Later that evening, Bailey was lying on her bunk doing a cryptic crossword, killing time before lights went out, absently curling her loose lock of hair around her fingers and letting it uncurl as she tried to work out the answers.
Sharon was sitting on the chair, one foot up on the desk, cutting her toenails, the sound of the clippers loud inside the small cell. The toenail clippings were pinging randomly over the desk and the floor of the cell and Sharon didn’t appear to be making any effort to clear them up.
‘Did you see that fight in the canteen today?’ said Sharon. Clip, clip.
‘It was hard to miss.’
‘It blew up really suddenly, didn’t it?’ Clip.
‘They usually do.’
As a policewoman, Bailey had witnessed a fair number of fights. They mostly followed the same pattern – a sudden explosive outburst of violence that was usually over in a matter of seconds. Today’s altercation had been no different.
‘Did you see, poor old Amber got her glasses knocked off,’ said Sharon. Clip, clip. A toenail clipping ricocheted onto the floor by the bunks.
Bailey had felt bad for Amber, as a rookie, having to deal with a situation like that all by herself. As soon as it had kicked off, her policewoman’s instincts had jumped to the fore and she’d had to stop herself from rushing in to give Amber a hand, knowing that she could easily have ended the situation. But she’d been sitting with the ABC at their corner table and it would have looked exceedingly suspicious if she, a mere accountant, had leapt in and applied expert control and restraint procedures, not to mention helping a prison officer, who they more or less regarded as the enemy.
So she’d had to just sit there and watch, wincing inwardly when Amber got hit, feeling secretly relieved when Terry had finally arrived.
‘That fight was very revealing,’ Sharon continued. She picked a toenail clipping out of her hair and flicked it onto the floor. ‘I was sitting at the table right next to them.’
‘I didn’t exactly get what it was about. I think one of them was accusing the other one of stealing her boyfriend or something.’ It seemed pretty standard, run-of-the mill stuff to Bailey.
‘I’m surprised no one’s noticed it.’
‘Noticed what?’
‘Knowledge is power.’ Sharon tapped her nose.
Bailey realised that Sharon was deliberately obfuscating, being all coy about whatever secret she seemed to know. She appeared to enjoy playing these little games and Bailey guessed it was her way of gaining validation.
Bailey sighed and played along. ‘So what are you going to do with this “knowledge”?’
Sharon smiled and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money.
Blackmail of some sort.
As Bailey recalled, that was the reason that Sharon had ended up in here in the first place. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, she thought.
She watched her cellmate cutting her toenails and reminded herself just how dangerous Sharon was. Bailey was terrified that she would reveal something in her sleep that Sharon could exploit to her advantage, like the fact that she was an undercover cop. Although everything seemed okay for the moment, she knew she would have to continue to tread very, very carefully around her.