Some part of him sensed her presence as he promptly twitched, then awoke. He looked up at her blankly and then started with a panic, sitting up sharply in his chair.

‘What are you doing here?’ he exclaimed, affronted. ‘This office is out of bounds to inmates!’

‘Sorry. I just heard a noise…’

‘No respect! That’s the problem with you lot. Not one of you harlots knows the meaning of the word “respect”. That’s why you’re all in here.’

‘You’re drunk,’ said Bailey in disgust.

‘I am not!’ he said indignantly.

‘I can smell it on your breath. Even from here.’

He looked her up and down critically.

‘For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread.’ He nodded and smiled to himself. ‘Proverbs, chapter six, verse twenty-six.’

‘How about Proverbs, chapter twenty-three? As I recall, it’s got a bit about those who “tarry too long at the wine”.’

He stared at her sullenly with his glassy bloodshot eyes.

‘Do you want to confess or not?’ he slurred aggressively.

‘To you? I don’t think so.’

She backed rapidly out of his office, leaving him to rant to himself.

One thing seemed likely. Toni probably hadn’t gone to the chapel to talk to Father O’Malley, because he’d been asleep in a drunken stupor.

So why had she gone there?

Chapter 29

Normally, the way it worked was that an informant introduced the undercover police officer to the criminal group that they were trying to infiltrate. This was usually arranged as part of some kind of deal that the informant had done with the police in order to avoid prosecution or jail time. Having an informant who was already a member of the group to vouch for the police officer was crucial in gaining their trust.

Once they were successfully infiltrated, the undercover police officer would subsequently introduce and vouch for another police officer and so on, so that it was harder for the criminals to trace the infiltration back to the original informant once the operation was over.

In here, however, for better or for worse, Bailey was all alone. She was going in cold. She had no informant to introduce her to the gang, so it was a much more challenging situation in terms of getting to know them and getting them to trust her, a relative newcomer to the prison. She needed to engineer an appropriate situation to facilitate her infiltration into the gang. And that was going to require a certain amount of creativity.

Based on her observations, she had ascertained that each member of the gang was allocated an area of the prison in which to sell drugs.

When it came to free association time, she walked methodically around each wing of the prison and along every landing until she had located Toni. As the leader of the gang, she knew it had to be Toni who she targeted.

Toni was leaning on an upper balcony of D-Wing, casually lounging, her hands in the pockets of her jogging top, sporadically conducting transactions with a succession of inmates.