The thought of that job and the circumstances under which she’d acquired the tattoo triggered a tumult of emotions, some good… some bad. It seemed that with every job she did, she seemed to pick up some form of physical memento. The tattoo from the prison job… The scars from the car theft job…

One thing she definitely seemed to gain with every job were enemies. She was slowly and steadily amassing them. They were people who she’d had locked up, as well as people who she’d tried and failed to have locked up. They were all out there, somewhere, her face in their heads and vengeance in their hearts. But she refused to let herself think about them too much. If she did that, then she’d never feel safe…

8

The police property storeroom was an Aladdin’s cave filled to the brim with things that had been seized in the course of various operations – designer clothing, drugs, weapons, antiques, jewellery, state-of-the-art electronics… It was a resource that undercover police officers drew on a lot. They were allowed to use just about any object in there as a prop in an operation, so long as it wasn’t some vital piece of evidence that needed to be exhibited in court, and so long as they followed due procedure in signing it out and signing it back in again when they’d finished with it.

The place was located down in the basement, and in fitting with the sensitive character and often high-value nature of its contents, it was well secured behind a heavy metal grille door.

Bailey had used her swipe card to gain access and was now gazing around in awe at the metal shelving units packed with plastic bags and boxes all labelled up with details of the various operations to which they pertained.

‘I love this place,’ she murmured. ‘It’s like some kind of crazy junk shop.’

‘How can I be of assistance?’ said the man working there, taking his feet off the desk and putting down the comic book he’d been reading.

Bailey glanced at the cover. It looked like a vintage edition.

‘Superman issue one,’ he said informatively. ‘Proceeds of a burglary. Can’t be that many in existence, so I’m sure we’ll find the owner soon enough.’

His name was Keith and he was somewhat on the podgy side, his belly straining at his T-shirt, and he was kind of pasty, like he didn’t get enough vitamin D being cooped up down here all day long in the basement.

‘What have you got in the way of designer clothing?’ Bailey asked.

She wanted to look the part and the kind of player she was intending to transform herself into for this role would wear expensive clothing. However, her detective constable salary only stretched so far, so she thought she’d save herself a bit of cash and come down to the police property storeroom to see what they had.

‘Hmm… designer clothing eh?’ He frowned and scratched his crew cut. ‘We’ve usually got plenty of that down here. Let me have a look.’