‘Where did you meet your wife?’

His face flooded with a tearful fury.

‘Why should she have to beg to be inside this country?’ he said. ‘And in case you are fucking wondering, she wasn’t a whore. She was never a whore. She came to this country to be a nurse.’

‘But she wasn’t working as a nurse for Ginger Gonzalez, was she, Sergeant Jenkins? And she wasn’t working as a nurse in the Champagne Room.’

‘Do you want me to take you outside and punch your lights out?’ he said.

‘You could try. You might even succeed.’ I sized him up. ‘You’re bigger than me. Stronger than me. But I’m in much better shape than you and I’ve probably had a lot more training than you.’

He sneered at me.

‘What are you meant to be then? Some kind of Mixed Martial Arts bad ass?’

‘Nothing so modern.’

He looked at the bend in my nose.

‘You’re a boxer,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s born with a snout like that.’

He didn’t seem impressed. I didn’t expect him to be.

I was here to talk to his wife about her former life in prostitution and the thing that he wanted most in the world right now was to rip my throat out.

‘But you know that rolling about on the pavement with me would not make anything easier for your wife,’ I said.

‘She’s a nurse. Ash is a nurse.’

‘I know.’ I took half a step closer to him. ‘But we have twelve young women who died following pretty much the same route that your wife took into this country. That’s why we’re here today. That’s the only reason we’re digging up the past. Because we have twelve bodies and no leads. You following me, Sergeant Jenkins?’

He nodded. But he still did not answer me.

‘So I’ll ask you one last time,’ I said. ‘Where was Mrs Jenkins working when you met her? At the Champagne Room?’

No reaction.

‘Then was she working for Ginger Gonzalez?’ I said.

He looked away, and he shook his head, but somehow it was the exact opposite of a denial.

‘I would have thought that Ginger’s staff were out of your pay grade,’ I said, and I took half a step back as I watched his fists clench by his sides. But he did not raise his hands. He raised his head and I saw that finally he wanted to get it over with.