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She nods. “I know he’s been supportive, and he seems to have a good handle on this.”
Even though Max is dealing with issues outside of mine he always makes time for me. Prioritises me.
You know how to cheer a guy up.
“If work permits,” I tell Josie confidently, “Max would come.”
Today,Paula is not accompanied by the young lad in training, but by two senior detectives. It makes me more nervous than normal. We spend a long time interrogating the significant memories I’ve already made them aware of.
“Tell me more about your bedroom,” DI Jones asks, a woman with a high forehead. “Was there carpet on the floor? Pictures on the walls? A clock on a bedside table perhaps?”
“Just floorboards. The window didn’t have a blind because it was in the roof. There was nothing in there apart from the wooden chair, and my bed.”
They want to know what the sheets looked like. I tell them, “Floral, with big flowers in pinks and yellows.”
“What did Luca talk to you about?”
“Nonsense. Something irritated him, but I wasn’t always listening.” I had fallen into my head, trying to survive. “Mostly he baited me, telling me how I was his prize girl, that I would earn him so much money, more than Frank got.”
“Wait, who’s Frank?” This comes from DI Jamison, a clean-shaven man with a prominent nose.
Shocked, I sit there, blinking, checking my memory. But it’s there, crystal clear. “Frank. He mentioned a Frank sometimes, I just remembered.”
I chase the memory, putting up a hand to stop any questions that I can see Paula about to voice. And then it comes, hitting me like a truck. “Frank didn’t think that I would invite much interest.” I almost laugh at the insult, but Luca’s presence in that memory has me shrivelling into my seat. Has me feeling like I’m back in that barren room, hurt and desperate and waiting for rescue.
Rescue.That word flaps about in my brain for a second before it disappears. “But Luca disagreed.”
They poke and prod, asking me more about Frank. “Was he the big boss?”
“I don’t think so. I think he was a rival.”
Paula’s eyebrows hike up. “A vast network to unpick,” she murmurs.
I feel the added burden weighing on me already.
I’m asked about any peripheral conversation that might not seem relevant but could be. When I have nothing else to give them, they ask about Luca’s clothes and his accent. They list out a bunch of names, hoping I’ve heard of them, showing me a photograph of each suspect as they do.
I haven’t got a clue who those people are. Were they the ones to abduct me? To hurt Jonas? Sell me? Did they tie me to the bed, traumatising me over and over?
I fight off the memories, my throat tight as I swallow down my tears. Paula tells me I can take as much time as I need. Because I want to get this over with we move on to the auction.
“What can you see in that room?”
It appears in my mind, razor-sharp, before it turns fuzzy. Was that down to the drugs Luca shoved in my arm?
I ask for paper and a pen and start to draw the room layout. “A cream sofa with three seats is here. There’s a desk with a dead plant, here,” I say, drawing. “Some pens, papers.”
“Can you see anything written down?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember any newspapers in there or anything to read. There were two paintings, both of countryside scenes with windmills and canals.” I draw them out, replicating their position in the room. “The floor was made from dark wood. There was a desk chair, like the one in my room.”
“And the river you saw—maybe it was a canal, visible from the window. Can you tell us anything else?”
“The sun was setting beyond it,” I suddenly recall. “There was a burst of red and orange on the horizon. There was a ceiling light with yellow shades. A sideboard over here, painted blue. A fireplace with a brick surround.”
“And the buyer. Male B,” DI Jones asks. “From Lancashire you think. What can you remember about him physically?”
“He was about five eleven. Looked heavy, but from muscle. Dark hair, eyes . . . I don’t know. He wore a blue suit. He looked English, if that makes sense, even before he spoke.”
