The Severed Streets

TEN

‘How did Sefton end up with “severe bruises on his arms”?’ asked Lofthouse.

Quill didn’t quite feel able to share all the details of Sefton’s experiment. ‘He failed to see a man about a bus,’ he said. The two of them were walking down a corridor in the Treasury, all polished wood and the smell of a carpet that was cleaned daily. Quill had asked her to come along to give him as much political clout as possible in what looked likely to be a difficult day. What they’d seen on the way in — protestors gathering in Parliament Square — had put them all on edge. This time the youths in the masks had been carrying an enormous puppet of the Toff character, held up by sticks. It held a bloody razor, doubtless made of felt. To Quill it felt as if this new Ripper was being elevated to the status of minor local god, a god that demanded sacrifice. Perhaps literally.

There was something else that was weird, too. As soon as they’d stepped into the precincts of the Houses of Parliament, he had felt a sudden lack of something, as if he’d walked into a recording studio and the ambient sound of the world had cut off. It had taken him a few paces to realize what was going on, then he’d walked back and stepped back and forth, oblivious to the glances he was getting, until he’d found a specific line where it happened. ‘It feels … safe in here,’ he’d told Lofthouse, who had raised an eyebrow at his performance. ‘Like past this line the power of London doesn’t work.’

‘That has to be deliberate.’

‘It does sound like the sort of thing those who laid down the law in past centuries might do: protect the centres of power from occult dodginess.’ They’d gone out again and walked around the boundaries of the old buildings, Quill finding that the force field or whatever it was approximated to the walls in some places but not in others. The modern additions weren’t covered. Everyone inside was lucky in ways that the vast majority of them didn’t appreciate. He noted that this wasn’t something that Lofthouse had known previously. When she said she knew less than they did, she seemed to be telling the truth. So why couldn’t she tell them what she did know?

Finally, they’d had to head in again because it was time for their appointment. ‘You’re trying to get a meeting with Vincent?’ asked Lofthouse now.

‘I have a call in with him, as they say. He’s obviously had an encounter with something from the Sighted world and, given that our suspect is the only thing we’ve seen so far that splatters, maybe even the Ripper himself. And Vincent radiates dodgy. The number on those business cards turned out to be just his PA, but that’s closer than most people get.’

‘Last time a fully armed parliamentary inquiry went after him he came up smelling of roses. Tread very gently.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Did you find the taxi that picked up the male witness from the bar?’

‘We did, but unfortunately he paid in cash, so we’ve just got a few extra lines of description from the foggy recall of a taxi driver. He bloody got out near Tottenham Court Road too, right in the middle of town, and we lose him on camera somewhere in the shops. So no indication of home address.’

‘And you’re pursuing Gaiman?’

‘He’s one of only two survivors from the Goat and Compasses that we can definitely find. He’s still in London, and in the face of a call from the Met, his agent was fulsomely cooperative, so our oomph is still respected in some quarters. Ross and Sefton, who insisted on getting right back on the horse, are interviewing him this afternoon.’

‘The other survivor would be…?’

‘The surviving Keel brother, Terry, who we’ve left where he is. Sefton’s been keeping a watch on the shop, and the individuals who were regular clientele seem to be lying low. For the moment.’

A door ahead of them opened, and a pleasant-faced, neat young man stepped out of it. ‘Superintendent Lofthouse?’

* * *

They were taken to a rather more impressive door and shown in to see the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Anthony Clough. He rose to greet them. A very guarded man, Quill thought: big smile on his face, but nothing in the eyes. He was large, had once been muscular, a big head with white hair around the temples. He’d served under both flavours of administration, was known to have an Olympian disregard for party politics and was, according to a senior Met colleague, ‘cruel, but fair’. Having exchanged pleasantries, he addressed himself to Lofthouse and asked what reason her people had for searching Spatley’s departmental and parliamentary offices, when they’d already been checked out once by the main inquiry. Lofthouse looked to Quill, who again trotted out that they were a special team with a special remit, and Lofthouse made the right noises to indicate that further questions, even from this level of seniority, wouldn’t be advisable.

Clough paused for a significant time when Quill asked him whether or not Spatley had any issues in his personal life. Lofthouse and Quill exchanged glances.

‘Michael Spatley was highly ethical. To a fault. But he’d recently been … distracted. He’d been delegating some of his parliamentary responsibilities to ministerial colleagues, often the sign of trouble at home.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Oh, no, in this case, I don’t think it was.’

