by Caro Savage
‘The whole reason I’m mentioning it is because we now know when the next murder is due to take place.’
‘If there is a next murder. If the killer sticks to this pattern.’
‘The ninth of July,’ she said. ‘That’s when it’s going to happen. In five days’ time.’
‘A date by itself is not enough to justify taking any kind of action. You need to provide me with—’
‘Something solid. Yeah I know.’
87
No sooner had she got back to her cell than Bailey turned around to encounter the gang filing through the door, crowding into the small room. Toni. Muscles. Rong. Keisha. No sign of Poppy. She hadn’t noticed them hanging around outside, but then she’d been so deep in thought about the significance of the sixteen-day pattern that she hadn’t really been paying attention to anything else.
An unannounced visit. They didn’t look happy. This wasn’t good. A knot of fear immediately formed in Bailey’s stomach.
They moved into the cell so they were all standing around her. Toni nodded to Keisha, who pulled the cell door shut behind her. This definitely wasn’t looking good.
‘Hey guys, what’s up?’ She tried to sound light-hearted. But they weren’t smiling.
‘Muscles,’ said Toni.
Muscles grabbed Bailey from behind, pinning her arms behind her back. Bailey squirmed in her grip, but Muscles was far too strong.
‘I don’t understand. What’s going on?’
‘What’s going on is that we think you’re a cop.’
‘A cop?’ said Bailey, evincing an expression of shock. But inside, her heart rate had suddenly gone up exponentially.
‘Yeah. A fucking pig!’ spat Toni.
‘Just admit it,’ said Keisha. ‘It’ll make things a whole lot easier.’
A whole lot easier for them to kill me, thought Bailey.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.
‘It’s so obvious,’ growled Toni. ‘You come in here. You join our gang. Terry gets arrested. All a little bit too convenient.’
‘You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘No, I think we’ve got it all right.’ Toni eyed her with a nasty leer. ‘You see, Keisha here happened to be talking to someone called Carly Potson, who swore on her grandmother’s grave that she was arrested by you one time.’
Fuck.
Bailey’s heart sank at the mention of Carly Potson. She realised now that she had made a fatal error in hoping that Carly would forget about her following their encounter in the canteen. Bailey had seen Carly around the prison, and Carly hadn’t approached her again, so Bailey had assumed that she had moved on, but apparently that wasn’t the case.
‘Now, normally we wouldn’t place much stock in the say-so of a worthless parasite like Carly Potson who could just be trying to ingratiate herself with us to get off the hook for money she owes us.’ Toni paused and tilted her head thoughtfully. ‘But then I did some thinking… of the mathematical kind. The two-plus-two kind. And it all suddenly adds up. You’re. A. Fucking. Pig.’ With each venomously hissed word, she poked Bailey hard in the chest with her forefinger.
This was exactly the kind of situation where the prime rule of working undercover was put to the test.
Never break cover.
However sure they were that she was a serving police officer, whatever evidence they had, however convincing, Bailey had to deny it to the hilt.
Because if she didn’t, she was dead.
Sure, there was that little perverse itching temptation that every undercover cop had in a situation like this, which was to give in and admit it, to free oneself of that horrible weight of pressure caused by the constant need to conceal and deceive.
She fought it back.
She remembered her training. The life-saving mantra.
Never. Break. Cover.
‘That’s absolute bullshit,’ croaked Bailey, her mouth dry with fear. ‘She’s got me muddled up with someone else.’
Rong fixed her with a bulging cross-eyed stare. ‘Don’t try and wriggle out of it.’
‘You’re always making all these phone calls all the time,’ said Toni.
Keisha leaned in with an aggressive grimace. ‘Like you were just now.’
‘Who are you talking to exactly?’ snarled Toni, prodding her hard in the chest with each word.
‘My lawyer.’
‘And who’s that who comes in to visit you?’ said Rong.
‘My brother.’
‘Not much of a family resemblance.’
