They walked to a pair of wooden gates in front of what seemed to be a schoolyard. Against the gates stood a tall washed-out woman with blood spilling down her dress. Her eyes were angry, insistent. ‘“Long Liz” Stride, only slashed across the throat, perhaps because Jack was disturbed.’ There he was, a fleeting glimpse, running. ‘One Israel Schwartz – note that name, sir – saw her having a row earlier with someone he described as “a gentleman”. That is how we know that Jack was, or was pretending to be, a member of the ruling classes, perhaps even royalty. Now, days had separated the previous murders, but this time, perhaps frustrated at not having got what he was after, just forty-five minutes later…’ Fennix let that sentence trail off as he led the party down the street to Mitre Square, where modern offices looked down on a group of benches, across which was sprawled the emaciated remains of a woman, her skirts and legs open, endlessly jerking and juddering, her arms windmilling as if she was in the act of falling, her head just a red lump. Costain wasn’t sure he wanted to move closer, but found himself doing just that.

‘Catherine Eddowes, again a drunk and a whore, again cut with a mighty blow across her throat, then systematically butchered, her intestines pulled out and laid over her shoulder, again her uterus and this time her left kidney taken by Jack. But this time he went further, which is odd, considering that these were all houses around here, and he could have been watched – perhaps was watched – from any one of these windows. He went further in what to us now looks almost like a demonstration, like a work of cruel performance art, like a protest at the conditions that had given birth to him. Her right ear lobe was sliced, a V shape was incised into each of her cheeks, and cuts made into her eyelids. Jack also snipped off the tip of her nose.’ Costain looked into what remained of the woman’s face, a mess of blood, and saw that her eyes, faint as they were, were again pleading. He wondered, not for the first time, what the connection was between what seemed to be people, preserved in time like this, and the Hell he’d glimpsed. Were these just images of people, as all the copies of Losley had been? Or were these somehow still the people themselves? Were they suffering? Was the history of London their Hell? Did they know that what had happened to them had started to happen again? Was this how he might end up, unless he played his cards exactly right?

There was the Ripper, standing all around, hands holding vague trophies.