The church in Monmouthshire was small, set back from sight of the main road behind a gathering of tall oak trees. There was little parking available, so Alex found she had to head back the way she had come and leave the car in a lay-by where many of the other funeral attendees had obviously had the same idea. Men and women dressed in black and grey milled about at the roadside, offering one another meaningless condolences as they tried to conceal their discomfort on what was already a sweltering morning. Alex’s thoughts couldn’t help but stray to her mother’s funeral. She would have to start making arrangements once the death certificate had been issued, but at the moment her brain seemed incapable of thinking that far ahead.

At least in her mother’s case it had been the natural order of things, she thought. Losing a parent was difficult; when her father had died, she had thought she’d never get over it. The pain had been like a physical wound to her chest, one that she’d never fully recovered from but had learned to live with. Losing a child was something she was unable to imagine. No parent should ever have to endure burying a child. Alex imagined no one could ever fully come to terms with such a loss. In Louisa and David North’s case, the true nature of their daughter’s death had still not been revealed, which must only have added further suffering to their already monumental grief. It was impossible to comprehend the day that lay ahead of them.

Alex locked the car and made her way to the church. She had wanted to attend to pay her respects. She also hoped her presence there might reassure the Norths that the search for the person responsible for their daughter’s death hadn’t gone forgotten. Louisa North seemed to hold little faith in the police. Alex didn’t blame her. Those first vital few hours of what should have been an investigation into the girl’s death had been marred by procrastination, deliberation and short-sightedness. Valuable time had been lost, and they continued now to pay the price for those mistakes. The woman was also still angry about the post-mortem carried out on her daughter: one that had given them a possible motive but hadn’t brought them any closer to finding out exactly what had happened.

Chloe’s theory that someone might have pushed Keira believing her to be Leah held a lot of weight. Had it been Melissa Matthews? Had she gone looking for Leah to confront the girl about the affair Melissa believed she was having with her husband, only to expel her anger and jealousy upon the wrong person? Had she returned for Leah having realised her mistake?

It might have gone some way to explaining the relatively minor injuries Leah had sustained during the hit-and-run. Perhaps the guilt that had followed Keira’s death meant Melissa Matthews had been unable to bring herself to kill for a second time, regardless of how deeply she might have felt she wanted to.

As Alex entered the church grounds and walked the path that led through the graveyard, she spotted Keira’s parents near the church door, talking with the vicar. Louisa North was crying, dabbing at her eyes in an attempt to keep her make-up in place. Alex wasn’t sure whether she found this strange or understandable. In the same situation, her appearance would be the last thing she would be concerned with. But perhaps the make-up was providing Louisa with a shield; something behind which she could hide until she got safely back behind the closed doors of her home.

David North turned and saw Alex approaching. They’d known she was coming: she had called to check they would be happy for her to do so, although happy was unlikely to be the right word to describe the reaction the news had no doubt prompted from Louisa. Whatever her husband had said to her following the telephone conversation, it was obvious he had had a tough time persuading her they should allow Alex to be there.

What Alex hadn’t mentioned was that as well as wishing to pay her respects, she wanted to keep an eye on the mourners. It wasn’t unheard of for a suspect to attend the funeral of a victim, in much the same way guilty people often found ways to involve themselves in the cases of missing people or murder investigations. If anything suspicious or untoward were to happen, Alex wanted to be there to witness it.

‘Thank you for letting me be here today,’ she said to David as he approached. She reached out a hand and he took it, shaking it briefly before letting go. His eyes were glazed, holding back an onset of tears.

‘Is there anything we should know? I’d rather find out now than later.’

Alex shook her head. ‘I promise you that when there is, you’ll be the first to hear.’

David nodded. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Alex put a hand on his arm. ‘You’ll find a way. If you need anything at all, I’ll be at the back of the room. I’ll leave after the service, but you’ve got my number.’

David nodded and looked away, not wanting her to see the tears that had spiked at the corners of his eyes.

Mourners were beginning to filter into the church, and Alex waited until the vicar and the Norths had entered before following them in. She took a seat at the back of the room, near the doors. She suspected that had Keira’s family not requested that guests be kept to a minimum of family and close friends, there might have been many more there. Keira had by all accounts been popular, not short of friends at school. Inevitably, funerals also attracted the usual rubberneckers and those who went to the burials or cremations of people they had barely known just to give them something to talk about. It had always seemed strange to Alex, who did everything she could to avoid having to attend them.

There was a large photograph of Keira propped on a stand at the front of the church. It looked as though it had been taken before a school prom; in the image, she was smiling boldly, her face so young and her excitement so visible and innocent that the sight of her was painful even to someone who hadn’t known her. The numerous papers that had reported on Keira’s death had all made note of her looks, as though the premature deaths of less attractive people were somehow less of a tragedy. Had she been plain or overweight, Alex reflected, the amount of page space devoted to her would probably have been less significant.

The room fell into silence as the vicar addressed his audience. ‘Every death is tragic, but the death of someone of Keira’s age, at the start of her young life and with so much ahead of her, is always all the more so. You all knew Keira, so you know the kind of young lady she was – caring, kind and ambitious. She was a bright student with a brilliant future ahead of her, but above all she was a loving daughter and a good friend to those she grew up with in the community.’

From the front of the room, Alex could hear the embittered sounds of Louisa North’s tears. The woman’s head was tilted forward, her chin resting on her chest as the vicar’s words washed over her. The Norths’ other daughter – a younger version of Keira – sat beside her, an arm around her mother’s shoulders. There were more tears being shed elsewhere, in the rows of pews on the other side of the room. Alex looked over. An older woman was sitting with a handkerchief clutched to her mouth, her shoulders shifting heavily with the weight of her grief. Beside her, a teenage girl held her hand, clutching it tightly in the woman’s lap.

Alex scanned the rest of the room as the vicar continued his speech. There were about thirty people present, none of whom she was familiar with.

‘And now we’re going to hear a poem read by one of Keira’s close school friends.’ The vicar looked to the second row and nodded to one of the young women sitting there. ‘Bethan.’ He offered her an encouraging smile. The woman stood. She had a shock of red hair pulled back into a ponytail, and when she turned to face the rows of people looking at her expectantly, Alex realised she had seen this girl before. She was one of the friends featured several times in the photo montage Keira had kept hanging above her bed.

The girl tried the first line, but her voice failed her, breaking as she spoke. She stopped and cleared her throat, refusing to make eye contact with anyone in an attempt to regain her composure.

‘I cannot say and I will not say that she is dead,’ she read. ‘She is just away. With a cheery smile and a wave of the hand, she has wandered into an unknown land—’

A sound at the back of the church interrupted the young woman’s reading. Alex turned. Jamie Bateman was in the doorway, his eyes fixed to the photograph of Keira at the front. Louisa North had turned at the noise of the door and was gripping her husband’s hand, urging him to do something. Her daughter’s arm had slipped from her shoulders.