The gold-toothed one called Toni turned to Bailey with a sneer. ‘Next time,’ she hissed.

Then she and her associates swaggered over to another table and sat down, hunched over their food, throwing her the occasional dirty look over their shoulders.

‘Thanks,’ said Bailey.

‘Don’t mention it.’ The prison officer scrutinised her. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you before.’

‘I just got in the other day.’

‘I’m Amber.’ She held out her hand for Bailey to shake.

Bailey hesitated. She was wary of appearing to look too friendly with a prison officer in case she got mistaken for a snitch. She knew all too well how criminals felt about snitches.

Amber seemed to sense her reticence and withdrew her hand with a light shrug.

Bailey reflected how ironic it was that this prison officer looked just the type of person she would have got on with on the outside. But in here she was forced to keep a distance for the sake of maintaining a realistic cover.

‘Get yourself another tray of food,’ said Amber. ‘I’ll arrange for this to be cleared up.’

‘I’m not hungry any more.’

It was true. She wasn’t. The confrontation suddenly seemed to have robbed her of her appetite. She left the canteen to go back to her cell.

With each passing moment in this place, Bailey was starting to question what she’d got herself into.

Chapter 15

Bailey lay on her bunk and reflected on the altercation in the canteen. That had been the second run-in she’d had with a hostile group of inmates since she’d been locked up. First the carrot-haired one and her friends, and now this other group led by the one with the gold tooth.

What was that old saying? You’ve made your bed, now lie in it. She’d chosen to be here and, at the end of the day, these kinds of situations were all part of the job.

Despite her short ill-advised detour into accountancy, all she’d ever really wanted was to be a policewoman. She’d wanted to be one ever since she was very young.

Growing up in the outer London suburbs, she and her sister Jennifer had had a happy early childhood, their plain semi-detached house forming the scene for countless games of make-believe. They had been close despite their considerable differences. Jennifer, two years older, had been the demure girly one, and Bailey had been the scrappy little tomboy who’d looked up to her.

Then, one day, at the age of eight years old, Jennifer had gone missing, abducted on the way home from a friend’s house just a few doors down the street. She had never been seen again. An extensive police investigation was launched but no witnesses were found, there were no records of any suspicious vehicles being seen in the area, and the detectives were unable to identify any potential suspects. No similar occurrences appeared to have taken place in the vicinity and it seemed like her abduction was just a random, opportunistic one-off. Her disappearance featured on Crimewatch and there was a reconstruction, but that too yielded no useful leads. It was as if she had just vanished into thin air.