The offices of the Daily Clarion occupied three floors of a grand five-storey building closer to the legal end of the street. An advertising agency and a magazine publishing company, both also owned by Harry Lennox, had the other floors.

The mighty printing presses themselves were on the ground floor, throwing their iron weight behind the flimsy ephemeral stories that their human collaborators spun upstairs. They were, in fact, visible from the street, as Lennox had had the idea to open up the front of the building and fit vast sheets of plate glass, which extended the full height of the first storey. He also kept the printing presses floodlit through the night. It was a stroke of marketing genius on his part, symbolizing the Clarion’s role as a Beacon of Truth that could never be extinguished. Lennox was inordinately proud of those plate-glass windows and insisted on their being cleaned twice a day. Every time he entered the building, he checked the glass to ensure that they matched the standards of cleanliness that he required. Not a speck or smear could be allowed to get in the way of this vision of industry and integrity.

The composing room and some commercial offices took the first floor, while the editorial offices were on the second. Content was sent down through the boards in vacuum-driven tubes by the sub-editors to be turned into copy by the compositors on the copy-desk. The constant clack and tap of the linotype machines sounded like the beaks of countless mechanical birds pecking the ground for grains of news.

The edition of Monday, 20 April 1914, had already gone to press when Bittlestone restored the telephone receiver to its stand. His hand was shaking, so it took him several attempts to jab it into the holder. As he leapt up from his desk, he was already shouting, ‘Stop press!’

Finch was in his office with his feet on his desk, about to light his customary cigar to celebrate putting another edition successfully to bed. He viewed Bittlestone’s intervention with sour suspicion, as if he believed the journalist was motivated merely by a desire to prevent him enjoying his smoke. ‘What did you do to your eye?’

Bittlestone’s hand went self-consciously up to his face. He had forgotten that he had taken off the dark spectacles, as they had made it difficult for him to work. The editorial offices were not as well illuminated at the printing presses on the ground floor.

‘Nothing … I … Look, didn’t you hear me? We have to stop the presses.’

‘This had better be good, Bittlestone. No – it had better be better than good. It had better be sensational.’

‘I’ve just had a call from a source of mine. A bell hop at the Savoy. Paul Berenger, the motion picture actor, has been found dead. It appears to be suicide. He climbed in the hot bath tub and opened his wrists. The place is in uproar.’

The editor was on his feet now. ‘What are you waiting for? Get over there!’

Bittlestone took the stairs two at a time, rushing towards the thundering rumble of the presses. Finch’s remark about his eye prompted him to feel for his dark glasses in his jacket pocket. He must have left them on his desk. No matter. The story was more important than his vanity, although there was perhaps a practical consideration. He knew from experience that the less obtrusive he made himself the more likely he was to get the story. His wound would only draw attention. He hesitated at the bottom of the stairs and was on the verge of going back for the glasses when the sight of the brilliantly illuminated, constantly turning rollers spurred him to go on.

The explosion happened as he walked across the foyer in front of the presses. There was no warning. No premonitory change in the air pressure. No sound of running footsteps. There was just a blinding flash, a boom so loud that it seemed to hollow out his ear drums, and a deep shooting pain burrowing into his eyes. He felt himself lifted by the blast. As if the sound of the explosion had formed a giant hand capable of taking hold of a man and throwing him off his feet. A rain of fine shards fell around him and into him. The strange thing was the unaccountable thing: there was no smoke.

The weight of the world came up to hit him on the back of the head as he landed. Then everything went black.

FORTY-SEVEN

Macadam kept the motor ticking over as he waited for a gap in the traffic. But the Strand was for the moment packed with vehicles, their headlights piercing the darkness with questing impatience, their horn blasts like the bleats of tethered animals.

Quinn felt the throb of the Model T’s engine in every joint of his bones. He was thinking of his father. He peered out into the night, expecting at any moment to see Grant-Sissons. Lurking beneath a street light perhaps, or sinking back into a shop doorway. It was truer to say he was willing the man to appear.

Two suicides in three days. It was as if the universe was forcing him to confront his past. And Grant-Sissons was the nearest he had come in years to finding answers to the questions of the past.

‘You let him go, guv?’

Quinn turned to face Inchball’s question. ‘For now, yes.’

‘So he’s to get off scot-free for making a bleedin’ monkey of us all?’

‘I would hardly describe the reception he received from Mademoiselle Eloise as scot-free.’ But Quinn knew this was disingenuous. Eloise’s rage was meat and drink to Waechter. He had lapped it up. ‘At any rate, I need to confer with Sir Edward. He might wish for the whole Cecil Court affair to be swept under the carpet. We did not exactly cover ourselves in glory over that. Pressing a prosecution would only bring a dubious episode back into the public eye. In addition, it would serve to increase Waechter’s notoriety.’

Inchball glumly pointed out a more serious obstacle. ‘We can’t touch him for it. Don’t have no evidence, do we? Unless he confesses. Or we find that one-eyed bitch an’ she tells us who put her up to it.’

There was a disapproving sound from Macadam in the front.

‘Well, it’s true, ain’t it?’

‘More serious is the question of the connection between Waechter’s irresponsible prank and the murder of Dolores Novak.’

Macadam seemed to have given up trying to pull out into the Strand. ‘Do you think Waechter could have killed the Novak woman, sir?’ he asked.

‘The murder of the victim and the removal of eyes suggests an escalation from the first attack. But if the first attack is not an attack at all – as it appears not to be – but simply a stupid stunt, well, then … what are we to make of that? It is not an escalation. It may actually be unconnected, except thematically. And the theme of vision – the fixation with eyes – that could have been taken independently from Waechter’s film by a particularly disturbed spectator.’

‘It could be anyone!’ cried Inchball in dismay.

‘Not anyone. Someone linked to the film. Possibly someone who was present at the party. That is the line I would encourage us to pursue.’

His sergeants nodded in unison.

And then they heard it. A distinct boom, followed by the tinkling of glass, a sound more refined than the piano in the Savoy.

‘Good God!’

‘Wha’ the bleedin’ ’ell?’

‘It came from that direction,’ said Macadam, pointing east. ‘What shall I do, sir? Back to the Yard, or …’

‘We should go and investigate. By the sounds of it, it was very close.’

‘Fleet Street, I reckon,’ said Inchball. ‘We could leave it for the City of London Force. Technically speaking, it’s none of our bleedin’ business.’

‘This is beyond police jurisdictions, Inchball. It could be the beginning of some kind of attack on our national interests. On our freedoms. An attempt to cow us before open hostilities are declared.’

Inchball nodded. A note of admiration seemed to have entered his voice. ‘How very Bismarckian.’