FRIENDS WHO KILL

DI OLIVIA AUSTIN - BOOK FORTY-ONE

NIC ROBERTS

Copyright © 2024 by Nic Roberts

‘Friends Who Kill’

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes.

Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

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PROLOGUE

One of them would have to go.

That was the only way forward. It wasn’t an idea they relished, but they knew they were one of life’s winners. And they’d worked too hard to have it all come crashing down.

But the question was, who needed to die?

They looked out at the group of people, making small talk and pleasantries through a thin veneer. They looked over at one woman who made a show of hearing all about someone’s baby, but deep down, their interest was as false as their fake breasts.

They looked at another guy who wore his ‘sensitivity’ on his sleeves. But he was one of those people who confused enlightenment with entitlement. All it would take was a few demands to be made on him and the nasty little misogynist would come rearing out.

In fact, plenty of people would probably make ideal victims.

And yet, when they died, people would weep over them in droves.

They always found it amusing how when a person died, others would lionise the worst of people. They’d forget about all of their flaws, and they’d be seen as beautiful souls snatched too soon. They wondered if that would be the case here.

Of course, if anyone saw what happened behind closed doors, they’d have a different opinion altogether.

They picked up a bottle of champagne. Clearly, someone had been feeling generous and ordered several bottles. It was funny how it only took some public attention for them to start stockpiling, and it wasn’t the cheap stuff either.

They took a swig from the drink, as much to stimulate themselves as to blend in.

They were all unaware of the bittersweet irony that even as they were on the verge of achieving a lifelong dream—having fame and fortune right at their doorstep—it was all about to come crashing down.

The house they had rented was quite a fancy property, the kind that would be found showcased on Instagram and TikTok, posted by people who were trying to live a champagne lifestyle online and have viewers flocking to the scenes in envy. The house had been rented because they thought it would strike up the right image. They looked around and saw that someone had already shattered a priceless vase.

By the time the morning rose, the owners would have a lot more to worry about than broken furniture.

It was like a reality show with one of the contestants unaware that they were about to be axed before a live audience.

The question was, which one?

Six people had gone into the house that night. Six people looking to party, to mix with friends of old and to make a mark online.

But when the sun rose the next morning, only five people woke up.

Most of them had difficulty remembering what had happened, the booze still hurtling through their systems, and some made a beeline to the toilet to throw up.

Two of them stumbled downstairs the next morning…

…and when they saw the sight before them, it didn’t quite register at first. They just thought it looked peculiar.

But gradually, panic started cutting through the numbness.

And that’s when they started to scream.

1

This was not how she’d planned on spending her day off.

Detective Inspector Olivia Austin stood in front of the mirror, twirling in a sleeveless wedding dress. Given that she was used to striding through a crime scene or chasing down a suspect, this was definitely a ‘fish out of water’ moment for her, and she was grateful that nobody else was around to see it. Well, almost nobody.

“Breathe a word of this to anyone and no one will ever find you,” she threatened in a tone that still had a hint of playfulness to it given the recipient.

“Oh, I’ve already got plenty of pics to post over Facebook,” Clara Fitzroy chirped as she held up her phone, a big smile plastered over her face.

It’d been a few weeks since Olivia had accepted Dean Lawrence’s marriage proposal. For the time being, she wanted to keep it quiet. There was enough excitement going around the office without her impending wedding adding to it.

They didn’t even have a date set for the wedding. For all they knew, it could be months or years away.

But she wanted to keep the idea of it in her head to ward off any possibility of getting cold feet, so she figured she’d try a few wedding dresses—partly to visualise herself walking down the aisle and partly to work out how much she’d be bleeding her bank balance.

The only person at work she’d told about her acceptance was Clara, who’d been over the moon for her friend and promised to keep quiet. As such, she was the only person Liv could ask to go dress shopping for her.

But Clara’s presence stirred bittersweet feelings in Liv. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the technician there. Over the past three years, the young woman had become not just one of Liv’s most trusted colleagues but also one of her closest friends.

It was just that on the rare occasion, Liv had imagined herself doing this with her beloved sister Mills.

But Mills was resting at home looking after a newborn baby. Liv made a mental note to check on them both when she had a free moment. The circumstances of little Annie’s birth were borderline traumatic after a criminal from Liv’s early career had begun targeting her personally, leading to an attack on Mills’ family home. Her sister had barely escaped with her life, and the evening had culminated in her giving birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Liv couldn’t help but wonder whether the circumstances would have some impact on the child in the long run. Nothing physical, of course. Despite the premature birth, the child had been perfectly healthy. But Liv had been reading up on generational trauma and wondered if that would be reflected in Annie’s mental state growing up. It pained Liv because she and Mills had promised each other that the child would be part of a fresh start, one of the first family members free from the so-called Austin curse.

“So, what’s Dean doing in the way of wedding prep?” Clara asked, hovering around Liv eagerly.

She knew that her fiancé had probably given the wedding much more thought than she had, considering that marriage had been on his mind for the past few months—though she suspected it could be much longer.

She’d had her hesitations before about settling down, but now, feeling the wedding dress smoothed over her body, looking at herself in the mirror and imagining herself walking up the aisle, now she couldn’t understand why she had put it off for so long.

As she turned in the dress, she waited for Clara’s running commentary… but it never came.

She turned around and saw Clara hovering over a buzzing phone. Her phone.

“It’s Archie,” she stammered apologetically, conscious of holding someone else’s phone. “He says you’re needed at a crime scene.”

Liv rolled her eyes. Of all the bloody times. Inconsiderate shitheads…

“Well, unless he wants me turning up looking like a runaway bride, I suggest you get me out of this thing,” Liv quipped, tempted to tear herself out of the fabric.

Clara had wanted to attend the scene to offer her support, but seeing as she was still technically a civilian, Liv had dropped the technician back at the police station on her way. Liv had always liked Clara and felt very protective of her, and she didn’t want people swarming around her.

As she drove through the streets of Newquay—the town that’d been her home for nearly four years—she looked at the picturesque surroundings with an air of melancholy.

She remembered when she was working in London, she had been gazing at the scenery, and one of her colleagues had suggested to her that at some point, someone had died on every street corner in the city. After that, it was hard to look at London the same way. She had since seen Newquay through similar eyes.

She turned up at the address Archie had given her. It was definitely on the posher side of town. Liv knew the kind of residents that lived in the area—people who weren’t above flaunting their wealth as a status symbol.

She donned a pair of forensic gloves and protective footgear before walking up to the house.

Sam was already standing outside talking to one of the paramedics.

“There was nothing we could have done,” the man was saying. “She looked like she’d been dead for hours.”

Sam waved Liv over. “Do we have any eyewitnesses?” Live asked.

“No one saw a thing,” Sam muttered, sounding put out. “They came downstairs and found her in this state.”

“Liv!” Detective Sergeant Archie Elmhurst rushed over to her. “Come on, I’ll take you inside. All of the occupants are gathered in the spare room.”

“What’s the situation?” she asked, dreading the idea of having to sort through a closed circle of suspects.

“You ever heard of the programme Stairway to Heaven?” Archie asked, looking embarrassed.

“I might have seen it on the tele when I was channel-flicking,” she acknowledged. From what she knew, Stairway to Heaven was a reality show about to start its third series and focused on ‘power couples’ cohabiting in a shared residence as part of a social experiment. “I don’t have time for trash TV, and I can’t think of anyone else who watches that garbage.”

“No, of course not,” Archie replied, suddenly struggling to meet her eyes.

“So, what were they all doing here?” she queried.

“Apparently, they are all applying to be contestants on the show. This whole weekend was meant as some big audition tape they were going to send off to the producers.”

“I’m guessing there are only a few open spots?” Liv asked, wondering if she should take out her phone and start googling the show.

“Yes, pretty much,” the DS responded with a raised eyebrow, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing. Looks like we’ve already got our motive.

“And did these people know each other beforehand?” she asked, wondering if it might be a crime of passion or profit.

“Apparently, a few of them are best friends,” Archie noted, gulping as the implications became obvious.

“So, we’re looking at a murder among friends,” she noted, wondering how deep those connections ran if someone was willing to commit murder.

“There’s something else, too,” Archie added as he looked over his shoulder to see Sam giving him the all-clear to go further. “Apparently, there was a lot of livestreaming going on last night. Meant to be used as producer bait.”

“We’ve got recordings of this footage?” Liv asked, wondering if perhaps she should have brought Clara along for the ride after all.

“Yes, so we’ll need to go over that with a fine-tooth comb and see if we can pick up on anything.”

By the time Liv and Archie finished talking, they’d reached the body, and Liv had to look very closely to try and work out cause of death.

2

The victim was a young woman with strawberry blonde hair and mascara lining her eyes. Her face was covered in makeup. Every part of her looked like it’d been sculpted to perfection. The only part of her that didn’t look like it’d come from a high-end store was a homemade bracelet adorned with rainbow colours wrapped around her left wrist. Given how it clashed with everything else the young woman was wearing, Liv figured that its inclusion in her wardrobe was more sentimental than material.

She was wearing an orange dress that looked almost invisible due to the extreme tan covering her skin. One of her heels was lying a few feet away from her body. Her eyes were wide open, full of fright, and her mouth was hanging open.

