‘Ah, yes.’ The actor nodded solemnly. ‘We’ll be visiting the site of the original eerie message implicating our Judaic friends, found over a piece of a victim’s soiled clothing, later. Was there a Jewish conspiracy involved? Is that conspiracy still afoot in London today, behind two modern murders? Was Jack’s original message a protest about the capitalist excesses of his own times, which resonates in the modern day? Or is it the other way round?’ He quickly looked at his tour party, as if to gauge their sensibilities and/or ethnicities. ‘Is it a conspiracy to blame these terrorist acts on the Jews? Are they to be the fall guys for the New World Order yet again? Were these prostitutes – I mean, these proper young ladies –’ he paused for the delayed laugh again – ‘slaughtered according to secret religious ceremonies as per the request of the secret rulers of the world, the Illuminati? Perhaps we shall see. Perhaps. But let us begin at our starting point, the bloody scene before us. Imagine it!’ With a sweep of his cape, he walked over to a wall. He pointed to the kerb beside it. ‘How much scrubbing did it take to remove every trace of such a scrubber?’ Perhaps knowing that the line wouldn’t translate, he moved swiftly on. ‘She’d been the wife of a printer’s machinist.’ Costain didn’t know what that was, and suspected, given the ease with which the phrase had come out, neither did this bloke; it was just one of those things that got written down and repeated. It sounded as if Fennix had added his modern conspiracy rhetoric to an older script at the last minute. It was hardly convincing. But the crowd seemed to be lapping it up. He continued, ‘But she was too fond of the bottle, and their marriage broke up when she started turning tricks to supplement her income.’