Costain didn’t like the silence; it made him aware of the terrible fear that was rising up in him. ‘How the fuck do we nick him?’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to fall asleep sooner or later. When we do he’ll know we’re onto him, and send the Ripper after us. We can’t go after him without some insane level of proof, and with his lawyers, it’d still take years.’ Also, he thought but didn’t say it – and this was the most frightening thing of all – Vincent knew about the Bridge of Spikes. What would such a powerful man be willing to do to avoid death?

‘Oh shit,’ said Ross suddenly.

Costain was scared again by the expression on her face. ‘What?’

‘Keel said, to use a scrying glass, you need to know the exact location of your target.’ She looked between them. ‘That bastard knows where we live.’

‘How?’ said Sefton.

‘Fuck,’ said Ross, ‘fuck.’ She leaned on the wall of the van, and her face contorted into an expression of anger, but also, Costain was pleased to see, comprehension. ‘Staunce,’ she said, ‘dates … fuck, this meth is getting in the way, it’s all getting jumbled up, I keep forgetting bits—’

‘What?’ asked Sefton.

‘I need a table,’ she said.

*   *   *

They took the van through the quiet streets, parked on another double yellow and, near Bloomsbury Square, spotted a pub that was open. They found a corner of the empty cellar bar, and drank their double Red Bulls as Ross constructed a mobile version of the Ops Board. She finally placed it on the table as four sheets of A4 and put down coloured marker pens beside it. Costain felt something once again give inside him at her continuing professionalism, found himself looking up into her serious expression, hoping as always now for a smile that would never come. He knew that something terrible might soon come between them. The fear of it was rising up in him, making his hands play a clatter on the table surface.

‘Staunce,’ said Ross, ‘Commissioner of the Met, could find out our home addresses, easy as breathing. We know he was being paid by someone. Those original payments stop…’ she slid her finger down a list in one of her enormous rough books ‘… one day after Vincent bought the scrying glass at the winter solstice auction three years ago.’

‘Because, if you can look into people’s dreams,’ said Sefton, ‘you don’t need sources for secret gossip any more, including police ones, so Vincent could dispense with Staunce’s services.’