They paused for a moment, taking in the scene. Quill’s team’s speciality was now being tested against a very mainstream, very high-profile, series of murders.

‘This is going to set London on fire,’ said Costain. ‘I mean literally.’

‘Where’s this message they were talking about?’ Stepping carefully, Ross followed the trail of blood across the room. She got to the enormous splatter of it across the far wall and stopped. Quill and the others joined her. She was pointing at the fine detail that the chaotic enormity of the splatter concealed. Among the blood was written, in awkward, blocky characters:

THE JEWS ARE THE MEN WHO WILL NOT BE BLAMED FOR ANYTHING.

‘What is that?’ said Sefton. ‘I recognize that.’ He started to tap at his phone.

‘So this is almost certainly from the killer,’ said Costain, ‘but—’

‘Making assumptions,’ said Ross.

‘You said we could—’

‘Only when we remember to mark them as such. This is me doing that. Yes, it could be from the killer, but there might also have been person or persons unknown here, associated with the killer or otherwise, who might have left what they regarded as a useful, or just anti-Semitic, message for the many Londoners who will read it when they get a news camera in here.’

‘Next time you make an assumption, I’ll make sure I mark it.’

‘I hope you will.’

‘Would you just bloody finish the sentence you originally started?’ Quill asked Costain.

‘Just that it’s really weird,’ said Costain, ‘to use “are the men” in what’s otherwise a natural-sounding phrase. It feels like … pretence to me. A front.’

‘You’d know,’ said Ross.

‘I would. There’s the fingerprint.’ He pointed to the very end of the words, where the fingers that had daubed the message had paused for just a moment, leaving a single smeared print.

Ross took a photograph of it. ‘I’ll ask to hear from the investigation about the comparison of that to the prints found in Spatley’s car.’

‘Oh, my God,’ said Sefton. ‘“The Jews are the men”!’ He held up his phone as the others clustered around. He read from it, keeping his voice down so the uniforms all around couldn’t hear. ‘Those words, or something like them, were what was written on a wall in a place called Goulston Street in Whitechapel, in 1888.’

‘So?’

‘It’s the message left by Jack the Ripper.’

Chapter Three

THREE

‘Jack … the Ripper?’ Sarah Quill slowly lowered her cup of coffee to the kitchen table.

‘Such is my glamorous existence,’ said Quill. ‘Celebrate my diversity.’

‘What does that even mean?’

‘I don’t know, I just say these things.’

‘I mean, is it that the Ripper’s … ghost has started to attack people?’