Ross looked back to the hole in the ground. She listened, unable to stop the analytical part of herself from becoming involved as Sefton got all the information Quill had told Costain and his plan for what they should do next, relayed it to her, finished the call.

She looked down at the hole. Now she knew what Quill had encountered in there. What she was looking at was what, in the end, always seemed to be under everything: the thread of abuse that had wound its way through Whitechapel. She’d been right about something she’d said. It seemed a long time ago now: the Ripper really was just blokes and desperation for money. The meaning of this story truly was the killing of women.

She had no meanings left and no hope.

She picked up the pickaxe, stepped forward and dropped into the dark.

*   *   *

She landed inside the long barrow. She could hear Sefton scrambling after her. She felt the mighty presence at the end of the chamber, shut in, desperate to be awakened. She shouldered the pickaxe and ran at the rock wall.

*   *   *

Sefton got inside the barrow just in time to see Ross land the pickaxe against the stone, the scene barely illuminated by the lights through the small opening they’d made in the roof. She struck once, then she cried out, and started striking the rock time after time after time, screaming at it. Sefton watched. He wanted to say something. But anything he might say would be too like her scream. This was what Quill had just ordered them to do, but he was pretty sure that Ross would have done it anyway.

Light sprang from a sudden crack in the rock.

The interior of the barrow was revealed in every detail. Sefton had a moment to see those fingerprints.

Something burst from the rock at the end of the chamber. It still looked like the Ripper. Silver was hissing from its eyes and mouth.

Sefton wondered, in the instant he got a good look at her – for it was very clearly a her – if she would be able to make it out of the barrow and across London. But, as well as the coldness of the evaporating silver, there was in the atmosphere all around them a sense of enormous willpower, of something awoken. The barrowwight opened her mouth and made a sound Sefton would never forget: a single note that banished the tattered remnants of what had been put here to keep her imprisoned.

Ross was looking up at her, empty, clearly wanting to be pleased that she’d freed her, but finding no meaning.

With a splatter of silver against the rock ceiling of the chamber, the being sped upwards and in a blur of motion she was gone.

NOW