Seven days had gone by since the riot. It was all quiet on Savile Row now. The famous old street was empty apart from a young blonde woman waiting on the nine stone steps of West End Central. She had a depleted beauty that made you think that good looks are a finite resource that can get used up just like anything else. It took me a moment to recognise her from the Champagne Room. It took me another moment to realise that she was waiting for me.

‘Bianca,’ I said.

She smiled at me as if this was all a beautiful coincidence.

‘Hello, Max. Do you have time for a coffee?’

We walked across to the Bar Italia and she told me she would have what I was having. I ordered two triple espressos.

I thought she wanted to tell me about the night the Champagne Room burned to the ground with Steve Warboys inside it. But that wasn’t what Bianca wanted.

‘It’s so good to see you,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘Were you at work the night the bar burned down?’

‘Night off,’ she said.

I stared at her, wondering if I believed her.

‘Night off?’

‘Horrible,’ she said, shuddering. ‘I’m at a bar in Ilford now.’ She made Ilford sound as exotic as the Serengeti. ‘But the manager is a pig.’

I shook my head. I still didn’t understand. Then her fingertips reached out and touched my face.

And finally I understood.

I was not flattered.

I felt like a mark, like another man who walked into another bar where the girls get paid to make you feel like a bigger man than you really are.

‘Frumos,’ she sighed. ‘You know that word in Romanian? Frumos, Max? It means handsome.’

I downed my triple espresso in one shot.

‘I know another word in Romanian,’ I said. ‘Rahat. You know that word, Bianca?’

She chuckled good-naturedly.

‘Rahat means bullshit. Very funny! But it’s not bullshit, Max. You’re very frumos.’ Her face grew serious. ‘I wanted to see you because I’m not going back there to Ilford. They are not English gentlemen in Ilford.’

‘I thought you might want to tell me something I don’t already know, Bianca. Steve Warboys died when the Champagne Room was torched. Whoever killed him is still walking the street. We believe they may be the people who brought in that lorryload of dead girls.’

‘I know, Max.’ She ran her fingers through wispy yellow hair that had been dyed cheaply too many times. There was a touch of the drama queen about Bianca. ‘I know these things but I want to forget them. Fires and dead women.’

She touched my hand. I pulled it away. She looked hurt.