We went across Gerrard Street to a cavernous Sichuan restaurant. It was crowded but there was no line outside and an indifferent waiter grudgingly found us a table for two. At the back of the restaurant there was some kind of celebration. An endless procession of waiters and waitresses brought massive plates that steamed and sizzled.

In the middle of it all, an old Chinese man stared at his phone, checking his messages.

I felt I knew him from somewhere.

Ginger and I ordered spicy dandan noodles and Tsingtao beer and then I pushed a manila envelope across the table. Hard 8 x 10 inch copies of the seven photographs we had looked at in MIR-1. The oldest photograph was on top.

‘The man is Zlatko Draganov and the woman is Rabia Demir,’ I said. ‘The names might be false but we know that first photograph was taken at Fort Baba Vida in Vidin, Bulgaria. And that Draganov was the driver of the lorry we found in Chinatown and Rabia was the only woman to survive.’

Ginger began to thumb through the photographs.

‘And how did she manage that?’

‘Because she wasn’t in the back of the lorry. She was sitting in the cab with Draganov.’

The waitress brought our order. The dandan noodles were a beautiful mess of pork, vegetables and scallions on a bed of noodles and drenched in a sauce of chilli oil and Sichuan pepper so spicy that it brought tears to my eyes. I took a gulp of ice-cold Tsingtao and watched Ginger go through the photographs and then do it all again, slower this time.

‘Even in strictly commercial transactions, affection can creep in,’ she said, more to herself than to me. ‘But sometimes – usually – that affection is only one way. It tends to be the one with all the power who starts getting that loving feeling.’

‘Draganov is dead,’ I said.

‘Good,’ she said.

‘But Rabia made it to London. Our theory is that she dropped him once she got here.’

‘Smart girl. Trading up from a people smuggler.’ She stared at the final photograph with the cool calculation of a professional. ‘Not a bad-looking woman,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘She would have been the prettiest girl in her village,’ I said.

‘Then they get to London,’ Ginger said. ‘And she finds there are a million others who were all the prettiest girl in their village. And suddenly the village feels long ago and far away.’

‘We have to assume that she’s working,’ I said.

‘And not as a nuclear physicist, right?’ Ginger bared her white teeth as she sucked some dandan noodles from her chopsticks. The heat did not seem to bother her as much. ‘You mean a working girl in London.’

I felt a stab of pain.

‘I think that’s what she’ll end up doing. I don’t know what her original plans were. Hana Novak – the one who was still alive – wanted to be a nurse.’