There had been one unexpected down side to the Intent to Kill documentary and the associated Silver Fox publicity that had come after it: Lestrade was, at least temporarily, no good for interviewing anyone on the streets of Whitechapel. He was too distinct, too much a fifteen-minute celebrity, though it pained him to leave Donovan, Dyer and Sherlock to head up all the fun of rounding up and interviewing sex workers, pimps, addicts and other down-and-outs in the Whitechapel area.

Instead, Lestrade had taken Halloran to interview the family of Mary Ann Nichols, including her ex-husband, Bill. Twenty-four years in the murder squad had taught Lestrade one thing, if nothing else: When a married or divorced woman died, cherchez l'homme.

It really was a pity that Bill Nichols had an unshakeable alibi for the time of his wife's death, in the form of a night shift at Perkins Bacon. Otherwise, he was prime suspect material: an ex with a grudge. He had custody of the younger four of the five children Polly had given him, and they were crowded into one dingy flat in Peckham. The oldest boy, Eddie, had moved out to live with Polly's father in Camberwell. On going to speak with Ted Walker, Lestrade and Halloran found both he and his namesake grandson hated Bill with a passion, and neither would put murder past him.

"God, that's ghastly," Halloran said as they were leaving Walker's flat with reams of information on the life of Polly Nichols, nee Walker. Not much of Ted's information was useful. He and Eddie had left out a lot of unsavoury things about Polly's character out of respect for the dead. They'd left out, for example, something background checks had already told police: she'd had several cleaning jobs in the seven years since her divorce, and lost every single one because she was light-fingered.

"Yeah," Lestrade said, itching to light a cigarette. "More importantly, it's not helpful. Bill Nichols is probably capable of doing it morally, but he physically couldn't have, so that's that."

Or not. It had only been two weeks since he'd failed to solve a crime because of the conviction that the guilty party couldn't have been at the scene at the right time. Before Halloran could say anything more, Lestrade's phone rang. Donovan.

"Hey, Greg," she said, forgetting or not bothering to call him by anything more respectful on work time. "I've got one for you, but unless you leg it down to the Blind Beggar right now, I think I'm going to lose her."

"Leaving now." Lestrade glanced at his watch. The Blind Beggar was just around the corner from where Polly Nichols had been murdered. He'd even driven past it on his way to and from the scene. "Who is she?"

"A woman named Annie Chapman. Asked for you by name. Have you met her?"

Lestrade thought back to the women he'd interviewed after Tabram's murder: two or three who had seen Tabram and Pearly Poll pick up the Grenadiers. 'Annie' wasn't ringing a bell.

"I don't think so," he said. "Pearly Poll might've talked me up to somebody. She won't talk to you?"

"Not a word. Won't talk to Dyer, either, not even when he's being really adorable. But if I thought she was wasting your time, I wouldn't have called."

"It's fine, I believe you. Otherwise, how are things going?"

"Hardly," she said. "You know what I'm about to ask for, don't you?"

"Manpower."

"Womanpower, if you want to be more specific. We're all getting the same vibes off the street girls: they're scared of someone, but they're too scared to tell us anything. Or at least, they won't tell the male officers anything, and I'm barely getting anywhere. I think they think we're the vice squad."

"So you want some nice, sympathetic female officers to talk them 'round. I'll do my best—see who can be pulled off other duties."

"Can we look farther afield than London? It pisses me off that there are officers in, I dunno, some tiny village in Sussex put to chasing people's escaped livestock when we've got this sicko on the loose."

Lestrade thought this one through. "I'll ask Hale," he said. "I don't like my chances, though."

"Because our sicko isn't butchering nice, middle-class white mothers."

"I wasn't going to put it like that, but now you mention it."

"God, that makes me sick."

"I know. Don't get distracted, Donovan. All victims are equal. Let's just get on with it and get this bastard. I'll be there in twenty-five minutes—do whatever you can to stop this Annie Chapman from leaving, will you?"

Lestrade had driven past the Blind Beggar pub on Whitechapel Road many times since moving to London, though he'd never before had the opportunity to go inside. A true London landmark, especially in the annals of crime: on a cold evening in March 1966, gangster Ronnie Kray had strolled in and shot rival George Cornell right between the eyes in front of the whole bar.