‘Sir,’ began Quill, ‘if you know of any dirty linen in, erm, the Cabinet…’ He mentally winced at his turn of phrase. ‘What I’m trying to say is, you can be sure of our tact, as far as it can go, and it’d actually be a service to the deceased if-’

‘We don’t, as a rule, let ministers with things going on in their lives get near the Cabinet. Though there have been exceptions. In Michael Spatley’s case, the only thing I can think of that might possibly be relevant is that, at parties, he would chat a little too long to charming young ladies.’

‘Are you saying he was having an affair?’

‘Absolutely not. I’m sure, in fact, that he wasn’t. But, and I hope you understand the subtlety and strength of our sensitivities in this area, I believe he might have liked to have been.’

Quill sighed. This man was sure he had powers in his own domain that equalled those of the Sight. Maybe he did. But it wasn’t the sort of thing likely to produce evidence. ‘Is there anything else about him you managed to … divine?’

Clough took a moment to find the right words. ‘I think he had something on his mind. This is a particularly exciting government. The Cabinet don’t share with each other as much as we’ve been used to. I have seen whips who were just one altercation shy of assault charges, whips confronting whips. That never happens. To be blunt with you, Detective Inspector, Superintendent, I’m privileged to serve within a government that at any moment might start fighting itself. If this is the brain of the country, that would be Britain having a stroke. So Mr Spatley was probably wise to keep his own counsel about whatever he was planning. Perhaps defection to the opposition, perhaps some uncovering of Tory misdeeds that might increase his own party’s currently minuscule leverage within Cabinet — who knows? Actually, I do remember something. Just before he died, I asked him when he was going to pick a fight, meaning when was he going to start taking his own bills into committee again. He said he had a big one planned.’

Quill smiled in sudden appreciation. ‘Interesting. Did you see any sign of this fight materializing?’

‘Now you put it that way…’ Clough seemed to be reassessing some of what he’d regarded as certainties before Quill had started asking him his simple list of questions. ‘He displayed a certain paranoia. These days, that isn’t unusual. He called in security on a couple of occasions. He felt the integrity of his office might have been breached, that it might have been searched. He said he’d put hairs across his desk drawers or something. I said, while sharing his concerns, that it was very unlikely that the place could have been turned over. He was also anxious that he might have a virus or bug on his mobile. Nothing was ever found. He was always changing phones.’

‘Did you tell all this to our colleagues on the main inquiry?’ asked Quill.

‘Of course. They wrote down everything. But at that point we were all convinced it was an open-and-shut case of a protestor forcing his way into the car.’

Now here, thought Quill, is a diplomat. If Lofthouse went back to Jason Forrest and created trouble about that, she’d have something to work with, but if it made too many waves, Clough would have absolute deniability. ‘So you don’t think the driver, Tunstall, did it?’

‘Well, who knows? But he and Michael were certainly friendly. Tunstall would come in to see him before they went home almost every day. They’d have a cup of tea.’

‘Do you mean they were … too friendly?’

Clough sighed. ‘I don’t think their relationship was anything that out of the ordinary.’

* * *

‘Bloody hell,’ said Quill, as he walked into Spatley’s office and took his first slow look around. ‘We actually have a few tiny new possibilities to follow up.’

‘A vague indication of possible motive,’ confirmed Lofthouse. ‘That Spatley was worried about being listened in on, that he might have been about to do … something.’ The room they were in was clean and plush, all leather on the desk, panelling on the walls, wooden floors. Outside was a more modern cubicle space, where Treasury civil servants worked. Lofthouse, Quill noted, did what she always did when she entered a crime scene: went to touch the walls, as if measuring something. He found himself wondering if that had anything to do with her mysterious links to the Continuing Projects Team from the Docklands ruins. They were meant to be architects, weren’t they?

She saw him watching her, and dropped her hand from the wall. ‘What?’

Quill shook his head. ‘Things I am not allowed to ask you about.’

‘You know I wouldn’t conceal anything that could harm your team.’

‘Then-’

‘But I’m really not going to go into it. I can’t. Okay?’

Quill could only force a dissatisfied smile.

Lofthouse pulled on a pair of evidence gloves and threw another pair to Quill. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘let’s get started.’

