‘We’ve got their phone numbers, we know where they work, we just don’t know who they are yet.’ Pet looked at Tom, whose face remained blank. ‘I’ve checked the timeline and the calls between them all match the events so far,’ she said. ‘Your Ilford man was called by Bent Cop while Adebayo was in custody, and the other calls match what’s happened so far. We have the three of them, so we just need to find out who they are. But how?’

‘Let’s skim through the photos and then get some rest.’

Pet brought the photo-roll up on the screen with each folder displayed.

‘For a working girl, her pictures are well-organised. Look: all labelled,’ Pet said.

It was true: there were eight folders, each labelled clearly.

Tom’s eyes went straight to the folder marked Hackney and he tapped the screen. ‘That one.’

Pet opened the folder and a series of thumbnail pictures appeared on the screen. She enlarged the first which showed three girls, all dressed in lingerie, arm-in-arm. Tom recognised them all as the three girls from the brothel.

‘Scroll through steadily.’

The pictures were a mix of the girls with each other, alone or with various males at some type of party. Inane drunken grins appeared all over, and the seediness was evident even through the screen.

Pet scrolled through mostly similar photographs until Tom shouted, ‘Stop, go back!’

Pet clicked back to the previous image, showing a lurid picture of Ana and one of the girls arm-in-arm, both dressed in skimpy underwear, clutching joints and glasses of champagne. They were stood in front of a dressing table laden with cosmetics, contraceptives and a large vibrator. But it wasn’t the items or even the girls that drew his attention, it was the reflection of the half-dressed person taking the photograph. Tom took in the thinning hair, the weak chin, the pallid cheeks.

Detective Chief Inspector Simon Taylor’s blotched and puffy face leered back at him, holding the camera phone in front of his pale, bare chest.

24

Tom felt the rage rising within him. It was a colleague. His boss had tried as hard as he could to provide the information which would have him killed and had also been indirectly responsible for Ivan being brutally slaughtered.

He felt the fury build, threatening to engulf him, but he forced it back down. He had to remain focused. He still had a job to do, but he knew one thing: Taylor would pay for this. They would all pay for this.

‘Tom?’ Pet’s voiced pierced the fog that was filling Tom’s head.

‘That’s my boss: DCI Simon Taylor. He’s working for the Brankos and trying to have me killed.’

Pet paused for a second, thinking of the impact of this information.

‘What can we do?’