‘The Rat King had several features of interest. I’m pretty sure he knew I was a police officer as soon as he saw me. He had that kind of … greater power that Brutus had too. But he said he wouldn’t give me away, and didn’t.’

‘So he knows about someone just by looking?’ said Costain. ‘He’d be the ultimate source, the fount of all info.’

‘He indicated he didn’t know who the Ripper was,’ said Sefton, ‘so his knowledge has limits, but, yeah. I just wish I knew how to find him.’

‘That’s still brilliant work,’ said Quill. ‘I asked you to find us background, and you got us tons of it.’ He turned back to the board, knowing he wouldn’t get an answering smile out of Sefton right now. ‘Now, I asked a favour of some mates at West End Central and had a couple of uniforms take a turn past the Goat and Compasses and the Keels’ biggest shop. The Goat has opened as usual today, and a car belonging to Terry Keel is parked round the back of his store in a parking place with his name over it. In short, it doesn’t look as if he’s scarpered.’

‘There seems to be some sort of generational conflict going on in what I think we can now call the occult underworld of London,’ said Ross. ‘The Keel brothers, or now just Terry—’ She stopped, realizing she might have said the wrong thing.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sefton.

Ross nodded. ‘They’re on one side, the newer side, happy to use money in transactions. A lot of the regulars at the Goat seemed against that, wanted to keep with older laws about the use of barter.’

‘Losley,’ said Quill, ‘if you remember, went apeshit when we dared to suggest she might be “employed”.’

‘Terry Keel,’ said Costain, ‘talked about a feeling that everything changed for this lot a few years back, but that the new generation have taken a while to take advantage of it.’

‘Maybe that’s about what destroyed the temple in Docklands,’ said Sefton. ‘If the Continuing Projects Team were the old law, and there’s been nothing to replace them, then this lot found themselves free to do what they liked, only they didn’t know it. I wonder why.’

‘Maybe the Continuing Projects Team worked more like under-covers than beat coppers,’ suggested Costain. ‘Perhaps you only knew they were there when they nicked you.’

‘I do wish,’ said Quill, ‘that we could find some good old-fashioned good and evil in this generational conflict, that we could say the barter people are the good guys and the money lot are bad. Because in my copper heart I have been waiting with baited breath to discover supernatural good and evil and the simple joy that would bring. But the barter people included Losley, and the money lot included your beardy waistcoat mate. So nuts to that.’

‘That would be good,’ agreed Sefton.