Despite the fact that she believed Jennifer was long dead, it didn’t mean that she’d forgotten her sister. Quite the opposite. Jennifer was there every day in the back of Bailey’s mind, crying out for redress, pushing her ever onwards to do her job the best she could. Jennifer, as well as Alice, was the reason she was here right now, endangering her well-being for the sake of making some kind of difference.

Not that it would ever bring either of them back…

Chapter 16

Pushing the memories away, she rolled into a sitting position and tried to think of what to do next. She was itching to make progress, but she felt stuck already. Curling her free-hanging lock of hair around her fingers and letting it uncurl again, she contemplated her options.

She looked at her watch. There were forty-five minutes of free association time left before she was locked in her cell. Hoisting herself off the bunk, she left the cell and walked out onto the landing. She scanned her surroundings.

Her gaze settled on a female prison officer standing around ten metres away, sturdily built, with a face like old leather. She tried to recall her name…

Maggie. That was it. Maggie Cooper.

She looked like she’d been working here for a while, long enough to be familiar with the whereabouts of any given inmate. And from what Bailey had observed of her in the short time she’d been here, she appeared to be relatively approachable.

Bailey eased up to her.

‘I’m looking for Melanie Clarke,’ she said with a polite smile. ‘Do you know where I can find her?’

Maggie gave her the once-over with a steely professional flick of the eye. ‘Any particular reason?’

‘Uh… just wanted to have a chat,’ said Bailey innocently.

‘Just a regular conversation, huh?’

Bailey nodded earnestly.

Maggie sighed and raised one eyebrow.

‘Well… good luck with that,’ she said in a manner that suggested that having any kind of conversation with Melanie Clarke would prove to be most challenging. ‘She lives on B-Wing. Cell number one-one-three.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bailey and headed off along the landing.

After having given it some thought, Bailey had come to the conclusion that asking a guard about Melanie Clarke was a safer bet than asking the inmates whose affiliations at this stage she was still uncertain of.

At the end of the landing, she descended a flight of stairs and eventually reached the junction of A-Wing and B-Wing. She turned and began to walk along one of the lower landings of B-Wing, passing by the cells, moving carefully through the groups of inmates leaning on the balconies. This was deep within the heart of the hive. It was an unfamiliar area to Bailey and she was on edge.

Once again, she was shocked by the general air of neglect in the prison and the distinct lack of modernity. Although she knew that these were criminals and this their place of punishment it was still worse than she’d anticipated. The antique architecture made no concessions to light or space, instead suffusing the place with a dark labyrinthine feel. She got the sense of things happening unseen, things being got away with…