‘The big ports see these refrigerated lorries all the time,’ Ken said. ‘Before I was in Heathrow I worked in Dover. Their refrigeration works just like your central heating – on either a timer or a thermostat. The cold air kicks in when the temperature gets above a certain level or at a specific time. My guess would be that it never crossed the driver’s tiny mind that those women could freeze to death back there. There’s no market for dead women. He didn’t turn the refrigeration on deliberately, and he didn’t know enough to turn it off until it was too late. He’s unlikely to be any kind of criminal mastermind.’

‘So he saw what had happened and he legged it,’ Edie said.

Whitestone nodded grimly. ‘The driver’s fear seems to be a major component in every possible scenario.’ I saw she was trembling with anger. ‘This is not a trafficking offence, Max. This is not smuggling illegals. We have eleven dead bodies at the morgue. I want these bastards for murder.’

‘Any leads inside the lorry?’ I said.

‘The women each had one small bag,’ Edie said. ‘That’s clearly all they were allowed. The contents are remarkably similar. They each had a little bit of make-up and they each had a phone, and the batteries were all dead by the time we found them. We’re charging the phones and calling in the relevant translators to examine text messages.’ She indicated the United Nations of passports before her. ‘It’s going to be a lot of translating. And the embassies are not going to be any help because it looks like only one of the passports is kosher. We can’t ID the dead if they’re travelling on a fake passport.’

Whitestone pulled off her gloves and went to stand before the giant map of London that covers one wall of MIR-1.

‘Are we working on the theory that Chinatown was the final destination?’ I said.

Whitestone nodded.

‘It’s unlikely those twelve young women were coming here to pick potatoes in East Anglia or collect cockles in Morecambe Bay. They were coming to London, Max. And they were coming to do one thing.’ She exhaled hard. ‘I want to put the squeeze on every pimp between Chinatown and the Watford Gap. You’ve got a CI in Chinatown, right?’

I must have looked surprised.

‘A CI?’

‘The Filipina,’ Whitestone said with a touch of irritation. ‘Ginger Gonzalez.’

‘Ginger’s not really a Criminal Informant,’ I said. ‘She’s more of a friend.’

Ginger Gonzalez ran one of the most successful prostitution rings in the city, although she preferred to call her business – Sampaguita, named after the national flower of the Philippines – a social introduction agency.