Bailey ran her hand over the mattress and decided against switching. She’d kind of got used to the upper bunk and, if truth be told, despite her professed lack of superstition, she felt slightly uneasy about sleeping in a bunk whose previous occupant had been brutally murdered.

Poor old Sharon.

Bailey hadn’t particularly liked her, but no one deserved a fate like that.

She recalled the gruesome scene and that single cryptic word that Sharon had scrawled in her own blood as she lay dying.

Flee.

A chilling warning.

There was something eerie about it. It brought to mind Mel’s duppies.

A momentary wave of goosebumps rippled across her flesh. She instantly quelled those thoughts. The supernatural did not constitute a feasible explanation.

But now, the more she thought about it, the more Bailey was sure that the answer lay there, locked within that single scrawl, just beyond reach.

What exactly had Sharon seen in the kitchen? Why had she even been in the kitchen? Bailey knew that she worked there, but the murder had taken place outside of work hours, so she must have gone there for some other reason.

She lay down on Sharon’s bunk, placing her hands behind her head, hoping to absorb by osmosis some new insight. She cast her mind back to Sharon and her schemes. Had she had some kind of blackmail scheme going? Had she been murdered because of it? If so, it must tie into the other murders somehow.

On the morning that Sharon had been murdered, Bailey had asked her what she was doing that day. Sharon had tapped the side of her nose. A secret.

As a police detective, Bailey had become accustomed to observing and memorising the minutiae of people’s behaviour. And, as she recalled, Sharon had done that same gesture one time before…

It had been when she’d been talking about that fight in the canteen.

Knowledge is power.

That’s what she’d said as she’d tapped the side of her nose.

Maybe it was just a mannerism. Maybe the connection was too tenuous.

Or maybe not.

Chapter 75

Agata looked attractive from a distance with her blonde hair and exaggerated pout, but up close it became apparent that she had bad skin and poorly maintained teeth.

Bailey hovered nearby in the yard, covertly studying her as she stood alone in the shadow of the east wall smoking a cigarette.

Of the two inmates who’d been fighting in the canteen, Agata was the only one Bailey had been able to locate. She’d followed her around for a bit, picking up her name in the process, waiting for an opportune time to make an approach. And right now looked ideal, seeing as she was all by herself.

Bailey pulled out a cigarette and put it between her lips. She made a show of patting her pockets and frowning.

She then sauntered casually over to Agata, the cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. Agata eyed her guardedly – as far as she was concerned, Bailey was a complete stranger.