‘Yeah. His nose is too big,’ grunted Keisha.
‘He’s my half-brother. Same father, different mothers.’
‘Bullshit!’ hissed Toni, leaning in close so their faces were almost touching.
Bailey swallowed and tried to maintain her composure.
She cursed herself for underestimating how closely they had been watching her.
‘And you’re always trying to get out of hurting people,’ said Keisha. ‘There’s definitely something wrong with you.’
In any other situation Bailey would have laughed at Keisha’s logic, but there wasn’t much to laugh about right now.
Toni reached behind her and pulled out her shank. She held it up to Bailey’s face so she could absorb every tiny detail of the home-made blade – the roughly filed edge, the vicious point.
She brushed back Bailey’s hair from the left side of her face to reveal her scar.
‘That’s a nasty scar you’ve got there. I think we’ll start by giving you one on the other side of your face to match it. They always say symmetry is an important factor in physical beauty. Shall we make you beautiful?’
Bailey tried to writhe away from the blade, but Muscles was holding her too firmly. Toni grinned in her signature shark-like way, her gold tooth winking from the corner of her mouth as she pressed the sharp tip of the shank against Bailey’s right cheek.
‘I’m not a cop!’ gasped Bailey. ‘You have to believe me!’
‘Too late for that,’ growled Toni, dismissing her protests.
Bailey closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, bracing herself for the pain, feeling the beads of sweat rolling down her face, her heart hammering inside her ribcage.
The flashback hit her right there and then.
…Hanging chained up from the rafters… the burning cigarettes… the smell of her toasting flesh… the razor blade… the blood dripping…
The name…
The name…
The name…
‘No!’ she screamed, her eyes popping wide open.
Toni recoiled in surprise.
‘Well, well… a little more squeamish than I’d bargained on.’
She lowered the shank.
‘Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on giving you a scar. Too messy. And inconvenient. And anyhow, we’re beyond all that now.’
What did she mean exactly? Bailey’s bad feeling got that little bit worse.
Without breaking eye contact with Bailey, Toni smiled and held out her hand. ‘Rong?’
Rong stepped forward and held up a hypodermic syringe. She depressed the plunger slightly to make a small squirt of liquid come out of the top.
The syringe must have been stolen from the medical facility or smuggled in somehow.
Bailey hated needles at the best of times. And this was far from the best of times. This didn’t bode well at all.
‘What’s that?’ she whispered, trying to buy herself a precious few extra seconds. She had a horrible feeling, though, that she didn’t want to know what it was.
Toni took the syringe from Rong and held it up in front of Bailey’s face. It was filled with a sandy-coloured liquid in which tiny impurities floated. The needle glistened, a droplet of liquid oozing from its tip.
‘This is a hundred quid’s worth of ninety-three per cent pure Pakistani heroin.’
Ninety-three per cent.
Bailey knew from her police experience that most heroin that dru
g addicts took was twenty per cent pure, if that. With a black sinking dread, she realised that they were intending to give her what junkies fearfully referred to as a hot-shot – a deliberately lethal injection of smack designed to kill the victim by overdose.
‘Much as I’d love to carve you up personally,’ said Toni, ‘it’s a lot less trouble for us if you’re just found here in your cell dead of an overdose with a needle sticking out of your arm. No one will bother investigating your death and therefore no one will interfere with our business. They’ll just think you were some sad junkie who OD’ed.’
Bailey squirmed and struggled in Muscles’ iron clutch.
‘Hold her tight, Muscles,’ said Toni.
Muscles gripped her even tighter whilst Rong took hold of Bailey’s left wrist and yanked up the sleeve of her jogging top to expose her left forearm. She wrenched it forward. Toni hunched over it and aimed the tip of the syringe downwards.
‘Hold her still! I’ve got to get it into the vein.’
‘No please! Please don’t do it! I’m not a cop! I’m not a cop! I swear!’