On stepping inside for the first time, Lestrade felt a wave of disappointment. This wasn't the smoke-filled den of iniquity he'd imagined since childhood. This was yuppie paradise. The furnishings were old and well-kept, all dark wood and walls painted a deep shade of emerald; so far, so authentic. But the bar walls were dotted with tasteless Kray memorabilia, along with one tiny plaque mentioning the Blind Beggar's other claim to fame, as the location of William Booth's first sermon, before he'd gone on to found the Salvation Army. The drinks menu was crowded with drinks Lestrade didn't even recognise, and the price of a pint made his eyes water.

Donovan was sitting in one corner with a fair-haired man of about thirty; if he was a police officer, he wasn't in uniform and Lestrade didn't recognise him as a detective. That hair would never pass on duty, anyway. He looked like he'd recently been kidnapped from a beach in Hawaii.

On seeing Lestrade, Donovan dropped off the bar stool and came over, the young man at her heels. "Sir, this is George Hutchinson, he's a centre worker for the Whitechapel Mission," she said, all deference in front of the stranger who might get the wrong idea about how she and Lestrade usually addressed one another. "This is his patch, so I thought he might be a help with some of the women in the area. Mr. Hutchinson, this is Detective Inspector Lestrade, who's heading up the investigation into the murders of Martha Tabram and Mary Ann Nichols."

Lestrade shook his hand. "So, someone's willing to talk?"

"If she's still sober enough to," Donovan said grimly. "I've had to buy her two rounds just to keep her here. Over there." She pointed to a low table in the corner. Looking over, Lestrade saw his witness and groaned inwardly.

Annie Chapman was, it seemed, doing a little better than Martha Tabram or Polly Nichols. Her clothes were shabby, but clean; her greying brown hair was not clean, but it was neat. She was a short, stout woman, barely five foot tall, with clear, intelligent blue eyes. As she gave him a nervous smile in greeting, Lestrade saw that she also had surprisingly good teeth. Still, he had his doubts as to her sobriety and perhaps her mental health.

"What's she like?" he asked Hutchinson.

"A good sort," he said. "Drinks, you know, but she could do worse. Scared to death you're going to arrest her for soliciting."

"She's…"

"With it," Hutchinson smiled. "I know not all of our clients are, but she is. I think she's clever, when she's sober… excuse me…" He pulled his ringing phone out of his pocket and wandered away to answer it.

"Where's Sherlock?" Lestrade asked. "And Dyer, for that matter?"

"Trawling brothels, last I heard, interviewing the staff." She grinned. "Sorry, but it cracks me up even thinking about those two in a house of ill repute."

"Behave, Donovan," Lestrade said, though he was trying not to smile himself. "Actually, don't behave. Buy me a pint and bring it over."

She raised her eyebrows. "Excuse me, Detective Inspector On-Duty?"

"Discretionary," he explained, and it was true; he had the discretion to drink, smoke and do just about anything else on duty to get witnesses to open up, unless it was downright illegal.

"You just want a drink, don't you."

"Maybe. If you have one too, will you lighten up?"

Without waiting to hear the answer, he went over to Annie Chapman, who looked up at him at the last minute. Sober enough, he judged, taking in her expression as quickly as possible. And that was no surprise. People built up a tolerance to alcohol over time. Half of these five-foot-tall women in the East End could probably drink him under the table on a good day.

"Annie…?" he ventured. "I'm Greg Lestrade. Sally said you wanted to talk to me?"

She nodded, and he pulled out a chair and sat down, leaving silence between them. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Donovan at the bar.

Annie glanced in Donovan's direction too, and Lestrade hoped sincerely that his sergeant had been civil. "Yes," Annie said. "Well, it's just that Poll Connelly said…"

"Oh, I bet she said a lot of things about me," he said, chipper and charming. "All good, I assume. As in, I assume she told you I couldn't care less what you do for a living, as long as you're safe."

Annie gave him another weak smile: again, those teeth. Healthy and white. She'd seen a dentist recently. "She said you were looking for whoever killed Emma Turner, and wanted information about anyone who might have done it," she said.

