Donny led the way through the open doorway and into a small room. There was a single bed in one corner, an oak cabinet and a lit red-shaded lamp to one side of it. Donny’s father was sitting in a high-backed armchair in front of a big bay window.

The James Maguire Dora remembered had been a big, bluff dark-haired man, a foreman at the foundry, someone everyone looked up to in their street. But this couldn’t be him. This man was old, and that thick thatch of black hair was white as snow. His face was lined, his shoulders hunched and bony under a thick checked dressing gown.

‘Dad?’ Donny stepped into the bay, taking Dora with him.

The man in the chair looked up at Donny’s face. Then his eyes wandered over to Dora, standing there grimly, waiting for him to shriek at her and say, You’re her! You’re the one who killed my boy and my wife!

She braced herself. Shaking, terrified, she waited for the axe to fall. Donny wanted her punished, and this was it. She was being forced to see what she’d done to his family and to take whatever came as a result of that.

But James Maguire was just staring at her, saying nothing. And then he took a breath and spoke.

‘Who is this?’ he asked in a quavering voice. Then his eyes turned to his son. ‘Who are you?’

Oh Christ, thought Dora. Oh Christ in heaven, get me out of here.

68

Frank Pargeter had a fierce reputation out on the London streets, and that followed him inside.

‘Who’s the top dog in this place?’ he’d asked when he’d first come in to stir. Whoever it was, Frank was looking to replace the bastard as soon as.

‘That’s Peter Cannock.’

‘Right.’

First off, Frank was in maximum security, rated as a category A prisoner, a danger to other cons, a danger to the public. He was kept away from regular prisoners so there was no chance – for now – of getting organized about Cannock. But he could wait; waiting was Frank’s strong suit. He had a long, long stretch ahead of him and his natural patience would serve him well for that.

Everywhere Frank went in the prison, he had to be signed in and out. From the workshop to the cells, he was escorted. Out in the yard, there was a warder and a dog handler with him, and when he came back indoors he was signed in again. He was checked on, every hour of the day and night. His cell was impregnable.

What kept him going, kept him sane (or as sane as he’d ever been) was thinking of Dora O’Brien staring at him across that courtroom with terror in her eyes. When the cell door slammed on him at night-time, he thought of her. When his eyes opened to another day in the morning, he thought of her.

The thing was, he was going to kill her.