‘Oh,’ she said, rubbing at the bruises as if that might make them disappear. ‘Sometimes I am so clumsy.’ She suddenly paid attention as the waiter returned with a bottle of Prosecco.

I looked at the label.

‘Champagne, sir,’ the waitress said, with just the right note of defiance. I signed the chit she offered and a red velvet curtain was pulled in front of us, hiding us from the rest of club.

My new friend was still massaging her bruises.

‘What’s your name?’ I said.

‘Bianca.’

‘Is Bianca your real name or your bar name?’

She smiled. ‘We’re in a bar, aren’t we?’

She poured us two drinks, the fizz spilling over the top of first one flute and then the other.

‘Whoops,’ said Bianca. ‘I did not think you would want me.’ She sighed elaborately. ‘There are so many beautiful girls in the Champagne Room. I thought you would want …’ She seemed to search for a phrase that she remembered from her English lessons of long ago and far away. ‘Fresh meat,’ she said.

She self-consciously pulled up her pants. When we sat down on the low velvet chairs, I saw that there were dark bruises on her knees, a deeper, darker hue than the ones on her arms.

‘Where are you from, Bianca?’

‘Bucharest. But I have been out for – oh, ten years.’

‘Where are the other girls from?’ I asked.

She leaned close to me and whispered her great secret.

‘Everywhere but here,’ she said.

Then the waitress was back.

‘Steve wants you in the VIP room now, Bianca,’ she said. And then to me. ‘We’ll get you another girl, sir – what flavour do you like?’

I waved her away.

‘You have to go?’ I said to Bianca, who was already on her feet, a tiny woman tottering on heels as long as hypodermic needles.

She tugged at the top and bottom of her little black dress.

‘Steve is the boss,’ she said, placing a chaste kiss on my cheek. ‘But you come back,’ she said, looking at me for the first time. ‘I like you, you’re nice.’

‘Bianca?’

‘Yes?’

‘What happens in the VIP room?’

Another secret to be purred into my ear.

I could smell the vodka and the cigarettes and her total despair.

‘Everything,’ she said.

I watched her walk away and the sound of her heels cut through the music.

Click-click, they went. Click-click.

Then the doorman was standing before me. When he turned sideways to glance back into the Champagne Room I saw that his nose had been punched so flat that it was as vertical as a sheer cliff face, just one long straight line of flattened cartilage, bone and scar tissue.

‘The boss wants a word.’

‘Bit busy right now,’ I said, grinning foolishly and acting drunker than I felt after a mouthful of sparkling wine.

‘Now, Detective,’ he said.

I looked at him.

And now I knew where I had seen him before.