‘I have a couple of hits. One is on a “sexual encounters” website. There’s no photo, just an email address and a description, calling himself “Big Toni”. “Forty-three-year-old, slim, professional male lives in London. Email address listed here.” He sounds nice!’ she said, sarcastically. ‘Big Toni has also been on a freelance escort site. He’s used that email to write a review on a girl he’s used in the past. He was very impressed, which is nice, although he seems a bit fixated on how “young and fresh” she was. Ew!’

Tom’s interest picked up a little at this news.

‘Do you have the girl’s profile there?’

Pet swivelled the screen round so he could see the small image of the escort. Tom stared at the picture of the young, pretty girl dressed in a tacky schoolgirl uniform, hair fashioned into pigtails, with a provocative look on her face spoiled by flat, dead eyes.

It was Ana.

23

‘You know this girl?’

Tom nodded. ‘She was a working girl at the brothel I was at when I was undercover. Whoever our dirty cop is, he’s clearly a client. She will know who he is, and this could be a major deal. It certainly explains the hold the Brankos have over him. If he’s as senior as I suspect he is, then consorting with prostitutes would finish him.’

‘So where do we go from here?’

‘I need to speak to Ana. She knows who the bent cop is, even if she doesn’t know she knows it.’

‘Is it safe to speak to her? She was with the Brankos.’

‘I don’t know. I always got on well with her but Aleks told me they’d packed the girls off back to Bosnia as they were getting troublesome. I don’t know if that’s true or not.’

That was a quandary. Ana had the information, even if she didn’t consciously know it. Tom had got on well with her, but a feature of trafficked victims is they often don’t feel like victims in the traditional sense. He didn’t know whether she knew he was an undercover cop or not, and meeting her could land him in the hands of his enemies. Pet interrupted his chain of thought.

‘Did she have a phone?’

‘I think so. She was Mira’s favourite.’ He reached for his phone and located her number, reading it out to Pet.

‘Give me a minute, I’ll see what I can come up with.’