They started by turning out the desk drawers, looking under them, tapping them for false bottoms. ‘You know, when you said I didn’t need to bring one of my officers-’ began Quill.

‘You thought you’d be doing this on your own?’

‘Kind of.’

Lofthouse gave him a look of mock annoyance.

A young suit stepped into the room, saw they were there and reacted in shock for a moment, then obviously remembered who they were, made his apologies and left.

‘That,’ said Quill. ‘That.’

‘What?’

‘Spatley felt this place had been searched. But even with him deceased, civil servants have to keep popping in here. No search that went unnoticed could have been very thorough. And it can’t have been done by anything invisible and occult, because that couldn’t have got in here.’

‘We are in a Ripper-free zone.’

‘A suspect still on our Ops Board — that is, Tunstall — came in here for regular cups of tea. Nobody would have paid attention to him popping in when Spatley wasn’t about.’

Lofthouse stopped what she was doing. ‘And do you know what I would have said if I was Tunstall and I’d just been accused of murdering someone I’d had regular cups of tea with?’

‘I’d say I’d never do that, that we were friends,’ said Quill, feeling as if he wanted to slap her heartily on the back or something equally inappropriate. ‘But Tunstall hasn’t seen fit to mention that, has he? It’s as if he knows that drawing attention to his close relationship with Spatley, and mentioning that he popped in here for tea and sympathy, might implicate rather than exonerate him.’

Lofthouse nodded. ‘You know, when coppers tell me they searched a room, I do tend to ask, considering how many times a second search is required in order to find the evidence we’re after-’

‘You reckon they just opened every drawer and read every piece of paper, and didn’t, for instance, lift up those heavy bookcases and filing cabinets?’

‘Of course, a normal human evildoer who was short of time wouldn’t have moved the furniture in his search either.’

‘So…’ said Quill, taking off his jacket.

‘I wish,’ said Lofthouse, ‘that I had come dressed for manual labour.’

They hauled every piece of furniture in the room out of its designated place. They revealed the remains of food, and a spider that must have felt they were hunting it down as it skittered from one hiding place to another. On the underside of a cabinet they found a cluster of obvious fingerprints in deep dust. Quill felt sudden copper glee. ‘If you were doing this fast, you wouldn’t bother with gloves, either.’

‘If they’re Tunstall’s, he can probably explain them away. Dropped his keys or something.’

‘Yeah, but at least it’ll give him an awkward five minutes under interview. It’ll be even better if we can find what he might have been after.’ He continued to search while Lofthouse put in a call to get some Scene of Crime Officers over to record the prints.

It was under the last bookcase he hauled away from the wall: something white and dusty revealed between it and the skirting board. A business card. Quill picked it up. It looked as if it must have been dropped down there by accident. He showed it to Lofthouse. One side was blank apart from a mobile number written in biro. ‘Relax in the Underworld’ said the lettering on the other side, with an address in Berwick Street in Soho.

‘A brothel,’ said Lofthouse.

Quill laughed. ‘I would have needed to look that up, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Excellent. We finally have some juice.’

‘Politically, it might be an idea to give this to Jason Forrest.’ Lofthouse said it as if she was sure Quill would say no, but she just wanted to put it out there.

Quill gave her her due, mentally rolled the dice, but finally shook his head. ‘No, ma’am, I’m going to keep that from him for the moment. We’re going to want to check the place out and I don’t want the main investigation crashing through there, perhaps disturbing evidence only we can see.’

‘James-’

‘I know, ma’am, on my head be it.’ He got out his mobile. ‘We can use the old reverse phone book to look up the number and see whose phone it is, but best foot forward.’ He dialled the number on the card. He waited a moment, then, without speaking, switched off his phone again. ‘Straight to voicemail, just the automated greeting.’

‘Are you going to interview Tunstall again?’ asked Lofthouse.

‘I’ll get that sorted for tomorrow,’ said Quill. ‘And this time we’ll all be bad cop.’

* * *

Sefton and Ross found the hotel that Gaiman’s agent had given them the address for. It was a simple three storeys, Victorian from the look of it, in the Seven Dials area, with the intersection of streets of that name visible from the door. Ross asked at the desk, and they were shown up to an ornate library, where armchairs were positioned in the sunshine and a breeze blew through the open windows. Nobody else was about. Sefton felt an ache in his legs as he sat down. He felt only half here, wanting to get on with finding the numinous in the world, but not knowing how. The Ripper, or rather his message, was exposing fault lines across London, and the bolder the rioters and rival groups of protestors became, the less the police seemed to be able to do to prevent them. His dreams made him feel as if he was being rifled through, and he woke with an urgent need to do something about all this. Still, he supposed, they were about to talk with someone who, according to Quill, might know more about occult London than they did. Background was always useful. But if Gaiman knew anything of direct relevance to the case, he’d be surprised.