Emma Turner. Known on every register and record as Martha Tabram. Lestrade knew it was better to have Chapman talk while she had the confidence to, but he made a mental note to confirm with her whether 'Annie Chapman' was actually her legal name.

"She was right," he said instead. "And you've got something to tell me."

"Well, it's about time someone did," she said. "Nobody else is game. See, but the problem is, I don't know this fella's name."

"That's okay," he said, though his heart was sinking. "We'll find him anyway. I just need whatever information you've got. Does he go by an alias, or…?"

"We know him as 'Leather Apron'."

"'Leather Apron'?"

She looked patronising. "We don't ask for our clients' names," she said. "If we've got regulars, we give them nicknames, what we use behind their backs. There's one we call Cat Food Man. Another one we call Bobo the Clown. We call this one Leather Apron 'cause he's usually wearing one… he fixes shoes or blacks boots or something. Or at least he did, 'cause none of us have seen him in a fortnight, and that's a long time for him not to be around."

"So he's a client?"

"Used to be. I wouldn't go with him for all the money in London now. He's a mental case."

"Mental case, like, how? Violent?"

She indicated a scar on her jawline. "Pushed me," she said. "I hit a, you know, one of those things across a gate."

"What did he do that for?" Lestrade, looking back to the bar again, saw that Donovan had bought a couple of pints and was hesitating as to whether to bring them over. He gestured to her and she stalked over and put his glass on the table, then backed off again with her own.

"Don't know," Chapman was saying. "His English isn't great. Something made him angry, and you know, with him, anything could make him angry—you're wearing the wrong colour today, or he doesn't like the look of the sky…"

Great, Lestrade thought. The only consolation in chasing down someone with a significant mental illness was that they were usually dead easy to catch. But that wasn't the only thing that now had his attention.

"So English isn't his first language," he said. "Do you know what nationality he is?"

"Russian, or Polish, or something," she said. "We think he's Jewish, actually."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, he looks Jewish," she said, matter-of-fact, even though Lestrade hadn't the faintest clue what she meant by this. "And he's had the snip, hasn't he."

"Can you describe the rest of him?"

That got another smile out of her. "Short and nuggety," she said.

"How short?" He glanced at Donovan, who was talking to George Hutchinson again. "Shorter than Sergeant Donovan, do you think?"

Chapman looked. "By about that much," she said, indicating a space between her fingers. Lestrade made a mental note of it, in the old imperial system: about five foot five.

"Short hair, very dark," she said. "And a little goatee. Always has this dark cap on, like he's a fisherman or something… You'd know him if you saw him. It's his face that creeps us all out."

"Why's that?"

"Just the look on it. He's got these small, piggy eyes, and Mr. Lestrade, he's always smiling. It's horrible. He was smiling when he shoved me against the gate. He was smiling when he took to Bec Allsopp with a bullwhip."

"A bullwhip?"

"I told you he was mental, now, didn't I?"

"What did your—actually, Annie, I'm going to ask, and feel free to slap me if you think I'm over the line. I've talked to a lot of sex workers this week, and none of you seem to have a pimp. Why's that?"

She laughed. "It's much the same whether you get the shite beaten out of you by a client or a pimp," she said. "And if you're going to take that beating, you prefer it from someone who doesn't take a cut of your money. Ten quid isn't much as it is, without a pimp digging his grotty little hands into it."

Lestrade stopped himself just before he could ask, out of pure curiosity, what services you got from Annie Chapman for ten quid. "Makes sense," he said instead. "But when you get a client like this Leather Apron character, then. Who protects you when he goes off?"

"Nobody," she said. "Unless you protect yourself. I reckon that's why Polly and Emma are dead."

Half an hour later, John finally arrived at Molly's bedside. He hadn't brought Charlie with him, he explained apologetically. He'd had errands to run and had left her at the flat with Harry.

"Oh, yes, she said." Molly strove to override anything in her voice that sounded like suspicion. The longer she'd been hospitalised, the longer and more elaborate John's stories and explanations of the world outside the hospital doors had become. He'd never before resorted to vague references to 'errands'.