“What the hell?” Liv muttered, kneeling down next to the body to get a closer look at the cracked lips and with a gloved finger, she peered inside the mouth.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the smell of burning and could see the inside of her mouth looked charred.

“What on earth?” Archie whispered, moving down for a closer look. “Her throat is burnt… What were they doing last night?”

Liv looked around the room, noting empty bottles strewn around and a window that’d been shattered and then unconvincingly covered with Sellotape. And a puddle of dried vomit was present next to the sofa.

“I can’t even put this down to signs of a struggle,” Archie muttered with disgust.

“Looks like a wild party,” Liv responded, looking down at the young woman.

“Do you think she might have consumed something?” the sergeant continued, looking around for anything that might be harmful. “LSD or something?”

“I’m hard-pressed to think of a drug that melts your mouth,” the inspector retorted, running through a list of known recreational substances in her head and coming up short. She looked through to the spare room where five people were gathered huddled together. “I think we’re going to have a hard time getting the full story out of them if it could lead to any charges.”

“But the party was being live-streamed,” Archie protested, pointing to a phone camera that’d been positioned on a tripod. “Who is stupid enough to incriminate themselves on a video that’s going to be seen by thousands?”

“That lot, presumably,” Liv suggested, pointing to the group before quickly cautioning herself. At the end of the day, they’ve lost someone who might’ve been close to them.

“Do you want to start doing the interviews?” Archie asked, looking eager.

“Just a moment,” she instructed, holding up a finger and crossing to the lead forensic coordinator who’d just entered the living space. “Sam, I want you to take note of everything that was consumed at the party—the food, drink, everything—and I want it all tested.”

“You think she was poisoned?” Archie asked, impressed with how quickly she’d started forming a theory.

“It was clearly something she consumed, and unless someone poured it down her throat, I think it’s safe to assume she would have consumed it herself.”

Suddenly growing impatient, she looked to the group. “Come on,” she commanded her partner. “They’ve been left on their own for far too long, and they’ve probably had more than enough time to get their stories straight.”

They walked into the backroom where everyone was still in a state of undress in clothing ranging from dressing gowns to hastily thrown-on t-shirts. Their faces all looked haunted by the display they’d witnessed that morning, though Liv was struggling to gauge whether any of them was putting on a performance for the sake of the police.

“I understand that this must be a harrowing experience for you all,” Liv began, knowing that launching in with accusations probably wouldn’t do her any favours. “I’m not looking to put you all through the wringer any more than you already have done, but I’m going to need to ask you a couple of questions about what happened last night.” She paused before adding, “And I’m going to need all the details.”

It was that last point that got their attention and prompted a nervous flutter throughout the room. They all looked at each other, hoping for some reassurance.

“Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first,” she began, pointing to the body still lying in the other room, her voice adopting a gentler tone. “Who is she?”

“Her name was Amber,” one woman explained a woman with a pierced lip. “She was my best friend.”

“And your name?” Archie asked, trying to resist the urge to take out his pocketbook.

“Caitlin,” the woman replied, tugging at a bracelet that looked identical to the one on Amber’s body.

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Liv offered sincerely. “I don’t suppose any of you know what happened to her?”

“No idea,” one of the lads replied, a man with sandy hair and an aqua shirt with the buttons undone revealing chest hair. “We all went up early, and she was the only one left downstairs. I think she wanted to have a few drinks.”

“And you are?” Archie asked, already knowing he was going to have trouble keeping track of everybody’s names.

“I’m Jay,” he explained, holding out a card. “I was pairing up with Amber for the show.”

Liv obligingly took the card, displaying the man’s full name—Jay Cooper, Sponsor to the Stars—as well as a contact number

“I’m an influencer,” he explained, taking a moment to look boastful, his braggart’s nature sticking out in the otherwise sober atmosphere. “I’ve been looking at starting up a brand and thought the show would be as good a time as any to get started.”

Liv twirled the card around in her fingers, noticing the marks of a pencil that hadn’t quite been cut over. Yeah, very professional.

“How well did you know each other?” Liv asked, thinking back to the reality shows she’d glimpsed where complete strangers had been paired up together in the hopes of generating chemistry.

“I reached out to her about six months earlier,” he explained, his tone more sombre. “Of all the people I could have taken on, she seemed like the one best suited to me.”

He said the words as though Amber should have been the one privileged to be in his orbit. But if that statement had been meant to impress the others, it’d fallen flat.

“This probably isn’t the easiest question to answer,” Liv began, trying for sympathy even as she was aware she was sharing a room with several narcissists, “but I don’t suppose there’s any chance Amber was ever suicidal?”

“Hell, no!” Caitlin exclaimed angrily. “Amber had a lot to live for. Yeah, she might have had her problems now and then, but she was looking forward to coming on the show. She wouldn’t just off herself like that!”

The sheer conviction in the young woman’s voice told Liv that Amber hadn’t poisoned herself. Which means the only other explanation is murder.

“Did Amber have any prior health conditions?” Archie asked, and Liv silently applauded her partner for remembering to inquire about that little fact.

“She was asthmatic,” Caitlin told them. “And it could get really bad in the winter, but she’s not had a major problem with it for years.”

Liv nodded, absorbing this information. “Right, we’re going to need to interview each of you one by one.”

“Can’t you just do us all together?” one of the men asked, his hair tied up in a man bun.

“All of you are going to have different perspectives of Amber,” Liv insisted, determined not to label her ‘the victim’. “Some will have known her for a long time. Others might only have gotten to know her in the last few days. We want as full a picture as possible.”

It was hard to tell if they bought that or not. But it’s still a lot better than saying ‘we want to make sure you’re not trying to cover each other’s arses.’

“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going first,” Archie suggested, pointing to Caitlin. “She was your best friend, after all.”

“Sure,” Caitlin responded reluctantly, looking like there was so much she didn’t want to tell.

3

“We’ve known each other since we were in nursery,” Caitlin explained, having been escorted to one of the other rooms in the house and provided with a glass of water. “We lost touch after that but reconnected once we were in secondary school.”

“I imagine you would have led quite the clique,” Liv suggested, thinking of the many teen films she’d seen where the most popular girls had acted as the Queen Bees, ruling over the school with an iron fist.

“Actually, she was a bit of a wallflower,” Caitlin explained, digging into her purse and pulling out a photo from when the two girls were teenagers. Liv instantly recognised Caitlin but struggled to grasp that the mousy girl with wide glasses wearing her hair in an outdated perm was Amber. “Yeah, she used to be pretty geeky, and she got no end of shit because of it. The number of times I had to step in and look out for her… She was a very easy target for bullies. Once we got to college, she took that as a time to reinvent herself.”

It looks more like a complete body swap.

“It seemed to work because she became a lot more extroverted, and guys seemed really taken with her,” she told them in a tone that smacked slightly of envy.

“Did this ever cause any problems with you?” Liv asked curiously, picking up on the slight change in tone.

“No, not really,” Caitlin replied. “She was like a sister to me.”

If anything, that means you’re more likely to argue.

“So, how did you two come to be on Stairway to Heaven?” Archie asked.

“I’ve been working to become an actress,” the young woman told them with an air of embarrassment. “But so far, I’ve only been able to secure work for a commercial or two and student shorts.”

“And you thought that this show would be a good way in?” the sergeant queried, thinking that this probably wasn’t recommended as a career option at drama school.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Caitlin responded, clearly not wanting to dwell on the subject more than she had to.

“So, what was the plan for last night?” Liv asked, pacing up and down the room.

“We were all auditioning for parts on the show, and we wanted to show them that we’d be entertaining to watch. So, we set up a few cameras. Bit of a fly on the wall documentary style.”

“And what was Amber’s attitude throughout the evening?” Liv knew they’d probably get that answer from the cameras, but she knew from personal experience that people were skilled in hiding their true feelings.

“She seemed to be very withdrawn from it all,” the friend noted, her face clouding over. “She made small talk when she needed to, but for the most part, she kept to herself. Like she didn’t want to be there at all.”

“Did you notice her take any recreational substances?” the inspector asked, deciding to throw caution to the wind.

Caitlin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “We might have popped a few pills here and there, but it wasn’t like we were dealing or selling to kids. It was just for a party.”

Liv decided to park that for the moment. “So, you all decided to turn in at what time?”

The young woman furrowed her brow. “I’d say… quarter past one, give or take?”

“And did everyone else go up to bed?” she asked, finding it hard to believe that everyone would go up to separate beds in complete unity.

“Amber stayed downstairs by herself for a while,” Caitlin explained, shoulders slumped. “I offered to stay downstairs with her, but she said she needed to be alone for a while. But something seemed to be bothering her.”

Wonder if that had anything to do with the other members of the group.

“Who discovered her the next morning?” Archie asked, knowing that whoever it was could be either the one most hit by the trauma or the most likely to have done the deed.

“That would be Ben,” she answered before remembering the detectives hadn’t taken any name. “He’s the one with the man bun.”

Liv thought back to the initial roundup. Back then, she would have thought that the one who found the body would be the most shaken up. But knowing what she knew now, Ben seemed surprisingly calm. Almost suspiciously calm. But then again, you can be calm without being a murderer.

“He went downstairs early to get some water. He saw her lying down and thought she was just sleeping off the previous night. It wasn’t until he saw that she didn’t seem to be stirring in any way that he realised something had happened. He tried CPR and was about to do mouth-to-mouth when he saw…” She broke off, and the detectives grimaced at the extreme close-up of Amber’s scorched mouth. “He tried calling 999 in a panic, but by that point, it was obvious to everyone that she was dead.”