‘Hullo.’ So this must be Gaiman, entering the room with a guarded expression on his face. He was all in black: a good-looking man, a long face, a lot of emotion around the eyes. Now he’d stopped and was looking startled at them. ‘You two are police officers?’

Sefton showed him his warrant card, and, as they all tended to do now, omitted to add that Ross technically wasn’t an officer.

‘I saw you both in the Goat.’ Gaiman motioned for them to sit down at a table by the window, and he followed. ‘Were you there undercover?’

‘That would be an operational matter,’ said Ross. She seemed burdened today, nervous about something. On the way over, she’d hardly replied to Sefton’s attempts to start a conversation.

Gaiman frowned at them for another moment, then seemed to decide on a more friendly course of action and extended his hand. ‘Neil.’ They introduced themselves in turn. ‘Thank you for blowing up my favourite bar.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sefton, ‘not deliberate.’

‘No, I think actually it was a mercy killing. You and your boss didn’t see the place at its best.’

‘Our boss?’ said Ross, raising an eyebrow.

‘The one who looked a bit lost there, stayed behind to help and looked like something out of The Sweeney.’

‘Our boss,’ Ross conceded.

‘He’s not an undercover,’ sighed Sefton.

‘Do you also have the Sight?’ Gaiman asked. From the look on her face, Ross was about to say that was also an operational matter, so Sefton quickly confirmed they did. ‘You’re the first police officers I’ve ever heard of who had the gift.’

‘Were you aware,’ asked Sefton, ‘of anyone before us who tried to bring law to the Sighted community?’

‘People say there was someone, but I don’t know who. Everyone seems to think that sort of went away a few years ago. I take it you’re investigating a particular case … and now, of course, I realize, having seen the news, that it’s obvious what that might be.’

‘We’re just putting together some background context,’ said Sefton, wishing he could share more information with this man. He was, after all, the only friendly human being they’d met who saw the world the way they did. A waiter arrived, and they all ordered tea. Gaiman asked for honey with his, and, while they waited, all aware that their conversation would get intense again once there was no possibility of being interrupted, talked about the bees he kept at his home in the States. ‘Each hive has its own personality,’ he said. ‘They have moods. You can’t really call a single bee an individual. The hive will sacrifice it for a greater good.’ Once the waiter had returned, he got them both to try a spoonful of the particular honey he’d asked for. It was, Sefton was pleased to discover, delicious.

When the waiter closed the door behind him, Gaiman put his hands on the table. ‘So … the Ripper…’

Sefton had got out his special notebook, which by now was a very randomly organized grimoire of notes and diagrams concerning ‘the matter of London’. Ross had got out her much more functional notebooks. ‘Sorry to keep on about it, but we can’t talk about operational matters. If you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions…?’

‘Sure.’

‘You told our boss that you’d been given the Sight via an artefact passed to you by a fan,’ began Ross. ‘We’re interested in any information you might be able to give us about what could be called the occult community in London. How, for example, did you get involved with them?’

‘I wrote a book called Neverwhere. It was a TV show first — you probably wouldn’t have seen it. The novel version is very different, because in between the two I’d been given the Sight. So the novel was a rather more authentic, if still metaphorical, story about there being a hidden London. Some of the folk who live here and know about these things picked up on that, and they started to come along to signings. And I’d sort of know, whenever I shook the hand of one of them?’ He had that American end-of-sentence question in his accent, Sefton noted. ‘They’d very kindly invite me along to their get-togethers, and, whenever I could, I went. They’re very set in their ways, but the odd thing is that London isn’t.’ He raised a finger and held it there as he seemed to want to completely explore a thought before he said it. ‘Have you been to any of the other cities of the Sight?’

Ross sounded slightly defensive. ‘No.’

‘We’ve been a bit busy,’ said Sefton.

‘Paris is quite something. Cork I didn’t really understand. Northampton is kind of … cute. Barnsley is delightful. New York is exactly what you’d expect.’

