“Yeah. Pretty well. Lenny G really took to him, groomed him real nice, bought him Nike trainers, taught him the ropes. Sammy, he didn’t really know what it was all about. I mean, he knew it was drugs, and he knew it was a bit dodgy, but Lenny paid well and Sammy was, like, desperate for money to send to his family so they could come over. That was like his goal in life, his only reason for doing what he did. He loved that family. And it was easy work. All he had to do was go to the trap house, hand out the orders and bring back the money. He’d got away from some gang in Birmingham or somewhere who’d helped smuggle him into the country and wanted him to work off his debt. Like, forever. Slave labor. They even wanted him to let blokes fuck him up the arse. But Sammy did a bunk.”

“Did he say what this gang in Birmingham was called? Any names?”

“Nah. Never mentioned no names. I don’t think he knew.”

“Didn’t he know about his parents?”

“What about them?”

Banks paused. “They’re dead. The whole family. Killed by a bomb the last weeks of the war in Aleppo.”

“Oh, fuck.” Greg shook his head. “He didn’t know. At least not when I left. The bastards didn’t tell him, if they knew. They kept him working the line thinking he’d one day have enough to help his parents, and all the time they were fucking dead.”

“Looks that way,” said Banks. “Which line did he work?”

“Malton.”

“Did he ever mention an uncle and aunt in this country?”

“Yeah, but he said he’d lost their address. Lost all the photos of his family, too, poor kid. One of the boats he was in sank, like, and they had to get rescued by some Italians. That was when they still let people in. The paper disintegrated. All he knew was they lived somewhere up north.”

“Big place,” said Banks.

“Yeah.” Greg paused. “It was really sad, man.”

“What was? There’s something else?”

“Samir could speak English pretty good, but he couldn’t read it very well. I guess he was used to Arabic, or whatever they speak in Syria, but our letters were mostly meaningless shapes to him. I asked him more than once if he remembered what it said on the paper, the address, even just the town, but he couldn’t reproduce it for me. He’d no idea. Poor sod. He used to write letters home, but he’d no return address. My girlfriend let Samir use her address—the flat in Yeadon—but nothing came for him. He was really gutted. Every day he expected a letter from home, but nothing came. Now we know why.”

Banks swallowed. “Nearly done now, Greg,” he said.