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explained. ‘Hard to believe, but Mifsud was a former traffic cop in Malta. Despite being loaded, he dressed like a dosser. They made an unlikely partnership.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘Silver was a north Londoner who’d served in the Parachute Regiment. His vice days began in the East End with a brothel in Brick Lane. That was the beginning of a vice empire that was to bankroll him to the dubious title of “Godfather of Soho”. Unlike Mifsud, he dressed impeccably and looked like a suave and dapper George Raft in one of those old black and white Hollywood gangster movies. Silver and Mifsud were as disparate as Laurel and Hardy, but not to be taken lightly. Together, they soon owned most of Soho’s strip joints. Silver was the brains, Mifsud the muscle.’
    ‘Are Mifsud and Silver still around?’
    ‘No, long gone – the way of the Krays and Richardsons; star-polishers in the great penitentiary of the sky.’
    ‘But what can you possibly hope to garner from this escort agency, Mike? Let’s take the mother’s account at face value: Tina just quit all those years ago. We’re not talking about a company like a bank or the Civil Service or the military that keep personal records indefinitely. The day Tina pulled the plug, everything about her would have been flushed.’
    ‘Wrong.’
    Sarah cocked her head like a spaniel, her expression challenging , as if slightly pissed off with me.
    ‘It doesn’t work that way, never has.’
    ‘Educate me, then,’ she said, her tone unusually churlish.
    ‘Escort agencies and porn-brokers are kindred spirits. They retain everything, pictures, personal details, all the minutiae. Know why?’
    ‘You’re supposed to be doing the teaching, but I’ll play along: there’s always the chance that one of their girls – or ex-girls – becomes some sort of celebrity, a Mary Poppins-type film star or marries into royalty. Then all the tales of her tarting can be sold to one of the tacky tabloids for a bundle.’
    ‘Or used for blackmail and monthly pay-days for life.’
    ‘Even so, thirty years is a hell of a time to hang on to tat like that. Just think of the number of girls who must have excreted through that agency during that period. Tina’s fifty, right?’
    ‘
Right
,’ I echoed.
    ‘They wouldn’t be expecting her to suddenly become Hollywood’s newest discovery.’
    ‘We can mull over this for ever, but we’ll never know until we’ve tested the water,’ I sighed.
    ‘So go dip in your big toe,’ she said, like she was
my
boss.
    ‘I intend to. Tomorrow.’
    ‘Not too early, though,’ she said, impishly now. ‘ Whore-traders aren’t noted for being early birds. They specialize in catching the nocturnal worms.’
    Sarah had a flair for anarchy, an attractive feature in a servant of the Establishment.
    There was only one important outstanding issue to be resolved that day: where would Sarah stay? The matter was solved early in the evening when I introduced her as my wife to my Oxford landlady, Betty Oliver.
    As the two women shook hands, Betty said, ‘Been married long?’
    ‘Quite long enough,’ Sarah replied, roguishly. She loved these games, especially when I could do nothing but squirm.

5
    V enus for the Lonely was situated behind Park Lane, just off Shepherd Market. The premises comprised one room next to a pub and above a bakery. The pavement-level door was locked. Alongside the black-varnished door were three lit-up bell-buttons . The second and third floor bells were for “models” Melissa and Cristina.
    I pressed the button for Venus. A husky female voice said, via the intercom, ‘Hell-ooh.’ There was heavy emphasis on ‘Hell’. The ‘ooh’ was as in
ooh-la-la
.
    ‘I’m looking for a lady,’ I said, confident that the double entendre would be a key to the door, which clicked open, without another word from ‘Husky’.
    The stairs were the kind I’d mounted a million times in the course of my invasive work in the West End. You could be