As soon as they unlocked her cell, she made her way to the phones. She didn’t have particularly high hopes that Frank would have managed to find out much in the short space of time since their last call. But what else was she going to do?

The queue for the phones seemed particularly long today. She waited impatiently in line, cursing every minute lost as a minute wasted. After what seemed an aeon, she reached the front of the queue and when a phone finally became free she marched over to it and furiously punched in the numbers.

‘Hello, Sullivan Knight Solicitors,’ said Rita. ‘How can I help?’

‘It’s Bailey Pike speaking. I’d like to talk to Mr Knight please.’

‘Just putting you through.’

Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ was on for less than a second before Frank came on the line.

‘What took you so long to call me?’ he said.

There was an urgent tone in his voice. Did he have bad news or did he have good news? She couldn’t tell.

‘You found out something?’ She was almost too scared to ask.

‘You bet I found out something.’

‘Well…?’

‘I looked into The Family.’

‘And…?’

‘Turns out that it was a religious commune. It was kind of notorious at the time. They held rather extreme views.’

‘Like a cult?’

‘Yeah kind of, I guess. Mind control. Physical deprivation. And so on and so forth. They kept all the children locked up in cages. Anyhow, when they shut it down all of the kids were rescued and put in care.’ He paused. ‘Both Felicia Lee and her brother.’

‘She had a brother?’

‘The same age. They were twins.’

‘It didn’t say anything about a brother in her file!’

‘His name was Leonard.’

‘Leonard Lee?’

‘That’s right.’

‘We have to find him.’

‘I’m one step ahead of you, Bailey.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Same deal as her. Off the radar. No trace of him.’

There was a pregnant pause on the line.

‘Why do I get this funny feeling you’re about to pull something big out of the hat?’ she said.

‘Leonard’s trail went dead at his last known address. Hilden Close, Wolverhampton.’

He let the news sink in.

‘Oh shit,’ she whispered. ‘The Hairdresser is Leonard.’

‘I cross-checked with West Midlands Police homicide files. The Hairdresser murders ceased at around the same time that Leonard stopped living at the Wolverhampton address.’

‘So that’s who Mel met,’ murmured Bailey. ‘She must have met Leonard. And it’s him who’s killing the inmates.’

‘If Leonard is the Hairdresser, and he’s not one of the prison officers, then how’s he getting into the prison?’

‘He’s getting in the same way that his sister got out.’

‘But no one knows how that is.’

‘That’s what I have to find out. By the end of today.’

Chapter 99

Bailey stood in the yard and gazed at the huge perimeter wall and the gatehouse that was situated partway along its eastern length. The gatehouse was the only official way into the prison and, with its X-ray machines and electronic double-door entry system, security there was pretty tight. And elsewhere in the prison the sturdy Victorian fortifications weren’t exactly designed to make it easy to get in and out of this place. But somehow Leonard was managing it, like his sister had done.