‘Then I had a lucky break. Mary Arthur contacted Challoner, who’d originally employed her. She’d figured that after the death of Spatley she couldn’t still be in trouble, or at least that’s what she told him. I suspect she wanted to find out if she’d been let off the hook. Of course she had no idea that I knew what Spatley had told her. I had Challoner pretend to offer her new work, to set up a meeting at a specific place and time. She was careful; she chose somewhere crowded – that Soviet bar. Bless. Once she got there, I had Challoner keep her talking, then “pop out for five minutes to meet someone higher up”. Of course, he went straight home. He knew enough about occult London to guess what was coming.’

‘But that time your Ripper wouldn’t play ball, would she?’

Vincent smiled. ‘I keep forgetting, you know it’s a she.’

‘Yeah. My team kept underlining their assumptions, but that was a huge one they ended up making, that the Ripper was a bloke. You led us into that too, when we interviewed you at the mews flat. We kept saying “it”, you kept saying “he”.’

‘I’m so pleased you noticed that. Well, now I am, I mean.’

‘Maybe we should have realized the truth when the Ripper refused to kill Mary Arthur.’

‘I tried so damn hard to make her do that.’ Vincent sounded as if he was sharing an anecdote about a difficult mount. ‘But she just bucked and bucked. In that bar, she swerved aside at the last moment and suddenly I was stabbing just some random bloke! She was fine with letting me do that!’

‘I think she’s got a problem with men,’ said Quill. ‘A feminist Jack the Ripper. Anything really can mean anything these days. This is why she’s leaking silver, isn’t it, because you’re forcing her into a shape she doesn’t want to be in?’

‘Yes, and I do wonder if she’ll last much longer. Again, I only know about the fuel thing thanks to you lot. At any rate, she’s probably done her bit now, but I’ll keep using her. I’ve got a few more people to kill. I’ll wear her down to the point where there’s nothing left. Safer that way. Of course, if I’d known she wouldn’t kill women, I’d never have started all this in the first place.’

‘I presume this was when you decided, since Mary Arthur then went back into hiding, that getting us to find out about supernatural means of locating people was a good idea.’