Chapter 52

Bailey was impatient for something to happen, but she knew she couldn’t rush things. And what she definitely couldn’t do was to force something to happen, however great the temptation was to steer events in the direction she desired.

One of the most important things she had been taught as an undercover police officer was not to be an agent provocateur. It was expressly forbidden to actively incite criminals to commit a crime in order to catch them, because if it ever came to light when the case went to court, then the case would immediately be scuppered. Not only that, it would in itself constitute an illegal act.

Her training had required her to learn the law inside out when it came to this area, so she knew exactly where the boundaries for acceptable action lay. The true art of being an undercover police officer instead resided in being able to insinuate oneself to the degree that one became part of the planning without actually getting the criminals to do anything they wouldn’t have done by themselves.

So she channelled her restive feelings into a clandestine observation schedule, secretly shadowing Terry over the course of several days as he performed his duties around the prison. Her aim was to build up a picture of his activities and gather any information that could be of use in constructing a case against him. Where she was able to, she eavesdropped on the conversations he had with other prison officers, learning in the process that he was a union representative and appeared to hate the Governor, and vice versa. Most of his dialogues seemed to revolve around various issues with ‘management’, such as overwork, personal safety and government cost-cutting.

One thing that did puzzle her, and one thing that she was unable to ascertain from just watching him, was the method that he was using to smuggle the drugs into the prison. She knew that the guards were subject to random bag checks when they entered and exited the prison. So maybe he just took a gamble each time and had always been lucky. But that seemed like a risky way of doing business. And given that it had been going on for a while, surely he should have been caught out by now. There had to be something else to it…

She was certain all would become clear soon enough. She had a good feeling about this job. She had succeeded in cracking the drugs ring and she sensed that the operation was now drawing to a successful close. More than anything, she was determined to make sure that Terry and the gang would pay the price for Alice’s death.

In many ways, Terry was more despicable than the gang in her eyes. As a corrupt prison officer, he was betraying the trust that had been imbued in him by the state and by the public, all for the sake of lining his own pockets. At least the gang were relatively frank about their criminality, but him, he was devious and dishonest. There was something low-down and dirty about what he was doing and it quite literally turned her stomach.