Chloe finally managed to get hold of Alex at gone 6.30 that evening. She’d left the station an hour earlier and had not long been back at their shared house in Caerphilly, having got stuck in traffic on the A470. She made herself a cheese sandwich and ate it in the garden, on one of Alex’s rusting patio chairs. She wanted to take in some of the sunshine she’d so far managed to miss most of, and it was nice to be away for five minutes from the noise and activity that usually surrounded her.

Alex’s garden had a lot of potential, though it would be a labour of love to tackle the overgrown bushes and tangles of weeds that now dominated what might have once been flower beds. Chloe knew that her friend had limited gardening skills – and even less enthusiasm – so she assumed it must have once been Alex’s ex-husband who had dealt with maintenance beyond the walls of the house. Either that or her mother.

Alex had only ever spoken to Chloe in any sort of detail about her mother on one occasion, six months earlier, when they’d gone on a night out just before Christmas. By the time Alex had reached her third glass of wine, her truths were spilling across the table in free fall. The following day, her regret had been tangible. Chloe had learned that Alex’s mother had gone to live with her shortly before her dementia diagnosis, when her increasingly unpredictable behaviour meant it had no longer been safe for her to live alone. By then, Alex and Rob had already been separated, but Alex had given the impression that her mother’s move to the house had cemented the separation into permanence. There had been an entirely uncharacteristic but unmistakable bitterness in her voice.

Chloe hadn’t judged. She didn’t know enough to.

Finishing the sandwich, she tried Alex’s number again, expecting the mobile to still be switched off. Alex answered on the third ring.

‘Everything OK? I’ve been trying to get hold of you all afternoon.’

‘Yeah, fine.’

The tone of her voice told Chloe everything was far from fine. Where had she been all afternoon? Chloe had an inkling that something might have happened to her mother, but if Alex didn’t want to talk to her about it yet, then she wasn’t going to force the subject. Trying to do so previously hadn’t been met with the warmest of receptions.

‘You can talk to me if you need to,’ she offered.

‘Everything’s fine.’ Alex’s tone was curt, abrupt. Chloe took the hint and left the subject there. ‘You’re not still at the station?’

‘Got back to the house about twenty minutes ago. We’ve got a few updates.’

‘Can they wait until I see you? I’m on my way back now. What are your plans for this evening?’

‘Shower, TV, bed.’

‘You’re not seeing Scott?’

‘He’s probably had enough of me for one week.’

‘Leah Cross has apparently come round. The hospital say she’s disorientated – it’ll take a little while before they’re able to assess the extent of any brain injury. I’m going to go back there to see her. You’ve had a long day, so don’t worry if—’

‘Oh no.’ Chloe cut her short. ‘I’ll come with you. I’ll explain when you get here.’

‘OK. Pick you up in about fifteen minutes.’

Chloe stayed in the garden another five minutes, basking in what remained of her time outdoors. She sometimes felt like an incarcerated animal, particularly on days that kept her trapped within the confines of the station. She looked at her bare arms. Her pale skin could do with a bit of sunshine, she thought. Perhaps at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future, she and Scott might be able to book a holiday. She wouldn’t care where: anywhere warm.

She picked up her plate from the ground and went back into the house. Five minutes later, Alex was outside waiting for her.

‘These updates then,’ she prompted as Chloe fastened her seat belt.

‘First thing,’ Chloe told her. ‘Leah Cross has more than thirty thousand pounds in her bank account.’

Alex shoved the car into first gear and pulled away from the pavement. ‘Nice savings for a student.’

‘Exactly. We’ve taken her laptop – Dan’s been looking over it this afternoon. We should have more details on the bank account first thing tomorrow. The other thing is the vehicle check. I’ve only gone through about a third so far, but—’

‘Already?’

Chloe shrugged. ‘Time’s against us, right?’

‘Always. Sorry … I interrupted you.’

They were headed down Caerphilly Road now, past the GE Aviation buildings that lay sprawled in giant concrete blocks. The familiar stretch of A470 waited ahead, stretched out beneath a late-evening heat that held everything in a sticky grip.

‘One of the vehicles on that list belongs to a lecturer at the university. A lecturer from the English department.’

Alex shot her a look. ‘Could be a coincidence. We only have the first five numbers of the plate, remember.’

Chloe felt a wave of disappointment wash over her. Alex’s reaction wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d hoped the DI might see this development as something that would move the investigation on, and do so quickly, yet she seemed to be dismissing it outright.

‘It’s worth looking into, though?’

‘Yeah.’

Alex took a right at the roundabout, silence falling between them, the atmosphere in the car cooling despite the warmth of the evening. Her attitude might have offended Chloe, but she knew her well enough to realise that something else lay behind her behaviour; something she had yet to share, and obviously wouldn’t volunteer to do so without some persuasion. Alex reached for the radio and turned it on, obliterating the silence with a song that had been overplayed by every mainstream station during the past couple of weeks. There was nothing that could have stated more clearly that she didn’t want to talk.

They were near the hospital by the time Chloe decided to break the uncomfortable mood. ‘Any updates with you today?’

‘Leah Cross has provided the university with false information,’ Alex told her.

‘False information regarding what?’

‘Her home contact details, it seems. I went to the hospital earlier, but she was still unconscious. I tried the uni thinking I’d be able to contact her parents through them, but the phone number they gave me belonged to a woman who said she’d never heard of Leah.’

Chloe pushed her hair from her face and pulled it back into a stumpy ponytail. It had been too short for one until recently, but over the past few weeks it had grown long enough to tie back.

‘Why would Leah do that?’

‘No idea. Either she’s lying, or the woman I spoke to on the phone lied to me about knowing her.’

Chloe sighed. ‘Seems to keep a lot of secrets, doesn’t she?’ she said, throwing Alex a sideways glance.

Alex pulled off the main road and turned into the hospital’s entrance. If she had picked up on Chloe’s insinuation, she wasn’t about to acknowledge it. It was the final attempt Chloe was going to make to get her to talk about her mother, and once again it failed.

---

‘What do you make of the bank account then?’ Chloe asked Alex as they headed down the corridor towards Leah Cross’s hospital room. ‘Makes Tom’s accusations suddenly more plausible, doesn’t it?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. She might have been given the money – let’s not jump to conclusions. I’m trying to keep an open mind until we speak to her, but she’s certainly making that difficult.’

‘What … the speaking-to-her bit or the keeping-an-open-mind bit?’

‘Both.’

She needed to talk to someone from the university again, Alex thought. Unless it transpired that Leah’s parents had moved house in the eighteen months since their daughter had started uni, something wasn’t adding up. The university would have sent correspondence to Leah’s home address prior to her starting there. If the address they’d always had for her was the address they had given her that morning, then that was where her letters would have been sent.

She pushed open the door to Leah’s room. The bed was empty, the sheets gone. The leather sandals that had been beneath the window earlier that day when Alex had stopped by at the hospital were also gone.

‘Can I help you?’

A nurse Alex hadn’t seen before was standing in the doorway.

‘Detective Inspector King,’ Alex said, showing her ID. ‘We’re looking for Leah Cross.’

‘She’s gone,’ the woman said.

‘When?’

The nurse glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Last hour or so.’

‘But surely she was in no condition just to walk out of here?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said defensively. ‘My shift has only just started – you’d have to speak with someone who’d seen her.’

Alex glanced at Chloe apologetically. Any hope either of them might have had of an early night was gone.