“I don’t suppose you know what could have done that?” Liv asked.

“I don’t know!” the young woman snapped, agitated. “We were just looking for a little high. I definitely didn’t bring anything that would cause that!”

“Either way, we’re going to need a list of all the substances ingested at the party and the name of your supplier,” Olivia instructed, waiting for the inevitable words that would follow.

“What the fuck!?” Caitlin exclaimed, any pretension of sadness now absent. “You can’t expect us to do that! It’s not like we’ve been selling to anyone we shouldn’t have. It’s just for recreational use!”

“Regardless of what you planned to use them for,” Archie insisted, his voice cold, “we have reason to believe that a substance consumed by Amber at the party led to her death, a substance that could just as easily have been consumed by any of you. So right now, we need to start ruling things out.”

The woman was between a rock and a hard place. Finally, she said, “Fine, I’ll give you the name.”

Afterwards, they worked their way through the other members of the group, trying to find something they could latch onto, a direction to go in, anything.

“Their stories all check out,” Liv noted once they were back in the car and going over her notes. “Fairly accurate.”

“Yes,” Archie noted slowly. “And entirely consistent in every detail. I’m actually surprised that they’re not pointing a finger at each other. You would have thought at least one of them would’ve been offered up as a sacrificial lamb.”

“Maybe it’s down to self-preservation,” Liv suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. “They grass on one, they pretty much grass on themselves.” She pointed to a CCTV camera that was positioned around the house. “I think we need to have a look at all the cameras surrounding this place.”

All of the surviving witnesses had assured them that they were the only people at the site, save a man delivering a pizza. Other than that, it was just the six of them.

“Maybe once Elliot gets to work on the autopsy, we can find out what killed her and how long it would have taken,” the inspector decided. For Amber’s sake, I hope it was a quick death.

“There is one thing to consider,” Archie suggested, looking back to the house to see Sam and her team packing up. “I had a look around Amber’s body for anything that could be used as a poison, and I couldn’t see anything lying around. No wine bottles, no glasses.”

“Well, there are two possible reasons for that,” Liv replied. “Either she realised she was drinking something toxic and threw it away, or someone took it to avoid implicating themselves.”

“I’m inclined to think the latter,” the sergeant suggested, sure that someone was hiding something.

“Well, Clara’s going to look through all the footage taken from the night. Toxicology is going to look at all the food and drink gathered, though I can’t really see them coming up with anything. Considering everyone there was drinking like a fish, it’s a small miracle that Amber was the only one who died. So, we’ve got at least thirty bottles of champagne… and she just happens to drink the poisoned one.”

4

It would be simpler to get somebody else to do this part of the job. It certainly would be easier. There were several moments when Liv had wanted to pass on the job of informing the next of kin to the uniformed officers, but considering she would be the one leading the charge, she always wanted to reassure the family that justice would be done.

“I promise you, we will find out what happened to your daughter,” Liv Insisted, taking care to use neutral language. No parent wanted to think that someone had gone out of their way to slaughter their child.

“I had a bad feeling about that crowd,” Mrs Heatley responded. “Nest of vipers, the lot of them. Spoilt brats who never grew up, always happy to tear into each other for the sake of entertainment.”

For a woman so hateful of the TV social experiment crowd, she’s certainly well-informed on the stereotypes.

“But our Amber wasn’t anything like them,” Mr Heatley insisted, clutching his wife’s hand tightly. “I was worried that she was going to be all vapid like them, but she never stopped being sweet and lovely. She was exactly as we raised her.”

Liv tried not to raise an eyebrow, knowing that parents often chose to see the best in their children while ignoring everything else.

“How much did you know about her auditioning for the show?” Archie asked.

“To be honest, we were surprised that she wanted to go for it,” the father explained to the detective’s complete surprise. “We knew she liked being the life and soul of a party and that she was easily the best presence in the room, but she never went in for all that razzle dazzle. If anything, I’d say it was more Caitlin that wanted that life than her. In fact, Amber was the reason she even managed to get that gig in the first place.”

“Is that so?” Archie exclaimed.

“Yes, at first we thought Caitlin was good for Amber,” Mrs Heatley explained, sounding territorial. “Amber was a very fragile child, and there were plenty of kids at school who had zero problem with taking advantage of that vulnerability. But Caitlin would always step in to defend her. We appreciated that. But we always wondered if she was being a little self-serving.”

“How do you mean?” Archie continued, feeling like they were about to describe a different person to the one Caitlin presented to them earlier.

“Caitlin is an attractive girl, but she didn’t have much authenticity,” Mrs Heatley explained, clearly drawing on all the exchanges she’d had with the younger woman over the years. “She liked to put on a show based on what everybody else wanted to see. But Amber? There was a lightness about her. And even when she had that makeover, she still had this gentleness that made people really like her. The only thing that really changed was she became a lot less of a pushover, but she did have a blind spot where Caitlin was concerned.”

“But they were going on the show together,” Liv continued, slyly playing devil’s advocate in the hope it would lead somewhere.

“Caitlin originally auditioned for the show by herself,” Amber’s mother continued. “But she didn’t make the cut. Apparently, they said she wasn’t ‘genuine enough’. But while she was trying to sweet-talk one of the producers, they spotted Amber and were instantly taken with her. So, they decided that she should have a place on the show. She almost turned it down. Probably would have been better for her if she had. But Caitlin said she really wanted a spot on the show, and I guess she saw Amber as a meal ticket because she was begging her to help get them both on the show. And it clearly worked.”

The mother’s hands curled into fists, as regardless of who had killed Amber, she clearly laid the blame at Caitlin’s door.

“Well, thank you for providing us with the relevant information, Mrs Heatley,” Liv replied, jotting it all down in her notebook. “If there are any more updates with the case, my colleague or I will inform you.”

They left the grieving couple with a family liaison officer before walking back to the car.

“No parent should have to bury their child,” Archie stated solemnly.

“From the way her mum was talking, you’d think that Caitlin would owe everything she was getting to Amber,” Liv observed, thinking back to their earlier conversation and how the young woman made little mention of the strings her friend had pulled.

“Shouldn’t that discount her as a suspect?” the sergeant asked, once again tempted to play devil’s advocate. “If anything, she had a lot more to lose from killing Amber. I don’t know what her future on the show looks like.”

“You could say the same for all of them,” Liv observed. “That party was supposed to be their ticket to fame. Now, they’re all going to be tarred with the same dirty brush. You think any producer’s going to touch them with a sixty-foot pole after last night?”

“You ever heard the expression ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity?’” Archie asked, counting on someone trying to milk the tragedy.

“Actually, I’ve never found that to be true.”

It hadn’t taken them long to find the dealer who provided the drugs for the party. His name was Jimmy Miles, a ginger-haired man in his early twenties who had clearly seen too many gangster movies, based on the leather jacket and confident swagger as he slouched back on the chair as though this were an informal interview rather than a police interrogation.

“So, Mr Miles, perhaps you can tell us what kind of substances you were selling the evening prior,” Liv began, certain this was going to be one of the more difficult interviews she had to sit through. He’d already denied legal representation under the belief that ‘only guilty people hired lawyers.’

“I was conducting some business,” he explained, sounding calm and collected. “I’m certainly not responsible for whatever you’re investigating.”

“A young woman who was at the party died after ingesting an unknown substance,” Archie told him, growing sick and tired of the bullshit. “We want to know what you sold them at the party and whether that might have contributed to her death.” In truth, she couldn’t see anything like LSD doing that to a person, but it was worth a shot to find out what had been on the ‘menu’ at the party.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jimmy instantly interrupted, holding his hands up. “Everything I sell is completely aboveboard. Okay, so it might not be the kind of stuff you can get from over the counter, but it’s harmless.”

“We’re going to need to search your premise for the drugs you provided,” Liv told him, fully expecting a protest. “And before you start coming out with some smart-arsed comment, this can go two ways. We can either halt this interview and continue treating you as a suspect in a possible murder while waiting for a warrant to come through, or you can let us know about your personal stash, as well as any other dealers you might have traded hands with. It’s entirely up to you.” Bet you’re wishing you hadn’t been so quick to dismiss your solicitor now, aren’t you?

Miles squirmed in his seat, actively weighing up whether he wanted to be known as a drug pusher or a murderer. “Okay,” he finally decided. “I’ll let you know what you can find. In return, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you guys to go easy on me?”

Maybe you should spend less time watching Line of Duty.

After a thorough search of Jimmy Miles’ premises, all of the drugs had been sent off to Toxicology.

“I still think we need to be having a closer look at all of the people in the house,” Archie suggested once they were back at the station. “We can look at possible weapons all we want, but as far as we know, the killer has to be one of those five people.”

“And they would know how to drug her?” Liv fired back, frustrated that they were no closer. “Times like this, I wish Nikki were still about. She’d bully them into a confession.”

But she was sure that one of them would trip up eventually. It was just a case of when.

5

Liv had gone over the board of suspects, trying to crisscross means, motive, and opportunity, spending most of her time with the motive.

Detective Sergeant Tim Harris approached the board, his arms crossed. “There is another possibility to consider—that maybe she wasn’t the initial target. Maybe someone else was the intended victim and she ended up dying instead.”

