Sefton went back to the concepts section of the board. ‘If the silver goo is the power source, the fuel…’ He wrote two headings in the concepts column. ‘Then maybe the gold thread is the software, the instructions.’

‘So that could be what we touched when we touched the soil?’

‘Maybe. And perhaps if we’d looked at that soil at a microscopic level once we had the Sight, we’d have seen silver goo in it too. The software and the power source.’

‘Perhaps. But that still doesn’t tell us why it was just us four, does it?’

There was silence for a moment. Quill supposed the others felt like he did about that central question of their existence. They all needed to know, at heart, if they’d been chosen for some grand quest or had been the victims of an accident. He wondered again if Lofthouse knew at least that much.

‘John, the Rat King,’ said Sefton, starting a new topic, ‘seemed to me to be … not actually a real human being – he said so himself – something like that bouncer, but with … consciousness, ideas of his own, a character, not limited like they were in the bouncer – more like Brutus.’

‘He went away downstairs,’ said Ross. ‘The bearded gatekeeper seemed calm enough to evacuate that way, so I think we can assume any lower floors just detached themselves and weren’t destroyed in the explosion.’

‘The Rat King had several features of interest. I’m pretty sure he knew I was a police officer as soon as he saw me. He had that kind of … greater power that Brutus had too. But he said he wouldn’t give me away, and didn’t.’

‘So he knows about someone just by looking?’ said Costain. ‘He’d be the ultimate source, the fount of all info.’

‘He indicated he didn’t know who the Ripper was,’ said Sefton, ‘so his knowledge has limits, but, yeah. I just wish I knew how to find him.’

‘That’s still brilliant work,’ said Quill. ‘I asked you to find us background, and you got us tons of it.’ He turned back to the board, knowing he wouldn’t get an answering smile out of Sefton right now. ‘Now, I asked a favour of some mates at West End Central and had a couple of uniforms take a turn past the Goat and Compasses and the Keels’ biggest shop. The Goat has opened as usual today, and a car belonging to Terry Keel is parked round the back of his store in a parking place with his name over it. In short, it doesn’t look as if he’s scarpered.’

‘There seems to be some sort of generational conflict going on in what I think we can now call the occult underworld of London,’ said Ross. ‘The Keel brothers, or now just Terry—’ She stopped, realizing she might have said the wrong thing.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sefton.