‘Right,’ said Sefton, hoping that he sounded as if he knew what New York was expected to be.

‘Listen, you’ve heard of Jerusalem Syndrome?’ Gaiman looked away as he continued, as if realizing there was the potential of rudeness here if he assumed knowledge they didn’t have. ‘When people go to Jerusalem, and within days, hours sometimes, they become convinced that they’re not just a very naughty boy but are actually the Messiah? Well, I think that’s sort of what the Sight is. That written large. Jerusalem, as far as I know, isn’t a city of the Sight, though it has, as everywhere does, a handful of features only the Sighted can see, and no, I don’t know why some cities are like this and others aren’t. The Sight gives other cities the same superpowers over the human psyche that Jerusalem has. Both effects are about the buildings, about what the shape of individual cities does to the natural human heart. I don’t mean just the buildings — that’s only one of many layers. You’ve seen people make gestures now, use their voices? That’s that layer. But if you place the buildings right…’ He quickly moved the places of the cups and teapot on the table. ‘That’s another way to work with it.’ He pointed out of the window. ‘I met you here so I could show you this. We’re at Seven Dials, the conjunction of seven roads. When you look at the pillar in the middle, using the Sight, what do you feel?’

Oh. Sefton reached out for the pillar with the Sight and found himself repulsed almost immediately. In a small way. That was probably why he hadn’t looked at it like that on the way in here. It was like the thought of some small guilt that you got reminded of and skipped past. Like he felt about Barry Keel. He wouldn’t have noticed it without it being pointed out.

‘Yup.’ Gaiman smiled. ‘Seven roads lead here. It’s said this was once the place in London with the highest crime rate because of that, by the way, with seven roads for a thief to flee down. But that pillar in the middle of them bears only six sun dials, because the pillar was designed before the seventh road was added at the last minute. So this is really Six Dials. London knows that and it drives it crazy. And so it also drives people who concentrate on the pillar crazy. Just a little. More or less depending on the time of day, actually. That’s why those with the Sight call this place “the Severed Streets”. They’re aware something went wrong at the planning stage, and that it doesn’t contribute as positively as it should to the occult power of London.’

Ross had an expression on her face that indicated she didn’t want to be interested in this seeming irrelevance, but couldn’t help it. ‘Why did the number of roads change?’

‘Money. They wanted to build as many houses as they possibly could. And that meant seven pubs, and so you put the pattern of the Sight and the pattern of money together, and you get one of the most notorious neighbourhoods in London, for a long time, until someone must have sorted that out. Probably someone who knew what they were doing.’

‘So the power of money and the power of London are at odds?’ asked Sefton.

‘I’ve been wondering about that. I think it’s more that the power of money doesn’t care about the shape of London, and so sometimes people with money try to do things that go against the grain.’ He smiled a warm smile at them. ‘Being police among all this, you must find your world view gets … distorted by it. You must keep trying to find straight lines.’

‘That’s pretty much our job description now.’ Sefton found himself wanting to go on a research trip to New York. To do that would give you such context. He also wanted to know which holiday destinations were ‘cities of the Sight’ before he went to any of them. ‘Do you do any … practical work yourself?’

‘A few youthful experiments. Now I like to live in places where that would be impossible, where I don’t have to see unexpected things before breakfast.’

‘What did you sacrifice?’ asked Ross.

‘You can always find something.’ He poured the tea, looking away, as if distracted again.

‘Such as?’

He stopped and regarded them seriously for a moment. ‘Nothing that would get me into trouble with you. Am I suspected of something?’

‘Not at all,’ said Sefton. ‘As we said, this is just background.’

‘Who or what do you sacrifice to?’ asked Ross, now firmly in interview room mode.

Gaiman sighed. ‘London, as a concept, as is traditional, but … okay, I don’t know how far you’re into this-’

Sefton was startled. ‘There’s something else to sacrifice to now?’

‘Yeah. You get that feeling now. I’ve been looking into this, and…’ He stopped and considered again for a moment. Sefton wondered if that speech habit was really because his thoughts distracted him, or if he was being careful about what he revealed to them. From the look on her face, Ross certainly seemed to be favouring the latter interpretation. ‘Listen,’ Gaiman said suddenly, ‘do you know about ostentation?’

‘Please,’ said Sefton, ‘tell us.’