The sinews in Bailey’s arm stood out as she twisted and wriggled against them but she couldn’t escape. Their fingers bit harder into her flesh as they held her immobile. She felt the sharp tip of the needle scrape the skin of her forearm.
‘Hold her still, damn it!’ said Toni, trying to line up the needle with the vein.
Bailey closed her eyes, clenched her teeth and braced herself for the massive hit that would put her into a coma within seconds from which she would never awaken.
‘She’s not a cop.’
Bailey opened her eyes.
Poppy was leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed, her black fringe hanging down across her face, calmly observing the situation with her large kohl-rimmed eyes.
Toni paused, a grimace on her face, the needle poised just a few millimetres from Bailey’s forearm. She twisted her head around slowly.
‘How do you know?’ she growled.
‘She told me stuff.’
‘What stuff?’
‘Accountancy. She knows too much about accountancy to be a cop. No pig would ever know that much about spreadsheets.’
Bailey felt an overwhelming surge of relief at Poppy’s intervention. Her life was hanging in the balance and Poppy was now all that stood in the way of certain death. All those conversations they’d had together and all those interactions during the tattooing sessions now converged upon this single crucial moment.
‘She could have been lying to you,’ said Toni, with a sceptical sneer. ‘That could just be her cover story.’
‘I never let anyone lie to me.’
Toni sighed, faintly dismayed. ‘Are you vouching for her, Poppy? Because if you are, you’d better be sure.’
‘I vouch for her. If I find out she’s lying, I’ll kill her myself.’
Toni straightened up slowly. She looked at Bailey and then at the syringe. Her eyes narrowed. An idea seemed to have occurred to her.
Still clutching the needle, she reached into her back pocket and took out a mobile phone.
‘Just to be sure, I want you to call your lawyer right here in front of us, right now. I want to listen to his voice. I want to know that he actually exists.’
The phone sat there in Toni’s outstretched palm, shiny and menacing.
Muscles let go of Bailey’s right arm.
Bailey reached out and took the phone. They all stood there silently watching as she dialled Frank’s number with a shaking finger. As soon as the ringtone started, Toni reached across, took the phone from her and put it on speakerphone so they could all listen in. She held the phone in front of Bailey’s mouth.
Rita’s nasal sing-song voice answered. ‘Hello, Sullivan Knight Solicitors. How can I help?’
Bailey could visualise Rita sitting there in the office with her headphones on, probably filing her nails at the same time. Bailey swallowed and took a deep breath.
‘It’s Bailey Pike speaking. It’s really important that I talk to Mr Knight.’
‘He’s just with a client at the minute. If you hold just a moment I’ll see if he can come to the phone.’
Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ came on. But this time it seemed to play for ages, longer than the usual five seconds or so.
The gang glared at her silent and stony-faced as the melancholy chords tinkled from the phone’s small speaker. In what could be her last moments, Bailey made an effort to savour the beauty of the music, noting ironically that it sounded more funereal than ever under the current circumstances.
It stopped abruptly as Frank came on the line.
‘Hello Bailey. I’m glad you called. No doubt you’re wanting to know where I am with your appeal. Well, I’m just putting together the last few bits. In a nutshell, I think we’ve got a good chance of the appeal working on the basis that the key prosecution evidence used against you was way too flimsy. I’ll be in court this afternoon with some other cases, but I should have everything related to your appeal completed by lunchtime tomorrow. Do you want to call me back then?’
Toni was staring fiercely at Bailey, the phone in one hand, the syringe in the other.
‘Bailey?’ said Frank. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Everything’s fine. Just fine. Tomorrow sounds great. Thanks for everything.’
‘No problem. Talk to you soon. Take care now.’
‘You too.’
He ended the call.
Toni lowered the phone and slipped it back into her pocket.
For what seemed like aeons, they all stood there in silence, Toni scrutinising her with her flint-grey eyes.
Bailey started to feel dizzy and then realised she had been holding her breath as she awaited the verdict.