Liv silently conceded the point. “Do a little digging into them all,” she instructed. “What they were doing before that night, what their relationships were like with Amber, and what kind of rivalries piled up.” Noticing Tim’s quizzical expression, she assured him, “It’s reality TV, Tim. You’re always going to have at least two people at each other’s throats.”

“I’ll get on it,” he responded and returned to his desk.

Liv retreated to the kitchen to get herself a cup of coffee. The day was drawing to a close, and she needed a caffeine fix to keep her going.

“I don’t know why you don’t load up on coffee while you’re out on patrol,” a jovial and very welcome voice came through as PC Andrew Shaw walked into view.

“Because I’ve seen the prices of some of those places, and I feel like I need to fit a burglar alarm to my wallet,” Liv replied, always grateful for the levity he brought into her world. “I hear that change is in the air, so would it be too early to give my congratulations?”

Over the last few months, Andrew had been working towards the idea of turning his career towards CID, having been on the fence about it for some time.

He’d been instrumental in one of their biggest breakthroughs, and for the past few months, the police service had been plagued by a series of media leaks, with sensitive information revealed to the public, hindering cases, and in some situations, even endangering witnesses. Such an incident had led to Detective Sergeant Nikki Harding seeing her daughter kidnapped and losing her husband in short order, prompting the fiery woman to take a secondment to Derby in order to heal from the trauma.

Thanks to Andrew’s quick thinking, they’d been able to identify the leak as PC Katie Gibson, an undercover journalist. As a result, Andrew had been given the opportunity to sit the CID exam, and if he passed it, the role of Detective Constable would be his for the taking. And I could definitely do with a bit more positivity round here.

“Any word on Katie?” he asked, and she frowned. The interloper was still a sore subject for everyone in the station.

On the one hand, the woman had done serious damage to the station’s reputation and integrity, and Superintendent Collins was determined to come down on her like a ton of bricks. On the other hand, she had selflessly assisted Liv in rescuing her sister, and without Katie, neither Mills nor her baby would have survived. So, Liv was of two minds about where she stood with the room.

“She’s still suspended pending an investigation,” Liv explained. “They’re poring over all the sensitive information she spilled and had access to. Her editor is being more than cooperative on the matter. Typical scumbag. Strongarms her into the position then sells her out to save his own skin.”

“He may be,” Andrew noted, taking her aback with his lack of sympathy. “But she knew what she was getting into. She made her choice all the same.” His eyes widened at Olivia’s troubled expression. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you feel sorry for her?”

“It’s just…” Liv sighed heavily, knowing that her loyalty should be to her team first and foremost. “My sister is currently at home nursing a baby girl. That wouldn’t have been possible without Katie.”

“I think you’re underselling yourself again,” the young PC offered kindly. “You were there, too, if I recall. And I know that she came through when necessary, but that doesn’t change the fact that she screwed us all over multiple times. Hell, I’m surprised Nikki hasn’t come over from Derby to get a piece of her.” Liv tried to mask the guilty look she was concealing, but the problem with Andrew was that he was far too observant of her emotional state. “You haven’t told her yet, have you?”

“I was just waiting for the right time,” the inspector protested weekly.

“And when is that? After the investigation wraps up? Or in ten years’ time when everyone’s stopped caring?” the PC asked rhetorically. “Nikki’s had her whole life turned upside down because of that woman. Now, we both know she’s a bit of a bloodhound, but her first priority always has been and always will be her daughter. She went through the worst kind of experience a few months back, and I think she would definitely benefit from some closure. You of all people should know that.”

“That’s a cheap move,” Liv noted, wondering whether Andrew had been picking up on his partner’s attempt at psycho-play. “But yeah, you’re right. She does need to know. But maybe I’m not the one who needs to tell her.”

Superintendent Collins was sat over his desk, having devoted as much time as he could to the Katie Gibson case and hoping to see charges brought against her. Liv knocked on the door, and she found herself longing for the days when she’d walk in to see Collins and Nikki readjusting themselves with the DS pretending that she was helping the gaffer with paperwork. Collins himself looked a lot less animated without the usual lipstick stain on his shirt collar.

Collins and Nikki had left their relationship in a precarious situation ever since Collins had made the tough decision not to collect Nikki’s daughter from nursery to avoid alerting her fugitive husband… which later backfired when Enzo had abducted the child. Nikki and Collins had parted on bad terms afterwards, and Collins was still unable to work up the nerve to reach out to her. I wonder if the falling out with Nikki is the reason he’s gunning for Katie so much…

“Is this about the Amber Heatley case?” he asked, clearly not wanting to be bothered with the ins and outs.

“Actually, it was about Nikki,” Liv began, and this instantly got his attention. “I was thinking that she still doesn’t know about what happened with the leak case, and maybe you could be the one to tell her. At the very least, it’ll allow you to start building bridges.”

Clearly, it hadn’t occurred to Collins to make use of that peace offering. “Well, thank you for that suggestion, DI Austin. I’ll look into it.”

“I’ve already sent her a text and told her you need to talk to her,” Liv noted to his visible alarm. “Because God knows you wouldn’t have done it unprompted.” Regardless of her thoughts on her colleagues’ affair, she knew that the two had meant a lot to each other, and Liv wanted Nikki to know that people in Newquay were still thinking of her.

Once Liv had left the room, Collins took out his phone and ran his finger over the number he’d memorised by heart.

He started typing in the phone and held it to his ear. “Hi, Nikki?” He’d tried to call her DS Harding in the office, but that’d never really landed. Not when they’d been that close.

“Liv told me that you’d be calling me,” she explained on the other end.

“I just thought you should know the source who leaked the story about your husband… We’ve got her,” Collins said slowly as he realised he’d been holding his breath.

There was silence on the other end, and for a moment, the superintendent thought he’d lost the connection. Finally, there was a heavy sigh.

“Thank you for letting me know,” she replied on the other end, and it sounded like it was taking a lot of effort for her to speak.

“I promise you, we’re going to do everything we can to throw the book at her.” Collins insisted, his blood boiling at the very thought of her. “She’s not going to get away for what she did to you. I’ll make sure of it.” He noticed his left hand was trembling as he spoke. “Listen, Nikki, what happened with Enzo… I’m so sorry for how it went down… If I could go back and do things differently, I would.”

“You can stop beating yourself up, Steven,” Nikki interrupted, her voice surprisingly gentle. “It wasn’t your fault, I do know that. I think I was so fucked off with how things went down, I just needed someone to take it out on, and I took it out on you. And I’m sorry that I left Newquay on less than stellar terms.”

Collins tried not to get choked up, feeling relieved that they were finally starting to move forward. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

“Same,” she said and though he couldn’t see her face, he could tell she was smiling.

6

Liv and Archie arrived at the morgue and waited patiently to be seen by Dr Elliot James. He came out clad in his usual attire. “Thank you both for waiting for me,” he started, gesturing for them to follow him through.

“I’ve already taken the liberty of performing the autopsy,” he explained, sorting through some notes as they looked on attentively. “The burn marks around her mouth and the inside of her throat are consistent with acid burns. I’d say sulfuric acid. Quite a harmful agent and typically only requires little more than a teaspoon for it to be fatal.”

“And she would have likely been glugging it,” Liv exclaimed with dawning horror. She tried to picture the scene—Amber picking up a bottle of champagne, necking it and barely having time to comprehend her mistake before the acid hit her throat, trying to cough it back out, but the fast-reacting acid burning away at her insides.

“I don’t even know if she could have screamed loudly considering how scorched her vocal cords were,” Elliot told them, sharing their horror. “By my count, it could have taken her three minutes to die.”

Liv thought about everything she’d learned about the young woman. While someone might have had reason to want her dead, to kill her in the most horrific manner possible… She wondered whether somebody had stood over her and watched her die. Watched over her knowing the agony she was in.

“I suppose that’s the cause of death confirmed,” Archie muttered through a dry throat.

“To be honest, given the circumstances in which she found herself, I’m surprised by how little she had in her stomach,” Dr James continued to their interest. “There was the remains of a salad and what looks like an energy drink, but very little in the way of drugs and alcohol. Medically, apart from her asthma, she was in reasonably good health.”

Liv nodded along just as her phone went. “DI Austin?” She answered and walked away to take the call, motioning for DS Elmhurst to continue with the analysis.

“I take it there’s no possibility of her being force-fed the acid?” Archie suggested.

“No, perhaps if there’d been more burn marks around the outside of her mouth and got a splash effect on the cheeks.” He pointed to the skin which for the most part, seemed completely intact. “So, she would have drunk it under the assumption it was just like any other drink at the party.”

Liv returned to the group. “That was Toxicology. They had a look through all the food and drink that was consumed at the party. The only thing that they found was a champagne bottle stashed under the sofa. A few dribbles left… but with heavy traces of sulfuric acid. So, it looks like we have our murder weapon. Now we just need to see if we can pull any fingerprints from it.”

Clara was back at the station going over all of the CCTV footage. It was a surprising sight to Liv. She was used to the civilian attacking her job with such gusto, but here, Clara looked a little bored.

“This was supposed to be their ticket onto the show?” she asked, full of contempt. “I thought the whole point of reality TV was that it was supposed to be spontaneous. But here, everything just seems so scripted. Like they’re following a model of what they think makes for good conflict.”

