‘I was about to rush off to tell Michael the good news, but that’s when things got complicated. The inspector reminded me of the fact that he was a good friend of Tonys, and that if Tony found out that his little bird had been singing, I might never chirp again. So I sat down. Then they said that there were several other charges against Mervyn, enough to put him away for a number of years, and that if I wanted them to be dropped as well, I’d have to give them something in return. Like what, I said. Like information about the porn and prostitution racket, he said. Well, I said, you can just go and ask your good friend Tony about that next time you see him, and he said, I’ve already done just that and he’s handed over all the books and what do you know, your writing is all over them.

‘Well, in the end it turned out that one sacrificial lamb was as good as another, and before the interview went very much further they were reading me my rights. I was charged with everything under the sun, from obscene publications to running a brothel, in the hope that something might stick. And stick it did. I got four years.’

‘What for?’

‘This’ll make you laugh, dear. Conspiracy. Me! Who couldn’t conspire her way out of a paper bag! They might have done me for any number of things, really, but this gave them the best chance of sending me down for a good long stretch. So they gathered up all the evidence, all the pictures of all the trade, all the accounts books and the letters and the envelopes and the receipts in my handwriting, and they said well, dear, you’ve been a busy girl, ain’t you? Quite a one-woman crime wave. And rather than getting me on some minor technicality that might have got me a fine or a suspended sentence or a measly six months, they went for conspiracy to commit gross indecency. In other words, I’d lured all these poor little flies into my web and made them flash the gash and do the you-know-what for the cameras. I mean it was ridiculous. If I’d had that kind of power over men, I wouldn’t have ended up as the lonely old spinster I am today.’

‘And what happened to Tony?’

‘Got off scot-free, dear. Clean as a whistle. Teflon Tony. Nothing stuck to him. Last heard of in the early eighties, when he was busted as one of London’s crime barons and buggers off to South America where I imagine he has a nice respectable wife and a great big house and a little flat somewhere so he can bugger the brown arse.’

‘But prison … That must have been awful.’

‘It wasn’t exactly Butlins, dear, but one managed. I served two years. Michael and Mervyn came to see me every week, regular as clockwork, even when I was transferred up to Norwich, never missed, not even to go on holiday. I don’t know what I’d have done without them. Killed myself, I suppose. Lots did.’