‘Michael Spatley MP handles a business card from a brothel he probably never frequented. He loses it in his office, so he obviously doesn’t think it’s very important. Perhaps he’s copied down the info from it, though we haven’t found that. Perhaps he’s tried the phone number, like we did, and got no result. But Tunstall, or whoever was paying Tunstall, does think it’s important, enough to search the place. Then Mary is attacked, but not killed, by the same entity that killed Spatley. And who’s this fucker?’ She stabbed her finger angrily at the picture of the man who’d been at both the bar and the auction. ‘I think there are, in reality, association lines all over this lot. But I can’t attach them on the board because we don’t know what they are. Oh.’

She’d stopped. Quill felt relief at the sound that indicated an imminent breakthrough. ‘Tell us, maestro.’

Ross put her finger beside the picture of Rupert Rudlin, the actual victim from the bar, and ran it in a circle right round him. ‘I was talking about lots of associations for the others. Then I could see it: no associations for Rudlin, not with anyone on this board.’ She pointed back to the picture of Mary Arthur. ‘She’s linked to all this, though we don’t know how. She was the one who was initially attacked in that bar. How about if the Ripper was there for her, and Rudlin just got in the way?’

Quill felt his relief wane slightly. ‘But … he had a good shot at her. He had every chance to kill her.’

‘And Rudlin is a rich white bloke,’ said Costain.

‘Yeah, we’ve been saying that, haven’t we, that Jack the Ripper now just kills rich white blokes, but Tunstall wasn’t rich, and as for them all being white, well, they’ve all been part of the establishment, so storks on roofs there, but, blokes…’ She trailed off.

Quill waited for more insight, but she just hugged herself and sighed, unsatisfied. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘how would you sum that up?’

‘I’d bet,’ said Ross, ‘and this is an assumption—’

‘Marked as such,’ said Costain.

‘—that Mary Arthur was meant to be the Ripper’s next victim. That he had motive for killing her. And for some reason didn’t, and killed Rudlin instead. If we can crack that motive and that reason, we might crack this.’