‘She’s out there now – the girl in the cab, the thirteenth woman, the only one who didn’t freeze to death,’ I said. ‘Rabia Demir. The only one who survived the journey. Find her and we find the chain that leads all the way to the bastards at the top.’ I looked at Billy. ‘Can you scroll through the photographs again?’

The images began to appear.

The young pretty woman and older scar-faced man looking almost formal in front of Fort Vida. And as they made their way across Europe, the woman becoming more relaxed, smiling more, something like her true self.

‘What do you notice?’ I said.

‘He looks keen,’ Whitestone said. ‘And she looks less keen.’

‘Understandable,’ I said. ‘He’s the one with all the power. He’s in the driver’s seat in every way possible. Until they reach their destination. Until they get to this country. Until they reach London. And then he feels all his power suddenly slipping away.’

We stared at the screen.

‘They tell a story, don’t they?’ I said. ‘These seven photographs. You wouldn’t call it a love story exactly. But they tell a tale. It has a beginning, middle and an end. She was the prettiest girl in her village. He picked her up. He drove her here. At some point – quite early on, I reckon – he fell hard for her. Love, sex, obsession – label it how you like. But she rode up front in that lorry all the way across Europe because he wanted her and because she needed him. And when all those other women died because he forgot to press a button or turn a dial, she lived because she got to sit in the cab. And then they reached Chinatown.’

‘And then she dumped him,’ Whitestone said.

16

I stood outside a duck restaurant halfway down Chinatown’s Gerrard Street and looked up at the small office on the first floor. The lights were on so I excused myself as I edged through the long line waiting for a table and went up a short flight of stairs to the white door with its small sign.

SAMPAGUITA

Social Introduction Agency

I knocked and went inside.

Ginger Gonzalez looked up from her copy of the Financial Times and stared at me coldly, still resenting me for coming to see her with Whitestone.

‘Come to bust me, Max?’ she said.

She mockingly held out her wrists to be handcuffed, displaying the tattoos that ran down her lower arms.

Never for money, said one side.

Always for love, said the other.

‘Maybe later,’ I said. ‘Fancy some Chinese?’

She stared at me for a moment and then got her coat.