Costain had always found Soho’s insistence that it was still naughty, almost because it had to be for the tourists, charming. It was actually calming to be back here. The sex-shop end of the business moving into the daylight across the way on Oxford Street had really taken the oomph out of the place, which now said gay and proud more than it said furtive. There was only one remaining peep show, and its signs sighed with the idea that this was the art of a lost age, like a freak show or a circus. Presumably because the area was still a popular brand, there were still over a dozen prostitutes working in walk-ups, stairwells with small advertising of their purpose that often seemed to lead to flats above independent television production companies (and there was an example of how rent levels created strange bedfellows). He assumed that meetings about new drama series were regularly interrupted by faked cries of encouragement. The TV people probably liked that. There was still a handful of men who made a living hawking to likely customers on the street and walking them to the stairwells. The prostitutes discouraged this parasitic trade. They preferred to have tips given to their ‘maids’, matronly figures who were, in effect, their PAs and lived in. There was a whole other industry of people who pretended to be prostitutes but were in fact thieves, and brothels that were actually high-priced drinking establishments which one was encouraged not to leave. There were also three or four genuine, surprisingly large, brothels in the area, including this one on Berwick Street, across from which Costain and Ross now sat, drinking coffee on a street-side table in the sunshine. The coffee was probably a bad idea. She looked as on edge as he felt. They had watched as a number of men had approached a completely nondescript door, had talked into an intercom and been welcomed up. Having established that the place was still working, in a while they’d take a wander around the map and work out back exits and boltholes.

‘You’re right at home here, aren’t you?’ Ross said to him.

He turned to look at her. They’d hardly talked on the way over. She was probably wondering if he’d meant what he’d said about helping her get her dad out of Hell rather than taking the Bridge of Spikes to save himself. He’d stared into the night worrying about that question himself, but the more he thought about it, the more he looked at her, the more he felt that, once again, he’d done the right thing; this time at least, the right thing felt good. ‘I guess.’

‘It reminds me of Whitechapel.’

‘Does it?’

‘I mean, all those dead women. Except here it’s all kept behind closed doors. How many container-loads of Belarusian teenagers do you reckon get decanted here every week?’