British madam's 'links with Mafia'

French detectives are investigating links between the Mafia and the alleged multi-million pound sex empire of a British woman.

Margaret MacDonald, a 43-year-old former teacher, is believed to have run one of Europe's biggest call girl rings from a Paris hotel.

The French believe she could not have operated the alleged operation on her own nor could she have done it without the approval of organised crime.

Scotland Yard believes MacDonald may be linked to a London-based escort agency. The agency has a website registered to a mailbox at a photocopying shop in New Cavendish Street.

MacDonald's arrest in Paris by the vice squad as she interviewed three "escort girls" came as a complete shock to her mother Matilda, a devout Roman Catholic who lives in a £750,000 house in Windsor. MacDonald's father, who is dead, was a former RAF sergeant and successful businessman.

Her sister Eileen, a mother of two from Horsham, West Sussex, said: "She told us she was in market research. She never gave us any indication she was making her living in this awful way."

MacDonald is being held in a French prison.