And I could sense the world on the move among the builders on their way to work at the huge developments of luxury apartments that were going up by the Thames. There were Poles and Russians and East Europeans of every nation. And in Smiths of Smithfield when we had our breakfast, Scout slipping scraps of pancake to Stan at her feet, there were the young people of southern Europe, the French and Italians and Spanish, a generation made exiles by the unemployment queues of their own countries, although you would never guess it from their smiles.

And there were homeless bundled up in the doorways, men with the same haunted faces that I had seen in the camp at Dunkirk – Syrians and Iraqis and Afghans. You saw those faces mirrored in the men who stood in the corner of Holborn Circus, one of the great junctions of the capital, five minutes from our home, where six roads lead to different parts of the city In the shadow of the great shining buildings of glass and steel men shivered inside their cheap sportswear and lifted their faces in hope every time a white van or a lorry slowed down.

‘What are those men doing?’ Scout said.

‘They’re waiting, angel.’

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘They’re waiting for work, Scout,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen all the new places being built and all the old buildings been done up?’

Scout nodded, her gaze not leaving the waiting men. ‘I guess so.’

‘Well, those are the kinds of places they want to work,’ I said.

‘Do they get work every day?’

‘Probably not every day.’

And I looked into those faces, too, but I never saw Hana Novak’s kid brother, Nenad ‘Nesha’ Novak.

I never saw the boy.

Up in MIR-1 Billy Greene tapped his keyboard and a blown-up passport photograph appeared on the big HDTV, every ragged scar a livid, larger-than-life furrow in that hard, empty face.

‘Mr Click-Click,’ I said. ‘This is the driver of the lorry that we found in Chinatown containing twelve women – eleven dead and one dying. The French police have identified him from his passport as Zlatko Draganov.’

MIR-1 was silent as DCI Whitestone stared thoughtfully at the face on the screen.

‘Nationality?’ she said.

‘Bulgarian,’ I said.

‘Can we trust the French ID?’

‘Not really,’ Billy said. ‘According to the Bulgarian embassy in London, a Zlatko Draganov with the same date of birth died of lung cancer four years ago. Zlatko Draganov was Bulgarian Roma. From Vidin, on the banks of the Danube in north-western Bulgaria. It’s where Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia all meet.’