Tyrell watched as Amy ended the call and put the phone away in her jeans pocket. Her shoulders slumped, her eyes stayed downcast on the floor. She didn’t look good.
The whole situation didn’t look good.
Tyrell glanced at Josephina, back to Amy. The woman shook her head. ‘We’ve been set up,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Little Josephina’s mummy doesn’t want her back as much as she said.’
Tyrell was confused. ‘I don’t … ’ He looked at Amy, searching her face for answers. He read familiar emotions in her eyes. Anger. Madness. But he saw something new, something he hadn’t yet seen there. Despair. And somehow he found that more distressing.
The crowd on the bales were still looking in the other direction, still screaming. He stood behind them at the back wall, between two hay bale seating areas, feeling like the still point in a raging storm. The calm eye.
But he was anything but calm. His heart was racing, panic threatening to overwhelm him. He could see Josephina’s mother beside the ring, a mass of people between them. She looked distraught. Josephina was straining, desperate, crying to be free, to go and see her. Her cries were lost in the screaming crowd. He looked again at Amy. She had gone back into herself, unmoving.
‘What … what did she say?’
Amy didn’t reply. Didn’t even acknowledge that she had heard.
Must be the noise, thought Tyrell. He tried again, louder.
‘What did she say? What’s happening now?’
‘She’s betrayed us,’ said Amy. It sounded like the voice of a dead person.
Tyrell shivered. ‘What? What d’you mean?’
Amy turned to him. Her eyes too were like those of a dead person. ‘She told someone else. And they’re coming for us. They’re going to take you away. And me.’
From the way she was speaking, Tyrell thought he was expected to feel shocked or angry. But all he felt was relief. They could take him away. Put him back in prison. And he could rest.
‘But I’m not going to let her win. And I’m not going to let him win either … ’
‘What d’you mean? Who are you talking about?’
‘The kid’s no good to us now.’
‘So we can let her go?’
Another sigh from Amy. She looked him straight in the eye. And what he saw there scared him. ‘Don’t be stupid. No. We kill her. Now.’