Liv leaned over to look at some of the footage and saw the group talking with each other while every now and then glancing to the camera as if to make sure their legion of fans were still watching.

“I feel like I’m watching a hyped-up episode of Gogglebox,” Liv muttered.

The footage then moved onto the group playing a number of games, such as ‘Shag, Marry, Kill’, arm wrestles, girlfriend swaps. “The most depressing thing about this is that millions aren’t going to bother tuning in unless everyone’s tearing each other’s head’s off.” She looked at the drinks that they were all holding. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anyone handling a champagne bottle?”

“I’ve gone over six sets of hands several times, and no, I haven’t seen anyone pouring poison in there,” Clara muttered with an air of defeat. “They all knew this was being livestreamed, and assuming they knew she was going to die later that night, nobody’s going to be stupid enough to incriminate themselves in front of thousands of witnesses.”

If only criminals were that stupid. Would make my job a lot easier.

While they looked at the footage, Liv tried to get a sense of Amber’s state of mind. She was making obligatory conversation with everyone, but for the most part, she needed to be literally dragged into the conversation. And the person in question came as no surprise.

“Clearly, Caitlin is willing to do anything for her fifteen minutes of fame,” Liv observed, watching the party unfold. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she didn’t want to be there.

They watched it all go on until the midnight time stamp came up and the gang all started heading up for bed, no longer having the energy or the restraint to keep up their enforced narrative. The only one who stayed downstairs was Amber who paced up and down the room, clearly looking a little forlorn.

“Wait a minute,” Liv instructed, her hand hovering over the pause button. “Go back a few seconds. Did you hear that?”

Already catching Liv’s thought-process, Clara raised the volume and played the footage over again.

This time, they could clearly hear the sound of raised voices and shouting in the background. And it didn’t sound rehearsed. There was the sound of something smashing, the suddenness prompting Clara to flinch.

“I think I need to get back over there,” Liv decided before hurrying off to find Archie.

“I’ve been getting it in the neck a lot since it happened,” the owner of the house told them, an obese man with rapidly thinning grey hair and a jacket that looked far too thin for the weather. “I figured that me and my wife needed the money, and it was only for one night, so I figured what’s the worst that could happen.”

Liv and Archie followed him into the house. He was less than happy to be informed about the damage done to his house, but he couldn’t afford to kick up too much of a fuss due to the murder that’d taken place. “I’ve been getting it in the neck from my wife, and I can assure you that I’ll be sending the bill to those little shits.”

Liv caught a whiff of alcohol in the air and suspected that a few whiskeys had loosened his tongue. “Mr Doherty, I don’t suppose you know of anyone visiting the house other than the core six.”

“No. When anyone is renting out the house, I leave them to it,” he continued as he walked through the house. There was still a mess lying around, Liv reluctant to have any clean up in case someone tried to make off with a key piece of evidence.

“Can we check upstairs?” she asked, kicking herself for not checking there before.

“Why not?” Mr Doherty snapped, sinking down into one of the only chairs that wasn’t stained with beer. “I can’t imagine it looking any worse than the other areas of the house.”

The detectives went up to the bedrooms, peering inside and seeing dirty clothes strewn around. Liv thought back to her earliest memories of Big Brother and watching the contestants strewn in bed post-coitus, an argument on the verge of brewing over… all the things the producers would be wanting to see in a reality show.

Liv scanned the room, trying to find anything that might be incriminating, imagining herself in the position of an audience member while trying to recall what she might have heard in the background.

She looked up to the corner of the ceiling and found it. “Got you,” she muttered triumphantly, taking a chair and standing up on it, removing it from the ceiling.

“A button?” Archie asked, surprised by the item.

“It’s not a button,” Liv noted, pointing closely. “It’s a wide-angle fibre optic lens.” She ran her finger along it so that Archie could clearly see the screen. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if we found one in every room.”

Archie furrowed his brow. “I think a better question would be did anyone know they were being recorded in here.”

7

Andrew and Diana were winding down for the remainder of the day. This shift had felt a lot heavier than many others.

They used to go out on shift a lot, but those sessions had been far and in-between since Diana had been injured in the line of duty and was confined to sporadic desk duties until she felt she could return to active duty. Since then, he’d been partnered with PC Katie Gibson, and she actually had all the makings of a decent copper before she was found to be a journalist. Part of Andrew’s frustrations stemmed from the fact that not only had he been without one of his closest friends, but he wasn’t sure how much longer they could enjoy shifts like this if he made the transfer to CID.

He was bringing into focus all of the steps of their routines—the routes they’d take in the car, the types of crimes they’d need to break up, the places they’d stop to get lunch and a coffee. Andrew didn’t realise how much he’d enjoyed the stability and the back and forth with PC Hershel… and how much he’d miss it when it all ended.

When Diana returned to the car with two coffees, he almost wanted to savour it, feeling like if he dragged the moment out, maybe it would last a while longer.

“Unless you’re developing a well-hidden caffeine allergy,” Diana noted dryly. “I think you’d better start telling me what the problem is.”

“You know about this post I could be getting,” he began, trying not to get too sentimental. “I’m not looking forward to the idea of everything changing.”

“If you’re about to go on some misguided rant about you want to protect me, you can save it,” she replied firmly but good-naturedly. “I can take care of myself… for the most part.”

“It’s not about looking out for you,” he began before realising how callous that sounded. “Well, it is. But I’m going to miss our shifts together.”

Diana smiled warmly. “Andrew, believe me, that silver tongue of yours has got me through some of the most stressful days. But we both knew this wasn’t going to be us for the rest of our careers, wasn’t it? You’re a great copper. You always have been. And now, you’re going to be in a position where you’re going to do a lot more good.”

“You say that as though it’s a done deal,” Andrew muttered, wishing he had as much confidence in himself as she did in him.

“You’ll get it,” she stated flatly. “And you’ve earned it. If an opportunity comes up, you should take it. Now, maybe you might find out that it isn’t for you. Not for me to decide. But I don’t want to be the one that holds you back.”

Andrew beamed, feeling energised from her words.

“I won’t deny, I’m going to miss you… I don’t think I’ll find another partner to match your wit.”

“Remember, not a word to her?” The way Liv hissed the words, it was as though they were hiding covert information rather than an impending marriage.

But she and Dean both agreed that they needed to keep their engagement a secret, partly because they were still working out the practicalities of it, and partly because they knew that with Mills having recently become a mother again, they didn’t want to overshadow her. It was exciting in a way, having this secret that nobody else was aware of.

They walked up to the front door, Dean having been relegated to the role of gift carrier, bearing a large bag full of stuffed toys and picture books.

“You know that the kid’s probably not going to be able to read any of that for a good few years, right?” Liv asked dubiously.

“I’ve sourced a lot of these books online,” Dean replied, holding up the bag. “These are the top books recommended for kickstarting a child’s development.”

Liv smiled at the thoughtfulness. He will make a great dad.

They knocked on the front door and Mills entered the frame. She was wearing a baggy top and her eyes were heavy from the lack of sleep, but she tried to greet them with a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve looked worse, believe me.”

“Where’s Max?” Liv asked as they stepped inside, knowing that her brother-in-law had always been ambivalent about Liv due to the danger her job brought to her family. But the last time they’d visited the house, he seemed to be a lot more subdued. She couldn’t help but think Dean might have had something to do with that, considering the way Max shrunk into himself whenever her secret fiancé made his presence known.

“He’s working late tonight,” Mills replied, walking back into the living room where she collapsed into a set of pillows covering the sofa.

“You building a fort here or something?” Liv asked trying to find a pillowless space.

“Presents from everyone at work.” Mills muttered. “I don’t know why they bothered wrapping them. They’re all pretty much the same. I swear there’s some stereotype going around that pushing a baby out has left me forever achy and delicate. As if I’m going to break the first chance I get.”

Dean walked over to a little cot where the baby was lying fast asleep. “She looks lovely,” he whispered before looking over at Liv. “She’s going to get your frown just right.”

“Thanks for that,” Liv replied, playfully tapping him on the shoulder.

“Try to keep it down,” Mills pleaded. “You have no idea what I went through trying to get her to settle.” There was no edge in her voice though. Liv knew that Mills was one of those people who was meant to be a mother. Back when Ru was born, no matter how difficult it’d been when caring for her son, she’d seen how Camilla’s heart melted whenever she laid eyes on the boy.

Speak of the devil, Ru bounded into the room. “Mummy, do you want a cup of tea?”

Mills tried to find the polite way to turn her son down when Dean stepped in with, “I’ll make it.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “You stay here and keep being Mummy’s little helper.”

As Dean went into the kitchen, Ru bounded over to his mum and nestled himself on her lap. “It’s probably the strongest thing I can drink right now,” Mills noted to Liv. “By this time, I’d have cracked open a bottle of wine, but as you can imagine… breastfeeding.”

Liv nodded in understanding.

“Max isn’t too happy about it. He likes to make a show of support by not drinking when I’m not able to, which is sweet. But I can imagine how much he’s craving that glass of red,” she continued, prompting Mills to stifle a laugh.

“How are you doing?” Liv asked, knowing that she should leave the subject be, but she kept coming back to that night. She didn’t dare go upstairs because she couldn’t go into the bathroom without thinking about how Mills had barricaded herself in.

