‘Maggie found me here a moment later, in a daze,’ said Vincent. ‘I didn’t let anyone else in here after that. I kept the cloth over the mirror, always half expecting it to happen again. I wanted to get rid of it, but I didn’t see how I could do that without endangering someone else. It’s not as if I could explain the problem. I thought about breaking it, but if looking into it had resulted in the appearance of that … ghost or whatever it was, then who knows what would have happened? Since the protests began I’ve always wondered if the man I saw was somehow … I don’t know … leading them. And then, when the killings started … but who could I tell?’

‘Can I take another look at your business cards?’ asked Quill. Vincent looked puzzled, then took a metal case from his pocket. Quill took it, opened it, and showed them to Sefton. There was preserved a spatter of silver, faded but obvious. ‘Do you keep a supply here?’

Vincent went to a little open box of them on the desk by the mirror, and pulled one out. The same silver deposits. Looking more closely, Sefton found signs of it across the top of the desk also, but the card seemed to have absorbed it in a way the wood didn’t. He got down on his hands and knees and smelt the carpet, found the tiniest droplets still deep in the weave. Vincent’s story checked out.

Vincent was looking perplexed at him, not able to see the silver himself.

‘Can you think of any reason,’ said Costain, ‘why the Ripper might have attacked you?’

Vincent was silent for a moment. Then he seemed to decide that he might as well go the whole distance. ‘I didn’t just want to know people’s secrets for personal gain. I wanted protection.’

‘From what?’

‘I’d started receiving anonymous death threats, left in places where nobody should have been able to go.’

‘Did you report this to the police?’ asked Quill.

‘No, because when one is aware that one is involved in … questionable activities … one doesn’t like to summon the law right into one’s home, does one?’

‘Do you still have any of these messages?’

‘Well, no. They tended to … curl up and turn to ashes as soon as I’d read them, or vanish off my phone or computer. They had a sort of official tone to them. I think, having declared myself to be an honest newspaperman, I’d got on the wrong side of what the late Princess Diana called “the dark forces” in British public life. I was feeling the same sudden chill that Assange, Galloway and Snowden must have felt. I never found out why I was being singled out, or who was doing it. But, given the way the threats were delivered, I became certain they might have genuine supernatural power on their side.’