‘That’s an understatement. I saw the crime scene photos.’

‘How are her family taking it?’

‘Well… it turns out she’s estranged from most of them. We spoke to an aunt, who seems to be the only one who was on speaking terms with her. Reading between the lines, she screwed over most of her close relatives at one point or another, they all hated her and none of them are particularly surprised that something like this has happened to her. Still, I thought it best to recommend a closed-casket funeral all the same.’

‘Please tell me the canteen CCTV captured something useful.’

‘I’m afraid not. You can just see the edge of the kitchen door opening but you can’t see who went in because they were outside the camera’s cone of vision. Whoever did it is well aware of the limits of CCTV coverage within the prison.’

‘Shit!’ She chewed on her knuckle. ‘This messes up everything, you know. If we assume that it was the same person who scalped and murdered all of them – Alice, Poodle, Natalie, Sharon – then it can’t have been the gang because they were with me when Sharon was killed. We were being told off by one of the prison officers. And Terry can’t have been involved because he was in police custody.’

‘Like I said, I’m glad you called when you did because I’ve got some news for you on that front.’

‘What news?’

‘We’re going to have to release him.’

‘What?! Release Terry? Why?!’

‘No evidence. We didn’t find any drugs on his person, in his car or at his house. He’s not saying anything and there’s very little we can do about it. Either your intel was wrong or he’s much more careful than we gave him credit for.’

‘Fuck! I saw him delivering the drugs with my own eyes. He’s guilty as hell!’

‘As you well know, without a wire we can’t prove anything.’

She sighed in frustration. She understood how it worked.

‘It just doesn’t add up though,’ she said. ‘Something else is going on here. It’s not the gang who have been doing the killings. These murders… I’m getting the feeling they may not even be drug-related at all.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Forget about it. We’re pulling you out.’

‘What?! Why?!’

‘Like I said at the start, the funding for this operation is coming from the drugs squad, and that’s the primary reason that you were inserted – to uncover the drugs ring. But the problem is that Terry and the gang will be much more careful from now on, now that they know they’re being watched. There’s no telling how long it’ll be before they resume their trafficking operations to the extent where it makes sense to monitor them properly. So it’s been decided that it would be a waste of time and money to keep you in there any longer. It’s therefore been decided to terminate the operation due to budgetary restraints.’

‘But what about Alice?’