‘So I said what I’d seen happen, straight off. I suppose part of me thought I might get off because it was all so mad, though I was being well paid to take any fall. We was sent a lot of money in a way so my wife could get hold of it. We needed that money. You don’t know how hard it is; they expect you to live in town … But then you lot turn up, saying you actually believe me, and you get me off. And I go home and … and it’s all shit. I couldn’t keep Spatley’s face out of my head, how scared he was when he was killed. I did like him, all right? But I’m holding on for my family, it’s all I ever did. Until you lot want to interview me again, and I start thinking I’d feel better if I told you everything. And then … then the Ripper came for me.’

‘You want to come clean about everything now, then?’

Tunstall seemed to understand what Quill was talking about. ‘I did something else on orders. When he was lying there dead in the back seat … I reached into his jacket pocket, and my hands were shaking, I tell you. I took out this piece of paper I’d been told was there, and I … I ate it. I was told that was the only way to get rid of it without tipping anyone off that anything had been there. Burn it and there’d be, you know, the smell. They didn’t even want to risk me crumpling it up and taking it with me. I can still taste it.’ Quill could see the tears welling up in the man’s eyes. ‘I mean, my mouth’s still full of it. It’s all I can taste.’

Quill went on his way and left Tunstall to his walking.

*   *   *

He found Rupert Rudlin in the middle of a crowd that kept grabbing him and hauling him over to waterboard him in a barrel of beer. Quill spared him that for a few moments and asked him his questions.

‘No,’ sobbed the young man, ‘I don’t know why I was killed! I don’t!’

The crowd grabbed him from Quill again and kept on with their torture.

*   *   *