Nellie had always ruled by fear; nowadays she relied heavily on her reputation from her younger days to keep order in her house. Nellie had once beaten a girl nearly to death, her crime to tip her hat at one of Nellie’s boys. As Nellie had grown older she had taken an undue interest in young men. Big handsome young men whose only duty was to treat Nellie with a bit of respect, light the cigars which she smoked constantly and hold doors open for her. It was the illusion of youth and desirability that Nellie still fostered, even though the illusion was nowadays quite incongruous. Nellie wasn’t really a jealous woman; she had beaten the whore for the simple reason that, if you let them get away with the little things, soon they’d try for bigger. Nellie had lived by that adage all her life. Until now, that is. Nellie was only sixty-two years old, not a great age for a madam. But she was so fat and lazy that the day to day running of her establishment had become something of a bind to her. She knew, deep down, that she had lost the urge to keep the place going, keep outwardly respectable and, worst of all for a madam, the urge to look out for her girls.

Now she had that young scut Briony Cavanagh coming to see her. Nellie pursed her lips to stop them twitching into a smile. She was a clever girl, that Cavanagh. Clever, good-looking and sensible. A lethal combination for a madam. Opened her first house with Tommy Lane when she was just a little girl, a greenie. Now the word on the street was that Briony was branching out into all sorts of skulduggery, legal as well as illegal.

Nellie sat back in her well-padded chair and absentmindedly unwrapped a sweet. Popping it into her mouth, she waited patiently for Briony Cavanagh to arrive and say what she had to say.

Briony walked into Nellie’s house with barely concealed shock. The door had been opened by a girl of about nine who had sniffed loudly as Briony introduced herself and said at the top of her considerable little voice: ‘You’d better come in.’

She had then been left in the hallway a good ten minutes before she realised the little minx had forgotten all about her. Briony was usually calm and fair in her dealings with children, but today she felt she had taken just about as much as she could stand.