‘And in the meantime?’ said Maggie. ‘The inmates are getting jumpy. They’re getting scared. They don’t feel safe. We have a duty to protect them.’

‘Business will go on as usual,’ said the Governor. ‘Unless you’re suggesting some kind of permanent lockdown, you know as well as I do that there’s little else we can do beyond what we’re already doing.’

They all knew that the prospect of a permanent lockdown was completely unviable. Even just a temporary lockdown caused huge disruption, affecting everything from the processing of new inmates to the operation of basic services such as the canteen. But, more significantly, the Governor knew that that kind of emergency action would signify to those outside, not least to his superiors, that he had lost all control over the situation inside the prison. And he would never permit that to appear to be the case.

‘You could hire more staff,’ said Terry. ‘This kind of thing is happening because we can’t do our jobs properly. Because we’re understaffed and overworked. Not only is it affecting the safety of the inmates, it’s affecting our safety as well. So far it’s just been them who’ve been getting murdered, but I can’t imagine it’ll be long before it’s one of us. We need more staff and we need side-handle batons.’

The Governor rolled his eyes and sarcastically mouthed ‘side-handle batons’ as Terry was saying it. He’d heard that petition so many times before.

‘You’ll make do with what you’ve got,’ he said.

‘We’ll see what the union has to say about that,’ Terry huffed.

Chapter 44

Bailey lay there and tried to focus her mind on something other than the sharp pain in her lower back as the tattoo gun drilled its intricate patterns into her flesh.

Poppy was once again sitting astride her on the bunk, working intently on the design.

‘Tell me more about your crime,’ said Poppy, pausing to dip the tattoo needle into the tiny pot of ink on the chair beside the bunk.

Bailey was surprised that Poppy was so curious about the reason that she had supposedly ended up in here. It wasn’t as if it was a particularly interesting or unusual crime, and she’d already told her a bit about it during their previous session.

It did cross her mind that Poppy might have been tasked with probing her story in a little more depth in order to confirm that she was actually who she said she was.

Either way, Bailey had no choice but to recite her story just the way she had rehearsed it so many times in her head.

‘Like I told you before, I worked in the accounts department for a big marketing company. People never suspect that the mild-mannered person in accounts is actually stealing hundreds of thousands of pounds from the company. I guess their mistake was that they had the same person responsible for setting up new vendors, processing invoices, making payments and reconciling the financial statements. That person was me.