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was distracted by the sound of raucous singing in the distance.
    “ I’ve been a wild rover for many a year …”
    Iona did not want to meet anyone tonight, so she turned away from the direction of the song.  She knew it was a bad idea to be out alone so late, but her anger still outweighed her fear.
    “… and I spent all my money on whiskey and beer …”
    As the voices echoed round the empty streets Iona thought she heard someone nearby call her name, but the singing drowned it out.  Was she hearing voices again?
    Iona turned a complete circle looking around for the source of the sound.  When she got back to where she’d started she found a burly figure standing not thirty centimetres from her face.
    Iona jumped back, alarmed:“Who are you?”
    The stranger had broad features, made even broader by his sizeable ginger side-burns.  He wore a faded and stained leather apron.  When he spoke it was in a peculiar variation of an East End accent.
    “Let’s just say I’m a neighbour,”he smiled unpleasantly, his eyes fixed on Iona’s neck,“I’d be more careful about the company you keep.”
    Iona took a further step away from the menacing figure.  She said nothing, but the stranger took her puzzled expression to be a question, so he continued, by way of an explanation,“Arthur.  He’s a liar and a fraud, and not who he seems to be.”
    Iona stood her ground trying to remember the self-defence  Karate moves she had seen on television, and had tried out on a few of the boys in her class.  Her curiosity had overcome her desire to run from this sinister character.
    “All he told you about Dick-blinkin’-Turpin, knight of the soddin’road; that was a pack of lies, and no mistake.”
    “OK, so he lied about a dead guy!  No big deal.  Why should I care?”
    “He has no right bein’involved with the likes of you.” The stranger was no longer smiling.
    He stepped forward.
    Iona stepped back.
    Iona watched as he reached into his leather apron and pulled out an old-fashioned razor, which he opened with a flick of his wrist.  Its handle was smooth ivory, yellowed with age, the blade was straight and sharp and glinted in the street-lights.
    “Do you know why they call these‘cutthroat razors,’girl?”
    Iona took another step back, and found herself bumping into a grimy brick wall.
    “Girl?  Would you like me to show you?  I used to be a famous barber!”
    Iona cast a glance to the left and to the right to calculate the best means of escape, when another voice, deep and commanding, resounded around the street and stopped the stranger in his tracks.
    “Mister Todd.  I have told you about such behaviour.  I’ll have the Runners onto you if there is any more of this nonsense.”
    The stranger with the razor flinched at mention of the Runners, and backed away from Iona.
    The owner of the deep voice was an elderly man, wearing the wig and gown of a judge, carrying a bundle of musty and dusty papers and an impossibly large book.
    “Judge Hawkins, your Worship, I was only playin’around, you know, scarin’the livin’, playing my part.” Mister Todd raised his hands, waggling his fingers and making a ghostly‘wooooh–oooooh!’noise.  He looked embarrassedly at the cutthroat razor still in his hand, snapped it shut and stuffed it back into his apron pocket.
    “The girl looks quite scared enough.” The Judge turned to face Iona at last: “Run along young lady.  You are fortunate Mr. Todd is dead.  He killed hundreds of people when he was alive.”
    As the Judge spoke, he reached out a hand and the razor leapt from Mr. Todd’s pocket, flew through the air, straight into his opened palm.
    To Iona’s wonder, and ever-increasing horror, he opened the knife and passed its blade right through his other hand.  She felt her knees go weak, and willed them not to buckle under her.  She enjoyed this sort of thing in the cinema, but when it was happening in front of her eyes her head started to