‘Let me handle it,’ I said, and Jovanović nodded and held back.

There is a giant chessboard in Saint John’s Gardens and I found Nenad Novak staring at it, as if contemplating his next move.

He looked up at me.

‘That’s not her,’ he said, his eyes shining.

I nodded and put my arm around his shoulder, as if I was ready to believe whatever he chose to tell me. There is a small circular fountain in the middle of the park and we took one of the benches facing it. When the tears came I patted him gently on his second-hand coat and then took my arm away.

It was dark by this time, one of those bleak mid-winter nights that has the world hurrying for home as soon as possible, and the park was totally empty. Just us and the pigeons. But Nenad still covered his face with his hands, ashamed of his tears. He said her name, and it came out as a choke of grief.

‘Hana.’

‘That’s your sister in there,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it, Nenad?’

He breathed out, a long slow exhalation that was at once an affirmation and an acceptance of a world that had suddenly changed forever.

‘I’m part of the team that wants justice for Hana,’ I said. ‘We want to find the men responsible for her death. But I need your help, Nenad. I need you to talk to me. And I need you to be totally honest with me.’

‘She was a nurse,’ he said angrily. ‘She was not anything else. And it doesn’t matter what anybody says about her now. My sister was coming to London to be a nurse.’

‘I spoke to her,’ I said.

He looked at me.

‘I was the one who went into the lorry where we found her,’ I told him. ‘I went into the lorry where we found Hana and eleven other women. Hana was the only one who was still alive. And she told me her name in the ambulance. And I went with her to the hospital.’

He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He waited as if there was a wealth of details that he knew nothing about. But there was not much more to tell.

‘You stayed with my sister?’

I felt a flood of shame. I shook my head.

‘I went away,’ I said. ‘To try to find the men who did this to Hana and the other women. But then I went back to the hospital. I was with her at the end. She died peacefully. In her sleep. She was not alone at the end.’

All the comforting clichés of death, I thought.

But it was true. Even if I had nothing else to give him.

‘She looked frightened,’ he said. ‘She looked so frightened.’