Page 35 of Slack Tide Kill

"Thank you, thank you!" she cried in heavily accented English. She was shorter, her head pressed against Sally's grimy shoulder, and sobbing.

Thoughts of evidence and contamination ran through Sally's mind, then she tossed them aside and hugged the girl back. Her body was as thin and frail as a child's, shaking as she wept. Sally felt the rage resurging in her chest, at Roarke Rook, at a system that allowed trafficking to happen, but anger was no use now.

She buried it and gently patted the girl's back, murmuring that everything would be OK, she was safe now. It didn't matter that the girl probably didn't understand the words. She understood enough, and steadily her sobbing eased.

A woman glided over to stand before them. She was in her 50s, with short gray hair, calm eyes and the commanding physical presence of a ward matron. She watched for a moment as the girl calmed herself, then spoke softly.

"Officers Rogers and O'Connell?"

"That's us," Liam said.

"My name is Polly Brampton, Safeguarding Officer. Eszter here has been asking for you. Isn't that right, Eszter?"

The girl turned to the older woman and nodded. She pulled back, offered a shy, teary smile, said something in another language then took Sally's hand and held it.

Sally squeezed back.

"Eszter's Hungarian," Brampton said. "The only one in this small group, so she hasn't been able to talk to the other girls so much. The four others are Romanian. If you'll come this way, we have a space set up for you."

Sally looked at the girl. "Eszter. Is that OK?"

Eszter nodded, eyes bright. "Yes. Yes. OK."

Brampton led them across the hall. "We have translators inbound. Until then, we're using a translation app. It works well enough, but we can't use it for a formal statement."

A folding table sat in a cubicle at the edge of the hall, and they sat. A tablet computer lay in the center, the translation app live. Brampton remained standing. "I'll remain nearby to monitor. I advise only brief contact at this point, no more than five minutes with each young woman. They've been through a terrible ordeal, which started long before their hazardous journey aboard a small boat late last night."

Sally looked up, still holding Eszter's hand. "Could we have some coffee, please? Biscuits, anything like that?"

Brampton nodded. "Of course you can."

She summoned an aide who hurried away. Sally looked at Eszter, then over at Liam, then she pulled the translation app toward her and began.

"Tell us everything, Eszter," she spoke into the app. It repeated the question in Hungarian, and the young girl nodded, then words began spilling out of her.

The process that followed was slow and halting, as Sally or Liam asked her to pause, to repeat, to backfill. The app was imperfect and didn't catch everything. They ate biscuits and drank tea and coffee while she went through it all.

The crossing. The shack. The pickup. What followed.

She'd known she was going to perform on a livestream, it seemed. It had been part of her payment. A one-month indentureship, and the Rooks had put them straight to work.

Sally asked if she could identify the brothers.

She did. One brother had slapped her several times. From the description, Sally believed it was Roarke.

"Did you see anything unusual on the beach?" Sally asked. "Did the Rook brothers or the men who brought you attack anyone?"

Eszter frowned as the translation came. She bit her lip, thought a moment, then answered low and fast.

"I did not see any attacks," the app translated. "But we were on the beach for seconds only. From the boat, into the box. That was all."

Sally looked at Liam. "Did you hear anything unusual? Any cries, shouts? An engine?"

"I don't think so. I just remember the cold. Two of the girls were crying. I tried to comfort them." She paused, looking back at the group of four huddled in their silver blankets. "I told them it would be all right. We were beginning a new life."

Then she began to cry.

Sally just rested her hand on Eszter's. "It's OK."