She hung around outside, doing a good imitation of casually lounging, all the while attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation of the inmates in the cell.

‘Bloodsport without a doubt,’ the Asian one was saying. ‘It’s an instant classic.’

The white one was shaking her head, without looking up from the joint.

‘Hard Target. Has to be. He’d matured by that stage. He was at the height of his powers. Couple that with a top-drawer action director like John Woo and you’ve got a masterpiece.’

‘Nah. It’s got too much shooting and not enough kickboxing. Van Damme is a kickboxer first and foremost. His best films are the ones that fully showcase his kickboxing talent.’

Bailey hovered on the threshold, wondering how she could interject. She trawled her mind. A piece of trivia floated to the surface. As an undercover cop, she had fallen into a habit of storing any bits of information that she could later retrieve to buttress a cover story or insinuate herself with people. However useless a bit of trivia might seem, you never knew when it might come in handy.

She sidled into the doorway. At first, none of the three figures in the cell registered her presence.

‘I think you’re forgetting Cyborg,’ said Bailey.

The white one was the first to look up. Then the Asian one. And, finally, the mixed-race one.

They all stared at her blankly through the thick haze of smoke. She moved just inside the doorway to the cell. She stifled a cough and blinked. The smoke was dense enough to make her eyes water.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said the white one, her face creased in suspicion.

The Asian one squinted at her as a thought seemed to occur.

‘Cyborg? Of course.’ She turned to the white one. ‘Kay, I totally forgot about Cyborg. Totally underrated. Kind of a low-budget masterpiece.’

The white one called Kay turned to her. Her face morphed into an expression of disgust. ‘Seema, you cannot be serious! Cyborg is worse than Nowhere to Run. It’s a substandard Mad Max rip-off. It’s one of his early ones you want to forget about.’

If the white one was called Kay and the Asian one was called Seema, then Bailey deduced that the frazzled-looking mixed-race one had to be Melanie Clarke.

Seema was shaking her head vigorously in disagreement with Kay. ‘Cyborg was a massive straight-to-video hit. So successful that they made two sequels.’

‘Neither of which had Jean-Claude in them. So they don’t count.’

Bailey judged that now was the time to drop her nugget of useless trivia. On one of her many sleepless nights, she’d found herself watching Cyborg, the type of low-budget sci-fi thriller which occupied the late-night slots on lesser-viewed channels. It wasn’t exactly her kind of film, but she’d noticed something faintly odd whilst watching it. ‘Did you know that the main characters in Cyborg are named after guitars?’ she said.

‘Guitars?’ sneered Kay. ‘I have never heard such a load of crap in all my life. Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question. Who are you and what do you want?’