‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said.

Nancy stared at her coldly. ‘You don’t have a choice.’ Her tone turned to steel. ‘Now tell me how you got those scars.’

For a moment Bailey wondered if news of her torture had drifted through the gangland grapevine. It was very possible. And if they already suspected she was a cop, then there was the distinct possibility that she might not be walking out of this pub alive.

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘It’s none of your business.’

She paused, closed her eyes theatrically, and conjured up the smell of clove smoke, letting it fill her with righteous anger and indignation.

She popped open her eyes and stared straight back at Nancy.

‘But one thing I can tell you is that I’m not going to give up until I find him.’ She twisted her face into a vicious sneer. ‘And when I do catch up with him, he’s going to pay. Big time.’ Bailey said it from her heart, and she meant it. Any other response would have been false. And for someone as astute as Nancy only the truth would suffice.

She saw Nancy’s eyes emit a tiny flare of approval, accompanied by a small affirmative nod of the head.

Bailey knew then that she’d judged her response correctly. Recalling the awful revenge that Nancy had supposedly wreaked upon the killers of her husband, Bailey knew that for someone like Nancy getting even was a big deal.

A sideways look passed between Nancy and Rick. Mother to son. Very subtle. Almost imperceptible. And that was when Bailey knew she’d won over Nancy.

She’d succeeded. She was in.

16

‘So you want to buy some shooters?’ said Rick.

He spoke softly but that only seemed to emphasise his innate hardness. This was a man who didn’t need to shout. When Rick spoke, people listened.

‘That’s right,’ Bailey replied. ‘Seemed like a good earner.’

‘What are you looking to buy exactly?’

He was aware that she already knew what he had for sale, but he was testing her anyhow, just to make sure.

‘Adrian told me you had a hundred and twenty brand-new seven-point-six-two-millimetre CZ 805 BREN assault rifles, a hundred and forty brand-new nine-millimetre K100 pistols, seventy silencers and five hundred rounds of ammunition for each weapon.’

Rick nodded slowly, observing her with his jet-black eyes.

‘Eight hundred grand,’ he stated after a short pause.

With the preparation she’d done prior to the meeting, Bailey had been expecting a black market mark-up of anywhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty per cent. Based upon her research into the retail prices of these particular weapons and their ammunition, eight hundred thousand pounds was definitely sitting outside the high end of the spectrum.

It was a delicate situation. She didn’t want to put up too much resistance and torpedo the deal before it had even been struck. But she couldn’t capitulate too easily to his offer or else they wouldn’t take her seriously, and might even become suspicious of her. She was aware also, of course, that she was by far the junior partner in any kind of dealings with them and thus had limited scope to dictate terms.