‘I was summoned to a meeting with the gang just now. Toni said they’re planning to resume operations pretty soon.’

‘Did she give a date? Any specifics? Quantities? Pick-up points? That kind of thing.’

‘No. Nothing yet.’

He sighed. ‘I don’t think that’s going to satisfy them.’

‘Look, just stall them for a bit longer so I can check out Dylan,’ she said. ‘Have faith in me. I’ve always delivered before, haven’t I?’

Chapter 80

Dylan stood with his arms crossed, leaning against a pillar, softly whistling that same tune she’d heard him whistling down in the basement.

While he was monitoring free association activity on the first-floor landing of A-Wing, Bailey was covertly monitoring him from a short distance away. Compared to some of the other prison officers, he took evident care in his appearance – his shirt glowed white and clean, his black shoes were buffed to a mirror shine and his trousers were neatly ironed with a sharp crease.

With his sandy-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, he bore more than a slight resemblance to Mark, the detective she’d dated for two years before they’d split up over the issue of kids and marriage. Quite why she was drawn to the ‘Teutonic look’, as Sharon had put it, she didn’t know; it just seemed that most of the guys she’d been out with had looked like that. However, the crimes she suspected Dylan of committing somewhat took the shine off any outward appeal he might have had for her.

After a few more minutes of watching him, she worked out what seemed to be the best way to break the ice. She walked up to him.

‘What’s that tune you’re whistling?’ she asked.

He stopped whistling and hit her with a long piercing stare as he sized her up. He looked somewhat guarded and a little wary, in the way that the prison officers often were if you approached them unawares. It was generally the case that inmates didn’t approach them out of the blue unless they wanted to extract some favour from them.

‘It sounds familiar,’ she lied.

‘I can’t imagine you’d know it unless you’re into military marching music.’

‘Actually that’s my favourite genre,’ she said.

The tanned skin around his eyes crinkled into a smile at her sarcasm.

‘We used to drill to it when I was in the army,’ he said. ‘It’s stuck in my head ever since.’

‘You were in the army?’

That explained the smartness of his appearance. Old habits die hard. The army had probably taught him to bull his shoes to a shine with melted shoe polish, just like she had been taught to in police training at Hendon.

‘Royal Marines. Forty Commando. ‘Sarie Marais’ is the name of the song. It’s the official marching tune of the Royal Marines.’

Her knowledge of the Royal Marines extended little further than the recruiting adverts they showed in the cinema before the main feature came on.

‘I take it you like jobs with uniforms then?’