Chapter3

If April thought the prison bed had been uncomfortable, it had nothing on the cheap mattress she was currently laid on. But at least she was out of prison now, and the reward had been a substantial monetary package courtesy of the police and the insurance company for being locked up for twelve weeks.

Money had been the first thing she’d negotiated before agreeing to anything. Both services had coughed and spluttered at the amount she suggested, gone away and came back to negotiate, but she stood her ground. Their plan couldn’t have moved forward without her, and she knew it.

Her eyes flicked around the sparsely furnished room. It was adequate for the task ahead. Exactly the sort of place an ex-con would live. The walls were a manky taupe colour, but she suspected they were originally much lighter, maybe a sort of warm biscuity-beige opposed to a dingy dirty one. The whole room was in desperate need of a lick of paint.

The thought of a shower in the grimy room that passed as a bathroom made her shudder, and her thoughts drifted back to her beautiful white bathroom in her own home with her Elemis Frangipani shower scrub and body cream invitingly waiting on the shelf. If she tried really hard, she could close her eyes and imagine the smell. It had been so long since she’d had decent cosmetics. Even the moisturiser she now used was a regular store brand and not the Clarins she usually favoured.

How long before she would get back to it?

She reached for her watch from the coffee-stained bedside table. When she’d arrived yesterday, a letter had been waiting for her on the Formica table in the tiny kitchen. It said very little.

Monday 20th March 11am, @ 7, East Hill, Bethnal Green, E2 9JE.

Appointment with your parole officer, Tom Campbell. Give your name at the desk when you arrive.

The shower had been surprisingly warm, and there was heating in the flat which she was grateful for. She selected a pair of jeans and a jumper from the drawer she’d emptied her few items of clothes into the previous evening. There was a full length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, but to look at herself, she had to negotiate a crack running down its centre.

Her cropped hair made her appear younger somehow and reminded her of being a teenager. A time when she’d been a scrawny sixteen-year-old and she and her sister, Chloe were living with foster carers. The Crawford’s had been lovely people, and she knew with absolute certainty their chaotic lives would have been enhanced greatly had they been placed with them when they were younger. The years of being in the care of the local authority, and some dodgy foster carers, had been a significant struggle for both of them.

Her once-tight blue jeans hung off her hips. It wasn’t just the diet of prison food that was responsible, she’d always been slim, but looking at herself properly, she realised she needed to beef out a bit. And she would, soon, if everything went according to plan. Hopefully then she’d be dining out on the finest food, but for now, plain and simple was good. A reformed prisoner was the part she needed to play, and she would play it well.

She had to.

There’d be no second chances.

She opened the dirty-white front door of the flat, and fished in her bag for a reel of black cotton. She snapped a short length off and moistened it with saliva before bending down and placing it in a straight line on the dirty carpet that looked speckled, but in reality was filthy ground-in muck. She took a photo on her phone, and gently closed to the door behind her.

Not the most sophisticated trap in the world, but it would be evident if the cotton had moved that someone had been in the flat.

She trusted nobody.