Now, at last, she had the time and the privacy to peruse it at her leisure and she was both nervous and excited about what she might discover. Sitting on the edge of the lower bunk, she laid the file across her knees and opened it up.

Once again she was drawn to the small photograph at the top. She examined it in more detail. By the looks of it, Felicia Lee couldn’t have been older than her mid-twenties when the picture had been taken. It had likely been done on her induction to the prison.

She wasn’t unattractive, but it was quite clear that, at least in this photograph, her appearance was the least of her concerns. Her punky hair stuck up in messy black tufts and her pale skin contrasted sharply against the dark rings around her eyes. She seemed to be looking back at the camera from some distant, cold place where the sun never shone. There was something unmistakably damaged about her, but Bailey couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Maybe it was the absence of something rather than the presence of something that unnerved her as she studied the photograph.

Shaking off the feeling of unease, Bailey leafed through the file. As well as information relating to her incarceration, the file contained details of Felicia Lee’s criminal record, a variety of psychiatric assessments and a number of reports made by social workers. This was exactly the kind of information that Bailey was looking for.

Outside, the sun had gone down and the sky had turned dark blue with the first twinkles of stars beginning to appear.

Sitting there on the bunk, Bailey started to read through the file…

Chapter 96

‘She’s off the radar completely,’ said Frank. ‘Seeing as she’s still on the run, my guess is that she’s been lying low somewhere for the past few years. She might have changed her identity. She could even be abroad for all we know. Either way, the trail’s dead.’

Bailey stood in the phone booth listening to him break the bad news. It didn’t come as a complete surprise to her.

‘My luck was slightly better,’ she said. ‘I managed to gain access to her prison record. I was up all last night reading it.’

‘Prison records? I thought that kind of thing was confidential.’

‘“You need to be able to use your initiative”. Isn’t that what you told me that very first time I started working for you?’

He chuckled. ‘So I did. What did you find out then?’

‘She grew up in an abusive environment. She was eventually removed from her birth parents and placed into care, and that was basically where she spent the rest of her childhood, in various foster homes and the like.’

‘Sounds like the typical background of your average prison inmate.’

‘Yeah, but there’s something else. The social worker reports mention something called “The Family”, spelt with a capital “F”. It relates to the abusive environment that she was in prior to being placed into care, but they don’t elaborate on what it actually meant. Does it mean anything to you?’