IT TOOK three days for Jax to realise something: pain was king. Pain was all. For three days, he’d managed to conceal the worst of his injuries – and himself – as best as he could. Only leaving his cell when he was forced out for muster and dinner, he’d kept his head down and covered his swollen eye with shadows, angles or a hand or crooked arm. Each night, he’d perspired his way to sunrise, rolling, groaning, and at times wishing for death.

On day three, he gave up. The swelling around his eye now was two inches high and seething. A clear liquid oozed down his cheek. His eyelid was sealed shut with puss, hardened like cured Liquid Nails. The pain was immense, like he had an ice-pick lodged in his face.

He reluctantly hit the knock-up.

When it was Rogers who answered – just Jax’s luck – he almost lost his resolve then and there, but one graze of a finger over his eye made his mind up for him.

When Rogers arrived, he took one look at Jax and left, then came back with a medical form and a pen.

‘Fill this out,’ he said, all matter-of-fact and without the slightest hint of remorse. ‘And then I’ll have someone escort you to the clinic. And don’t say a word. Tell ’em what happened and you’re dead.’

Jax did his best with the form, though being in the throes of a fever he struggled to focus and shook so badly his writing was barely legible. He ignored all the questions about how he’d received his injuries. Another guard came and escorted him to the clinic.

The clinic had two separate entrances: one for protection inmates and one for the general population. The guard at the door checked Jax’s ID card to make sure he had come in the right one. Occasionally, a protection inmate found his way into the general population area of the clinic, and sometimes a general population prisoner found his way into the protection area of the clinic. The result was usually the same: a protection prisoner dead and a general population prisoner on a murder charge.

The guard also frisked Jax for weapons and checked his form had been signed by his wing guard. With everything correct and in order, Jax walked into the waiting room and checked in with the nurse. The woman, old enough to be his grandmother, was seated safe and secure behind a glass screen. Jax handed his form through the slot and was gruffly told to take a seat. That’s when he was hit by the smell.

The clinic had been doused with medical-grade cleaning products, but a foreboding odour lingered beneath that surface smell: death. That’s what the addicts smelled like, Jax realised as he surveyed the half-dozen men who were waiting to be seen by a doctor. The methadone gang.