She winked at the two police officers and said, a tad awkwardly, ‘One of my regulars. Would you like to see them separately or together?’

‘Separately,’ Bella said.

She ushered them hastily down the hall and through a doorway into a small room.

‘I’ll go and fetch them.’

She closed the door. And now Nick Nicholl noticed the smell Bella meant. There was a sharp, hygienic tang of disinfectant, mixed with a potent, cheap-smelling, musky scent. He stared in shock at the small, pink-painted room they were in. There was a double bed with a leopard-skin-patterned bedspread and a folded white towel, a television monitor on which a pornographic film was playing, a bedside table with some toiletries and a roll of lavatory paper on it, a wide mirror on the wall and a pile of erotic DVDs.

‘This is so tacky,’ he said.

Bella shrugged. ‘Normal. See what I mean about the smell?’

He nodded, breathing it in, slowly, again.

A few moments later the door opened again and Joey showed in a pretty girl, with long dark hair, dressed in a flimsy, pink see-through nightdress over dark underwear. She looked sullen and nervous.

‘This is Anca – I’ll be back!’ the madame mouthed, closing the door.

‘Hello, Anca,’ Bella said. ‘Take a seat.’ She indicated the bed.

The girl sat down, her eyes darting between them. She was holding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, as if they were stage props.

‘We are police officers, Anca,’ Bella said. ‘Do you speak English?’

She shook her head. ‘Little.’

‘OK, we are not here to cause you trouble, do you understand?’

Anca stared blankly.

‘We just want to make sure you are all right. Are you happy to be here?’

Anca had been well briefed. She had been told by Cosmescu that the police might ask questions. And she had been warned of the consequences of saying anything negative.

‘Yes, is good here,’ she replied in a guttural accent.

‘Are you sure about that? Do you want to be here?’

‘Want, yes.’

Bella shot a glance at her colleague, who appeared to not know where to put himself.

‘You just came over from Romania? Is that right?’

‘Romania. Me.’

Bella showed her the three e-fits, then watched her face closely.

‘Do you recognize any of these?’

The Romanian girl looked at them, with no glimmer of a reaction, then shook her head. ‘No.’

She appeared, to Bella, to be telling the truth.

‘OK, what I want to know is who brought you here.’

Anca shook her head and delivered a line that Cosmescu had drummed into her. ‘No understand.’

Patiently, and very slowly, gesticulating with sign language, Bella asked her, ‘Who brought you here?’

The girl shook her head blankly.

Nick suddenly flipped through the pages of his notebook for some moments, then stopped. Reading out aloud, slowly, in Romanian, he asked, ‘You have a contact here in England?’

Anca looked startled to hear her native language, however badly pronounced it was.

Bella looked equally astonished – and had no idea what he had said.

The girl shook her head.

Nick turned a page and looked at his notes. Then, harshly, he read out in Romanian, ‘If you are lying we will know. And we will send you back to Romania. Tell me the truth now!’

Startled, and looking scared, the girl said, ‘Vlad. His name.’

‘Vlad, what?’

‘Coz, er Cozma, Cozemec?’

‘Cosmescu?’ Bella suggested.

The girl was silent for some moments, looking at her with scared eyes. Then she nodded.

Twenty minutes later, after having interviewed both girls, they got back into the car.

Bella said, ‘Do you mind telling me what that was all about?’

‘I checked with the UKHTC.’

‘The what?’

‘The United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre. I wanted to establish where the girls were most likely to have come from. Romania was high on the list. And Romania was our brief.’

‘So you learned fluent Romanian in an afternoon?’

‘No, just the phrases I thought I might need.’

Bella grinned. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘Not as impressed as my wife will be – not – when she finds out where I spent my afternoon.’

‘Don’t all men visit brothels?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, fervently and indignantly. ‘Actually, no.’

‘You’ve really never been to one before?’

‘No, Bella,’ he said snarkily. ‘I really haven’t. Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘I’m not disappointed. It’s good to know there are some decent guys out there. I just don’t seem to be able to find one.’

‘Maybe that’s because my wife found the only one!’ he said.

Bella looked at him, at his thin, elongated, grinning face in the glare of the street light. ‘Then she’s a lucky woman.’

‘I’m the lucky one. What about you? You’re an attractive lady. You must have tons of opportunities.’

‘No, I’ve had tons of disappointments. And you know what? I’m actually content being on my own. I look after my mum, and when I’m not looking after her, I’m free. I like that feeling.’

‘I love my kid,’ he said. ‘It’s an incredible feeling. You can’t describe it.’

‘I should think you’ll be a great father, Nick.’

He smiled again. ‘I would like to be.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Can you imagine what kind of father Anca had? Or the other girl, Nusha?’

‘No.’

‘For life for them in a crummy Brighton brothel to be better than whatever they left behind, I find that incredible.’

‘I find it incredible that you bothered to learn their language, Nick. I’m blown away by that.’

‘I didn’t learn their language. Just a few phrases. Enough so that we could get through to them.’

She looked down at her notes. ‘Vlad Cosmescu.’

‘Vlad the Impaler.’

‘Vlad who?’

‘He was the Transylvanian emperor that Dracula was based on. A charmer who used to impale his enemies on a spike up their rectums.’

‘Too much information, Nick,’ she said, wincing.

‘You’re a police officer, Bella. We can never have too much information.’

She smiled, then said, ‘Vlad Cosmescu.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘By name. He’s a pimp. Was active a few years ago when I was on brothels. He’s a kind of gatekeeper for Romanian, Albanian and other eastern European contraband. Drugs, pirated videos, cigarettes, you name it. He’s been a Person of Interest for the drugs teams for years, but I heard he always managed to keep out of trouble himself. Interesting that he’s still around.’ She made a note on her pad, then said breezily, ‘Right! One down. There are only about twenty-eight more brothels in Brighton to cover before we’re done. How’s your stamina?’

With a baby needing feeding every few hours, around the clock, probably a lot better than my libido at this point, he thought.

‘My stamina? Terrific!’