But I didn’t see her stopped by one of the two uniformed officers who waited in the doorway of the canteen for when the nurses left, and I didn’t see her being processed by the immigration officers who set up their desks in the lobby, and I didn’t see her loaded on to one of the coaches that were waiting to transport them all directly to one of the UK’s dozen Immigration Detention Centres, which are built to Class B – medium-security – prison standards and invariably close to an airport.

We don’t call the facility a prison or even a detention centre. We call it pre-departure accommodation. They did not know it yet, but the staff of Golden Years were all going home.

As ABC made way for Abba, I went upstairs to Lil’s small corner room on the first floor.

There was a half-eaten box of Milk Tray in the wastepaper bin.

But the bed was stripped down to its bare mattress, the room was dark and cold and Edie Wren’s beloved grandmother was staying in some other care home tonight.

37

They came to the Old Bailey and they waited for justice.

It was not quite ten in the morning but many of the crowd gathered in Newgate Street had already done a full day’s work.

They were the night cleaners who scrubbed the towers of glass and steel. They were the drivers of tube trains, buses and mini cabs who pulled the graveyard shift. They were hospital porters, security guards and nurses, and some wore the white-and-blue uniforms of professional carers. They came up from the underground and they came down from the skyscrapers where they scrubbed before the working day began.

The winter was over now but they still wore its clothes, wrapped up in thick fleeces and padded jackets, the clothes of those who wait for the night bus or the first tube trains.

Their faces suggested that they came from every corner of the earth and they stood in silence for Barry Warboys to be brought to the Central Criminal Court, the proper name of the Old Bailey.

I flashed my warrant card to a uniformed officer and made my way to the main entrance where Dejan Jovanović of the Serbian embassy was waiting for me. As we were about to go inside, he tugged my arm.

‘The boy,’ he said. ‘Nenad Novak.’

Nesha was standing at the back of the crowd on Newgate Street and I wondered how many other blood relatives of the victims were in this crowd. It was impossible to know where the curious ended and the bereaved began. I lifted my hand in salute to Nesha but he gave no indication that he had seen me.

‘Here he comes,’ said Dejan.