Sharon’s voice drifted up from the bunk below. ‘Are you still awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t get to sleep?’

‘I suppose not.’

A pause.

‘Do you like stories?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘My nan used to tell me stories to help me get to sleep when I was a kid.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Bailey didn’t imagine she had much of a choice anyhow. Sharon seemed determined to talk and Bailey might as well have something to fill the silence other than her own thoughts.

A pause.

‘Okay,’ said Sharon. ‘Well… once upon a time, there was this criminal gang, see. They stole cars. High-end motors. BMWs, Mercedes, Maseratis… that kind of thing. They’d steal them and then they’d sell them abroad. Lots of money involved. Big operation.’

Bailey lay there breathing in and out, listening, an unpleasant feeling growing inside her. This wasn’t the sort of story she’d been expecting.

‘But one day they found out, somehow, that they had an undercover police officer in their midst. A woman. She was posing as a secretary apparently. Fairly low-level in their organisation. But she was spying on them, feeding information back to the cops, setting them up for a bust.’

Bailey felt herself stiffening. Sharon’s voice tinkled along casually as if this was just some kid’s fairy-tale.

‘They ran a very tight outfit so they were pretty sure that she’d only been able to infiltrate them with the help of someone inside their organisation, someone high up who had turned snitch. And they wanted to know the identity of this traitor. So instead of killing her immediately, like they wanted to, they decided to torture her until she gave him up.’

Bailey’s mouth had turned dry. Her heart was pounding against the inside of her chest.

‘So that’s what they did. Tortured her horribly. And raped her. But she didn’t break. She didn’t give him up. She refused to even admit that she was a cop. I guess she must have been a pretty tough cookie.’

Sharon paused as if she was listening, trying to gauge Bailey’s reactions. Bailey lay there frozen, barely breathing now.

Sharon resumed: ‘As soon as the traitor heard they’d caught her, he panicked and fled. Went straight to the police. Now he’s in a witness protection programme apparently. He’s a dead man if they ever find him. He’s got a massive contract on his head.’

Prone on her bunk, Bailey stared straight up at the ceiling, saying nothing, the atmosphere in the cell pressing down on her with a suffocating pressure.

The meat hook…

The burning cigarette…

The straight razor…

The blood…

The pain…

The violation…

‘And the undercover cop?’ said Sharon. ‘She managed to escape. Somehow. Lucky for her.’

Bailey forced herself to breathe. Steady. Even. In. Out. In. Out.

‘The traitor, the one she refused to give up,’ said Sharon. ‘Do you know what his name was?’

Bailey said nothing.

‘His name was Spyros,’ said Sharon.