“So have you found anything out?” Jayne said to Frank, Rupe’s PI.

The three of them had met up in a local pub not far from Jayne’s apartment. The place smelled of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Even though it was illegal to light up inside public places, Rupe guessed it was one of those pubs that had a few lock-ins where the rule of law was ignored.

“I tracked down the pusher. It wasn’t that difficult from the information you gave me. He maintains he sold you the heroin,” Frank said to Rupe. “But when I showed him four photos and asked him to pick you out, he couldn’t.”

“Surely the police would have done the same thing?” Rupe said, looking over at Jayne with a perplexed expression.

“You’d think,” Frank said.

Jayne made a note in her journal. “The list of questions I have for Detective Fisher is growing by the minute. The more I look into this, the shakier the ground this case seems to be built upon.”

“Ah yes, Detective John Fisher.” Frank moved their drinks to the side of the table and set down a folder. “Now, this is much more interesting. I did as you asked and looked into his background.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and began to read. “His parents were hard-working people. His mother was a nurse until she retired in 2007. His father was a supervisor at a factory that made cardboard boxes until he was made redundant five years ago when the factory closed down. Since then, he’s worked odd jobs here and there but nothing permanent.

“They live in a two-up two-down terraced house in Croydon. They still have a small mortgage on the property, but the mother’s pension and the father’s modest income mean they can afford the repayments.”

Rupe frowned. “Sorry to sound like an arse, but this is pertinent how?”

Frank gave Rupe a condescending look. “When researching someone’s background, Mr Fox-Whittingham, it is important to check all the strands of a person’s life. Please, if you’ll let me continue.”

Rupe spotted Jayne’s twitching lips and stuck out his tongue. Frank didn’t notice the exchange as he pressed on.

“Detective Fisher is their oldest child at thirty-eight. He’s been in the force since he was nineteen. When he reached the rank of detective five years ago, his career stalled. It seems our detective friend has a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Tells anyone who’ll listen that if his parents were middle class, he’d be at least a DCI by now.”

“Ha,” Rupe said, flashing a triumphant look at Jayne, who shook her head at him. Frank continued as though Rupe hadn’t interrupted. Clearly, the PI was a man on a mission.

“His parents had three other children: David, who is thirty-five and works for the post office, Rory, thirty-two, who is a retail assistant, and the youngest, Julie, who died a year ago when she was twenty-nine.”

“Died?” Jayne and Rupe said simultaneously.

“Of what?” Jayne continued.

“Suicide,” Frank said.

“How awful,” Rupe muttered.

Jayne began to scrawl in her journal, but Frank stopped her. “I’ll give you all my notes. No need to make extra.”

“Terrible for the parents,” Jayne said, putting her pen down. “Suicide is never easy for those left behind. They always seem to blame themselves.”

Frank searched through his folder once more and pulled out a photograph of a pretty young girl. She had straight coffee-coloured hair and soft brown eyes and wore a yellow dress that made her tanned skin stand out. She was smiling into the camera and looked happy and relaxed. Frank pushed the photo in front of Rupe.

“This is Julie. Do you recognise her?”

Rupe barely looked at the photograph. “No. Why would I?”

“Because she worked for one of your businesses here in London.”

Rupe’s eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing into his hairline. “She worked for me? Wow, small world. I still don’t know her. I have over twenty thousand people who work for my different businesses globally. I can’t know them all.”

“Ah yes, but Julie is a little different. You see, a month before she killed herself, you fired her.”

Rupe’s head flinched back as his mind began to race. He’d never seen the girl in his life, so how could he have fired her? He gave Frank an astonished look. “I can’t have done. I would have remembered something like that. Firing an employee is extremely rare.”

He picked up the photograph and gave it a more detailed look. Nope, nothing about the girl triggered any memory at all.

“Which of my companies did she work for?”

“FW Game World Limited,” Frank replied.

“Why was she fired?”

Frank shook his head. “I haven’t been able to find out. I was rather hoping you’d tell me.”

Rupe scratched his cheek. None of this made any sense. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the girl in the photograph. He rose from his seat. “Give me a minute. I’m going to call the director of that division and see if he can shed some light on what’s gone on.”

