The only fingerprints on the bullet were hers. They promised to make enquiries. She suspected they wouldn’t.

But she had to call them again, frantically, a week later, after she found another bullet, on her bed. Nothing in her house had been touched aside from the back door, which had been smashed in. The bullet was almost identical to the one that had been thrown through her window and again was engraved with the name: JAX.

A small forensics team went through the house she rented, a three-bedroom weatherboard in suburbia, looking for prints, fibres, hair and blood. They found nothing with their brushes, combs, black powder and sticky tape that didn’t belong to her or people who had legally entered her apartment.

Nikki became a nervous wreck. She packed a bag and rented a hotel room. She changed her route to work, drove with one eye on the rear-view mirror, and panicked every time she heard a loud engine, certain it was a motorbike. She thought she would be safe in the hotel, as there were cameras everywhere.

She saw the bikes before she saw the men: four of them in the underground car park. Nikki turned and started back towards the lift, but the four riders appeared from nowhere and cut her off.

‘Stay calm,’ the oldest of the four men said. ‘We aren’t here to hurt you. We’re here to help you.’ While the other three stayed silent, he explained that someone she loved was in a lot of trouble. That only she could help. They would kill him if she didn’t do them a little favour. They would kill him if she went back to the cops. The prospect arrived at her door a few days later.

AFTER booking her visit, Nikki googled ‘smuggling’, ‘drugs’, ‘jail’ and ‘NSW’, suddenly aware that there were consequences other than death. That was soon spelled out on the screen in front of her:

NSW correctional centres prohibit certain items from entering the prison, including mobile phones, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, lighters, syringes, SIM cards, chargers, computers and offensive weapons.

Anyone caught smuggling or trying to smuggle these items into a prison will face heavy criminal penalties.

She scanned further down the page, bile rising in her throat.

Any person who smuggles or tries to smuggle any of the following things into a prison without lawful authority will face a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment and/or a $2200 fine:

Any of the items listed in some of the schedules under the Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Act . . .

Nikki took public transport to Long Bay, as instructed. She’d been told not to drive because the police conducted random searches in the streets surrounding the prison, pulling cars over and searching for drugs, but they never bothered the bus.