‘You stick a bunch of desperate people in the back of a lorry – or in some rubber boat – or in the boot of a motor – and then you let them take their chances. And sometimes they make it across the border and sometimes they get turned back, and sometimes they drown and sometimes freeze to death in a lorry dumped in Chinatown.’ John sipped his tea. ‘How smart would you have to be?’ he said.

I looked closer at the display of Paul Warboys.

In one black-and-white photograph the legendary villain, not yet thirty years old, was posing in a boxing ring with a spindly little boy, perhaps five years old, who was wearing shorts, vest and a pair of Lonsdale boxing gloves that were larger than his head. The man and the boy both had their fists raised as if they were about to start fighting.

Paul Warboys’ face was split in a broad smile.

But the small boy looked terrified and on the verge of tears.

Paul’s laughing henchmen, all busted noses and Ben Sherman shirts, chortled in the background, their heavy arms leaning on the ropes of the boxing ring.

‘Who’s the child?’ I asked.

John studied the photograph.

‘Now that is Paul’s son – Barry Warboys. Steve’s old man. Barry is the one and only Warboys who went straight. The one who made a packet in business. He started this chain of care homes – Golden Years. And apparently he’s nothing like his father. Or his son.’

We stared at the photograph together in silence.

Half a century gone, and the boy’s face still radiated terror.

‘A boxing ring’s not a good place to be small or scared,’ I said.

Sergeant John Caine nodded.

‘It’s tough enough if you’re an adult,’ he said.

The police can hold you for up to twenty-four hours before we either have to charge you with a crime or release you.

So after letting the lorry driver stew for a night and a day, DCI Pat Whitestone and I took the lift down to the custody suite of West End Central. The lift doors opened and a female uniformed officer was waiting for us.

‘Ma’am,’ she said, slipping a set of keys from her belt and opening up holding cell D.

Lee Hill was lying half-awake on a blue, easy-to-clean mattress that was not quite as large as a camp bed and built close to the floor to avoid drunks falling off and cracking their drunken skulls wide open. The holding cell itself was a beige-tiled cube, clean but airless, with a toilet in one corner and a frosted-glass window high on one wall to let in natural light. In terms of holding cells, this was one of the nicer ones.

‘Lee Hill? I’m DCI Whitestone and I am arresting you for facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants.’

The lorry driver jumped up from his easy-to-clean mattress, his jaw open with shock.