‘Those girls in Chinatown,’ she said, and the shake of her head became a shudder. ‘A terrible thing.’ I followed her to the kitchen. ‘Everybody’s been washed, walked and fed,’ she said, looking at Stan. By everybody she meant Stan and Scout, my six-year-old daughter. Mrs Murphy collected the airmail envelope that contained her money for the day. For some reason, both of us preferred me to not actually hand over money directly. Perhaps because Mrs Murphy felt like the closest thing that Scout and I had to family.

‘Scout thought you might be here to tuck her in.’

‘That was the plan.’

I knew I had let all the good things of the day slip away. Meeting Scout from school. Eating dinner with my daughter. Walking Stan in the streets and squares of Smithfield. I would have to try harder to make them happen tomorrow. We walked to the door. Mrs Murphy pulled on her coat and patted my arm.

‘You’ll make up for it, I’m sure. Scout mentioned pancakes at Smiths of Smithfield.’

I smiled. ‘OK.’

‘We should be nice to our children,’ Mrs Murphy advised. ‘They choose our care home.’ At the door she jabbed a finger at the laptop. ‘And don’t turn that thing on or you will never get your sleep.’

When Mrs Murphy had gone I crossed the loft, Stan padding behind me, the lavish plume of his tail wagging, and I slipped quietly into Scout’s room. It felt that until quite recently she had slept like a baby, on her back with her raised fists in the air, like a victorious boxer. But tonight she was curled up on her side, her hair falling across her perfect face. Now she slept like a little girl.

I gently pulled up her duvet and let myself out, ushering Stan before me. The pair of us sat by the giant floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the lights burning at the meat market.

Despite my weariness, I knew that sleep would not come soon or easily tonight.

So I slipped Stan a dental chew and, as he crunched it contentedly in the middle of that massive open space we called home, I powered up the iMac and found the home page for Europol, the European police intelligence agency responsible for the war on people smuggling.

And I learned it was a war they were losing.

The figures were staggering: 90 per cent of migrants into Europe used smuggling and trafficking networks. The smugglers came from more than a hundred countries. Hana Novak and the eleven other young women who died in the back of that refrigerated truck were part of a criminal industry that was worth almost £5 billion a year.

This was far more than big business.

This was the fastest-growing industry on the planet.

Europol charted the varied routes of the smuggling, a tide of trafficked humanity heading west and north.