‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Two men just works better. In fact, two men is the only thing that works. Look – the Champagne Room is somewhere between a lap-dancing club and a knocking shop. We’re not going to be kicking down doors, Edie. We’ll go in undercover as a couple of punters. And see if they’re still working from the same business model.’

Her phone was ringing. After a moment she took the call, listened, murmured assent and hung up.

‘That was DCI Whitestone,’ she said. ‘The boy has landed. Hana’s brother. Nenad Novak is sixteen years old. And later today he is going to ID his sister’s body at the Iain West.’

My stomach knotted at the thought of a sixteen-year-old boy staring at his next of kin in the mortuary.

‘Whitestone wants you to be there,’ Edie said.

‘Why me?’

Edie smiled a little sadly.

‘You’re good with children,’ she said.

7

There was a flurry of snow in the evening air as I walked from 27 Savile Row to the Westminster Public Mortuary on Horseferry Road. A man and a boy were waiting outside. They were an odd couple. The man was a tall lean figure with a briefcase, a sleek and affluent professional ready for the last of the day’s business. The boy – a young-looking sixteen – was in an unbuttoned coat that was frayed by previous owners and two sizes too big for him. His spectacles had been broken and mended more than once.

‘DC Wolfe?’ the man said, shaking my hand. ‘I’m Dejan Jovanović from the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia.’ He turned to the boy with a show of formality. ‘And this young man is Mr Nenad Novak.’

I could see his sister in his face.

I shook the boy’s hand.

‘I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,’ I said, as his eyes behind his broken spectacles slid away from me. His second-hand coat was unbuttoned despite the temperature hovering just above zero. I felt that he had a lot of things to learn. ‘Shall we go inside?’

They followed me into the Westminster Public Mortuary. I addressed both of them. ‘Identification is necessary to establish that the person reported as having died is truly that person in order to complete the certificate of death,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ nodded Jovanović of the embassy. The boy said nothing, his face a glum mask, as if he had been brought to this country, this city and this place against his will.

I looked at him until he finally met my eye.

‘Nenad,’ I said. ‘I am afraid we believe that body is your sister, Hana.’

His mouth twitched with emotions that I could not read. Grief. Shock. Adolescent embarrassment. I wished there was a way around this bleak ritual.