She had once helped me bust a paedophile ring wide open. She had arranged company for my colleague DC Curtis Gane when he had been paralysed in the course of duty and needed someone to hold in the last days before his death. I believed the end of his life had been made easier by Ginger.

So I had plenty of reasons to feel grateful to Ginger Gonzalez.

‘Your friend puts wealthy men in contact with beautiful young women, right?’ Whitestone said.

Ginger found Sampaguita’s clients in the swankier bars of London hotels – the Coburg at the Connaught, the American Bar at the Savoy, the Rivoli at the Ritz, and the Fumoir at Claridges – and then put them in contact with the ever-changing stable of young women who were on her books.

‘But she doesn’t think of herself as a pimp,’ I said.

Whitestone bit her bottom lip, as if I was testing her patience to the absolute limit.

‘She can call herself what she likes, Max, but I call it pimping. Do you really want to give her a pass?’

I was certain that the lorry in Chinatown was nothing to do with Ginger. There was no coercion involved in what she did. She was a businesswoman.

‘She’s a good kid,’ I said simply.

Whitestone’s face flushed with anger.

‘Those women in the back of that lorry? I bet they were all good kids, too. Your first job is interviewing Hana Novak in the hospital. But then you’re coming back here and we are going to see your friend, Max. That’s your second job.’

It wasn’t a suggestion.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

‘Ma’am, why are you so certain they were coming here to go on the game?’ Edie asked Whitestone. ‘We don’t know that for sure, do we? They might have thought – I don’t know – they were coming here to be models, or dancers, or waitresses.’

‘But the men who brought them in knew,’ Whitestone said, looking at me. ‘Didn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The men knew.’

My phone began to vibrate.

DR PATEL CALLING, it said.

‘Hana’s not going to make it,’ he told me.

By the time I got up to the Royal Free they had moved Hana Novak from the ICU to a small private room where the lights were low and the temperature was warm and you could hear the buzz of traffic drifting up from Pond Street as they slowly climbed one of the steepest hills in London.

The nurses had tucked her up to keep her comfortable and, with only her face showing above the bedding, she looked very young.

‘I suppose there’s no point in asking about next of kin?’ Dr Patel said.