She followed his gaze and nodded. ‘Maybe the heat got too much in the Midlands so he decided to move away somewhere else, to lie low for a bit.’

‘And he just conveniently decided to get a job as a prison officer?’ Frank raised one eyebrow doubtfully.

‘It’s a perfectly viable explanation. Decent salary, financial security, and the chance to have access on a daily basis to exactly the kind of women he likes to hunt. Plus he has the protection of a uniform. He’s in a position of trust and authority. It would also explain how he manages to get around the prison so easily and so elusively – he has his own set of keys.’

‘Prison officers are vetted before they can work in a prison. They have to undergo fairly detailed background checks, criminal record checks, that kind of thing.’

‘You know as well as I do that if he was never caught for anything before, then nothing untoward would have shown up in any checks. And even if he had, I’m sure you’re also aware that any dedicated criminal can quite easily source a new identity, a clean identity, which means it’d be no problem getting around those background checks.’

Frank conceded her point with a nod and a raised eyebrow.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘the Hairdresser is a cold case, which means it’s an angle that’s only worth pursuing if you can find something new, something solid, to go on. And at the moment you don’t appear to have anything of the sort. Cheap crime books and crazy ex-hookers don’t make the cut. You should know me by now, Bailey.’

She did indeed know only too well the kind of stringent standards by which Frank insisted on operating.

‘Something solid,’ she sighed. ‘Sure…’

‘And don’t forget,’ he added, tapping his watch. ‘You’re running out of time.’

Chapter 74

Bailey lay on her bunk ruminating, listening to the pipes gurgle, staring at the wall watching the shadows grow longer as the sun went down. She curled her hair around her fingers and let it uncurl…

Frank was right. Time was running short and she desperately needed something more to go on than the unsubstantiated assertions of one of the less sane inmates in the prison. The idea of the Hairdresser was enticing but ultimately futile if she couldn’t establish anything concrete.

She swung herself off the bunk and began to pace the cell impatiently, back and forth like a caged animal, willing some kind of solution to come to her.

But nothing did.

She sighed in frustration and sat down heavily on the bare mattress of the lower bunk, Sharon’s former bunk. Sharon hadn’t yet been replaced with a new cellmate and Bailey supposed that in the meantime she could switch her bedding from the upper bunk to the lower bunk. After all, in prison the lower bunk was regarded as the more preferable bunk to possess – you weren’t right up by the glare of the ceiling light and you didn’t need to climb up and down all the time.