Thursday 01:15
Priya’s eyes stare at the phone then back at me.
“Why do you have the cameraman’s mobile?” I ask, hoping she has an answer and that I can believe it.
“I didn’t know the phone was his. It was on the ground next to the broken glass, outside the back door.”
So she does have an answer, but I don’t believe her. Not anymore.
She looks scared again and I wonder whether I do too. If Priya is somehow involved in all this, then the smartest thing I could do now is play along. Hopefully she will lead me to Anna.
“Richard must have been here,” I say. “Someone smashed the glass in the back door to break in, and I’m sure he’s involved in this somehow. That’s the only explanation. I knew he was no good and I should have trusted my instincts—”
“We don’t know anything yet.”
Her interrupting me is a first.
“Why else would his phone be here?”
“We need to stay calm and stop jumping to conclusions, Jack.”
“Jack,” not “sir” or “boss” again, I notice. But then another thought pushes that one aside. Something she said earlier.
“The fifth girl in the photo, you said she was married, who to?” I ask.
Priya puts Richard’s phone back in her pocket, then takes out her notepad, flicking through several pages.
“What was the cameraman’s surname?” she asks, still turning them.
I doubt she has forgotten; she never forgets anything.
“Jones. Richard Jones,” I reply, trying to hide the mistrust from my tone.
Priya stops turning the pages and stares at what is written on them.
“Oh my god,” she whispers. Then she says something that instantly shifts all my suspicion from her to him.
“It is him. The fifth girl is married to Anna’s cameraman, Richard Jones.”