‘Felicia Lee,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘How very observant of you. But then you are a police officer and the police are supposed to be observant, aren’t they?’

The metamorphosis was uncanny – the unkempt tangle of black hair had been dyed blonde and drawn back tight and smooth into a neat bun; the dark brown eyes had been cleverly masked by blue contact lenses; and the facial structure had been deliberately obscured by the large pair of thick-rimmed glasses. On a cosmetic level, the transformation was relatively simple, but crudely effective, and probably enough to fool most people.

But what really completed her disguise was the way that she carried herself. With her pressed uniform and prim demeanour, she seemed worlds away from the nihilistic punked-out girl in the file photo. Now Bailey knew why the picture of Felicia Lee had elicited such a strange feeling of unease in her – she must have on some level subconsciously recognised Amber.

But now, the Amber she’d known was evaporating before her very eyes, casting off the layers of primness and virtue like a snake shedding its skin. And to see it happening unnerved Bailey like nothing she’d ever encountered before.

What disturbed her the most though, was how completely she’d been taken in by the caring and conscientious facade. For Amber to have been able to so successfully conceal her true character served to illustrate just how dangerous she really was. Even just a short while earlier when Bailey had convinced Amber to help, Amber had played her part to perfection.

Assimilating everything before her, Bailey now understood what Amber was doing here.

‘You’re bringing him into the prison, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Through the well. Your brother.’

‘For a policewoman, you’re quite smart. Smarter than your friend anyway. She wasn’t half as good as you at concealing her identity. I only realised you were a cop just now when you told me out there in the corridor.’

The breath caught in Bailey’s throat. ‘You knew Alice was a police officer?’

‘I caught her using her mobile phone one day. You do know they’re illegal in here? I plucked it right out of her hand before she knew what I was doing. Confiscated it there and then. She hadn’t had time to lock it, so I took the opportunity to read though the messages and listen to the voicemails. It didn’t take me long to work out that she was much more than just your ordinary inmate.

‘When I put it to her that she was a policewoman, she went ahead and admitted it. Guess she knew I had her bang to rights. Made me promise not to tell anyone. Confided in me that she was investigating some drugs ring, told me that she was trying to work out how the drugs were getting into the prison. So I gave her back her phone and told her about this well in the laundry, how I’d seen some suspicious stuff going on down there. I told her to go down and check it out when no one else was around. Unfortunately she bumped into Leonard…’