‘The Jericho Road,’ Milton says. He laughs, and punches Jericho’s shoulder. It’s the first time he’s heard him laugh. A proper laugh. ‘The Jericho Road,’ he says again. ‘We’re all on our Jericho Roads.’

BILI LIVES IN HER TOP-FLOOR FLAT OVER A CLIFF WITH GUARDS ON the main door because of the threats against her. There have been too many of them, and Laedi insisted. That, or come and live with her behind the security of her ministerial guards. She might be single, Bili says, but she is too old to live with her mother, and, besides, she needs her own place. After another nasty incident – Yu laik lukim tumora? Do you want to see tomorrow? scrawled on her door, and her dog dead on the step – she left her old house with its lemon trees and familiar neighbours and moved into her cliff top eyrie.

So it is a shock for her to wake on the morning that the Collingwood Bay case is to start and find her laptop gone. Has she hallucinated working on it late into the night? Was she so tired that she forgot to put it in its case ready for court? She has an early meeting with the barrister who’s come up from Sydney. Nothing has been tampered with, nothing else has been touched – no broken door, no open drawers. Nothing except the laptop, which has vanished.

She hasn’t been hallucinating. Her mind has never been more focused. This is an important case in the national court, it could become a precedent, and she can’t afford a slip. She knows the counsel Jacob has brought up from Brisbane; he is aggressive, and he is good. The stakes are high. The evening before, she had an early meal with the landowners. They were on edge – too many times they’ve been disappointed, with the case adjourned because Jacob and his lawyers have found another way to delay. No, she told them, this time no delay is possible. Tomorrow at last you will be heard. All the arguments. All that has happened. Everything will be heard. Then she’d left, not staying to talk more. The old men frowned, until she said she must work, prepare for the court. Then they took her hand, bowed their heads. Thank you. Tenkyu tru.

Jericho stayed with them. ‘Will you be okay?’ he asked her. ‘Would you like me to take you home?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said and squeezed his hand, a soft small squeeze, but he took it as a softening, a gesture. ‘I’ll be fine. You stay here with the landowners. They need your support tonight. I don’t.’

Need. Would Bili ever admit to a need? To needing him? He’s come back from Milton’s despite her letter, hoping Milton was right and secretly she needs him. Sure, she’s had him running around since the barrister arrived, ferrying the landowners, or making tea for everyone. He’s been busy and it’s help she needs, but nothing he’s done couldn’t have been done by someone else. No particular need there. She let him cook dinner one night, but only once, and she was distracted, eating with the laptop open beside her, going over, and back over everything. ‘What have I missed?’ she asked, and it was not a question he could help her with. He was grasping at another thin reed. He had a beer with Simeon the night he got back from Popondetta. He told him the whole story, about Bili telling him to not bother coming back, and Napo arriving, and not going up to the mountain.