‘I’d like to hear it from you.’
‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘OK. What about from 2009 when you lost your job at the packing factory in Leicester?’
‘I didn’t lose my job. I was made redundant. I’d worked for them for more than ten years. I got a good payout.’
‘So what happened?’
‘There weren’t any jobs going. People were being laid off, left, right, and centre. Companies weren’t hiring as they were scared by the economy. I managed to survive for a while; I had my redundancy money, but it didn’t last long. I had a few temp jobs, working behind a bar, as a postman at Christmas when they needed extra staff, then a milkman, but even they dried up eventually.’
‘It sounds like you wanted to succeed though. You didn’t want life to beat you.’
‘I didn’t. At first. It was the bloody Olympics that did it.’
Matilda frowned. ‘How’s that?’
‘While the whole country was pissing themselves about the Olympics, saying how brilliant it was going to be for Great Britain, how the mood of the nation was high, I couldn’t get arrested.’ He laughed and showed a set of brown, broken teeth. ‘Actually that’s not true. I probably could have got arrested if I’d wanted to. I had to go and sign on. I’ve never done that before in my life. Do you know how degrading it is having to beg for a bit of money just so you can pay the rent? I had some snotty cow behind a desk asking me what I’d done to find work. What work? There was nothing out there. I ended up having my benefits stopped. I couldn’t even afford the bus fare to get food from a food bank. How bad is that?’
Matilda started to feel sorry for Samuel. Had he been let down by the system or was he doomed from the day he was born?
‘So what happened?’
‘Around September 2013 I started getting into drugs. I met this woman in a pub and I went back to her place. She had some coke and we had a pretty heavy night, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we met up a few more times, and it was always the same thing: coke, drink, and sex. One night, she didn’t have any coke and I had no idea where to get some from, but she said she knew a guy so off she went. She came back and said she had something new she hadn’t tried before but was told it was the bollocks.’
‘What was it?’
‘Crystal meth.’
Matilda had to bite her tongue. Crystal methamphetamine was one of the most powerful illegal drugs available. Commonly known as the ‘club drug’ it is addictive from the very first hit. The first experience may involve some pleasure and act as a stimulant to party all night, but it would already have begun to attack the body and change the user’s life.
Samuel noticed the look on Matilda and Amy’s faces. ‘You know what it does. At first I thought it was brilliant. It gave me so much energy. I was happy. But it doesn’t take long to bring you down. I was getting depressed. I stopped eating, lost weight, and the only way to stop yourself from feeling down is by taking more meth. I sold everything I had to buy more. I lost my flat, everything. I ended up moving in with Caitlyn but it wasn’t her flat to begin with. It was just a squat.’
‘Was Caitlyn supporting your habit?’
‘Yes. To begin with.’
‘Was she working?’
‘She was,’ he smiled. ‘But it wasn’t the sort of job you put on your CV.’
‘She was a prostitute?’
‘And a bloody good one too. The problem is the dealers know how much you need the drug so they keep putting the price up. You can’t afford it but you need it, so you’ll do anything to get it.’
‘What happened?’ Matilda was engrossed in Samuel’s story.
‘Caitlyn was going out more and more to get money. She started doing riskier stuff if it meant getting more cash. She didn’t like it.’ Samuel genuinely looked disgusted as he relived his darkest days.
‘What was she doing?’ Amy asked.
‘Trust me, you don’t want to know. You’ll be shocked if you knew what sick things some men like to do. I liked Caitlyn. I genuinely had feelings for her. It was horrible seeing her change into a shell. She stopped talking to me. She stopped eating, and she was crying all the time. Then I remembered.’
‘Remembered what?’
‘I remembered I had a friend … Thomas Downy.’
SIXTY-NINE
‘Christian, any chance of a word?’
Sian and Faith were standing in the doorway of his office. They looked pensive.
‘You can have as many words as you like if it’s going to distract me from these sodding overtime sheets.’
‘Faith’s been trying to track down John Preston all day. She’s run his car through the ANPR and it was last seen a few weeks ago here in Sheffield, despite John supposedly keeping a vigil at his son’s hospital bed. We’ve got a copy of his driving licence and … well … ’ she handed him a printed copy of the licence.
‘That’s not John Preston,’ Christian said, studying the printout.
Sian and Faith exchanged glances.
‘I called the hospital that Malcolm Preston is in and spoke to one of the nurses,’ Faith said. ‘I sent an email of the driving licence and asked her to confirm that it’s John Preston. Six nurses all confirmed it.’
‘This makes absolutely no sense. What does Matilda say?’
Sian looked everywhere apart from at Christian Brady. ‘She’s not back yet.’
Christian blew out his cheeks. He would have to step up to the plate and make a decision. He hoped he would make the right one. If he did he would make sure the ACC knew it was him who solved the Ryan Asher case and not Matilda Darke.
‘Well … ?’ Sian prompted.
‘We need to visit Starling House. Someone is either a very good actor or everyone has been lying to us
