I wrapped my arms around my legs and placed my forehead on my knees.

“You’re the only police looking for the real Ripper, right?” I asked. “Because the regular police can’t see him. What if you can’t stop him?”

“We can,” he said. He set a box of shelf-stable milk in front of me, punctuating his remark. He had said all he was going to say about that. We sat in silence for a few moments, looking at our tea but neither of us drinking it. We just let it steep, darker and darker, like our thoughts. The kitchen wasn’t very well lit, so there was a closeness—a gloom around us.

“What happened to you?” I asked. “To make you like this?”

He tapped his mug with his spoon, considering his answer.

“Boating accident. At school.”

“Eton,” I said, pointing at the leg of the pants. “That’s where you went?”

“Yes.”

“And how long have you been . . . this? A policeman, or whatever you are?”

“Two years.”

Stephen removed the tea bag and set it on a lid from a takeout container. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He took a long breath and exhaled loudly.

“Everyone’s always known that London is full of ghosts,” he said. “It’s a particularly haunted city. And in that spirit of organizing things and controlling the empire, it was decided—very quietly—that something needed to be done, some kind of watch needed to be kept. But belief in ghosts, and science, and law and order, these things didn’t really go together. Back in 1882, a group of prominent scientists founded the Society for Psychical Research, probably the most respectable and serious attempt to study the subject of the afterlife. This was right in the middle of the development of the police force and the security service. The police system itself isn’t that old. The London Metropolitan Police was founded in 1829, and the Security Services—which is MI5 and things like that—in 1909. So in 1919, with the help of the Society for Psychical Research, the Shades were born.”

“The Shades?”

“It’s another word for ghosts. MI5 are called the spooks, and we were a lot smaller and stranger. A shady little branch. I think they used to call us Scotland Graveyard as well. Anyway, we were around for years. Very secret. Never very large. But in the Thatcher years . . . someone got wind of the group and didn’t like it. I don’t know what happened . . . something political. But they shut it down in the early nineties. Two years ago, they decided to start it up again. They found me. I was the first one.”

“How did they find you?”

“It’s complicated,” he said. “And classified.”

“So, are you a cop? A real one?”

“I am,” he said. “I was trained. The uniform is real. The car was issued to me.”