Alex stood at the side of the table upon which Keira North’s body lay beneath a sheet, trying not to let her focus linger for too long on the girl’s parents. Nothing could have prepared them for seeing their daughter as she was now. The wail that had ripped from Louisa North’s throat was even more disturbing than the one that had filled the station when Alex had informed the couple that Keira had been pregnant.

‘She was raped.’ Louisa turned sharply to Alex now, her eyes red and expression defiant. ‘She must have been. She wouldn’t have let this happen.’

David moved from his wife, recoiling as though the suggestion had caused him physical injury. ‘I doubt that’s what happened,’ he said quietly.

Louisa turned her attention to him. ‘How would you know?’ she snapped. ‘None of us know anything.’

‘She wouldn’t have kept it, would she? And she’d have told someone, surely? I don’t know.’ David turned away from them both, no longer able to look at the shape of his daughter’s form beneath the mortuary sheet. Alex could still see the girl’s dead eyes staring past her as she had lain on the cold ground of the backyard at the house where she had died, though she had tried to fight the image from her mind. She could see the stitches that had sewn up Keira’s abdomen; a crude attempt to mask the cuts that had been made to remove the baby from her womb. A girl, the pathologist had said.

‘We may be able to tell more once Keira’s laptop has been examined,’ she told them.

‘You’ve taken her laptop?’ Louisa’s anger flared, redirecting itself at Alex. Her face reddened and her jaw tightened, trying to hold back the torrent of fury Alex knew still lay behind it.

‘It might give us an idea of what happened leading up to the party,’ Alex explained. ‘We need to know who she’d been in contact with.’

‘So her privacy is violated for a second time?’ Louisa snapped, stepping towards Alex. ‘It’s not enough for you that she’s been cut up, that she’s …’ She glanced back to her daughter, unable to look for too long. She still couldn’t bring herself to speak about or acknowledge the baby.

‘They’re just trying to find out the truth,’ David said, trying to pacify his wife.

‘The truth,’ Louisa spat, ‘is that our daughter has been treated like a piece of meat, and you’re happy with that, are you? You’re OK to let it happen, just standing there and doing nothing?’

She pushed past him as she left the room, her tears audible as she fell out into the corridor. Rather than go after her, David moved closer to his daughter.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Alex wasn’t sure whether he was apologising to her or to Keira.

---

Chloe sat with DC Daniel Mason in one of the station’s interview rooms. Opposite them, Leah Cross was already crying. Chloe had fetched a box of tissues, one of which the girl now held to her face as though trying to conceal her tears behind it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘No need to apologise,’ Chloe told her. ‘We need to talk to everyone who was at the party last night,’ she explained, ‘so thank you for coming in. You were in the back garden when Keira fell, is that correct?’

Leah nodded. A loud sob was followed by a sharp intake of breath as she attempted to regain her composure. ‘Sorry,’ she said again, ‘it’s just been such a shock.’

‘Of course. Take your time.’

Leah sat back in her seat, lowering the tissue from her face. She held it in her lap between both hands, tearing fine strips into it. ‘I was in the yard, sitting on the back wall. Everyone was laughing, drinking … you know, just normal stuff. There was a scream …’ She hesitated for a moment to catch her breath again. ‘Keira was suddenly just there, on the ground, not moving. I can’t stop picturing her lying there.’

Dan looked to Chloe. He always seemed uneasy around crying, she thought, despite the fact that he had two young daughters. She’d have thought he would be well versed in dealing with emotional outbursts.

‘Were you and Keira close friends?’ he asked Leah.

The young woman nodded. ‘Yeah. We got on well. She was a really nice girl. I can’t believe what’s happened.’

‘This is going to be a difficult thing to consider, Leah,’ Chloe said, ‘but do you know of anyone Keira might have had a disagreement with recently? A falling-out over anything?’

The girl looked at her, her face caught by surprise. ‘No. I mean … Keira got on with everyone. Why would you ask that?’

‘An argument was heard coming from Keira’s room just before she died,’ Dan told her. ‘Tom has admitted he argued with her. Any idea what it might have been about?’

Leah shook her head. ‘I was outside for most of the evening. I only popped back in a couple of times to use the bathroom, and I went to the one on the first floor – the boys’ one. I didn’t see Keira much last night.’

‘Why was that?’ Chloe asked.

Leah shrugged. ‘She’d been a bit quiet over the past couple of weeks. I don’t know … she just wasn’t herself. I think she was tired after the exams and was looking forward to going home. I didn’t think too much of it really.’

‘Did Keira have a boyfriend?’

Leah shook her head.

‘But you’d have known if she did?’

‘Of course. I mean … yeah, I’m pretty sure she’d have told me. She was seeing someone for a bit last year, over the summer, but she’d met him back home and they decided it couldn’t really go anywhere, not with them both going back to different universities. Since then, she’d not been seeing anyone.’

She stopped and studied them critically for a moment, suspicious now. ‘Why are you asking about all this?’

‘Keira was pregnant,’ Chloe told her quietly. Leah’s reaction was enough to confirm she’d known nothing about this. She moved her hands from her lap, resting them on the table in front of her before gripping its edges as though it was the only thing keeping her upright.

‘She didn’t tell you?’ Chloe said.

Leah shook her head. ‘No. No, she didn’t tell me. How far gone was she?’

‘Five months. Any idea who the father might have been?’

She shook her head again. ‘She never said anything to me. I mean, I thought we were close, I thought she used to tell me things, but obviously not.’ She stopped for a moment, her face crestfallen. She had taken the news of the pregnancy personally, reading Keira’s silence as a question mark over the friendship she had thought they’d shared.

‘Why are you asking me this?’ she said again. ‘You don’t think …’ Her words trailed into silence and her face fell as she realised the implications of the questions. ‘I thought this was an accident?’

‘We don’t know anything yet,’ Chloe admitted. ‘That’s why we need to gain as many facts as possible. You’ve been really helpful, Leah, thank you. If you think of anything else, no matter how small it might seem, please let us know.’