‘Nice.’

‘And I’m sure he’s well aware of that. Which means when we catch him, he’ll do anything to avoid a custodial sentence. He’ll give up the gang in the blink of an eye if he thinks it’ll get him off. We’ll have much more leverage over him than we would over your average inmate. Once we’ve got him in an interrogation room, we’ll make him spill the beans on everything, including the organised crime group who are behind the supply of drugs to the prison.’

‘And then we can finally find out exactly what happened to Alice.’

‘Sure. We’ve just got to catch him. The important thing is to get him in the act. We need you to find out exactly when the next delivery is going to take place.’

Chapter 51

It was raining outside, a soporific patter which threatened to lull her to sleep even though it was only three in the afternoon. Lying face-down on Poppy’s bunk, Bailey would almost have felt cosy in here, were it not for the persistent jabbing pain of the tattoo needle drilling its patterns into her flesh.

Poppy knelt astride her, concentrating intently on the intricacies of the design, pausing occasionally to dip the needle in the pot of ink that stood on the chair beside the bunk.

‘It’s like the penthouse suite up here,’ said Bailey. ‘You’re lucky – you’ve got a nice view. You can see over the walls.’

Poppy lifted the whirring tattoo gun from her back for a moment.

‘Sometimes when I’m bored I look out of the window and try to count the sails of the windsurfers on the reservoir. On hot days, I wish I could swim in there. It’s so close… yet so… you know.’

‘Well, actually, taking a shower in here is kind of like having a swim in the reservoir. That’s where the prison pipes in all its water from apparently.’

‘How d’you know that?’

‘Maggie cornered me and some others while we were waiting to use the phone. She’s a veritable fountain of knowledge about the prison.’

‘Oh god, I should have known! That woman is so bloody tedious! She always manages to pin you down and then she talks at you and you just have to stand there and listen to her.’

‘So I guess that means you’re not interested in hearing about the meaning of the name. I thought it was kind of interesting.’

‘It’s named after some river or something. Yeah I know all about that.’

‘She told me that when this place was built in the 1800s it used to draw its water directly from a subterranean tributary of the River Foxbrook. But the river dried up in the thirties after they dammed it in order to build the reservoir.’

‘I find history so boring. It’s all in the past. What’s the point of knowing about it? Who cares?’

‘Don’t they say those who forget history are condemned to repeat it? History helps us to learn from our mistakes. And mistakes are the reason we’re in here, aren’t they?’