The girl seemed remarkably calm given her situation.
Boss stood in the doorway and watched her for a couple of minutes.
If she betrayed any emotion at all it was more akin to boredom than fear. If boredom was even an emotion.
“How long are you thinking of keeping me here?” She asked eventually, releasing a heavy sigh.
“That depends,” Boss said.
“On what? On whether my father pays a ransom for me? That’s never going to happen. You may as well just let me go now and miss out all the crap.”
“Do you know what happens to little girls whose father don’t pay the ransom?” He asked, watching her face for the slightest reaction. There wasn’t so much of a flicker. “They don’t get to go home.”
“What the fuck you talking about?”
“You have a dirty mouth, don’t you?”
She looked away, caught out for a moment, but didn’t speak.
“You ought to know, your father was just here.” This time he saw the reaction, a sudden light in her eyes as she looked up at him.
“What did he say?”
“He was only interested in that poor kid, Lebna. Or at least he said he was.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“Why would he? But what I’m curious about is why he’d come here looking for a dead boy and not mention you?”
She hadn’t known that Lebna was dead, so there was a good chance her father didn’t know either. But if that was the case, then Danjuma wasn’t behind his murder, and if he wasn’t, who was? The questions buzzed like flies around his mind.
“Maybe you can help me with something, girl. Tell me, how well did you know Lebna?”
“I didn’t,” she said, not missing a beat. “Not well. I met him a couple of times, that’s all. He was my sister’s boyfriend.”
“Someone killed him,” he said. “And I want to know who.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
“I never for a moment thought it was. I can’t see you dumping his body outside our gates like you’re dropping off the trash. But I’m wondering, is that the kind of thing your father would do?”
“Daddy?” She shook her head. “Why would you think he could do such a thing?”
“Danjuma has quite the reputation.”
“He’s a well-respected businessman.”
Boss laughed at that. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
“And what do mean by that?” she said, bristling. There was no hiding the anger in her voice.
Boss folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the door frame. “How do you think your father makes his money?”
“He’s a businessman.”
“He is indeed, but what kind of business? That’s a bigger question.”
She shrugged. “He owns a club, and he buys and sells stuff.”
“And, my dear child, now we find ourselves at the crux of things. What kinds of stuff might that be?”
She gave a shrug. “All kinds of stuff. Why so many questions?”
“I just wanted to see if you knew what kind of man your father is.”
“I do. He’s a good man,” she said, but there was a difference between a good man around his daughters and a good man in a world of violence. He wondered if she really understood that.
Boss grunted.
The temptation was to push a little further, but he had no great appetite for breaking the girl. She was a child, whatever her father was or wasn’t. Whether she knew what he did made no difference. Boss knew enough about Danjuma to know he wouldn’t hesitate to use force to get his daughter back. The only thing protecting them from his anger were these walls.
He needed to make contingency plans.