Ross and Sefton looked up at the building above them, dark in the summer night, framed in the ruddy light of the fires from the riots in White City. Only a few windows were illuminated. The former BBC TV Centre looked like the corpse of the building from Ross’ childhood memories. What once had been a broadcasting headquarters was now home to independent production companies, other businesses, apartments. The circular building with the courtyard and the fountain and the statue familiar from so many magazine programmes was now a listed building, a sort of monument to the idea that broadcasting should belong to the nation, to the people. The Sight revealed so much more, it made the building actually hard to look at. Its sheer gravity made Ross feel she had to stand straight, with her feet balanced, or she’d be drawn forward into it. They stepped forward slowly, both of them trying not to stagger, the weight of exhaustion and drugs making what was in front of them feel like a swaying dream. The round building was like an enormous recording device, a swirling whirlpool of visual and audible information, caught here to be replayed forever, like ancient video, fluttering and distorted, the light of childhood, the memories of the great national occasions, the hope for unity, the hope of meaning. The density of the information moving in front of her made it hard for Ross to pick out individual moments, but every voice she heard, every image that swept past her pupils meant something to her, tugged at emotions right down to the core of her, from scenes she’d seen on screen before she was aware of having memory. This place had imprinted itself into the consciousnesses of Londoners for decades. Even now, with this temple turned over to profit, the memory remained; the memory fought the building’s new purpose. This was a place of a billion ghosts.

Across the country now, the Ripper killings were continuing, and here they were, pursuing a tiny hope.

‘They’re sure it’s here?’ asked Sefton.

Ross stopped herself from looking again at the email. ‘The long barrow in the grounds was partially excavated in the fifties, before TV Centre was built. That’s when the fingerprints on the inner wall were photographed. Then it was reburied.’