Alex glanced through the open doorway at the couple waiting for her in the family room. It was one of the supposedly nicer rooms at the station; carpeted, as though soft flooring might in some way lessen the hard truths delivered within those four walls.

‘I can do this with you if you want me to,’ Chloe offered.

Alex shook her head, her focus still fixed on Keira North’s parents. Of course she didn’t have to deliver the news that Keira was dead; the family’s local constabulary had been informed of the tragedy, and it had been left to a couple of their officers to relay the news to the young woman’s parents.

‘This is the worst part of the job,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘Well … one of them.’

The physical reactions of loved ones in the immediate aftermath of such news, the expressions on their faces, was something Alex found difficult to forget. The sounds that accompanied them were often even more harrowing and persistent; those guttural reactions, those low moans that emanated from the depths of a person would stay with her for long afterwards, their echoes haunting her.

‘Someone’s going to have to accompany them to the hospital. I’d rather you stayed here. Leah Cross is due in soon. Find out everything you can.’

‘You really don’t believe this was an accident, do you?’

‘No,’ Alex said, reaching for the door handle. ‘I really don’t.’

Chloe put a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll be upstairs if you need me.’

Knowing she could no longer delay the inevitable, Alex stepped into the family room and closed the door behind her, leaving Chloe to head back upstairs. David North stood from his chair, his wife’s hand still clutched tightly in his.

‘Mr North,’ Alex said, shaking his free hand. ‘Mrs North. I’m Detective Inspector King.’

She didn’t get any further: Louisa North’s sob filled the room in a burst of noise and emotion. David North sat back quickly, putting a comforting arm around his wife’s shoulder.

‘I told you,’ Louisa said to him, concealing her face behind a hand as though ashamed to have anyone else see her tears. ‘I said this would happen.’

Alex took a free chair to the side of David and gave him a look that was intended to be supportive. Whether or not it would have the desired effect was impossible to tell. How on earth could she offer any useful support to a couple who had just lost one of their children?

‘Said what would happen?’ she asked gently.

Louisa North – a petite woman who looked younger than her forty-seven years – wiped her fingertips beneath each eye in turn before lowering her hand and looking at Alex for the first time. ‘We were told there’d been an accident. That Keira had fallen. So why are we here, speaking with you? Detective inspectors work on crimes, don’t they? Not accidents.’

Her previous single sob now escalated into a full-blown bout of tears, and Alex reached for the box of tissues that sat on one of the shelves, offering it to David. She watched as he pulled one from the box and pressed it into Louisa’s hand.

‘What are we going to tell Natasha?’ the woman sobbed.

Natasha was the couple’s younger daughter, eighteen and in her final year of sixth form. The sisters were apparently close; so close that Natasha had been considering studying in Cardiff that September so that she could be near to Keira.

‘We don’t yet know the exact circumstances surrounding your daughter’s death,’ Alex told them, ‘but we do know that an argument took place in her bedroom shortly before the fall. Until we’ve established what happened, we don’t want to come to any conclusions. You’ve been assigned a family liaison officer. She’s here in the station – I’ll introduce you. Any questions you may have, or concerns, please speak with her. She’s here to help you in any way she can.’

‘Keira was murdered, then – that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’

David North’s hand tightened around his wife’s. ‘That’s not what’s being said, love.’ His own voice was shaking now, weighted down with the force of a grief that was likely not yet fully realised. How long would it take for the impact of what had happened to this family to take its full effect? A month? A year? Alex suspected that in many cases no amount of time was enough to absorb the shock of such a loss. People just found – somehow – a way to adapt; their bodies continued to function, yet their minds would never exist in the same way again. Life went on, but lives stopped.

‘I appreciate that this must be incredibly difficult for you, but we will need one of you to make a formal identification.’ She paused, knowing that what was to come next would only add further suffering to an already harrowing situation. ‘Due to the circumstances surrounding your daughter’s death, it has been necessary for a post-mortem to be carried out.’

David North looked at her with confusion, his eyes narrowing in an expression of unreserved accusation. His wife lowered her hands from her face. Her eyes were red and bloodshot and her mouth was set in a scowl, ready for attack.

