Thirteen seconds of hiss, then:

‘Take her in Preston, and I did, didn’t I George? Dirty cow. Come my load up that.

‘At the rate I’m going I should be in the book of records. I think it’s eleven up to now isn’t it? Well, I’ll keep on going for quite a while yet. I can’t see myself being nicked just yet. Even if you do get near I’ll probably top myself first. Well it’s been nice chatting to you George. Yours, Jack the Ripper.

‘No use looking for fingerprints. You should know by now it’s as clean as a whistle. See you soon. Bye.

‘Hope you like the catchy tune at the end. Ha. Ha.’

Reed leans forward and switches off the cassette just as Thank You for Being a Friend starts.

‘As you know that was June last year,’ says Warren. ‘What you won’t know is that Home Secretary Whitelaw immediately approved the use of the Police National Computer to back up covert surveillance operations of vehicles in the West Yorkshire area, to use birth and school registers to cross-reference these against all males born in Wearside since 1920. He also secretly approved the release of DHSS records to trace all males who have lived or worked in Wearside in the past fifty years. So far they’ve interviewed and eliminated 200,000 people, done over 30,000 house to house searches, taken over 25,000 statements, and spent the best part of four million pounds.’

‘And most of it on bloody publicity,’ says Sir John Reed.

‘Flush out the Ripper,’ whispers Philip Evans.

Sir John snorts: ‘Some bloody plan that was. 17,000 fucking suspects.’

‘Some bloody plan,’ repeats Michael Warren, putting in another cassette tape, pressing play again:

‘Every time the phone rings I wonder if it’s him. If I get up in the middle of the night I find myself thinking about him. I feel after all this time, I feel that I really know him.’