Toni’s face broke into a smile. She handed the syringe to Rong, patted Bailey on the shoulder and straightened her tracksuit top which had got rumpled in the altercation.
‘Guess it was just a case of mistaken identity after all. Had to be sure though. No hard feelings, eh?’
Then she and the rest of the gang filed out of the cell as promptly as they had entered.
Only Poppy remained, standing there with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall.
‘Thanks for sticking up for me,’ said Bailey, rolling her left sleeve back down, massaging her forearm from where they had been gripping it.
Poppy said nothing, and just stood there studying her for a few moments.
‘Just remember our deal,’ she said.
And then she turned and left the cell.
Bailey stood there all alone, her heart beating hard. She felt weak and shaky all of a sudden now that the adrenaline had run its course. She slumped down onto the bunk.
As she sat there, she reflected on the wisdom of having previously set up a special code with Frank. As part of the security protocol they’d agreed that if she prefaced the call to the switchboard with ‘It’s really important that I talk to’ instead of the usual ‘I’d like to talk to’ then it was a signal to Rita that she should prompt Frank to answer in character as there might be other people listening in.
Once again she’d scraped through. Just.
88
Bailey stood by herself in the canteen queue, impervious to the clatter and chatter going on around her, lost in thought about the murders. She knew the answer was lying there right in front of her, tantalisingly close, almost within her grasp. It resembled a particularly difficult cryptic crossword clue, except that in this case someone would die in five days’ time if she didn’t work it out.
She sighed in frustration and shuffled along with the rest of the queue. She momentarily ceased her introspection to tune into the conversations around her, hoping to detect some elusive fragment of information that would solve the mystery. From what she could overhear, the fear of being viciously mutilated and murdered was still foremost in the minds of many of the inmates. After all, quite a few of them had witnessed first-hand the aftermath of
Sharon’s slaying and if they hadn’t fully comprehended the gory reality of it before, then they certainly did now. An edgy pall of impending doom hung in the air – even if they weren’t consciously aware that one of them would die in five days’ time, it seemed like they could almost sense the inevitable butchery that was to come.
So saying, not everyone was talking about murder…
Directly in front of her stood two white inmates who were squinting up at the lunchtime menu that was written in messy black marker pen on the whiteboard propped next to the serving counter.
‘Lamb wokra?’ said one of them. ‘Never had wokra before. What do you think it is?’
‘Wokra?’ said the other one. ‘Sounds like some kind of stew.’
Bailey listened in with mild interest. She too had never heard of wokra before. She looked at the whiteboard. It took her a few moments to realise that the messy writing was actually referring to lamb with okra. The ‘with’ had been abbreviated by ‘w/’ but the ‘/’ was too faded to be visible so instead it just looked like ‘wokra’. She chuckled to herself.
‘Excuse me, but I think you’ll find it’s supposed to be lamb with okra,’ she said.
They both turned and looked at her quizzically.
‘Okra? What’s okra?’
‘It’s a plant,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of like a green pod with gooey seeds in it. It’s used a lot in African cooking.’
They both swapped glances and wrinkled their faces in distaste.
‘Gooey green pods. Yuck! Don’t like the sound of those,’ said the first one.
‘I think I’ll go for the sausage and mash,’ said the other one.
When it came to Bailey’s turn to be served, she also opted for the sausage and mash, not because she disliked okra but because she’d never been that keen on the flavour of lamb.
She sat down and started to eat, smiling to herself as she reflected on their misinterpretation.
Wokra.
She supposed that if you didn’t know what you were looking at then it was quite easy to mistake the abbreviation for—
It suddenly triggered a flash of insight within her.
Could it be…?
Thinking back, she visualised Sharon’s bloody scrawl in her mind’s eye. With mounting excitement, she took her fork and spread the mashed potato out on her plate, and with the tip of her knife she traced the letters in exactly the way that she recalled they had been written by Sharon’s dying hand.