Rogers then made Jax watch as he unzipped his fly and urinated all over his immaculately made bed.

THE sun had long left his room by dinnertime – but the smell hadn’t. The urine had soaked right through his sheets and into the mattress. He’d been able to sponge most of it from his bedding using a soaped-up shirt but there was nothing he could do about the mattress, not now, not without the warmth of the sun.

Although it wasn’t quite 6 pm Jax’s cell would already have been pitch black had it not been for the fluorescent light, which, like everything else in prison, was in a cage. Dangerous things needed to be kept in cages: tigers, Jax, lights. Jax’d had no idea that so many seemingly innocuous objects were dangerous, himself included, until he’d been locked away. Until now he’d certainly never looked up at a fluorescent light and thought, Gee, that’d make a good weapon. You could really rip a throat open with the jagged glass if you snapped it just right. But while he could kill a man with his light – and probably another ten things in his cell if he thought about it, and he would – a globe could not dry his mattress. Or his sheets, which he couldn’t hang up either, because hanging points were lethal too. He was in for another long cold night – assuming he made it back from the mess hall.

‘OI!’ the two vowels were shouted as loud as the man could whisper. ‘Oi! Oi! You!’

No. Not me.

‘Yeah, you.’

No. Please. Not here. Not now.

‘Oi. Over here. Behind ya.’

Stale sweat, urine and Rexona roll-on. Jax did not have to look to know who it was. He remembered more than faces.

‘Oi. Stop ignorin’ me, mate.’

Jax could feel his temperature rising. He turned his attention back to the steak he could not cut. He took a deep breath, clenched his jaw and attempted it again.

‘Oi,’ the voice was at his ear now, and a finger was jabbing him in the rib.

The plastic knife snapped as Jax slammed it into his burnt rubber steak. He watched as the broken tip flew into the air, almost in slow motion.

‘Knew it was you,’ the man behind him went on. ‘So, was I right? Yeah . . . I was. They don’t go Area 51 on a good-looking fella like you. Dude like you can make some serious coin in here. They ain’t going to search you after a visit. You got a missus? They won’t get searched either, bra. Seriously. The screws can’t touch ’em if their man ain’t been done for gear. We can make bank, bro. Won’t have to worry about nothing if we’ve got gear.’

‘Gear?’ said the man to Jax’s left. ‘Who’s got gear?’

Suddenly the entire table was looking his way.