She scanned the room again. There was no sign of anyone else in here. Yet.

As for Father O’Malley, his office door was closed and she had no intention of disturbing him.

As soon as Toni had informed her that the chapel was to be the rendezvous point, the possibility had crossed her mind that Father O’Malley might be the contact. But it seemed unlikely. He was a drunk and drunks just weren’t reliable enough for this type of thing. More probable was that the chapel had been chosen for the very reason that he was too inebriated most of the time to pay proper attention to what was going on in there. At any rate, it explained why Toni had come here that time that Bailey had covertly followed her. She had been making a pick-up.

Bailey padded down the carpeted aisle to the front of the chapel and, as per Toni’s instructions, headed for the right-hand of the two confessional booths. She stepped inside the small wooden cubicle and sat down on the narrow seat. It was the first time she had been inside a confessional. It was cramped, very dim and it smelt faintly of varnish.

To her immediate right there was a wooden grate to enable communication between the two booths. And it was when she peered through this that she became aware of someone occupying the other booth. It was too indistinct to make out anything other than a shadowy outline sitting there in silence.

A jolt of anticipation went through her. This must be the contact she was supposed to meet.

The person shifted impatiently, their clothes rustling. Whoever it was, they were aware of her presence and waiting for her to say something.

‘Forgive me Father for I have sinned,’ she said.

‘A sin is not a sin if no one sees it,’ came the response. A man’s voice. A cockney accent. Definitely not Father O’Malley. It had to be one of the guards, but she wasn’t able to make out which one.

‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,’ she said, completing the script that Toni had told her to recite.

There was a pause. The silhouette leaned closer to the grate.

‘It’s under the seat,’ he said.

She reached between her legs and groped around under the wooden seat of the confessional, her fingers closing around a large package wrapped in polythene. She picked it up. It was fairly heavy. It must have weighed around a kilogram.

‘Leave the money in the same place,’ he said. She could smell cigarettes on his breath. He was a smoker.

She pulled the bundles of cash out from her waistband and placed them beneath the seat. She then tucked the drugs into her tracksuit top and zipped it up, hoping that it was baggy enough to disguise the bulky package.

If only she could see who was on the other side of the grate. It was frustrating to be so close and yet unable to make a positive ID.