Free White Crocodile by K.T. Medina

the passport from his pocket. ‘The photographs in your hall . . . it’s definitely your daughter’s.’
    ‘May I look?’ Reaching out, she took the passport from him; looked at the cover briefly before flipping through the pages. ‘Yes.’ A tiny smile tipped the corners of her mouth as she studied the photo. ‘Yes, that’s her. The name, date of birth, everything – it’s definitely her passport. Or identical to hers if it isn’t.’ She passed it back to him.
    ‘How did she get to Sri Lanka without a passport?’
    ‘She has dual nationality. She travelled on her Sri Lankan passport.’
    ‘Did she tell you she’d lost her British passport?’
    ‘Yes. She was planning to take both with her, but we couldn’t find her British one, so she just took the Sri Lankan.’
    ‘And you didn’t think to report it stolen?’
    ‘We were pretty sure it would turn up somewhere in the house,’ Mr Brooks cut in, joining his wife on the sofa. ‘She’s not the most organised, I’m afraid. We had a great hoo-hah the day before we went skiing last New Year. She couldn’t find her passport anywhere. The French won’t let Sri Lankans in without a visa and we just didn’t have time to get one, so we thought we’d have to cancel the holiday. We turned the house upside down and finally found it behind the sofa.’ He smiled. ‘Heaven knows how it got there.’
    ‘Have you had a break-in recently?’
    ‘No.’
    Wessex held up the passport. ‘So where?’
    ‘She’s been filling out applications for university at school,’ Mrs Brooks said. ‘They ask for all sorts of identification these days, so she’s had to take in her passport a few times to get it photocopied.’
    Mr Brooks gave an apologetic smile. ‘It’s her Achilles’ heel – the organisation thing.’
    Wessex nodded. ‘Could you call her and tell her that we have it. Ask her if she has any idea where it might have been stolen.’
    Mrs Brooks glanced at her watch. ‘It’s the middle of the night over there.’
    ‘First thing in the morning – their morning.’ He pulled a card from his pocket and passed it to her. ‘Call me on my mobile, as soon as you’ve spoken with her, please. It’s important. Very important. And I’m going to have to ask you to keep quiet about this. If you talk to anybody about what I’ve just told you, it may compromise our investigation.’
    ‘Of course,’ they murmured in unison.
    Mrs Brooks dropped her gaze to the card in her hand. ‘So the girl you found?’
    Wessex shrugged. ‘Now? I don’t know. I don’t know who she is.’ He looked at the photo of their daughter again. Then he held out his hand. ‘Thank you for your time. I’m very sorry for the mistake.’

13
    Jacqueline Rong’s life in the last few months had been defined by a series of choices. Confess her condition to the people who knew her, or hide it for as long as she could. Beg for help, or withdraw into solitude and keep her own counsel. She was self-reliant by instinct. But she had made one mistake. And it was a mistake she had come to love very much.
    Now she had a new choice to make. She knew she was bleeding, that a shard of wood from the old broken fence that ran like a spine through the jungle had sunk deep into her thigh. There was pain, but something worse too, an electric zing in the muscles around the wound. Gritting her teeth, she scrambled on to her knees – the shocked response of her wounded leg made her shout, once – and felt frantically through the sludge of mud and rotten leaves for her baby son. His blanket was gone – the blanket with the embroidered teddy bear that the woman from Médecins Sans Frontières had given her – and his little body was cold and slippery from leaf mulch. The fall had winded him, and for a moment he was silent. But she heard that familiar in-suck of breath, and she knew what was coming.
    His scream echoed through the dark jungle. It sounded different out here, raw, the noise of an animal in