‘We have to use plastic cutlery and everything. That mad cow somehow managed to get into the kitchen and break a bottle a few weeks ago and hide the bits of broken glass everywhere, in toilet cisterns, behind pictures, in her shoes, everywhere. They search the whole place every single day but she still keeps appearing and slashing at her wrists with a new shard. She’s always in the Supervised Confinement Room – ‘solitary’, to you. Killed both her kids because her ex was trying to get custody, then tried to hang herself with a belt. She’s only twenty-eight, and she’s been in here for six years.’

Gill sat up straighter and met Pat’s eyes again. ‘I know trafficking’s the obvious thought, for your case, but if I were you, I’d be looking for someone like her. Recently released but probably still insane. Desperate. May have lost her kids already. Nothing else left to lose . . .’

Pat stared at her.

Nothing else left to lose . . .

Why on earth hadn’t he thought of that before?

Chapter 22

Chapter 22
Patrick – Day 4

The air outside the secure unit was thick and tense with the tar and brimstone smell that rose up from the pavement before a storm. Sure enough, as Patrick reached his car the light dimmed as an armada of black clouds drifted over the sun and the heavens opened.

He sat in the car, watching fat raindrops bounce off the windscreen, sucking hard on his e-cigarette. The tip winked green to indicate the battery had died and he threw it angrily into the footwell of the passenger seat. He would give his right lung for a real fag right now.

He held his hands out before him. They were trembling. While he’d been in the room with Gill he had kept his emotions locked down tight, trying to pretend they weren’t there, ignoring them as if they were a crowd of rioters yelling abuse at him. And now – well, it felt like an emotional riot, so many conflicting feelings rampaging through his head and stomach, where he felt it most, that he couldn’t process it. He simply didn’t know how he felt. There was relief, that she had seemed so stable. Sadness, when she had asked about Bonnie and all he had to show her was his stupid key-ring. What else? Mostly he had felt awkward and tense. Not so long ago, Gill was the one person in the world that he felt fully comfortable with. Today – and he knew this shouldn’t surprise him – it had been just like talking to an ex-girlfriend.