ruefully at her suede shoes, wondering if they were ruined. Great, that would be another outlay she didn’t need.

As she reached the rear of the van, the base of her skull suddenly exploded with indescribable pain. Night transformed into brightest day, and she seemed to be staring directly into the noonday sun, but then the world spiralled into blackness and the floor rushed up to meet her.

◆◆◆

The music in The Disciple’s head was becoming louder again as he drove into Mitre Street from Creechurch Lane. He already knew the Blackmailer was a Libra, which meant he would soon be devouring kidney. At least she wasn’t another Leo; he didn’t think his stomach could cope with eating heart twice in one night.

He slowed on the approach to Mitre Square and pulled over against the kerb as soon as he cleared the junction. There was nothing behind him. Grinding the gears, he eventually found reverse and carefully backed the van into the square. The side mirrors were next to useless in the rain, and with all the condensation it was causing on his windows he was virtually driving blind. Moving at a crawl, he concentrated on keeping the van parallel to the school playground, aware that there was a row of bollards somewhere behind him that prevented vehicular access to St. James Passage.

Thunk.

The van jolted to an abrupt halt. He had found the bollards. He jumped out and ran around to the rear to check for damage. Luckily, he had only been doing about 5 MPH. Apart from a minor kink on the bumper, there was no harm done.

Back in the van, he studied his environment carefully. The cobbled square was relatively small, approximately seventy feet by eighty. Mitre Street was directly in front of him, at the top of the square. The left side of the square was taken up by the gates to Sir John Cass’s Foundation Primary School. There was a line of office blocks behind him and another along the right side of the square. A narrow pedestrian alleyway called Mitre Passage was located at the bottom right of the square, and St. James Passage, a wider pedestrian alley, was located at the bottom left of the square, immediately behind the Sherpa.

“This is where I drop you off,” he told the unconscious woman lying bound and gagged in the back of his van.  “But before I go, we’re going to have a little fun.” He thought for a moment and then grinned. “Well, when I say ‘we’, I actually mean ‘me’.”

He had decided long ago that the three women who had ruined his life would be left in historically relevant locations; it seemed a fitting homage to the man who had successfully completed the same series of rituals one hundred and eleven years earlier.

He had left the Infector in Hanbury Street because that was where Jack the Ripper had killed Anne Chapman, and he would leave the Blackmailer in Mitre Square because that was the deposition site for Catherine Eddows, another of the original Ripper’s five canonical killings.

He stared with reverence at a spot on the floor just beyond the walled flowerbed in the southeast corner of the square, which had a solitary park bench in front of it.

Squinting through the rain covered windscreen, The Disciple carefully scanned the offices off to his right, allowing his eyes to linger on the building in the southwest corner of the square, at the junction with Mitre Street. To his relief and delight, there were no signs of movement anywhere.

Pulling his coat tight around him, he ventured out into the rain a second time to check out the buildings behind the van, and the two alleys; first Mitre Passage and then St. James Passage. The buildings were in total darkness and both alleys were deserted. He paused before getting back in the van, in order to study the night sky above. The downpour was torrential, and it showed no sign of letting up. The rain was his friend; it was another omen that this was all meant to be.

Satisfied it was safe to continue, he ducked into the rear compartment and pulled the dividing curtain closed. After removing his coat, The Disciple donned a pair of surgical gloves in readiness for the impending operation. When that was done, he surveyed the woman lying hogtied before him with clinical objectivity.

The Blackmailer would have to die in the van, which meant that slitting her throat was out of the question; an arterial bleed would be far too messy, even with all the plastic sheeting.

Strangulation seemed the logical alternative.

The Disciple sat astride Rye and wrapped his fingers around her neck, carefully probing until he found her windpipe. “You thought you could get away with blackmailing me, you filthy scheming harlot,” he hissed, spraying her face with spittle. “You were wrong, and now you’re going to pay the price. Like Shylock, I want my pound of flesh.” Taking a deep breath, he flexed his fingers and then began to squeeze with all his might. Almost instantly, he felt her body start to shudder and wriggle beneath him as her air supply was cut off.

She seemed to take forever to die, but eventually, the convulsions diminished into minor twitches, and then Rye’s body went totally limp. After checking for a pulse, The Disciple slumped down next to her, staring at his shaking hands and gasping for breath.  He hadn’t realised that strangulation was such hard work. In future, he decided, he would stick to using his trusty knife.

After a few seconds rest, he stood up on wobbly legs and switched on the van’s internal light. The Blackmailer lay on the plastic-coated floor, staring up at him accusingly from sightless eyes. “Back in a moment,” he told her, turning the light off again. The Disciple stuck his head through the cabin divider and spent a few seconds scanning the streets again. When he was satisfied that it was safe for him to continue, he ducked back inside

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