Seven months earlier
MINE SITE
March 11th, later
Detective Inspector Braithewaite returns, hands me a bottle of water. I sip it slowly.
‘We need to wait for a senior-ranking officer to arrive to interview you,’ he says.
He seems more tense, doesn’t meet my gaze. He’s probably annoyed he hasn’t been allowed to conduct the interview. Or things have got serious now that he’s found out more about me.
‘Anything else you need? Some food?’
‘A room with working air-con would be nice.’
He nods. ‘I’ll get you a fan.’
After he has left, I stand in front of the window, trying to see beyond the piles of dirt and machinery outside, imagining the cooler, deeper, rusty-smelling land beneath, its ancient red rock and precious metals. It would be quiet inside that land. You would say there are worse places to end up. I touch the rough wooden windowsill and feel your scar. I return to the chair, take another sip of water, shut my eyes. Now I imagine you striding through the land, heading far away into the pounding sun of the north. Freedom. At least for me.