I turned away. His voice stopped me at the door.

‘You want the truth, Max?’

I stared at him. People will say anything. That’s the first thing you learn. People will say anything to save their skin.

I waited.

‘The truth is that I met a girl,’ he said. ‘And she stole my heart. Corny but true. Happens to the best of us and the worst of us. And she stole it even though I was a young married man with children. And she stole it even though I knew she had done bad things for money. We fitted together – I’m not good with words. Never had any education. So maybe that’s the best I can do. We just fitted, Max. She was the best fit that I ever knew. And I thought about starting over. We talked about it. And she got pregnant and that just made it even better. But when the baby was born it all went wrong. And the baby – this beautiful little baby – there was something wrong with him that we couldn’t understand and we couldn’t deal with. So we locked him away and I think the shame of it killed us. We didn’t deserve to be happy any more, see? Theresa and I haven’t had any contact for years. For half a lifetime. We’re strangers, Max. You can understand that, can’t you? How you can love someone and then they become a stranger? You had a wife once, didn’t you? Now you tell me – do you feel like you still know her? Or does she feel like a total stranger, Max?’

I banged on the door of the holding cell.

‘I’ll see you in the interview room,’ I said. ‘But we will not be talking about the good old days, Paul. We’ll be talking about lorries full of women left to freeze to death in Chinatown. And we’ll be talking about the slave market you ran in that penthouse.’

He sighed and shook his head.

‘All right, you cow son,’ he said. ‘Give me a pen and paper. I’ll write it all down for you. Make it nice and easy. What you want to know about, Max? People trafficking? Prostitution? What are those hippies called – Imagine? I’ll give you the lot if you give me pen and paper. Where the women came from. Who finds the drivers. Who gets paid at the border. Who gets paid all the way down the line. Is that what you want, Max?’

There was no pen and paper in the holding cell. I borrowed a yellow legal pad and green Ball Pentel from the duty sergeant on the desk outside and brought them back to Paul Warboys. Then I left him alone.

My phone began to vibrate as I was on my way up to MIR-1. I recognised the faint Australian accent of the Director of Nursing from Summerdale Psychiatric Hospital.