody meat. As we watched, a CSI armed with long surgical tweezers carefully plucked something from the shredded meat of his neck and expertly slipped it inside a plastic evidence bag.

The history man’s mouth dropped open with a kind of sickened wonder.

Professor Hitchens stared at the body in disbelief. I have no idea what he had been expecting. But it was not this – a man who, in his last desperate minutes, had tried to remove the rope strangling him by attempting to rip open his own throat.

Hector Welles looked as though he had been flayed alive from his chin to his chest. There was not a piece of skin left intact, just a sickening mass of minced meat where his neck used to be.

Professor Hitchens said, ‘Dear God . . . what does he have stuck in his neck? They’re not . . .’

The CSI gently removed something else with the tweezers. There were ten of them in total.

I nodded.

‘Fingernails,’ I said. ‘Hector Welles’ fingernails. When he was hanging, he tore at the rope around his neck so hard he ripped out all of his fingernails.’

Professor Hitchens quietly emptied his stomach over the blue baggies on his shoes.

A summer breeze stirred the tent.

I shuddered, my skin crawling at the proximity of all that ancient horror, and the wind in the trees of Hyde Park sounded as if all the ghosts of Tyburn were moaning.

10