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week.
    With all his privileges revoked, he was moved out ofhis cell and placed in the solitary wing. A single cell, smaller, more basic than the usual, locked in for twenty-three hours a day. No exercise, no education. Just enough time to get showered, grab food, then back to the four walls.
    Day one wasn’t so bad. He managed a little exercise – star jumps, stomach crunches, press-ups. He read some of a book he’d been allowed to take with him. He had chosen it because he’d seen the film and it was pretty decent.
    Day two came, and Sean started to notice something weird about his time. There seemed to be more of it. And no matter what he did with it, he couldn’t get rid of it. Sleep didn’t come easily. He was restless. Exercise seemed pointless. The book was dull.
    Day three, he started to think about what lay outside the cell: the people, the noise, the endless space. A car might strike you down as you crossed the road. Some git a thousand miles away in some country you would never visit might decide it was your turn to die today, and a bomb would take your life without you ever knowing. Out there struck him as a dangerous place to be. Perhaps staying in the small cell made sense. Most of that day he spent perched on the bed hugging his knees.
    Day four was the complete opposite. He paced about the little room, convinced it was getting smaller. Didthe walls creep a little closer every time he took his eye off them?
    He stood on the bed to peer out of the high, narrow window. Shit, there were trees out there. Trees! It was late autumn and the leafless branches made him think of bare bones clawing at the sky. Even so. He quite fancied climbing a tree. That would be fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it, if he ever had. Funny, he thought, how here inside a prison he could see more trees every day than he’d ever seen in his whole life, and yet he still couldn’t get to them.
    Day five, he had a visitor, and his life changed for ever.

Chapter 5
    ‘Uh – hi?’
    Sean stopped just inside the door to his tiny cell. The screw who had escorted him from the showers gave him a shove in the back and closed the door, but didn’t lock it.
    A man stood in the middle of the floor with his arms behind his back, feet slightly apart, back straight, like he owned the place. Like he was the one receiving the visitor. Sean guessed he was in his late thirties. His face was worn and lined, his light brown hair cropped short. A furrowed brow sat above pale grey eyes that were frighteningly alert. He wore green slacks and a white T-shirt over a wiry, athletic frame. The shirt had some kind of crest on the left breast.
    He smiled when he saw Sean, but . . . that smile. It wasn’t a friendly, pleased-to-meetcha smile. It wasn’t the sneer of a Tag or the mad grin of a Copper. It was . . . it was the way Sean might smile at a new Ferrari which hejust knew he was going to wire later that night. Quiet, keeping it to himself, but supremely confident that he would get what he wanted.
    ‘Sean Harker. Hi. Phil Adams.’
    It was a London accent. Adams held his right hand out to shake and Sean clocked the tattoos straight away. The man saw where Sean was looking and held out the other hand. Both powerful forearms were heavily inked.
    ‘Matching pair,’ he said with another, friendlier smile.
    Sean didn’t return the smile. Adams lowered his hands.
    ‘Mate,’ Sean said. His voice sounded weird in his ears – the first words he had said out loud to another human for five days. ‘If you get locked in with me for another twenty-three hours, then I’m keeping the bed.’
    ‘They’ll let me out. Do you want to sit down?’
    Sean wasn’t sure he did. They were about the same height, so he wasn’t about to be intimidated, but it was clear from Adams’s body language that neither was he. The man perched himself on the edge of Sean’s table. Sean sat on the bed, a safe distance away, so that he could sit without craning