Kim glanced at her watch as Stacey bustled through the office, removing her satchel as she moved.

‘Sorry I’m late, boss,’ she said. ‘Missed my bus.’

Kim crossed her arms. ‘What time did you get off last night, Stace?’ she asked.

‘Around eight… ish,’ she answered vaguely.

‘CCTV says nine thirty,’ Kim corrected, giving her a hard stare. ‘A full hour and a half after I told you to leave.’

‘I know, boss, I just…’

‘You know, guys,’ Kim said, opening up her words to them all. ‘I’ve done all your appraisals this week, and I could stand here and talk to you about my duty of care surrounding physical and mental health. I could explain the rate at which your effectiveness drops as the day wears on. I could even bore you to death with figures of police burnout and breakdowns if I wanted to, but how about when I tell you to go home you just do it?’

She heard three mumbled responses in the affirmative.

She was the first to admit that staff welfare was not one of her strong points. Yeah, running into a burning building after any one of them was a no-brainer but making sure they got enough R&R between shifts was another story.

‘Okay, we know that Sadie Winters was being fed antidepressants by her parents. We’re not sure exactly what dosage she was taking but they were definitely in her system. We established that there may have been a girl at Heathcrest who had an illegal abortion possibly carried out by Doctor Cordell. We know the name Lorraine Peters means something to—’

‘Boss, about Lorraine—’

‘Hang on, Stacey,’ Kim said, as Dawson stood and began noting the bullet points on the board.

‘We also know that Monty Johnson was instructed to kill Joanna Wade by members of his old club in return for re-entry back into the group. We have the whole message stream on text but can’t find out from whom.’ She paused to demonstrate her frustration at that fact. Having the whole conversation but no name was driving her mad.

‘And now Monty Johnson is dead, so we can’t get any more information from him. Rupert knows nothing and thought Monty’s messaging was due to an affair. So, we still have a lot of names, a lot of secrecy, private elite clubs, privilege, wealth, illegal abortions. And yet there’s only one question that matters as much today as it did on Monday.’

‘Why is Sadie Winters dead?’ Dawson said.

‘Exactly,’ Kim agreed, looking at the board.

Shaun Coffee-Todd had been murdered by having nuts forced into his mouth. Joanna Wade had been killed by someone under instruction, and Christian Fellows had almost joined them. But it had all started with Sadie Winters. Her death was the key to the whole thing.

‘There’s not one thing there we can tie her to,’ Kim said. ‘She wasn’t in the groups, she wasn’t pregnant and seemed to have no enemies at all.’

‘Shaun was in the Spade group, but Christian Fellows wasn’t. It makes no sense,’ Bryant said.

Dawson turned. ‘It has to be linked to this illegal abortion,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing that adds up. Perhaps all of this is just smoke,’ he said, pointing to the boards. ‘Maybe these kids just heard the wrong thing at the wrong time.’

Kim shook her head. ‘I get that for Joanna. Someone definitely wanted to shut her up but not the others. It’s not proportionate,’ she said.

‘Huh?’ Bryant asked.

‘Murder begets murder,’ she explained. ‘If someone steals your bike you don’t stab them multiple times. It’s too much,’ she explained. ‘The death of two children, and a third attempt, in addition to Joanna’s death to cover a seedy secret, is just not proportional. There’s far more to lose from the subsequent acts than the original crime.’

‘But we’re dealing with people who value image above all else,’ Dawson argued. ‘These folks will do almost anything to protect their precious reputations.’

‘I agree, Kev, but you don’t use a hammer to crack open an egg. Don’t get me wrong. I also think our good Doctor Cordell is involved in this somewhere. For some reason that abortion is intrinsic to this case. If it was someone named Lorraine—’

‘It wasn’t,’ Stacey said, quietly but definitely.

‘Wasn’t what?’ Kim asked.

Every gaze was on Stacey.

‘Go on,’ Kim instructed.

‘Lorraine Peters enrolled at Heathcrest in 1990, when she was twelve years old. She was one of the two annual scholarships because of her swimming abilities. Olympic material, apparently.’

Kim sat back and listened. Maybe she should have let Stacey speak sooner.

‘All was well for three years. She studied hard and began improving her swim times. She’d been entered for the junior world championships, except she started turning up late for practice. Started back-answering the sports coach. Talented girl by all accounts but the training is brutal. Six mornings a week and five evenings.

‘Two days after her fifteenth birthday she dived into the swimming pool from the ten feet high diving board.’

‘And?’ Kim asked, confused. She’d probably done that a million times.

‘The pool was empty.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Bryant said, as Dawson visibly winced and rubbed his neck.

‘It had been emptied earlier that day due to a high legionella reading. Lorraine didn’t know that because she’d skipped training that morning.’

‘She was in the pool in the dark?’ Kim asked.

Stacey nodded. ‘Her death was marked accidental.’

A moment of silence fell before Kim turned to Stacey. ‘And this is what you were doing last night?’

Stacey nodded, and Kim recalled her earlier words.

‘Stace, remember when I said about losing effectiveness in your job as the hours go on?’

‘Yeah, boss.’

‘Doesn’t apply to you,’ Kim said. ‘These two maybe, but definitely not you.’

‘Thanks, boss, but there’s one more thing you really need to know.’

‘Go on.’

‘Lorraine Peters was pregnant.’