‘You smell of doner kebab, mate.’

Frank glanced up at him and smiled. ‘I just had lunch.’

‘How can you eat that revolting shit?’ muttered Shane.

‘Sod him,’ said Rick, who’d been observing with a dark expression. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’

With a final sneer of contempt, Shane wandered out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

Rick turned his focus back to Bailey. He cleared his throat and spoke to her once again.

‘Are you an undercover police officer?’ he said.

The answer started to rise up in her throat. Once again, some deep primitive urge inside her screamed at her to resist, but her strength to do so had atrophied to virtually zero.

There was a sudden metallic groan, followed closely by a loud hissing. They all recoiled, turning in shock as water sprayed across the living room, coating them with a fine shower of cold droplets.

Bailey saw Frank standing in the kitchen, clutching a wrench, drenched in water, while a large geyser sprayed uncontrollably from the top of the tap. It appeared that he’d somehow pulled the top off it with the wrench.

‘What the fuck?!’ snarled Rick, looking down at his wet Armani suit in outrage. He looked up at Frank, a truly murderous expression on his face. ‘You muggy cunt!’

Frank put his hands over the top of the tap, vainly trying to stem the fountain of water spraying upwards from the exposed valve.

‘I’m terribly sorry, gentlemen! Please forgive me.’

Violent looks bounced between the four men and there was a dangerously tense pause. Then Rick’s murderous expression subsided and he brushed off his suit jacket.

‘It’s only water,’ he said dismissively. ‘Anyhow, we’re done here.’

‘Wait a minute—’ protested Stephen.

‘I said we’re done.’

Rick nodded at them all to leave. And so they did, leaving Bailey and Frank alone in the flat, water coming down like rain around them.

44

Bailey’s memory started to return sometime later, coming back sluggishly in bits and pieces.

The first thing she saw was Frank sitting on the sofa next to her, dressed in a paint-spattered blue boiler suit, peering into her face with an expression of concern.

She groaned softly. Her mouth was unbearably dry, she felt excessively nauseous and she had a headache far worse than any hangover she’d ever experienced.

‘Urghh… oh my God,’ she muttered. ‘I feel terrible.’

She slowly gazed around the interior of the apartment. Her face twisted into a puzzled frown.

‘Why’s everything wet?’

‘You really don’t remember anything, do you?’ said Frank.

She rubbed her head, grimacing in discomfort. God it hurt. She tried to cast her mind back. She could recall everything up until just before they injected her.

‘They gave me scopolamine,’ she said. ‘It wipes the memory.’ She squinted at him with a perplexed look. ‘What’s with the boiler suit?’

He looked down at it. ‘Oh, this? I was pretending to be your plumber. I think they bought it, although I imagine any real plumber would have been out of here like a shot.’