‘I had a good time.’

She felt horribly pleased to see his sudden smile. ‘Oh. Great.’

‘So, we should talk about how we’re going to go forward with all this. I mean, if we’re going to go to the auction together, how we could maybe find, you know, some trust.’

He was nodding quickly. ‘Absolutely.’

‘So, I was thinking, second date?’

‘Right. Right, yes.’

She didn’t like the amount of power she had over him either because of her bloody allure or because he was giving it to her in order to flatter and deceive her. ‘Do you mind combining business and pleasure? There’s someone I want you to meet. My place at 2 p.m. tomorrow.’ She walked off and looked over her shoulder: yeah, now he was the one watching her go.

*   *   *

Sefton lay awake in bed, listening to Joe snoring beside him. He couldn’t help but keep seeing the blows the Ripper had struck. The news tonight had been about escalation, about far right groups starting to march in areas affected by the riots, starting to shout down Toff protestors. From what he knew about the Thirties, he didn’t like the feeling of where this was all going. If people started to feel the establishment was failing them, that the police were failing them, they looked for order in terrible places.

He kept thinking about Barry Keel, about human remains. The two deaths overlapped each other in his head, to the point where he felt vaguely guilty, insanely, for Rudlin’s death too.

He had to do something more than he was doing, he decided. He had to find some way to heal both himself and everything around him. He had to see if the centre was going to hold, to ask a greater power for answers.

*   *   *

At home, Quill stayed up late that night, looking at the documents of the case, wondering if there was any single thing more he could do. They’d gone out to the Spatley home that afternoon, after they’d got all they could from the new crime scene, and had found, even with their Sighted eyes, nothing the main op hadn’t.

Forrest was starting to realize that Quill’s team were bringing nothing extra to the operation. There seemed to be no connections between Rudlin and the other two victims. They still had very little in the way of access to an occult underworld that seemed to know nothing about this case. Nothing, nothing, nothing … and time was running out both for his team and for the next bloody unlucky man who the Ripper decided to randomly slaughter. Just as he’d finally decided to go to bed, his mobile rang. He saw it was Sefton, and answered.

‘Jimmy,’ said the voice on the other end of the line, ‘I’ve decided.