“I’m doing okay,” she explained, shifting herself on the sofa and clutching Ru closely. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go and find Mummy those biscuits she really likes?”

Ru nodded and left the room, almost bumping into Dean on the way clutching a mug of tea. He passed it to Mills who sipped gratefully. “It’s perfect, thank you.” She looked to her sister. “You should be careful. I might have to steal him from you.”

Dean blushed at this.

“Look, I’m doing okay. I can’t really afford to start breaking down, not when I’ve got two kids I need to be looking after,” she explained bluntly. “I’ll be fine, I think, but…” She covered her eyes with her hand. “Sometimes, it can be a bit much…”

Liv felt a wave of guilt. The only reason she was targeted was because of me.

“If it helps,” Dean started, unable to step out of his role as the saviour, “we could always help out when we need to, chip in with babysitting duties, maybe even take Ru off your hands.”

Liv was taken aback by the gesture. Clearly, Dean had long since started thinking of the Austins as his own family and was determined to help out where he could.

“Thank you, guys, I really appreciate that,” she responded, taking another sip of tea. “God, it feels like the first time I’ve been able to relax in weeks.”

Just then, there was the sound of cooing coming from the cot, and Olivia immediately rushed over to pick Annie up. The infant instantly settled as Liv nestled the child against her chest rocking her gently.

“You’re a natural with her,” Mills noted warmly.

Let’s hope she doesn’t pick up my stress.

8

The next morning, they headed over to visit Caitlin, armed with the knowledge they’d gained from their conversation with Amber’s parents.

“Are you guys any closer to finding out what happened to Amber?” she asked, and the concern had come out again, though Liv and Archie were having trouble measuring how much of it was genuine and how much was Caitlin putting on an act of how upset she thought she should look to them.

“No, but we’re finding out more and more new things every day,” Archie noted, unable to stop himself from sounding a little sly, his tone clearly rattling her.

“We had a chat with Amber’s parents yesterday,” Liv began, her arms folded. “Have you met them?”

Caitlin snorted. “Maybe a few times. We’ve known each other since I was a kid, but I was never really that close to them.”

“Yeah, I get the impression that they’re not your biggest fans,” the inspector continued, waiting for some reaction. “According to them, you are aspiring to be an actress.”

“AM an actress,” she retorted, looking a little stung. “Okay, it’s taking a while before I can get my big break, but we all have to start somewhere.”

“But Amber was seen as a more ‘natural’ talent, wasn’t she?” Archie continued. He wasn’t trying to sound probing or offensive… not that Caitlin would have heard it any other way. “She had what some people would describe as a ‘natural charisma.’”

“There was nothing ‘natural’ about her,” Caitlin suddenly snapped, and Liv suppressed a smile. Nice one, Arch. Got the reaction we wanted. “I wanted to go into television way before she did, but because she was better at playing the Queen Bee, she was going to get there first. As though getting contacts, hair extensions, and a change of wardrobe would suddenly make her any different.”

“From what we understand, she was supposed to be your way onto the show,” Liv noted coolly. “Care to comment on that?”

“They weren’t going to let me onto the show originally,” Caitlin mumbled, pacing up and down the room. “They thought I ‘wasn’t natural’ enough. One producer—this snotty woman who had her face pumped full of Botox—told me that I wasn’t likable. Me? Unlikable? Stupid cow.”

Yeah, can see why they didn’t snatch you up.

“But Amber got you a place on Stairway to Heaven?” the inspector continued, wondering how many more times she could say the title without rolling her eyes.

“I spend my whole childhood defending her,” Caitlin snapped, her voice dripping with entitlement. “She only made it to adulthood because of me. So she owed me that much.”

“But Amber didn’t really want the gig, did she?” Archie noted. “From what we understand, it wasn’t really her thing. Did that occur to you?”

“I only wanted what I deserved.” the young woman continued. “I would have been more suited to that lifestyle than she ever was.”

Liv thought about all of the shows she’d seen, people making half-hearted attempts at friendships, only to stab them in the back when it was convenient. Yeah, she would definitely fit in with that crowd.

“I don’t suppose you can explain what happened amongst the rest of the group after everyone had gone to bed,” Liv asked, turning her attention to the bedroom. She felt that she was going to need a lot more evidence if she was going to accuse the woman of murder. But we’re not at that point. Yet.

“Just a few arguments, you know how it is,” Caitlin replied with a shrug. “A few petty arguments after a few too many drinks. These things happen.”

“Wasn’t there smashing?” Archie asked, sounding sceptical. “Can’t have been that minor if people were throwing things at each other.”

They were now putting the woman on the spot, and they wondered how much loyalty she was willing to show her fellow cast members.

“That was Jay,” she finally declared before adding with contempt, “the influencer.”

They’d since viewed the man’s Instagram channel and had seen him showcase a number of ad-hoc brands no one had heard of. So, when she and her colleagues talked about him, the word ‘influencer’ was used as loosely as possible.

“We were arguing in my room because he felt I wasn’t pulling my weight enough,” she explained to their surprise. They’d seen her talking on the camera and seen how animated she’d been—or tried to be. “He said that if we were going to have any chance of being picked up, then I needed to show my outrageous side.”

“What more could you have done?” Archie asked, wondering what kind of commitment they demanded of her.

“He said he wanted me to do a striptease,” Caitlin answered to their shock. “He said that viewers were more likely to tune in when they were thrown a bit of cleavage. Skin sells, apparently.”

Liv felt a little grimace. She'd heard that expression used in many of Jay's videos focusing on skincare products, the seemingly light-hearted catchphrase taking on a much darker meaning.

“He told me that I needed to do it for the team, and if we didn’t get through, then that’d be down to me,” Caitlin explained, and the detectives felt a sudden rush of sympathy.

“I’m really sorry that you were put in that position,” Liv offered. “You didn’t deserve that.” I could throttle the little shit.

“Thank you,” the young woman said gently, the admittance taking a lot out of her. “For not asking whether I went through with it.”

“So, what happened after you said no?” Liv asked, knowing they’d probably see how it played out in the footage, but wanting her side, nonetheless.

“He got really pissed off about it, grabbed a vase and threw it against the wall, basically throwing a tantrum because he didn’t get his own way.”

“So, just to clarify, this request had taken place in the bedroom?” Archie asked, remembering the placement of the camera. The sick bastard would have had it all on camera. At least he hadn’t thought to remove it.

“Yes,” Caitlin nodded, breathing heavily as though relieved to finally share the burden she’d been carrying.

“Did he make the same request to anyone else?” Liv asked, dreading the answer.

“I didn’t really ask them,” she responded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, but once Amber died, that pretty much took over everything else. And I never thought about it.”

“Did you know that you were being recorded?” Liv asked, knowing that regardless of Amber’s death, there’d been a serious invasion of privacy.

“I don’t see how, considering that we were all upstairs at that point,” Caitlin responded obliviously.

“Caitlin, yesterday evening, we conducted another search of the rented property,” Liv declared, trying to leave out the point about how the landlord was baying for their blood. “We found several cameras present in the bedrooms. We have reason to believe that they were planted there by one of the group members.”

Caitlin went silent as she digested this bombshell. Finally, she muttered, “Motherfucker. That’s why he asked me to do it in the bedroom. So he could jerk off to it later on. I could fucking kill him.”

Even though her rage at her supposed friend was fairly justified, Liv couldn’t help wondering if that same rage could drive her to actual murder.

“Do you think there’s any chance she could have killed Amber?” Archie asked as they drove away.

“I don’t know,” Liv muttered. “She certainly strikes me as the jealous type. But she strikes me as more of the ‘lash out in anger’ type rather than calculated murder.”

“If she did kill her,” Archie suggested, “then maybe she’s as good an actress as she thinks she is.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” she concluded. “Right now, we need to focus on what Jay Cooper has to say for himself.”

9

Jay Cooper was indignant throughout much of his arrest and seemed almost disappointed that he wasn’t given a perp walk, as though they were telling him that he wasn’t worthy of such an ‘honour.’

“This is harassment,” he exclaimed during the police interview. “You’re going and bothering me when there’s a killer still out there possibly lining up their next victim.”

“We’ve got that covered,” Liv exclaimed, leaning back in her chair. “I want to talk about your actions that took place the other night, namely your methods of getting ad sales.”

“I think you’ll find that influencing is a much more subtle art,” he exclaimed stiffly. “And I’m not about to divulge treasured secrets.”

Does he think he’s a fucking magician? “Well, that’s a shame, because those secrets might keep you out of prison,” she continued, relishing his alarm.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, that silver tongue clearly going rusty.

“Just wondering if you can talk us through your relationship with the other members of the group,” Archie asked, half-expecting another lie.

“I wouldn’t go as far to say that we’re close, but we all have a common dream, and we want to support each other towards it,” he explained, the words sounding suspiciously rehearsed.

“So, would you say that they’re a means to an end?” Liv asked.

“We all get something out of each other,” Jay responded noncommittally.

“Would you say that you have a certain respect for each other?” Archie queried before quickly adding, “At least where boundaries are concerned?”

“Of course, we do, why?” He looked increasingly uncomfortable in his seat. You are not wriggling your way out of this one.

“I wanted to ask about the footage that you took from the party,” Liv asked, watching as the young man’s body went stiff.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with that,” he muttered. “You took the camera and surely you’ve got all the footage.”

