‘Mr Click-Click looked like he was from the same neck of the woods,’ I said. ‘But my guess is that the passport found on him originally belonged to a brother or an uncle or some kind of relation. This town Vidin is a major hub for the people smugglers and the Bulgarian Roma in those parts are the poorest people in all Europe. And they’re off the books. They’re not big on registering with the authorities.’

‘But this guy would be on our books if he has ever been arrested here,’ Whitestone said. ‘Can we run him through IDENT1? Have we got prints?’

IDENT1 is the UK’s central database for storing the palm and fingerprints of anyone who is arrested or detained by the police. If he had ever been lifted, even if he had never been formally charged with a crime, then Zlatko Draganov – or whatever his real name was – would be on there.

‘Our CSIs are trying with the fresh prints they took from these.’ I held up two phones in evidence bags. ‘But IDENT1 is a long shot as none of the prints lifted from the steering wheel of the lorry in Chinatown has been identified. Suggesting that we have no record of Mr Click-Click on any database.’

‘Talk to me about the phones,’ Whitestone said.

‘This one is a burner.’ I indicated the cheaper piece of black plastic in my left hand. ‘Use it and lose it. The IMEI numbers are only six digits from the phone that Lee Hill was using.’

‘So they were using disposable phones from the same batch,’ Whitestone said. ‘Anything on the burner?’

‘Never been used,’ I said. ‘Presumably Draganov – I’ll call him Draganov, shall I? – would have received GPS coordinates for the drop-off point after arriving in the UK.’

I held up the other phone, the latest model of some Korean smartphone.

‘This is his personal phone. Everything has been wiped – calls made, calls received, calls missed – apart from the photographs. And they’re worth seeing. Billy?’

Billy had pulled on some blue latex gloves. As he took the evidence bag containing the smartphone from me, my own phone began to vibrate. I read the message and looked up at Whitestone.

‘Edie will be back in the country tomorrow,’ I told her. ‘She’s talking about coming into work.’

I expected Whitestone to say something about taking the rest of the week off after the miscarriage.

But our SIO merely nodded.

‘We could use her,’ she said.