There was silence. Quill would normally have said something to further shape the questions they should be asking. Ross listened to the silence, feeling the limits of where the board could take them. She felt the speed of her pulse making the emptiness stretch. It was as if the death of Quill had been just the first enormous blow, and they knew more were coming. The business of the Ops Board, of trying to turn such huge impossible things into simple data, of trying to control the world that way, felt ridiculous now. That they had won against Losley seemed like sheer chance.

On the way to Quill’s autopsy she had looked again at her research on the object that could bring her father back from the dead. She had checked every detail. The Bridge of Spikes, her reading said, was one of a kind. She hadn’t found anything else that claimed to be able to do the same thing.

She put the marker down. ‘Fuck this,’ she said, ‘fuck this.’ She ran for the door.

She managed to get into her car and start the engine as Costain ran down the steps of the Portakabin. She accelerated out of the gate and onto the road and just glimpsed Sefton in the rear-view mirror, stumbling out after Costain, starting to shout.

*   *   *

Leyton Gardens in Kentish Town looked just as grim in the early afternoon. There were a few kids playing in the street. Still a smell of smoke; it was everywhere in certain suburbs now. Music from open windows on higher floors. Ross walked around the block, checking for exits. The curtains were open now; she’d been home since last time, this Anna Lassiter.

Ross turned the corner to head back round to the door of number 16 and found Costain standing there. He raised his hands in surrender. ‘If you really want to do this on your own,’ he said, ‘I’ll go straight back to the nick.’

‘You left Sefton on his own?’ she said.

‘It doesn’t matter. The Ripper could take all three of us as easily as one. He could. Just like that.’ His teeth were starting to chatter. She’d let her meth intake drop, but he hadn’t.

‘Was he okay with that?’

‘He just stared at me. Then he started to ask me what I was doing, but … I got out of there.’

‘He deserves better.’

‘Yeah. So. Yeah.’ Costain stepped towards her. ‘Do you want me along or not?’

‘You’d really go back?’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’

She studied his face. It was the most obvious move, pretending to do her bidding. She could imagine him grabbing the object out of her hands and sprinting to his car, just as they’d both run away from Sefton.