Evans is nodding: ‘The public is unlikely to accept two simultaneous investigations. Secondly, nor will the West Yorkshire lads. Thirdly, we don’t want to wash our dirty linen in public etc., should there be any. Morale being what it is these days.’

I look around the room.

Sir John Reed says: ‘So go on, ask?’

‘Ask what, sir?’

‘Why me? That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? That’s what I’d want to know.’

‘OK. Why me?’

Reed nods at Michael Warren.

‘Primarily your work with A10,’ says Warren. ‘And the fact that you’ve previously been involved with investigations into the West Yorkshire force.’

‘With all due respect, one investigation was over five years ago and failed to reach any conclusion, aside from making me possibly the most unpopular copper in the North. And the second one was over before it began.’

‘Eric Hall,’ Evans says to the other two.

I look down at the cup of cold instant coffee on the table before me, the light reflecting in its black surface.

‘Hunter the Cunt, they call you,’ laughs Sir John Reed.

I look up at him.

‘That bother you, does it?’ Reed asks.

‘No,’ I say.

‘So there’s your answer.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I make spies of them despite themselves,’ he smiles.

‘General Napier,’ I say.

Sir John Reed has stopped smiling: ‘You know your history.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know my history.’

Outside it’s snowing.

There is blood on my windscreen, a dead gull on the lawn.

I switch on the windscreen wipers and drive back alone across the M62, alone between the articulated lorries crawling slowly along, the weather stark, the landscape empty -

Just murder and lies, lies and murder:

‘The Yorkshire Ripper has claimed his thirteenth victim, as police confirmed that Laureen Bell, aged twenty, was killed by the man responsible…’