Alex stood in Superintendent Harry Blake’s office trying to maintain her composure. It was difficult when she knew he doubted everything she believed about Keira North’s death. He had already made it clear he thought it was simply an accident.

‘You’ve heard what happened last night, I take it?’ he said. ‘A sixteen-year-old girl’s in a coma after taking something at a nightclub.’

‘I know, sir. Chloe and Dan are heading over to the hospital soon to speak with the girl’s mother.’

‘Her condition is critical,’ Blake said. ‘This needs our focus. By all accounts, the girl took one of those so-called party smarties that have been doing the rounds. The drugs squad in Cardiff has been working on this stuff for months. Whatever scum sold her that poison, I want him caught.’

The drug was a combination of Ecstasy mixed with a high volume of caffeine, intended to give users enough energy to see them through a night and into the next morning. They’d been given their nickname due to their bright pink colour, as well as the fact that they were apparently being distributed mostly among teenagers. What hadn’t been so clear, yet was becoming increasingly evident, was their possible side effects.

‘Yes, sir,’ Alex muttered, speaking more to herself than to Blake. ‘And I realise it needs our focus – of course it does. But just as this girl isn’t less important than Keira North, Keira isn’t less important than her either.’

The superintendent sighed and sat back in his chair. Not for the first time, Alex found herself thinking he shouldn’t be there. He should have been gone months ago; he was supposed to be in remission, but his coming back to work had only proven a hindrance to his recovery. He looked pale and exhausted and she wished he would start looking after himself. She respected the fact that he hadn’t wanted to leave before a suitable replacement had been found, yet at the same time she couldn’t condone the way in which he seemed to want things neatly wrapped up for an easy ending to his career.

If only life was that simple, she thought.

‘I don’t need to remind you that what happened to that girl is a serious crime,’ Blake said, and for a moment Alex was unsure which girl he was referring to. ‘These bastards are obviously targeting teens, and it’s our responsibility to make sure no one else’s daughter or son ends up in intensive care. She’s the third teenager in less than four months to be hospitalised. Now I appreciate that what happened to Keira North is tragic, but there is nothing concrete to suggest it was anything more than an accident.’

Alex held his gaze, trying to stop her top lip from curling. She could feel her frustrations coming to a bubble, ready to hit boiling point. ‘Only because the attending officers made a complete balls-up of things.’

The superintendent raised his eyebrows, waiting for further explanation. Alex was more than happy to provide it for him.

‘They took over an hour to clear the house of people, during which time every possible piece of evidence had plenty of time in which to become contaminated. They took contact details for an estimated fifty per cent of the people there, leaving us with now-unknown witnesses who might have been able to shed some light on what happened up in that bedroom. So yes, sir, we have nothing concrete at the moment, but I think it’s fair to say it’s evident why not.’

She paused for breath. She had already reprimanded the attending officers, though it had been far less polite than this.

‘There was an argument in that bedroom not long before Keira died. There was evidence of violence, and, according to the pathologist, it was unlikely she would have landed where she did, in the position she did, if it had been a simple fall. I’d like to go public with this now. We need to speak with as many of the people who left that party without providing a statement as possible. Perhaps news of Keira’s pregnancy might prompt a few more to come forward.’ She paused again, briefly mulling over her next words. ‘I respect you, sir, you know that, but are you sure you’re not letting your own situation colour your judgement of this case?’

Blake’s face tightened. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning it would be the easy option to consider this an accident. Quiet last few weeks.’

A couple of years ago, Alex would never have thought to speak this bluntly to her superior. Things were different now. There was so much behind them and so little time left. He was taking early retirement following a cancer diagnosis, a course of chemotherapy and a reconsideration of his life’s priorities. The job didn’t come first any more, and Alex appreciated that. He had two children still young enough for him to play more of a role in their lives than his career had previously allowed for. She got it, all of it.

Yet he also had to understand that she didn’t have those things. Seeking the truth was her priority.

‘That’s what you think of me?’ he said, his words steeped in a genuine sadness that made her feel instantly guilty for her choice of phrasing. ‘After all this time, you think I’m just opting for the easy route?’

Alex sighed. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, knowing her words had made it sound as though that was exactly what she thought.

‘I think you’re becoming too involved in this one, Alex. Your attitude towards this case changed completely once you knew that young woman had been pregnant.’

Alex held his gaze, her jaw tensed in defiance. ‘Keira,’ she said, although she knew the superintendent was well aware of this. ‘Her name’s Keira.’

‘You asked for a chance to prove this was more than an accident. So far, we’ve got nothing more than supposition and hearsay. I need something concrete to justify keeping this open as a case.’

Alex rolled her eyes. ‘Money. Of course. We’d better consider the budget, hadn’t we? More important than anyone’s life, obviously.’

‘I’ve asked you for evidence,’ Blake said, ignoring her reaction. ‘Find it.’

---

Keira North’s face stared down at Alex from the evidence board in the incident room at the station. She had been a small girl, slim in build and with a face that looked like so many other young female faces these days, Alex thought: pencilled-in eyebrows, kohl eyeliner; pouting, gloss-stained smile. Young women were so heavily made-up these days that it was becoming impossible to tell what any individual actually looked like. It seemed strange to Alex – and curiously sad – that everyone should want to look the same.

Or maybe she was just getting old.

The team had assembled for a meeting regarding the investigation. The argument heard not long before Keira fell from the window and the smashed bottle that lay strewn in shards on the young woman’s bedroom carpet implied that her death had been more than a tragic accident. Interviews with her housemates had subsequently aroused further suspicion, particularly in the case of Tom Stoddard. A theory of suicide had been bandied about by a couple of officers, but the post-mortem report that rested on the table beneath Alex’s hand was about to put an end to further talk of that.

