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“Okay. Some of these questions may be hard for you but you need to answer them.” At her nod, I continued. “Glass wants to know why that man wanted you tortured.”
She answered slowly but without a single tremor in her words. “I told you, I’m only a librarian in Sydney.”
“But the man? How does he connect to you?”
“I know his son. He was a doctor, that’s all. I went to him about some plastic surgery but chickened out. I know he was arrested for fraud and was going to go to jail over it, as well as paying back millions to the government.”
Her shrug was dismissive.
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
Such wide eyes, and too steady, like she was afraid if she looked away I’d see it as a lie.
“His name?”
“The son was David Gavoche. That man said he was Andrew, the father. I had nothing to do with the son’s death.” She was shaking and her eyes shone. “Nothing.”
I went to reach across to her but she glared, her eyes sharpening.
“You said you wouldn’t touch me.”
Silence.
Yes, I had, but the vehemence in that was shocking. I searched her face. “I’m not your enemy, Jazmine. You know that.”
Her sniff was followed by a deep breath, and she squirmed her nose about.
“If you want to cry, there’s no shame.”
Her answer came out through teeth. “I don’t want to fucking cry. I want to go home. I want out of here!”
How had we gotten to this? Her yelling at me with hate? Her determined to go home without even passing go and talking about us?
Us. I’d thought, hoped, there was a chance for something to happen. I’d really hoped. After all these years, I was tired of being alone, but all she wanted to do was leave. All I wanted to do was turn her over my knee and spank some sense into her.
Except I couldn’t. Or was that shouldn’t?
Definitely shouldn’t. She’d been through enough to break anyone, but at the back of my head all I could hear was, if she leaves, you will never see her again.
And wasn’t that a happy piece of news.
“Okay, so you don’t know why. Next question. We need to know if you are going to be okay with lying to the authorities in Australia about where you’ve been. It’s best if you just say you’ve been travelling with someone and you don’t want to get them in trouble, so you won’t identify them. Can you do that? Even if you’re pressured? If there’s been a lot of news coverage of your disappearance, and police investigation, the cops will be really interested in you.”
“Yes. I can do it.”
I watched her, raised my eyebrows but she didn’t twitch at all. The girl was stonewalling me.
Last question and the one I’d thought she’d say no to. If she didn’t trust me. This one, I almost didn’t want to say because if she refused, I wasn’t sure where to go from here.
“We also need to know your full name and address so we can check it’s all valid. So we know without doubt, that you exist as who you say you are.”
The nothing blank look on her face was quickly replaced by a puzzled one, with her shaking her head. “What? You’re joking. Your friends are the murdering criminals, not that I’m not abso-fucking-lutely grateful, but I seriously do not want them to know who I really am.”
“And me, what about me?” My heart sped up. This was like putting my soul out for her to knife. Do you trust me? “If you tell me only, I swear I won’t pass it on. I’ll do all the checking.”
Then she ran on, blurting out something that I couldn’t understand, but from the rush and the little movements of her face, it upset her greatly.