‘It’s a term from folklore, used there in the context of what are called “friend of a friend stories”. You know, “there was this stoned woman who put her baby in the microwave” — urban legends. Well, sometimes, in cities that aren’t Sighted, those stories come true simply because enough people have heard about them, and in a big population there’s always someone mad enough to try it, whatever it is. But in cities of the Sight, I think that can happen a lot more easily. I think in London, to announce something is sometimes to take a further step towards that thing actually happening than would be the case outside. I think that might be what the phrase “streets paved with gold” in the pantomime means, to those in the know. That the streets of London are infused with-’

‘That golden threadlike stuff.’

‘Yeah. But I don’t exactly know what that is. I’ve only ever seen it a couple of times.’

‘When?’

‘When my youthful experiments messed up. Unless the golden thread is preset to do something, I think you only see it when things go wrong. It’s like lines of code in software. You’re only meant to experience the effects. Have you seen the silver stuff?’

‘The power source?’ said Sefton.

Gaiman pointed at him with a little nod and pursed lips — an expression that made Sefton feel perversely proud of himself. ‘These are visual metaphors for control and power that only the Sighted can access. Whether or not you’d say the gold and silver stuff is real … I’m not even sure that’s a sensible question. I only ever saw either when something I did went wrong.’

‘You never saw the silver splattered around?’ asked Ross.

‘Not especially. It’s very valuable. It’s actually the definition of value to those who are Privileged to work with the matter of London. It is the power they’ve sacrificed for. They tend to make sure it does what it’s supposed to.’

‘Are there any other ways of getting power, apart from making a sacrifice?’ Ross was using the tone she’d employ in an interview room, which was making Sefton smile.

‘You hear about people stealing power from others, or finding it or having it gifted to them, but those tend to be one-offs in specific circumstances.’

‘Okay,’ said Sefton, with a little look to Ross, who was now making notes at high speed. ‘You were talking about how things happen more easily in London if they’re talked about as being possible. Is that the start of London “remembering” something?’

Gaiman asked what exactly he meant by that, and Sefton tried to fill him in, without revealing operational details, about the conclusions his team had come to concerning, for example, the moment when Losley had been remembered by the metropolis and ghosts of her had appeared everywhere.

Gaiman finally nodded. ‘I didn’t know there was a name for it. But, yeah, when I’m here, I try not to talk about babies in microwaves. Try standing in Berkeley Square and reciting a poem about nightingales, over and over, for a day. My wife did that once.’ He found a picture of her doing so on his phone and showed it to them. ‘At the end, we were hearing their song, just faintly, but it was there. That’s a quaint feature. It can become pretty un-quaint. I think you might find that very important.’

Sefton was remembering their own terrifying adventures in Berkeley Square and could see that Ross had made the connection too. That wasn’t relevant right now.

Gaiman leaned forward. ‘There’s a question you want to ask me,’ he said, ‘but feel that you can’t, because it’d give too much away about what you’re investigating. So let me answer it anyway. No, I don’t think this Ripper of yours is a product of ostentation. He’s certainly been “remembered” by London, but-’

‘That’s confined to where it should be, in Whitechapel,’ said Ross.

She got one of Gaiman’s affirming nods too. ‘But I have been wondering if the sudden appearances of these flash mobs might be a product of ostentation. In London, tweeting about something might be planting the seed of that thing happening-’

‘So tweeting about a riot-’ said Sefton.

‘-could start one. If you knew how to do it just right. But also, imagine doing the opposite. What if you could seed the idea, especially right now, that everything was okay? That might start to make everything better.’ He smiled hugely.

‘Catching the Ripper would do exactly that,’ said Sefton.

‘It would,’ said Gaiman.

‘You seem,’ said Ross, ‘to be telling us a lot about what we need to do.’

‘Do I? Sorry.’

They asked him all their detailed questions about everyone they’d seen in the pub, but he could only provide scant detail. They explored Ripper connections with him and asked if Sighted cities ever turned against the rich, if one could push the powers of a place too far. ‘It is said,’ he replied to that, ‘that it’s hard for a rich man to enter Jerusalem through the gate they call the Eye of the Needle. That’s where the proverb comes from.’

Sefton for the first time wondered if Gaiman was making it all up; that didn’t agree with what he’d read. ‘I thought there was no such gate.’

‘That’s true,’ said Gaiman, gently, ‘unless you have the Sight. More honey?’