‘At another of the auctions. This bloke on the phone, a proxy for someone, he ran me ragged, beat me to it. Back in those days, we were the only two paying in cash. It was the night the auction was underneath the whale skeleton at the Natural History Museum.’

Ross nodded. ‘That was where our source said he got the mirror we just showed you. That was sold to him as a scrying glass.’

Keel frowned. ‘I don’t remember that. The scrying glass I was after was definitely the genuine article: smaller than a human head, red glass, a thread of blood from an old London family in a phial around the frame. You concentrate on the exact location of your target, and the mirror forms a connection between you and their sleeping brain. Nobody in the know would mistake the mirror in that photo for a scrying glass.’

A terrible suspicion was starting to form in Ross’ mind. ‘What did this proxy look like?’

‘White, late thirties, balding, dark hair…’

Ross asked a few more questions, then exchanged a look with Costain and Sefton. It could be the same man who had bid against her in her attempt to find the location of the Bridge. It would make sense. The owner of the scrying glass was the one reading their thoughts; having discovered their intention to find the Bridge, and what the Bridge was, who wouldn’t send someone to compete to get it? ‘Do you know who was he working for?’

Keel smiled and straightened up, realizing he had something valuable. ‘I do know, because I did the old –’ he made the ‘bar code reading’ gesture in the air and they all automatically deflected it. But again their phones chirruped. It made him laugh. ‘I felt who was on the other end of the phone and it made me think something big was going down. So. What’s it worth?’

‘We leave you alone,’ said Costain. ‘And we don’t start gossiping at the Goat, or whatever pub that community settle in, about how delighted you were to help out the new law.’

Keel considered further for a moment, then nodded. ‘All right. The buyer was Russell Vincent.’

In the clear summer air, in the moment of silence that followed, Ross heard a nearby church clock, and then others in the distance, all begin to strike the hour of twelve.

*   *   *

Russell Vincent put his scrying glass onto its stand on his desk. He had his iPad ready beside it. Soon it would all start kicking off in London. The Summer of Blood had reached its apex. The day of the Ripper had begun.

Chapter Twenty-Four

TWENTY-FOUR

Costain grabbed Keel by the beard and hauled him out of his seat. ‘If you’re lying…!’

Keel cried out. ‘It’s the truth! I don’t want you coming back here, do I?’