Sefton looked up and was handed a cup of tea, by … it was the barmaid with no face from the Goat and Compasses. She now wore a thin, bloody bandage across where her eyes presumably still were not, together with a crown made of a cornflakes packet, and she carried a sword and scales strapped to a belt around what looked to have once been a Fifties party dress. Her pale masklike face made her look like a statue. ‘Hello Kevin,’ she said. ‘Good luck. We love you.’

The Rat King rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

‘How’s your friend doing?’

‘You mean Ross? I wish I knew.’

The Rat King put a hand to his mouth in a stage whisper as he took his own cup from her. ‘I don’t know why I took her on. She breaks all my cups.’

‘Please,’ said Sefton, not drinking his tea, ‘do you know anything that could help us find the Ripper?’

The Rat King snickered into the tea. ‘Oh, I’m afraid not. The major players know to stay away from me; they can’t stand that I can read their intentions like a cheap and nasty book.’

‘Well, then, okay, can you take me to Brutus?’

‘What, the Roman bloke? Et tu Brute and all that?’

Sefton wanted to kick something. ‘He’s who I met the last time I visited somewhere like this.’

The Rat King sighed theatrically. ‘I don’t know everyone who isn’t real. There isn’t a phone book.’ He suddenly seemed to recall, holding up a finger. ‘Wait. Was there nobody about in his London? Big, empty place, with just him in it?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’ Sefton found hope springing up inside him again. Maybe the Rat King was meant to show him the path that led to the object of his quest.

‘Oh. Right. You can’t get there from here.’ The Rat King saw the defeated expression on Sefton’s face and laughed again. ‘I know him by one of his many other names. You didn’t go on the right path today to get to him. If you haven’t seen him, I should think he’s still got his back to you. You should be careful of him. He can be very demanding.’

‘So you know what he is?’

‘It’s not for me to share the meanings of the others. I am only in charge of my own.’

‘Then what are you?’

‘Listen to this policeman!’ The Rat King grinned at the woman with no face, revealing gaps in his stained teeth. ‘Most of those who come here ask mystical questions full of allusions and get a lot of bollocks in return.’

‘He seeks the truth,’ the woman said. ‘He should get it.’