‘I think he likes you,’ said Frank, a faint smirk briefly piercing his harsh demeanour.

‘Are you taking me seriously or not?’

‘Sorry. You were saying?’

‘The whole reason the sub-personality exists in the first place is because of the traumas that he underwent in Afghanistan. And his brain injury has probably exacerbated the whole problem. I’m sure it can’t have helped.’

‘I don’t buy it.’

‘What about Sharon then?’

‘What about her?’

‘Remember I only got onto Dylan in the first place because I was trying to work out if anyone might have had a good reason to kill Sharon. And he’s the most likely contender. If she was blackmailing him.’

‘For misconduct in public office?’

‘Yes. She probably thought she could extract money or some kind of privilege from him, but she obviously didn’t realise the kind of person she was trying to blackmail.’

‘So you’re saying she somehow unleashed this crazed sub-personality…’

‘Maybe it comes out when he’s under duress… like when he’s being threatened with blackmail.’

Frank was shaking his head. ‘Maybe this. Maybe that. It’s all maybes. You need to find some evidence. Hard evidence. Body parts. Scalps. A weapon. Anything that explicitly connects him to the crimes. Either that or you’ve got to catch him red-handed. And soon.’

‘I’m doing my best.’

He grimaced and shook his head slowly and she knew with dismay that for him, right now, her best just wasn’t good enough. Sometimes he could make her feel so isolated, but that was just the way he was.

‘The drugs squad are demanding to see some kind of intel from you. From this “new angle” I told them you were working on. If they don’t see something soon…’

‘Just string them along for a little bit longer,’ she pleaded.

He fixed her with his arctic watery stare.

‘I’m under pressure, Bailey. And when I’m under pressure,’ he pointed his finger at her, ‘you’re under pressure.’

Chapter 85

As she walked through A-Wing, Bailey looked up through the mesh of the anti-suicide netting which was strung across the balconies and noticed Crazy Mel standing by herself on the landing above. She was swaying slightly, staring vacantly into space, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jogging top, her hair sticking up in its usual chaotic tangle. She glanced downwards and for a brief moment their eyes met. But there was no recognition there, only a frazzled blankness.

Bailey lowered her head and continued on her way, weaving deftly between the groups of inmates lounging outside their cells, making sure that she didn’t lose sight of Dylan. He was striding along about ten metres ahead of her and by the looks of it he was headed towards the stairwell at the end of the landing. She had been covertly following him around all morning in the increasingly desperate hope that she would uncover something tangible that linked him to the murders.

As far as she was concerned, she was sure that she was on the right track with him. She just needed some sort of confirmation. The more she thought about it, the more she had become convinced that his experiences in Afghanistan had unleashed a mental trauma of some sort. Suffering as she did from PTSD, she could identify with him to a certain degree for they both lay on the same spectrum, he was just at the most extreme end of it. And that was the reason he also scared her, not just because of what he might have done, but because of what he represented – a human being lost to madness, the same kind of madness that nipped at the edges of her own mind in the greyness of the pre-dawn.