I never saw him fight. I never saw him at York Hall. It was at Smithfield ABC. Banging the bags at Fred’s gym. A few years back now, it must have been. He had turned pro and then almost immediately been put away for running around town with a gun, waving it in the face of known drug dealers.

I could even remember his name. Peter Chivers.

‘Working the doors now, Peter?’

‘It’s not Peter any more. It’s Mahmud X.’

‘Converted inside, did you?’

‘Saw the light.’

And then Steve Warboys was there, tired of waiting for me to show up in the VIP room. His eyes flitted and moved, frowning at the puddle of alcohol that Bianca had left on the table. There was a natural intelligence about his grandfather Paul that had nothing to do with academic education and his father Barry must have been no slouch to build up his business.

But Steve Warboys looked as though his lift stopped a few floors from the top.

‘So your theory is that we’re bussing in illegals from bongo bongo land?’ he said. ‘Getting our girls under the counter?’ He laughed. ‘You’ve seen too many Liam Neeson films, Detective. Why would we? Look around. The whole world wants to live in this country. And they will do anything – anything – to stay here.’

‘Well – Steve – if I may call you Steve – the word is you favour using illegal migrants because they are easier to control,’ I said. ‘Not quite so fussy about pension plans and health care as the locals and the legals.’

He laughed.

‘None of them are easy to control!’ Steve Warboys said. ‘They’ve all got their issues. Issues with their daddy, issues with their boyfriend, issues with their body, issues with substance abuse.’ He looked hurt, misunderstood. ‘In this job, people see only the glamour. They see only the glitz. But it’s hard keeping a stable of girls.’

He must have seen some doubt in me because he grinned.

‘People smuggling is an industry,’ he said, as if I needed to understand. ‘But it’s not my line of work. Now I’m not denying that we might have had a few employees who fell off the back of a lorry in our time. Like dear old – what was her name again, Mahmud?’

‘Asuman,’ the bouncer said, and it sounded like a threat. ‘I can’t remember her bar name.’

They both smiled at my surprise.