‘No one told us,’ David said. His voice was calm, for now, almost disbelieving. The repercussions of Alex’s words hadn’t quite sunk in, that much was obvious.

‘Post-mortems need to be carried out quickly, within the first couple of days after death.’ Particularly where a crime is suspected, Alex thought.

‘We didn’t give permission,’ Louisa said. ‘No one asked us. We didn’t give permission.’

Alex leaned forward in her chair. ‘The decision is never taken lightly, Mrs North. We have reason to consider misadventure, and carrying out the post-mortem was the first step in giving us the best possible chance of finding out what happened to Keira, and why.’

‘You cut her up,’ Louisa said slowly, looking at Alex yet through her. ‘You cut up my little girl.’

At her side, Alex could see Keira’s father visibly react to his wife’s choice of words. His shoulders stiffened as though he was fighting to keep himself upright and his face contorted in a pained grimace, holding back his own tears.

‘I know this is incredibly difficult, but we will need a formal identification of the body.’

Louisa North clung to her husband’s hand, her face buried in his chest and her wails muffled by his clothing.

‘Was she drunk when she fell?’ David asked.

She looked up sharply at him, a look of horror on her face. ‘Why would you ask that?’ She snatched her hand away from his, holding it in a fist in her lap. ‘Whose side are you on?’

David sighed. The sound was tired – exhausted – and it seemed to fill the room, sending a further surge of anger through his wife. Alex didn’t want to play audience to the scene about to unfold, but it was sadly part of her job.

‘This isn’t about sides,’ David said, fighting to keep his emotions in check.

Louisa stood suddenly and turned to the wall, her arms folded across her stomach. From behind her, Alex could see the woman’s shoulders shaking. David North was looking up at his wife pleadingly, but she refused to meet his eyes.

Alex stood. ‘Keira wasn’t drunk,’ she told them.

‘You see,’ Louisa snapped, turning back to her husband. ‘She was a good girl, a sensible girl. She wasn’t some idiot who got so drunk she couldn’t stand – she was never like that. Why would you even start to think that?’ She turned her focus to Alex. ‘So what now?’ she asked, anger spilling from her every word. ‘You cut her open just so you could tell us what we already knew. My daughter is dead and all you can do is sit here talking about whether or not she was drunk. If you think there was more to it, why aren’t you doing something about it? Why aren’t you looking for whoever did this to my daughter?’

David North reached out and put his hand on the sleeve of his wife’s jacket, but it was quickly knocked away.

‘Mrs North, I know this is an awful time for you and I appreciate that all this has come as a shock, but—’

The laugh that cut Alex’s words short was harsh and brittle, and in that moment Louisa North looked nothing like the woman who had walked into the station an hour earlier. All pretence at composure had been lost; now she was merely an embodiment of her emotions, raw and visceral, every nerve and scar visible.

‘You know, do you?’ she said accusingly. ‘You know what it’s like to lose a child and then have some stupid woman who’s doing nothing tell you she appreciates what you’re going through?’

The words might have hurt her, but the look Louisa North gave her was far more painful. Alex wanted to take the woman’s suffering, hold it in her hands, discard it for her, leave it somewhere it could be safely forgotten; somewhere from where it would never be able to make a return. She wanted to bring Keira back, undo everything that had happened to this family. Instead she stood there, as Louisa had said, doing nothing.

She thought the woman was going to hit her. Louisa’s hand was still balled into a fist, tensed and ready at her side, her face set in a look of such anger it seemed to have cast itself as permanent. Judging by David North’s reaction, he had also had the same thought. He put a hand out to his wife again, taking her by the arm. His fingers wrapped around her wrist and he pulled her gently back to the chair beside him.

‘Come on, love,’ he coaxed. ‘Come on.’

At once all the anger seemed to leave her; in its place, an overwhelming grief. Louisa North sank into the chair, her body collapsing as though her bones had been reduced to foam. She pressed her head against her husband’s shoulder. When she wailed – a guttural, piercing, animal noise – the sound was stifled by his sleeve. He put both arms around her, rocking her like a child.

Alex’s eyes met his, and in that moment she felt they at least understood one another, even if she could never know what they were going through.

She reached for the door handle and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

She would give them some time alone before she told them their daughter had been pregnant.