‘OK,’ she said, addressing the team. ‘Let’s get started. A few of you haven’t had much involvement with this case until today, so I’ll get you up to speed.’ She raised a hand and pointed to the image on the evidence board. ‘Keira North. Turned twenty last month. Studied history at the University of South Wales, second year. Her family is from Monmouthshire – they’ve already arrived in Pontypridd and are understandably distraught at their daughter’s death.’

She paused to clear her throat. She was conscious of the envelope that still lay beneath her hand; of the pregnancy that had now been shared with the dead girl’s parents. Louisa North’s reaction to the news was something she was not going to be able to forget in a hurry.

‘According to people who knew her, Keira was bright, friendly and happy. Her coursework grades were all good and she was predicted to do well in her end-of-year exams. She was supposed to be heading home to Monmouthshire this coming weekend, where she had a job lined up for the summer months.’

‘Which would seem to rule out a possible suicide,’ said DC Daniel Mason. He was sitting at the front of the group, just along from Chloe. The station’s resident IT expert, he had proved his worth on a number of recent cases.

Alex raised her hand in agreement. ‘Makes it seem increasingly unlikely. And as I said, Keira was reportedly a happy young woman. She’d made plans. None of these things suggest a person intending to take her own life. It’s nonsensical.’

Her tone had changed, and with it her expression. It was obvious that her words were aimed at a couple of individuals among the group, and those people knew who they were. Those who had been suggesting suicide as a possibility despite the evidence stacking up against its likelihood were exactly the same people who broke out into a rash at the first glimpse of paperwork. They didn’t want the hassle, and if hassle-free meant truth-free, then so be it.

Alex glanced at Chloe. Her eyes were somewhere else, averted from the photograph of Keira on the evidence board. She wondered if the young woman’s thoughts in that moment were close to her own. Chloe knew better than anyone how devastating a false suicide conclusion could be.

‘There are a number of reasons why this death is being considered suspicious. First, an argument was overheard between Keira and a man a short time before she fell from the window. We now know that the man in question was Tom Stoddard.’

‘Her housemate?’ one of the DCs asked.

Alex nodded. ‘One of them. Tom Stoddard, Leah Cross, Jamie Bateman. All living in the same house as Keira since September last year. All at the party on Sunday night. There was also broken glass on the carpet in Keira’s bedroom,’ Alex continued, gesturing to the other images that adorned the evidence board. ‘If you look at the stains on the wall here, it’s obvious this bottle wasn’t dropped accidentally. It was thrown against the wall. Tom Stoddard denies having done it. He said the argument heard between them was just about the number of people who’d turned up to the party over the weekend.’

Alex paused and slid the envelope that held the post-mortem result from the table. ‘The most important update at the moment is the fact that Keira was five months pregnant when she died. It perhaps gives us a motive. The rest of the post-mortem findings,’ she continued. ‘Her neck was broken in the fall. And despite what we all might have assumed, Keira wasn’t drunk. The toxicology report states there was no alcohol detected.’

‘Drugs?’

Alex shook her head. ‘We’ll need to look into this further – check out whether she’d been seeing a doctor or a midwife. Also, had she told anyone else about the pregnancy?’

‘Did her parents know?’ one of the DCs at the back of the room asked.

Alex shook her head. Louisa North’s reaction to the news that her daughter had been pregnant had been one of complete denial. She had continued in her insistence that her daughter had been ‘a sensible girl’. Sensible or not, Keira had only been twenty years old. Thinking back to herself and her friends at that age, it occurred to Alex that even the most sensible of twenty-year-olds didn’t really have a clue.

‘She was barely showing, so she’d obviously been able to disguise the pregnancy from others,’ she continued. ‘None of her housemates mentioned it, so unless they were hiding the fact, it would seem they didn’t know. Keira was due home soon – perhaps it was her intention to tell her parents then. We’ll never know. But it seems unlikely there was no one she’d have confided in. It’s a huge knowledge to carry alone, particularly at her age and away from home. I find it hard to believe that no one else knew her secret.

‘I don’t believe Keira North fell from that window accidentally. She was seen by several eyewitnesses sitting on the ledge during the time leading up to her death – something she and the other people living in that house had apparently done countless times before. Having been up there, it’s difficult to see how someone sitting could have fallen. She was sober. Also, the trajectory at which she fell – the placement of her body upon landing – makes it seem unlikely that she simply lost her balance. She hit the roof of the first-floor bathroom in a way that could only have been achieved through force from behind.’

Alex scanned the room, knowing that half her colleagues were as sceptical of her suspicions as Harry Blake was. Most of them would have written this off as an accident and forgotten about Keira North and her unborn daughter. There was a reason why the police treated everything as suspicious until proven otherwise, but Alex knew she’d take no satisfaction in using Keira’s death as the case with which to highlight the point.

Chloe caught her eye and gave her a reassuring nod. Alex needed it. It was confirmation that at least one person in the room didn’t think she was overreacting and reading more into this situation than there was.

‘There’ll be a statement going out in a press release later today. Right, things to do,’ Alex said, looking back at the images on the board. ‘Eyewitness accounts need to be chased up from the people who’ve not yet already been spoken to. Dan, I know you’re going to the hospital with Chloe shortly, but once we’ve got Keira’s laptop and phone, we’ll need a check on her recent emails, contacts – in particular, anything we can find relating to the pregnancy.’

‘You think it’s got something to do with her death?’

‘Too soon to say,’ Alex admitted. ‘But like I said, it’s given us a motive. Maybe someone knew about it and wasn’t too happy. Until we find evidence to the contrary, we’re all working on a murder investigation. Let’s please not forget that.’