“Yes, we’ve looked over the footage,” she replied, deciding not to mention their own findings. “And I remember asking you about what devices were used for the livestream, and you only told us about the camera in the living area.”

“Because that’s the only one that was there,” he replied, sounding a little uncertain.

“So you said,” the inspector noted dryly. “So, can you explain how we found several cameras located in the bedrooms?”

They wondered if he was going to claim ownership of the cameras and risk implicating himself.

“Not really anything to do with me,” he responded with a shrug.

“I thought you’d say that,” Archie added, before holding up a sheet of paper. “So we had our team do a bit of digging and we found this—one bank statement and one invoice in the name of Mr James Cooper which attests to the purchase of four cameras that we found installed in all of the bedrooms.” He held up the invoice and slid it along the table. The man’s eyes widened as though he was expecting the thing to detonate. “So, one could say that you had eyes all over the place, didn’t you?”

Jay opened his mouth to speak, but it was clear that there was nothing he could say that would undo the damage. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I was upstairs and Amber was downstairs, so what does this have to do with me?”

“Mainly the gross invasion of privacy,” Liv spat out, unwilling to let him wiggle off the hook. “And I’m going to take a stab in the dark and assume that nobody else in the group was aware that you were recording them.”

His face went bright red. “It was meant to be a bit of a slice of life kind of thing.” he explained. “The stuff that was going on downstairs was all staged. Everyone would have seen that. So, I knew that I needed to spice things up a bit. I decided to stir the shit. I told Ben that Amber had a thing for him to see if he’d pick up on the signals. Told Caitlin that an ex-boyfriend was constantly texting her. And then waited to see how they’d react.”

“And were any of these examples true?” Liv asked dubiously.

“Well, Amber clearly needed to let loose, and Caitlin definitely had some guy chasing her online, but I did have to stretch the truth a little. Despite all this shit about reality, people don’t really want it. It’s more akin to a soap opera.”

In a warped way, Liv could understand a lot of Jay’s reasons for the creative choices for the sake of a narrative… before she came back to why they’d dragged him in.

“And what about the striptease?” she fired, watching his face fall. “Was that meant to be part of the narrative?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he muttered, notably stuttering.

“We’ve spoken to one of the attendees, and apparently, she said that you told her in order to attract more viewers, she should do a striptease,” Liv repeated, her voice full of disgust. “You would have had her degrading herself just for the sake of bringing in more views.”

“We all needed to pull our weight for this if we wanted to make a hit,” he explained, clearly having rolled over the justification so many times in his head.

“Last time I checked, you weren’t in a hurry to get your clothes off,” Liv replied, watching him bristle at the double standard.

“People mostly want to see girls naked rather than blokes,” he offered half-heartedly.

“Well, either way, I think it’s safe to assume that none of the women gave their consent to be recorded,” Archie said, his distaste palpable. “And I’m sure you don’t need me to take you through all the laws associated with invasion of privacy.”

“I didn’t kill Amber!” he exclaimed, changing the subject. “I was upstairs with Caitlin… fucking bitch…”

“Confessing to guilt on one charge to get out of another charge is probably not the smartest approach you could take,” Liv noted dryly. “In any case, we’ve put in a request to seize your electronics…”

“Okay,” Jay replied, trying to think of the ways in which he might regain control of the situation. “I’ll have a word with my flatmate and get him to bring everything in.”

“Oh, I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” Liv explained, happy to burst his bubble. “You see, we need to cross reference all the items with everything that the police are going to find. And I believe they’re in your home about… right now.”

Jay’s cheeks were flushed with colour, trying to think of a way he could regain control of the situation but coming up short every single time.

“Now, we’re also going to be having a look at the device the footage on the cameras is currently stored on. Your tablet, I believe? So, this is probably your last chance to tell us what we’re likely to find on it, because I’m going to have a very good idea.”

Jay was struggling to meet their eyes. “Just me… talking to the girls…”

“Making demands on them as well,” Archie exclaimed angrily, struggling to conceal his disgust. “We shall be seeking the authority of the Crown Prosecution Service to charge you with the illegal recording of multiple people and attempted coercion of sexual behaviour.”

“They didn’t actually go through with it!” Jay insisted, now a frantic mess.

“You’re actually lucky they didn’t, or you’d be looking at even more serious charges,” Liv retorted. “Now, do you understand these charges?”

“Well, he may not be our killer, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take a lot of satisfaction from putting that deviant away,” Archie said as Jay Cooper was escorted to the cells.

“Hopefully, the footage will tell us something useful about the other group members,” Liv said, glad that Clara would have something more to work with.

“Doesn’t really tell us much about what was going on downstairs, like why Amber ended up drinking the only thing laced with acid,” the sergeant muttered.

She looked back to the corridor where Jay was being informed of his rights. Chances were he’d be released on bail before finding out about his fate.

“We’ve already ruled out suicide,” Liv said in case Archie was considering it again. “And even if she was in that frame of mind, there are definitely less painful ways to go.”

“I think we need to have a closer look at all of the other people involved,” Liv suggested. “I’m sure some of them will be responsible.”

10

With Clara having more footage to get through, she was no closer to a prime suspect than they were at the start of the case. It was approaching 48 hours since the house party, and Liv was conscious that if they didn’t get the case solved soon enough, it would drag on forever and be one of those things that was batted around.

But at that moment, she had something else she needed to worry about. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going because the last thing she wanted was no end of judgment. Nobody would understand why she was making the decision she was. Dean might understand in time, but even then, he might still be bewildered by what she was about to do.

She knocked on the door of the flat and waited for it to open, checking on either side of the corridor to make sure she wasn’t followed. The door opened, and Katie Gibson stood standing there. She tried to manage a small smile, but it was clear that a load of energy had been taken out of her. Too much time had been spent warding off all the legal charges against her. There was a time when Liv would have looked at her situation and called it karma, but now… she wasn’t sure how she felt about the undercover journalist.

“You’d better come in,” Katie offered, holding the door open in a flat tone.

Liv stepped into the flat and she saw it’d been a while since Katie had kept up with the cleanliness. All the cutlery was piling up in the sink, and the bin bag was overflowing.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Katie asked as she slumped into the sofa.

“I’ll pass, thank you,” Liv said as she joined her. “How have you been keeping?”

“Well, I’ve been better,” she muttered. “I’ve got no job, I’m facing legal charges, my parents don’t want anything to do with me…” She paused as though the full weight of that sentence had only just hit her. “The day I got my first headline out, they were so proud of me. They had their doubts that I could make it in my career, but they were so proud of me. I felt like I was telling the stories that people needed to hear.”

“So, what happened?” Liv asked, trying not to add ‘to you’ to the end of that question.

“I’ve been asking myself that question for the last few weeks,” Katie replied, moving some cushions around. “I tell myself that maybe I just liked the publicity more than I did the content. But I look back to when I was doing my journalism degree, and I would have hated the person I turned into.”

“I’m sure there’s a way you can turn it around,” Liv suggested, not wanting to see the woman so despondent and struggling to make the words sound convincing, even to herself.

“But how am I going to do that if I’m in prison?” she asked despairingly.

“There’s no guarantee that that is going to happen,” the inspector said. “For what it’s worth, I’m trying to plead your case to the higher-ups and argue for lesser charges. There’s also the matter of your editor. He’s being very cooperative. Now, I know he’s only doing that to keep his own arse out of prison. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You told me a while back that you’d been growing cold feet over the whole thing. That you wanted out and he kept pressuring you into it. If there’s any correspondence that might prove you were coerced, at the very least, it stops him looking like the golden boy.”

“So, I’ve got to choose between looking like I’m easily led or that I’m some vindictive bitch,” Katie muttered. “That’s what I love about life. The choices. I don’t suppose you can tell me what the best-case scenario is for all this?”

“At the very least, you will be charged with mishandling in a public office and served with a red notice signifying the termination of your police contract,” Liv explained, seeing no point in beating around the bush and getting her hopes up.

Katie silently accepted this, though her face looked heavy.

“You know the sad thing about all this?” Liv offered. “You were good at your job. You had good instincts. You had the respect of your colleagues.”

“I know,” she gulped, trying to force back the emotion. “I kept on trying to tell myself it was just a cover, that it was a way of getting sources for my story. I… I didn’t think I’d end up caring so much. I remember helping out this young mum who was being mugged. Some shithead looking for change was harassing her. And the way the woman looked at me as she thanked me…” Her voice trailed off. “I felt like I’d made a positive difference. Something I could be proud of. And now, no one will ever look at me like that again.”

Liv’s emotions were mixed. On the one hand, this woman had done much to damage her team, fractured them, driving DS Harding away to Derby. She tried to tell herself that what she was facing now was justice, that she should treat her no differently from any other criminal that’d broken her trust.

“Katie, I’m not going to lie to you, these are serious implications,” Liv offered. “I can’t promise that you will be able to come out of this completely unscathed, but I promise you that I will do what I can to make sure you still have a life at the end of it all.”

“Why are you going to all this trouble?” the former journalist asked, bewildered. She’d spent so long studying human behaviour, she could not understand what she was seeing before her, sure there had to be some trick.

Liv reached into her wallet and took out a picture of Mills holding her newborn baby, handing it to the journalist. “She’s beautiful,” Katie said sincerely before handing the photo back. “I’m guessing they’re both okay.”

