‘I should’ve guessed by the looks of you,’ Ratface said. ‘You can keep your pennies. But mind you tell him it was Stivers from down the docks that done him this favour.’

Bill and the Blackbirds had cost me dear. If they hadn’t enticed Eustace into working for them, he’d still be alive now. For the sake of what they’d led him to, I’d determined to leave St Giles, work as hard as I could to take myself beyond their influence. But this wasn’t about me. Could I risk using Bill’s name if it got me closer to finding the Leopard Lady?

‘Yes, one of Bill’s girls,’ I heard myself say. I’d just have to pray that word of this didn’t get back to the man himself.

‘You should have said upfront,’ Ratface muttered. I wasn’t imagining that some of his swagger had gone and I felt a chill steal over me. By invoking Black Bill I’d put myself on dangerous ground here, but it was done now. And if he were still here, Eustace would understand why I’d done it.

‘I know it was Marcus Crillick you spoke to. I just need to know why,’ I said.

‘A shipment came in with his name on it. Some livestock, you might say.’

My stomach roiled. Livestock meant people. Only the credulous thought slavery had truly ended, regardless of how the Liberals congratulated themselves. They could pass all the laws they liked in Parliament, but I wasn’t convinced that the richest abided by them.

‘How many?’

‘Handful, that’s all. He’s not in the volume game. Too much risk nowadays. Something a little more specialised.’

There’s more to come – that’s what he’d said. More freaks like the Leopard Lady. The half-dream I’d had came back to me and I tried to blink it away. Ratface jerked his head to the left. ‘Over there. That’s where Crillick keeps his cargo.’

I turned to look where he pointed. A lock-up made of corrugated iron. Crillick stood outside it. Surely he didn’t need a whole warehouse? The thought of how many people a space like that could hold made me queasy, but Crillick was about theatres, entertainments.

‘He owns it?’

‘Not him. I forget the name but I could get it for you.’

‘Will you tell me who’s been in and out?’

He leant in to me. ‘Anything for Bill,’ he said, his breath on my face.

It took all my strength to stand my ground and not take a step back. With men like him you could never show your fear. He was another Crillick but without the tinge of respectability.

‘Tell me what you want to know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a fair few things in the last week or two. Things that could make your hair curl.’