‘I want to find out what happened to her. I’m certain she was onto something and I’m pretty sure that was the reason she was killed. I want to know what she found out.’

He fixed her with his watery, penetrating gaze.

‘Are you ready to come back, Bailey?’

Chapter 4

‘Spyros!’

Bailey wrenched awake, twisted in the sweat-soaked sheets, alone in her bed, gasping the name that she had been screaming in her dreams.

For a few moments, she just lay there, shrouded in the greyness of pre-dawn, her heart palpitating in her chest, and waited for the horror to slowly subside.

She’d tried prescription medication of all types – from sleeping pills to antidepressants. She’d gone for counselling. She’d even tried alternative medicine. Anything to make the nightmares go away. But none of it had been any good. Each and every night, a slightly different iteration of that last undercover job played out, and each time was no less horrific than the last.

She’d thought that quitting undercover work would make things better. But it hadn’t. If anything, the nightmares had been getting worse.

Turning her head, she saw that the glowing digits of her bedside clock read 4.05 a.m. She knew that she would be unable to get back to sleep.

Pulling aside the sheets, she got up out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. She switched the light on. Blinking in the harsh unflattering glare, she looked at herself in the mirror of the bathroom cabinet.

Jesus she looked like shit. Like some kind of zombie. Her skin was grey. Her eyes had dark rings around them. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a good night’s sleep.

She ran a hand through her hair, spotting yet another white strand amongst the brown. She was only twenty-nine and she already had white hairs appearing on a regular basis. Damn nightmares. She pulled the offending strand out with a snapping sound and dropped it in the sink.

Opening the cabinet, she took out a box of beta-blockers. She popped two of the tablets out of the blister pack and tossed them back with a mouthful of water directly from the tap.

She wasn’t planning on going back to bed. No point lying in the darkness ruminating over things. She decided to go into the living room to watch whatever crap was showing on TV at this time in the morning, anything to distract her from the bad dreams, the stupider and more mundane the better.

Wandering into the living room, she sat down on the sofa and switched on the TV. It was showing a long American infomercial advertising an ultra-intensive workout programme that promised to transform flab into rippling muscle. She’d seen this one many times before. It was on most nights, most of the time, on most of the channels so it seemed. But she sat there and watched it again.

As she slouched on the sofa in the flickering light of the TV screen, she thought again about the decision she’d made the previous day. She’d said yes to Frank because of Alice. And later that evening she’d mourned alone for her friend in the privacy of her flat, resolving through tears and gritted teeth to find out what had happened to her. But now, after awakening from the nightmares, she wasn’t so sure about her decision any more. Had it been a really bad idea?