‘We’re trying,’ I said. ‘Her passport’s real. Probably the only one of the bunch that is real. We’re in touch with the Serbian embassy about next of kin.’ I looked from the young woman in the bed to the doctor who had done his best to save her. ‘We should hear soon. But I don’t know if it is going to be soon enough. How long has she got?’

‘She’ll slip away soon,’ he said. ‘She’s not in any pain.’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. I don’t think I had ever seen a man more tired. ‘But there was too much internal damage before we reached her.’

‘May I stay with her?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

As soon as Dr Patel was gone, I took the only chair in the tiny room and pulled it close to the bed. When I spoke, my voice was as soft as a prayer.

‘Who did this to you, Hana?’ I said.

But if she heard me, she did not speak, and if she knew I was there, then she gave no sign, and so I sat by the bedside of Hana Novak and I stayed there until she had gone.

3

Night was falling on Chinatown.

There was no sign of what we had found outside the dim sum restaurant in the freezing sunrise. It all seemed a lifetime away. The white lorry had been impounded by forensics. The police tape had all come down and been neatly disposed of. And the only clue that the dead bodies of twelve young women had been discovered on this spot was the tide of flowers that was piling up by the entrance to Gerrard Street.

DCI Whitestone glanced at the flowers as we walked through the archway to Chinatown, and I knew she was in no mood to go easy on Ginger Gonzalez, whatever favours my friend had done for us in the past.

‘Is this difficult for you?’ Whitestone said.

‘We have to talk to her,’ I said. ‘I don’t see that we have a choice.’

Halfway down Gerrard Street there was an open doorway by a duck restaurant where a long queue of stylish young Cantonese queued for a table. We went up a short flight of stairs to a white door with a simple sign.

SAMPAGUITA

Social Introduction Agency

Whitestone laughed. ‘She even advertises,’ she said bitterly.

Without knocking we went inside a small white room. It was almost nothing – just a spartan little cube of a room above a Chinese restaurant. Ginger Gonzalez was sitting behind her desk.