The walls were steel plates like a ship’s bulkhead, studded with rivets, painted a faded cream above and mustard colour below. Their footsteps echoed. The sheriff unlocked a heavy door with one small high grating and slid it aside. They stepped through and he closed and locked it. He motioned her ahead of him and they came into a barnlike area, concrete on walls and ceiling. Built around it was a sort of balcony; under and over this were the cells, steel-walled, fronted by close-set bars. There were perhaps twenty cells. Only a half dozen were occupied. It was a cold, unhappy place.
‘Well, what did you expect?’ demanded the sheriff, reading her expression. ‘The Waldorf Plaza or something?’
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
They walked to a cell on the lower tier. ‘Snap out of it, Barrows. Lady to see you.’
‘Hip! Oh, Hip!’
The prisoner did not move. He lay half on, half off a padded steel bunk, one foot on the mattress, one on the floor. His left arm was in a dirty sling.
‘See? Nary a word out of him. Satisfied, Miss?’
‘Let me in,’ she breathed. ‘Let me talk to him.’
He shrugged and reluctantly unlocked the door. She stepped in, turned. ‘May I speak to him alone?’
‘Liable to get hurt,’ he warned.