But just how had Felicia Lee escaped? Had she dug some kind of tunnel that lay undiscovered somewhere in the prison? It seemed unlikely that she had assiduously burrowed her way out of here. Bailey was certain that the breach took some other form. But without knowing what this was or where it was, there was nothing that she or Frank, or anyone else, could do.

She looked at her watch. Time was ticking down. She had around an hour or so of free association time left before she was locked in her cell for the rest of the day, and once that happened she might as well give up for good.

A hand grabbed her upper arm, breaking her reverie. She spun around. It was Toni, accompanied by Keisha. They both closed in on her.

‘We’ve been looking for you,’ said Toni.

‘Oh?’ She tensed and assumed a defensive stance.

Since her close call with them a few days earlier, Bailey had been actively trying to avoid Toni and the others. And in the meantime, she’d been so consumed with trying to work out the Felicia Lee connection that she’d forgotten to consider that they were probably wondering where she’d got to.

Toni leaned in menacingly. ‘I hope our little misunderstanding the other day didn’t make you forget that you still work for us, remember? And there’s business to be conducted.’

Shit.

This was not what she needed right now. She just didn’t have the time for it.

With a mirthless smile, Keisha pushed a plastic bag full of drugs into the pocket of Bailey’s jogging top.

‘I want you up on the fourth-floor landing of A-Wing,’ said Toni. ‘Pronto.’

‘Sure. No problem,’ she said, silently berating herself for getting caught up in the gang’s activities. She knew there was no excuse that she could make so she headed indoors. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Toni give her the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture.

Up on the fourth-floor landing, Bailey leant on the balcony, her head hung in despair as the sounds of the prison echoed around her. She reflected that her chances of finding out anything by the end of today had now grown slim to the point of being almost non-existent.

‘Got any speed?’

Bailey looked up. A lank-haired inmate with sallow skin and twitchy-looking eyes was standing beside her, fidgeting nervously and looking around in a shifty manner.

‘Sure,’ said Bailey.

She eased a small bag of amphetamine powder from her pocket.

The inmate opened her palm to reveal a handful of screwed-up banknotes.

Bailey gave a cursory glance around her before conducting the transaction—

—And froze as she spotted the uniform of a prison officer walking in her direction along one side of the fourth-floor landing.

She gestured for the inmate to hold off for the moment. They both smiled falsely at each other in a pretence of conversation.

As the prison officer got closer, Bailey saw that it was Terry. She relaxed slightly. If there was one prison officer who wouldn’t be disrupting her business, it was him.