Rupe stepped outside the pub. He stood off to one side, away from the smokers gathered around the entrance. These last few weeks, his life had taken on the feeling of an alternate reality. Dead bodies, arrests, murder charges, police cells, court, and now it seemed that he had an unknown connection to the lead detective on his case. Not to mention Jayne and his increasing attraction towards her. No wonder his head was spinning.

Rupe found the name he was looking for in his contact list and hit the call button. He tapped his foot as he waited.

Eventually Aaron, the head of his London branch, answered. “Hey, Rupe,” he said, his voice light, bright, energised. “How’s things?”

Fucking awful. “Not bad. How’s business?”

“Growing every day, my friend,” Aaron said. “Are you in London?”

“Yeah. I’ll swing by early next week.”

“Before you head back to the yacht—hey, you lucky bugger.”

Rupe didn’t care to enlighten him about his current turn of bad luck. “Listen, Aaron, does the name Julie Fisher ring a bell?”

“Julie Fisher, Julie Fisher,” Aaron muttered under his breath. Rupe could imagine him, eyes raised to the ceiling as he tried to locate the right file in his brain. “Not offhand. Why?”

“I’m sending you a picture. Let me know when you get it.”

Rupe forwarded the photograph of Julie to Aaron’s number. After a few seconds, Aaron said, “Got it.” There was a pause. “Aha. Yes, I remember her now, although she went by the name of Julie Fraser, not Fisher.”

“But it’s definitely her?”

“Oh, yeah,” Aaron said, his voice taking on a harder edge. “I never forget a thief.”

“Thief? What do you mean?”

“She was caught trading software code for an upcoming release with one of our rivals. Silly woman. She should have known we’d have had programs that would pick such activity up. Fortunately, we caught her before she did any real damage.”

“Why don’t I know about this?” Rupe said as irritation began to prickle beneath his skin—irritation at himself. How could he have dropped the ball on something so important?

“You do know,” Aaron said. “I might not have given you a blow-by-blow account, but I emailed you about what she’d done, and you agreed with my decision to fire her.”

“Can you reforward the email to me?”

Fuck, he’d messed up. He had absolutely no recollection of an important issue in one of his main branches.

“Of course. Rupe?” Aaron’s voice took on a note of concern. “Is something wrong?”

“Did you involve the police over the incident?”

“No. She begged me not to. Said her brother was a copper, and she was worried it would affect his promotion chances. Because there hadn’t been a financial loss, I agreed. I did tell her that I’d make sure she didn’t get a job at another software company, though.”

“Fair enough,” Rupe said.

“Why are you raising this?”

“She killed herself.”

Aaron gasped. “No.”

“Yep. One month after you fired her, it seems.”

“Shit. That’s awful.”

“Locate the email, and send it to me straight after this call. It’s quite urgent, Aaron.”

“Sure thing.” His voice had become quieter, more reflective, tinged with guilt. “I made the right decision, though. I couldn’t condone theft.”

“You did the right thing,” Rupe said. It’s me who’s been doing the wrong things. “I’ll be in touch.”

Rupe headed back into the pub, a heavy weight pressing down on him. Could Fisher be so distraught about his sister’s suicide that he’d set up Rupe for murder as payback? And how did Nessa and her husband fit into this? Christ, trying to figure it all out was making his head hurt.

Jayne and Frank were exactly where he’d left them, their body language awkward, like two strangers trying to connect through small talk. As Rupe approached, Jayne turned her head and gave him a grateful look.

“Find out anything?” she said, moving her drink out of his way.

“Yeah.” Rupe ran a weary hand over his face as he recounted his conversation with Aaron. “I’m going to go over there on Monday and see if I can talk to some of her colleagues. Aaron is sending across the email where I apparently agreed with his decision to fire her.” He made eye contact with Jayne before turning his attention to Frank. “Do you think a copper would go as far as setting up a stranger for murder because he laid the death of his sister at that person’s door?”

Frank pulled a face. “I’ve seen less tenuous reasons for revenge.”

“Jesus.”

Jayne got to her feet. “I’m going to talk to Mike again. This potentially changes everything. I’ll see if he’s been able to look into the information Fisher submitted to his superiors and the CPS in order to get this case to court.”

Frank also rose from his chair and stuck out his hand. “If you need anything else, Mr Fox-Whittingham, you have my number.”