Hessa picked up the skirt, and concentrated on it, her fingers careful, her face taut with concentration.

‘The Rohingya,’ Hessa struggled with the blue embroidered letters. ‘They’re the refugees in Bangladesh. I don’t understand . . .’

‘What do you think that bit there says?’

‘It’s all tangled.’

‘I know.’

‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Try.’

Hessa peered closer, and Casey saw her flinch.

‘It says “factory”. ’ Hessa’s voice shook. ‘It says they take them to a baby factory.’

The shop’s music was a shield of noise, drowning out the scramble of the shopping centre.

‘You have a nice evening.’ A beaming smile from a beautiful girl handing out diamante-studded baskets at the entrance. A security guard stood vigil.

Rhapso’s lightning-flash logo was everywhere. The neon letters shouted on the wall, and the music pounded. Two girls, killing time. Beside them a shop assistant folded jerseys, as women queued up to change.

Hessa and Casey paced through the shop, stroking the silks and the satins and the lace. The changing rooms were hidden behind theatrical red velvet curtains. The shop assistant, spiky hair and ripped jeans, smiled at them indulgently.

‘Let me know if you need anything, yeah?’

‘Thank you.’

They walked on, then drifted apart.

As Hessa marched down serried ranks of clothes, Casey checked the piles of skirts. Scarlet taffeta, folded fun, nothing else to find in dozens of identical skirts.

Casey began unfolding a different pile of skirts, then shirts, then trousers, then cardigans. A shop assistant followed her, refolding as she went.

‘Sorry.’

A snap of gum. ‘S’fine.’

Until finally Hessa caught Casey’s eye, and Casey headed over to a quiet corner, breath shortening. Hessa was carrying a grey velvet jacket, beautifully cut, and thrust a piece of silk into Casey’s hands. ‘Look.’

It was the same white silk, the words embroidered in a pale blue thread. Casey turned the piece of material cautiously.

‘They take the babies,’ she read aloud. ‘They take the babies for the women.’

2

2

‘Do you think it’s possible?’ Miranda was prodding at the red skirt. The three of them were in the little investigations office early the next morning. Casey was sprawled at her desk, chin in her hands. Hessa was leaning against the scuffed cream wall, the shiny black shop bag at her feet.

From some odd sense of propriety, Hessa and Casey had queued up to buy the grey jacket just before Rhapso closed the night before. They had watched like hawks as the assistant folded it into a bag, tying the ribbon with a professional smile.

‘The shop assistants would never have noticed a piece of silk among the petticoats on that skirt,’ said Casey. ‘Or fastened into that velvet sleeve.’

Casey was playing with a little silver bird that hung around her neck. It dangled there to give her something to fidget with.

‘But isn’t it such a strange way of getting a message out?’