Mel’s eyes were wide, like a kid in a toyshop. She reached up greedily. Bailey closed her hand and lifted the drugs out of reach.

Mel’s face turned sullen.

‘Gimme the rocks!’ she said petulantly.

‘When you’ve told me what you know.’

Mel sat back on her bunk, arms crossed, looking away. She wasn’t going to say anything.

When Mel had demanded crack cocaine in exchange for answers, Bailey had been dubious, to say the least, about supplying someone who was already pretty strung out with a drug that was renowned for inducing severe paranoia. But she had no choice if she wanted to find out what Mel knew.

Bailey plucked a single rock from her palm and tossed it into Mel’s lap. Mel looked down and furiously scrabbled for it as it fell onto the bedclothes.

She looked up wildly at Bailey. ‘The others!’

‘When you’ve told me who the killer is.’

‘I want them now! No rocks no killer!’

Bailey walked backwards a few steps until she was standing above the small toilet in the corner of the cell. She held her hand up over the toilet and placed her other hand on the flush.

‘I’ll just flush these away. I promise I will. I’ve got no use for them.’

Mel’s face morphed into an expression of alarm and she leant forward, her arm outstretched. ‘Nooo… don’t do that! I’ll tell you.’

Bailey moved forwards and sat down on the chair by the table, positioning herself so she was facing Mel.

Mel scowled at her, huffed and then reached beneath her bunk and groped about under there for a few moments. Her hand emerged holding a plastic bottle with an empty biro tube taped to a hole in the top. A dark cloudy liquid slopped around inside the bottle. Wrapped across the mouth of the bottle was a piece of blackened foil punctured with small holes. The inside of the bottle and tube were encrusted with a brown residue.

Bailey realised that it was a home-made pipe.

Mel reached into a pocket and, after a bit of fumbling, pulled out a small plastic lighter. She carefully unwrapped the rock and placed it on the foil on top of the pipe.

The routine was meticulous and deliberate. Bailey watched her with a grim fascination.

Mel lifted the pipe and placed the tip of the biro tube in her mouth. A brief glance at Bailey and then she flicked the lighter and lowered the flame towards the rock. She sucked in and the flame curled downwards into the foil.

The rock glowed red and crackled as it burned. Dense white smoke filled the inside of the bottle. Mel sucked furiously, her eyes closed, her chest expanding and expanding and expanding. The murky water inside the pipe bubbled as the smoke passed through it, cooling it on the way into her mouth. Then, when she couldn’t inhale any more, when she had reached her full lung capacity, she stopped, her mouth tightly closed, her eyes clenched shut.