It was one of dozens of advertisements in the Chinese Business Gazette, a freesheet circulated in Chinatown in London. A brothel was advertising for staff: "Located in outer London. Catered only for westerners. Comfort-able living environment. Safety guaranteed. Recruiting Misses. Housekeeper urgently required. Female only. Hsiao-Hung's duties were to cook, clean and look after the girls. She soon realised the "misses" came and went on a weekly basis, rotated through Chinese-run brothels in a routine intended to keep the customers happy and the authorities guessing.
It's part of a well-established system. Young girls are lured to the UK with the promise of lucrative, respectable careers. Some as young as 11, they arrive without passports or visas, some claiming asylum at British airports, having paid traffickers thousands of pounds for their transit. Once here, they vanish from the hostels or foster care to which they have been assigned by the immigration authorities, often ending up in brothels run from suburban flats and houses.
Hsiao-Hung - posing as Xiao Yun, just in from Zhejiang province, in south-eastern China - saw for herself that the misses are never allowed out and have no idea where they are, the time of day or even the month. Few can speak English or know anything about their rights, the UK's asylum processes or its legal system; they are made to believe they have no alternative but to remain in the brothels until they have earned enough to buy their release, and their only contact with British society is the men with whom they have sex.
Madam Linda's phone rings. She arrived from Beijing four years back and worked as a prostitute until she'd amassed enough money to climb up the pecking order and become a lao ban niang, a madam. She switches into a sweet English voice: "We've got a nice young girl, cup 32, very pretty, lots of demand.
Trade is brisk today. Yet none of the other residents of Avon Court, a 70s block of flats on Shakespeare Road, Bedford, seems to suspect what's going on in this two-bedroom, ground-floor flat. Dozens of Chinese girls pass through here, part of a network that has sprawled out across almost every British town and city. It is a criminal enterprise that blurs the boundaries between trafficking and smuggling, ensnaring girls and women who in many cases leave China of their own free will.