But she was holding her own secret, sort of. Telling John what had happened between her and Rachel was asking for trouble—or at least asking for another blow-up from John. That might be enough for Dianne, who had just come on the afternoon shift, to get the police or social services involved. The idea that anyone could think John was abusing her made Molly angry; the idea that anyone could think he'd hurt his children was too monstrous to contemplate. And the last thing Dianne needed to overhear was John getting testy with her if she pressed him about what errands he'd been running that morning.

He seemed less harrassed than had been usual recently, and though she'd been disappointed that he hadn't brought Charlie, it was undoubtedly better for his stress levels. He had a glossy black file with him, and once he'd greeted her and the twins properly he sat down and pulled a few papers out of it, holding them out to her. "Mary Ann Nichols's post-mortem notes," he said.

"Oh!" She broke into a smile. "I was hoping to have a look. Thank you…"

"Thought it'd warm the cockles of your morbid little heart, my love." He smiled, and she thought it might have been the first genuine smile she'd seen out of him in days that wasn't prompted by his children.

"Were you there for it?" she asked, speed-reading through the abstract.

"Not this time. Shame, though. Sounds like it was… on the exciting side, for a post-mortem."

Molly settled in and began reading the post-mortem report in earnest, half-listening to John whispering a charming one-sided conversation with Sophie and Louise in the incubator beside his chair.

The dead woman's throat had been slashed twice, from ear to ear, all the way down to the spinal column and penetrating the vertebrae. Her abdomen had been laid open from just below the sternum to the pubic mound, but nothing in the notes indicated any of her organs had been removed. Pondering those details, she forced herself to put all thoughts of her recent hysterectomy out of her mind. It had been done under a general anaesthetic, and she had no memory of what had happened between some fuzzy, barely-conscious moments while they were still in their room at Arndale Hall and waking up in intensive care after it was all over. But reading of the fate of Mary Ann Nichols after death caused a sympathetic twinge deep within her that hurt.

"Throat cut from left to right," she said finally, looking up at John. "He's left-handed, then?"

John shrugged. "You're the expert," he said.

She went back to her notes, backing up a paragraph or two and rereading. "Mmm. It's hard to tell. Of course, if he cut her throat from behind he's almost certainly right-handed. That'd be sensible. He wouldn't want to get blood all over himself. But the notes say there was no blood on the front of her dress either?"

"None that I saw," John said, stroking Sophie's arm with one finger. "Her dress was black, but still…"

"It says here that most of the blood, and there wasn't much of it, soaked the back of her dress," she said. "Which is consistent with her lying down on the pavement at the time her throat was cut."

"So, strangled?"

"If I had to testify it in court, I'd say the injuries are consistent with it. Face discoloured. And they found a laceration on her tongue consistent with her having bitten it, which you would if you were being manually strangled… are you okay?"

John had drawn his hand out of the incubator and scrubbed it over his face. "Yeah," he said, taking a deep breath. "Just tired."

"You look terrible—no, I mean, you look tired. Charlie's not sleeping?"

"She has to be, but I hardly ever catch her at it. Are you completely sure she doesn't have an 'off' button?"

Molly reached over and squeezed his hand. "Come on," she said. "Come up here with me."

"On the bed? You're sure it won't…"

"It's fine. There's lots of room, and the stitches have nearly healed, anyway."

Molly entirely expected John to refuse her, either on the grounds that he'd somehow hurt her or that it wasn't the time or the place to be silly. Instead, he took his shoes off and climbed up onto the mattress beside her, cupping her shoulder with one hand and burying his face in her neck.

"I love you," he murmured. "I know I keep forgetting to tell you, but you know, right?"

She lifted her head, but he was half-asleep already and she could read nothing from his expression.

Of course he loved her. She'd always known how hard it was for him to say it, but she had never doubted it.

But why say it now?

She drew him closer and shut her eyes—it had been a rough night for her, too. A few seconds later, she heard the familiar clop of low-heeled, regulation shoes outside the door. They stopped, and she sensed a shadow fall across the doorway. Then the footsteps moved off down the corridor and the shadow was gone.