Jax started scanning the crowd. Going from left to right, he gave every inmate present a once-over: name, age, crime, sentence, social media profiles and posts. He matched the files he’d just devoured to the faces, then compared them to the profile he’d started building: male, aged thirty or over; intelligent, idealistic, resourceful, charismatic, egocentric, pathological, messianic, megalomaniacal.

Most of the prisoners were standing in groups. Searching for shade, they’d congregated under trees, awnings and in the shadows cast by buildings. There was only one inmate sitting in the sun. Alone and looking at his feet, he was appeared to be in a world of his own. Matt McAuliffe, eighteen. Drink driving. Eight months. No prior convictions.

Jax crossed McAuliffe off his list of suspects, which he had now narrowed down to twenty-one. Jax had been able to rule out almost eighty-five percent of the yard on his first sweep, based on his profiling. But twenty-one was still twenty too many. There was only one mastermind.

Jax turned back to his left and started a fresh scan in a bid to further narrow the field. This time he would not be looking at their files. He would be looking at them. Concentrating on the twenty-one who still matched his suspect profile, he would study them closely: their mannerisms, group dynamics, gestures, posture. If a picture was worth a thousand words, then an action was worth a million. The files couldn’t tell him everything. He had to observe to truly determine things like megalomania, egocentricity and charisma. And once he’d narrowed the list further – by the next day, he hoped – he would go even deeper, hovering behind his targets to not only watch but also listen. Then, finally, he would interact – his behaviour tightly scripted and his questions carefully crafted.

Jax was almost through his second sweep when he saw that the kid called McAuliffe was no longer alone, and no longer in the sun either. Four Samoans, ranging from big to fucking huge were standing over the first-time offender.

Jax sprang from his tabletop and onto his feet. Don’t do it. Don’t get involved. It’s not your fight.

He knew the smart move would be to back up, to turn the other way and go back to studying the inmates. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. Not now. Not with just twenty-nine days to find the mastermind. The Samoans would most likely come after him if he intervened. They might even try to kill him.

Jax wasn’t scared of death – sometimes he wished for it – but dying right now would be selfish. They wouldn’t just be killing him, they would be murdering the hundreds he had been entrusted to save. He turned round, retraced his steps. But then . . .

‘Fuck it,’ he snarled.