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Peter Pan about his girl. But that could wait. The boy would stand a half hour outside my guesthouse and then leave. I would make it up to him next time.
    â€˜Sounds good,’ I said to Minh Quy.
    But shortly I felt ashamed sitting at a squat alfresco table enjoying the evening with barbecued shrimp and Japanese beer while somewhere in the night a girl might be enduring hell.
    I left early.

9
    The taxi turned down a street lit by a pair of copper lights that fell upon the doorway of Club 49. At the door was an evil-looking scarecrow of a man in a yellow shirt: a motorbike-taxi tout. He slithered up to me but I brushed him away.
    Beyond the pink neon ‘49’ and the black doors was a dimlit bar and pool room and small dance floor, all clean and well appointed so as to distract the clientele from the squalor that surrounded the room and threatened to leak in, especially from the door at the back left just ajar into the girls’ bathroom that was wet and atrocious. But you did not notice these things at first. The first thing you noticed were the girls slinking in and out of the dark in sprayed-on dresses to get drinks or change the track of the trance music that saturated the room. One girl in a tight black singlet and denim shorts was green enough not to know how to walk in high heels. She rocked from one table to another as though on stilts. I supposed she was eighteen, only she was used to walking in flat shoes in the provinces. Three girls were with customers. One girl lolled on a lounge chair with the stupid bliss of a junkie after a hit.
    A snake-eyed man with a scrappy beard, bloated face and tattoos on his forearms eyed me from behind the bar. The club shared a wet tiled room that was used as a kitchen by the next-door restaurant and in the doorway of it were about two dozen brown pups stuffed into a cage that might have uncomfortably housed one. These were sold in the restaurant under the billing of a northern rodent considered a delicacy. Snake-face saw me scowling at the cage and kicked it to make the pups yelp and then grinned at me. I held my tongue and tried to ignore him. The bartender brought me a Scotch and dry. A girl arrived before the drink. She sat down on the barstool beside me and our knees touched. She had pretty eyes and bad teeth. I told her that I was only here for a drink, and I wondered who would walk this corner of District Four in search of a drink at ten minutes after midnight. The girl nodded. She spoke to me in broken brothel English.
    â€˜No problem. I also only here drink. We drink and talk, yes?’
    The accent was strange.
    I asked the girl her name and scanned the room. I did not hear the name, nor did I see the girl I had come to see. But if she was abused like Hönicke said then I supposed she would not be on show. I thought if I asked the right questions very gently I might find out if she was kept here or what other place the girls lived or worked – perhaps the place Hönicke claimed he ended up in.
    It is an advantage when making investigations in a foreign country for the locals to believe you are ignorant of the language, so I mispronounced a couple of ungrammatical phrases. But the girl barely understood the words I spoke properly. I switched to English.
    â€˜Sorry, what was your name again?’
    â€˜Jo.’
    â€˜Zhou?’
    I traced the Chinese character on the bar with my finger.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜You are Chinese?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    A Chinese bar girl was a great rarity in Saigon. A girl got up from a far table and I stared over Zhou’s shoulder.
    â€˜You want other girl?’ she said without a hint of wounded pride.
    â€˜No. But you can invite your friends to talk.’
    She signalled to a pair of girls sitting nearby. They wore red and pink spandex suits with slits at the ribs like fish gills that told how the girls would look naked.
    I asked the girls the absurd question that invites a lie.
    â€˜Do you like