Jill nodded.
'He's a good boy, really,' Narelle continued, 'but he's been drinking far too much since this happened.' She shook her head. 'And the arguments! You've no idea. They used to be so close, so kind to one another.'
Jill noted that Gabriel's attention now seemed to be split between Narelle and the soap.
'I'll just get some more biscuits.' Narelle stood. 'Everyone loves them.'
Jill looked down at the empty plate in front of her partner. Are you serious, she asked him with her eyes.
He smiled at her with delight, his thick eyebrows raised high. Crumbs covered his dark tee-shirt. She stared at him disparagingly.
'What?' he said.
She pointed at his clothes.
'Oh.'
Still smiling, he brushed at his flat stomach, then stood and dumped the crumbs on the floor. He stared at the little pile around his chair, and then scraped at them with his feet, spreading them into the carpet. She watched, transfixed, as he stopped, then began again, his head down, scraping at the ground with his toe, like a cartoon bull about to charge. Laughter caught in her throat; she wiped the smile from her face when Mrs Rice walked back in, the plate refilled. Gabriel settled back into his chair and took another biscuit.
A scrabbling sound at the front door drew their attention.
'Mum, let us in.'
'Excuse me please. They must have lost their keys again. We haven't left a door unlocked anywhere in this house since the robbery.'
Jill heard a whispered conversation at the front entrance, a disgruntled young female voice louder than the others. Footsteps stamped upstairs and then Mrs Rice re-entered the living room, accompanied by an ungainly youth in a work uniform, baseball cap pulled low, a few pimples scattered across his cheeks.
'Detectives, this is Ryan.' Her hand rested protectively across his shoulders. 'I'll just get you a glass, Ryan,' she told him.
'That's okay,' he muttered. 'I'll get a beer.'
'I'll bring you one,' she said tightly. 'You speak to the detectives.' Turning to Jill, she said, 'Justine's just getting changed.'
'You're not the ones we talked to last time.' Ryan dropped into a chair.
'I'm Sergeant Jill Jackson, Ryan. This is Federal Agent Gabriel Delahunt. We wanted to ask you a few more questions.'
'Yeah, I know. Justine said you called. Is it true those arseholes killed someone this time? We heard it on the news.' His eyes were just visible under the rim of the cap, his voice flat.
'We're not sure if it's the same people at this point, Ryan, but we need to reinterview everyone who's been through a home invasion lately so we can try to find out.'
Ryan took his beer from Mrs Rice with a mumbled thank you, and drained half of it in one go. Justine's mother gave Jill a resigned look and left the room, worry creasing her forehead.
'They'd better not come here again,' Ryan spoke into his bottle. 'I'll be ready for them next time.'
'Ryan,' Jill had his statement in her hand, 'this is the police report you made. Could you have a look at the section I've highlighted, and tell me if there's anything else you can remember about the offenders? Anything at all could be a great help. The way they moved, talked, anything they said. Sometimes after a couple of weeks bits and pieces come back.'
Ryan swallowed the rest of the beer in two long draughts and stood up.
'I'll look at it, but I'm not the one you should be talking to.' He stood rigid, the statement clenched in his fist. 'Half the time I had my face shoved into that chair you're sitting on.' He indicated to Gabriel. 'The rest of the time I was getting the shit kicked out of me. Justine was upstairs with two of them, and it was pretty quiet up there.' He turned at the sound of feet on the stairs. 'Here she is now. I reckon she got a good look at everything.' His voice was acid. 'I'm going to get another beer.'
Justine Rice froze in the doorway, staring after her boyfriend as he left the room, her eyes panicked. Jill was surprised to see she'd changed into flannelette pyjamas. It wasn't yet three p.m. Her hair had been scraped into a messy ponytail and her clear skin was free of makeup. If Ryan had not just indicated otherwise, Jill would have been certain that this was Justine's little sister, a much younger teen.
Justine seemed to register Jill's eyes on her clothing, and hugged her arms around her slender body.
'I've got a stomach ache,' she said, 'so can we do this quickly? I'm sick all the time now, since it happened.' She crawled into the chair furthest from Gabriel and tucked her legs under her. She spoke to Jill only, angling her body so that she could not even see Gabriel.
He stood. 'Jill, I'm just going to see if I can help Ryan with his statement.'
She nodded, grateful Gabriel had picked up the girl's obvious discomfort with him.
'Justine, I'm Jill. Thank you so much for talking with us. I know this is the very last thing you wanted to do today.' Jill leaned forward in her seat and smiled; Justine seemed to uncurl herself a little.
'Are you going to catch these guys soon?' she asked, her voice small.
'Yes.' Jill hoped it was true. 'We've got a lot of people looking for them, and we need your help, Justine.'
'Hah. I can't even help myself.'
'Maybe, Justine, but you saw these guys. You got a better look at them than some of the other witnesses, and that could help us a lot.'
Justine said nothing.
'Justine,' Jill began carefully, 'you were taken upstairs by two of these guys, is that right?'
A small nod.
'And you could hear the others hurting Ryan down here?'
'I could hear everything. He was screaming.' Her mouth was now on her knees, her voice muffled in her pyjamas. 'They said they'd kill him.'
'It must have been horrible, honey. I can't even imagine it.' Jill wished that were true. 'You were very brave to get them what they needed so they wouldn't hurt Ryan anymore.'
'I wasn't brave.'
Jill could barely hear her now.
'Justine, you did exactly what you had to do to get them to stop hurting Ryan and get them out of the house.'
Justine was a portrait of misery, her face buried in her knees, her arms wrapped around them. Her small body shook silently.
'Justine, sometimes it's easier if you keep your eyes open,' Jill told her. 'It makes the images not so clear.'
Justine rocked slightly, her sobbing just audible, and Jill wondered whether she'd told them all there was to know about her time upstairs.
'What happened up there, Justine? Tell me what happened when it all went quiet.'
'They said they'd kill him,' she said. 'The spider one said he'd cut my throat -'
Suddenly she gagged and ran from the room. Mrs Rice hurried after her from the kitchen. Jill sighed resignedly and stood. She followed the sounds of Justine dry-retching and found her sitting on the edge of the bath, her face wet with tears. Her mother bent to comfort her.
'It'll be easier if you just tell me, honey,' Jill said.
'Tell you what?' Mrs Rice straightened. 'Really! She's sick. I think it's best we leave this for another time. I can bring her in to see you tomorrow.'
'Narelle, you've been great letting us come over here, and I know this is horrible for everyone. And I am going to have to get Justine and Ryan to come in and make another statement tomorrow. But right now, Justine has something that she needs to tell me.'
Mrs Rice clasped a hand over her mouth.
Jill continued. 'Narelle, I'm going to have to ask you to just leave us both in here for around ten minutes. Maybe you could duck down to the shop and buy Justine a lemonade? It'll help settle her stomach.'
She spoke firmly. If Justine didn't get this off her chest now, it would consume her from the inside out. Narelle Rice seemed suddenly to know this too, and with an imploring glance at Jill, left the room.
Jill took her place on the side of the bath.