‘There’s a lorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been abandoned in Colindale. The place that was Oriental City. Do you know it?’

On either side of the millennium, Oriental City had been a massive Asian shopping centre located at the suburban end of the Edgware Road. Some people had called it the real Chinatown.

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘But I thought they tore that place down.’

‘The lorry is on the top floor of the old car park.’

‘Why are you telling me, Mr Li?’

‘It is the same vehicle that was recently parked outside the back of West End Central.’

Lee Hill’s lorry.

‘Who told you it was in Oriental City?’

‘Some friends.’ I could hear the impatience in his voice. ‘I am doing you a favour, Detective.’

But I didn’t feel like being grateful.

‘Why the hell did they call you instead of the police?’

Now I could feel him smiling at the other end of the phone.

‘They wished to speak to someone they can trust,’ he said.

Nobody could mistake what had once been Oriental City for the real Chinatown any more. It looked like the world’s forgotten shopping centre, a vast sprawl of empty parking spaces, abandoned shops and a food court where nobody had eaten in years.

‘What was this place?’ Billy Greene said.

‘It was an Asian shopping mall. Japanese-owned and then Malaysian. There was a supermarket. Some great restaurants.’

In a dreary corner of North London, it had once been an outpost of East Asia. My mouth watered at the memory of all the Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese food that I had eaten here.

Keith Li leaned forward from the back seat. I had insisted on his presence and he hadn’t resisted.

‘Top of the car park,’ he said.

We drove to the top floor of the two-storey car park. Skateboarding kids scattered when they saw us coming. The lorry stood all alone in the far corner.

‘That’s Lee Hill’s ride all right,’ Billy said.

I looked at Keith Li in the rear-view mirror.

‘You’re never far away when a lorry gets dumped,’ I said.

‘Lucky for you,’ he said.

Billy Greene got out of the BMW and we watched him as he walked towards the lorry.

‘This has nothing to do with Chinese people,’ Keith Li said. ‘Whoever does these things, they don’t look like me.’ He nodded at my face as I glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. ‘They look like you.’

‘Maybe they don’t look like either of us,’ I said.

Billy Greene stepped up to peer into the cab.

He got back down again and shook his head at me.

Nothing.

I took out my phone and called Lee Hill’s mobile.