‘Okay, Simon, let’s start with why.’ He gazed over Sasha’s shoulder at the drab blue wall, and she again had the sense that his body was in the room, but his mind was roaming free somewhere. ‘Michelle estimates that she’s been blackmailed to the tune of maybe eighteen to twenty thousand pounds in the last seven or eight years. Is it you, Simon, who’s been blackmailing her?’ His eyes met hers very briefly, and they were full of hurt. ‘Can you tell me why?’

‘He’s homeless,’ Craig said when Simon didn’t answer. ‘So of course he needs the money.’

Simon’s attention whipped to Craig. ‘Money is the last thing I need. I’ve no interest in it.’

‘Good for you.’ Sasha bit thoughtfully on the lid of her pen. ‘That’s very laudable. But you can understand my confusion, then. If you have so little regard for money, why on earth are you extorting it from Michelle?’

Simon sat back in his chair and sighed. ‘I’ve admitted it, it was me, what else do you need?’

‘A teenage girl went missing two nights before you demanded money off Michelle.’

‘Okay, wait.’ Simon’s focus snapped back into the room. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with that.’

‘You’ve admitted to blackmail, which means you know she is the girl’s biological mother. That’s a hell of a coincidence, Simon. What are we meant to think?’

He scraped his fingers through his hair. ‘You’ve got it wrong.’

‘Then tell me where I’m wrong. Maybe it’s time we got you that lawyer?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I want Karin in here.’

‘Karin’s not a legal representative, so I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.’

‘I thought Michelle was your mate,’ said Craig, dropping into a chair. ‘You often go about blackmailing mates?’

Simon shrugged. ‘We knew each other because of… what happened to us a long time ago. But she’s not my friend. I don’t do friends, friends just hold you down, they make you immobile, they lock you into a single place, a single linear reality.’

‘I’m gonna be honest with you,’ said Craig. ‘You’ve totally lost me there.’