‘Get her in here,’ commanded Kailash, as Dina, the little Irish redhead, wandered into the kitchen. ‘Get Rochelle, and make sure everyone else keeps out until I say so.’ Rochelle must have been hanging outside the door anyway as she came in immediately; she’d probably sent Dina in to see how Kailash’s mood was in the first place.

‘Right,’ said my mother. ‘From the start.’

Rochelle sighed theatrically, looked at the three of us, then began. ‘I was waiting last night to see if anyone would come in; it was pretty quiet and after midnight but my shift was a long way from over. I was in the waiting room with another three of the girls when this guy came in. Pretty good looking, tall, clean–but he seemed nervous. That was odd, because he didn’t seem the type who would be unsure at all; he wasn’t nervous about being here exactly, and he’d paid upfront of course–but there was something. Anyway, he came over to me, we chatted then went to my room. He was straightforward, didn’t want anything weird, just sex. He took a while, he seemed kind of worked up, but it was fine–then he asked if I would hold him while he fell asleep.’

‘Is that odd?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘It’s his dollar. He’d paid for the night, Claire said.’ Claire was one of the managers who took the money and she had a system of signs when she introduced punters to the girls to let them know what the state of play was, and whether she’d picked up on anything. ‘They can do what they like.’

I could feel Kailash fuming. ‘We’re not a dosshouse. He’s not here to sleep.’

Only my mother would come out with something like that. If Rochelle had wanted to get on her good side, she’d have woken the bloke up, made sure he had a new fantasy involving someone else he’d have to pay again for, then got him out to another girl or out of the building so everything could start all over again.

‘What else?’ I asked, wondering what this had to do with me.

‘He kept his shirt on when we were having sex, which is fine I guess, but when I looked at him this morning, it had come off. He was covered in scratches, really bad ones, and what looked like knife cuts. That’s when I went to get Malcolm.’