Images of Keira North and Leah Cross were pinned side by side on the evidence board in the station’s main incident room. They were surrounded by a gallery of faces: Tom Stoddard, Jamie Bateman, and a whole host of people who had attended the house party on Sunday night. The team had been called to meet first thing that morning for an update on both the Keira North case and that of Amy Barker, who was still in a critical condition in hospital.

Alex and Chloe had arrived early at the station. They sat alone in the room, both women focusing on the faces that stared out at them from the evidence board.

‘You look exhausted.’

‘Thanks.’ Alex pulled her dark hair back and tied it into a stumpy ponytail.

‘Do you think you might need a break? Take some time to spend with your mum?’

‘In the middle of a murder investigation? I wouldn’t have thought so.’

Chloe bit her lip, feeling her face flush. Alex rarely spoke to her like this – she rarely spoke to anyone like this – and her doing so was evidence that something was very wrong.

Alex sat with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes fixed on the faces on the wall, refusing to look at Chloe, though she presumably must have felt the other woman’s gaze on her. Dark shadows circled her eyes and the whites were bloodshot. It looked as though she had at some point been crying.

Though Alex had been informed of the incident involving Leah Cross during the early hours of that morning, Chloe felt certain Alex’s sleep had been disturbed before that. ‘One housemate dead,’ Alex said now, ‘one dealing drugs, one a hit-and-run victim. I imagine Harry will be trying to tell me this was an accident as well.’

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Over the next ten minutes, the team trailed into the incident room. Finally, the superintendent appeared in the doorway, and Alex began the briefing, addressing the team members sitting nearest her.

‘Some of you will already be aware that Leah Cross was taken to hospital in the early hours of this morning. She was hit by a car just outside the house in which she lives in Treforest – the same property, as we know, at which Keira North died on Sunday. She’s in a stable but serious condition, still unconscious. I’ll be heading to the hospital after this. We need to find out what’s been going on in that house. Yesterday Tom Stoddard was arrested for supplying the drugs that landed Amy Barker in hospital. He was released without charge, though Jade Richards, Amy’s friend, has given a positive ID.’

As expected, there was an outbreak of whispered reaction to this news. A lot of the team had finished for the day by the time Tom Stoddard’s interview had been held, so many of them didn’t know he’d been released without charge. He was now a link between the two cases, although Alex couldn’t yet see exactly where the connections could be made.

‘Why wasn’t he charged?’ DC Jake Sullivan asked.

‘At the moment, it’s Jade’s word against Tom’s. She says she saw him at the club, but she admits she didn’t actually see him selling Amy the drugs. Tom alleges that Leah is involved in dealing. Obviously this is something we’ll want to talk to her about when she recovers.’

‘If she recovers.’

Alex pursed her lips. ‘Thank you, Jake.’

‘Could he just be trying to save his own neck?’ Dan suggested.

‘Could be. We’ve got him unsettled now, so there’s a chance we might be able to get more out of him. As you’re all aware, Cardiff drugs squad is working on a full-scale ongoing investigation into the recent increase in drugs-related incidents in the city. We know they’re currently focusing on two properties in the Canton area as having possible links. The official name for the drugs we know as “party smarties” is MDP. They’ve not been widely available in South Wales until the past few months. We’re still waiting to hear back on whether the drug Amy Barker took was in fact one of these. Her reaction to it certainly seems to suggest so. There may not be a link to what’s been happening in Cardiff, but if there is, we could be on to something huge. There are some brains behind this – it’s a well-organised and thorough distribution set-up. Clearly I’m not referring to Tom bloody Stoddard, but he might have got himself mixed up with more than he bargained for.’

‘He might be too scared to give names,’ Chloe said.

‘Maybe. But there’s also a chance he’s got no idea what he’s involved in.’

‘So where do the girls come into it all?’ Dan asked.

‘This is what we need to find out. Did the person who pushed Keira North from that roof have any connection with what happened last night to Leah? Is Leah involved in the drug dealing, and if so, was the person driving that car last night linked to Cardiff’s inquiry? Cardiff’s sent over a list of people currently under investigation. We’re not expecting to find any of these faces directly linked to Amy Barker, but we might be able to find one of their dealers. Was Keira involved in the drug dealing? I know,’ Alex added, responding to Dan’s facial reaction to the suggestion. ‘Seems unlikely, but at the moment we shouldn’t be ruling anything out. We have a lot of unanswered questions. As always, time is against us.

‘Dan, I’d like you and Chloe to go back to the house in Treforest with a search warrant. The rest of you I’d like here for now. We have a witness statement from the hit-and-run last night, but it needs corroborating – by all accounts, the man who saw the car driving away was so drunk it’s a wonder he could see anything. There’s CCTV footage from the off-licence on Railway Terrace, just up from the house – it might have picked something up, so it needs checking. OK. Any updates, I want to be informed straight away, please.’

Alex gave a nod, bringing the meeting to a close. She could feel the superintendent’s eyes upon her; she had felt them for the past five minutes, scrutinising her. She was getting tired of having to justify each and every decision she made. If he was about to launch another attack on her judgement, she felt ready for retaliation.