“Mills is a lot more shaken up than she’d be willing to admit…” Liv noted, remembering the fleeting moments when her sister’s body would go rigid, as though caught up in the memory of that night. “But she and the baby are both very healthy. Most importantly, they’re both alive. And I have you to thank for that.”

Liv knew that this was going against all her years as a serving police officer, that she should keep her personal feelings completely separate from the matter and lead the legal system do its work.

“I’ve got to go, but I’ll try and check in later in the week, okay?” she offered, unsure what else she could say, and knowing that the longer she was gone, the more people would notice her absence. Why do I feel like I’m committing a mass betrayal?

Liv knocked on the door to Collins’ office, still convinced that she might have been followed to Katie’s flat. “Come in,” the voice barked.

Liv went in, and he could see the agitation from the day’s events had already started wearing him down. More than anything, the man just wanted to go home. “Do you have an update on the Amber Heatley case?”

“We’ve not got a prime suspect, but we’re looking to charge Jay Cooper for illicit visual recordings,” Liv iterated. “So far, we’ve seen all the signs pointing to him being a massive pervert but not a killer.”

“What about the others?” the superintendent demanded, determined to make the case fit. “Is there anything you found at the house that we might be able to use?”

“Nothing tangible, sadly,” Liv noted. “From what we’ve seen, there was definitely a lot of infighting, but apart from her best friend, no one had a visible bone to pick with Amber, and even then, she doesn’t seem vindictive enough to commit full-blown murder.”

“You’d be surprised how petty some people can be,” Collins muttered, looking down at his paperwork. “God knows I still am.” He looked up at her again. “Is that all?”

Liv suddenly felt like she needed to muster a lot more courage for this next part. “Actually, sir, I want to talk to you about Katie Gibson…”

But Collins was quick to intercept her. “If you’re going to discuss what I think you’re going to, I suggest you save your breath, DI Austin. We are bringing down the full weight of the law on her, and my decision is final.”

She remembered the pitiful state of the woman she’d just visited, and the vision prompted her on. “I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any consequences, but…”

“DI Austin,” Collins interrupted. “I would remind you that she had a duty as a serving police officer to uphold the standards we set out to everyone, but what would be the point? Nor shall I remind you that she has cast unwarranted aspersions on the integrity of officers you serve alongside. Instead, I have to remind you about the personal damage she’s done… to Nikki. And for the first time since she moved to Derby, I’m actually glad she’s not here to hear you championing the woman who turned her life upside down. I suggest you remember where your loyalties are supposed to lie—with your colleagues, first and foremost.”

11

Jay Cooper was over the moon when it was revealed that he’d made bail. Clearly, he had some very loyal followers who would not want to see him locked up. Without them, he could still be sitting in a cell, his life in tatters.

He wanted nothing more to go home and have a long shower. He could only hope that the police hadn’t done too much to turn his place upside down.

Now that he was out in the open, he was starting to think about how he could get his life back on track. He refused to believe that this was it for him. He reeled off a list in his head of all the major celebrities who’d been cancelled, shunned by the public, and then a few years later would make a triumphant return. He could do the same, although he couldn’t afford to wait years. He’d have to start putting a plan together now.

He thought about a way of using Amber’s death to his advantage. It was a well-known fact in the world of showbiz that icons were only truly appreciated after they had died. He could imagine it—an unknown gem taken from them too soon. He had access to some of her online content, some pictures. He figured that the loss of a dear friend would surely win him some brownie points with the subscribers. Of course, he didn’t intend to rely on her for the rest of his career. After all, he was the star of the show. Just long enough to boost his brand until the police got off his case.

The rest of the group members would be a lot harder to sway, considering they all hated his guts. And the police had the footage of his requests. He still didn’t understand what the big deal was. He wasn’t asking them to do things that they probably would have done on live television. Maybe he could convince them to say to the police that it was all part of some kinky roleplay and there wasn’t any intent behind it. He wished he’d thought of this back when he was being interviewed by those two detectives. But he was sure he could turn it all around. He always found a way to keep himself going.

He opened the door to his house and closed it behind him, not ready to turn on the lights yet, content to just sit in the darkness and gather his thoughts. He closed his eyes, wishing this were all a nightmare that he would soon wake up from.

But when he opened his eyes again, he still felt trapped in the nightmare.

His eyes started to adjust to the dark, and as they did, he noticed a shadow moving in the corner of the room.

Probably a trick of the light, he figured. He got up to head to the kitchen and get himself a drink, fumbling for the light switch.

And that’s when he saw the second person standing there. Before he had time to react, they lunged at him, and once again, the world went black.

Caitlin Burns made her way back to the empty flat she’d once shared with Amber. She kept on waiting for them to perform their usual rituals, Amber being the first in getting the dinner ready, double-checking it with Caitlin, walking through the door, and then sitting down to watch some rubbish TV shows together while entertaining the idea that one day, that could be them.

Caitlin was full of regret over how she’d left things with Amber beforehand. Her friend had been hesitant about going on the show, describing herself as ‘camera shy’. Caitlin thought she was taking the piss as conversation came naturally to her. People gravitated to her because of her personality, not her looks. She had a great sense of humour and a very gentle nature. Even though she’d gone overboard to make herself look more ‘presentable’ to everyone else, there was an authenticity that set her above all the other women… an authenticity that Caitlin knew she secretly lacked.

Caitlin knew that the producers would never accept her on her own. The only way she’d get in was through Amber. And when Amber shared her concerns the night before the party, citing a social battery that would run out very quickly, Caitlin had snapped. To her, Amber was being a selfish bitch who didn’t give a damn about Caitlin’s own dreams. So, Caitlin had turned to the only weapon that she knew would have any effect, emotional blackmail. She told Amber that the only reason she’d made it that far in life was because of her. That without her, everyone else would eat Amber alive, and this was her now getting what she was owed. And Amber, out of a sense of obligation, had reluctantly agreed.

Caitlin hadn’t had the chance to speak to Amber properly since then. Sure, they’d spoken in front of the cameras, putting on a good show, but it wasn’t a genuine conversation, and it didn’t address the argument they’d faced beforehand. And while she was busy speaking with some of the other guests, Caitlin would look over and see Amber standing by herself, looking and feeling out of place. Any thought of going over to her was swept aside by the thrill of the party, with Caitlin constantly telling herself that they’d make up at some point, and then they’d be back on track.

But when Caitlin had come downstairs the next morning, Amber was dead, and there was nothing that could be done to revive her. All throughout the previous 48 hours, the last words she said to Amber kept running through her head. She wanted to be able to say to them that she’d told Amber, “You’ve been a great friend, and you’ve made my life so much better just by being in it.” That would have been nice. A good memory to hold onto. But instead, she’d have to live with, “Stop being such a selfish bitch and think about others for a change.”

And she’d never have the chance to make it right.

She blinked back tears as she closed the door to the flat, feeling truly alone. She took out her phone, seeing the Stairway to Heaven logo as a backdrop. All of a sudden, the show meant so little to her, and she couldn’t believe how much time and energy she’d poured into it. She’d have given anything to have her friend back.

She got up and went through the process of finding something she could bang in the microwave for twenty minutes, getting used to her new reality.

There were three heavy knocks at the door. Who the hell was calling her at this time? She didn’t answer it, just wanting to be left alone with her thoughts. But the banging persisted, and Caitlin suspected that the visitor wasn’t going to go away until she answered the door.

Leaving the microwave unattended, she walked over to the door and opened it, her eyes widening with recognition. She barely had enough time to get a word out before a hand clamped over her mouth.

She tried to fight against her aggressor, but she felt sharp fumes enter her nostrils, and before long, her world faded away.

He took out a notepad and pen and crossed the names Jay Cooper and Caitlin Burns off his list. There were three other names already accounted for, Ben Draper, Tina Waddingham, and Vinny Ellis. All five had been loaded and taken to the new destination.

There was no point in adding Amber’s name. This was all about them and what they meant to him. He still wasn’t sure what to think of Amber. She hadn’t seemed as fame hungry as everyone else. But the vindictive side of his mind wanted to lump her in with the rest of them.

Stairway to Heaven had been his fantasy, constantly staring him in the face, and they’d robbed him of it. He’d done a lot of the work to get these people noticed and they’d casually tossed him aside.

It hadn’t been so hard to round them all up. Partly because in all of their previous interactions, they’d looked on him with disdain. They’d never once considered the possibility that he might be dangerous, but he was very happy to prove them wrong.

He thought about the house they were all going to find themselves in. It was going to be perfect. He’d spent a long time planning this, making sure that the house was looking just like it did in Stairway to Heaven. But now, he was going to make sure that he had exactly the show he wanted, under his terms.

The cameras had been positioned throughout, thanks to an unknowing but no less welcome donation from Jay Cooper.

He watched them all on the monitor, waiting to see who would be the first to wake up.

So many times when he’d watched the show, the contestants had treated getting voted off as a life-or-death scenario.

He was now taking that to the literal extreme.

12

The conversation with Superintendent Collins could have gone down so much better.

She thought she was doing right by Katie, trying to help her in light of the incident with her sister. It had only seemed right. Liv hated feeling that sense of obligation to someone but knew that she couldn’t turn her back on the young woman so easily.

But Collins was right. At the end of the day, whether she’d meant to or not, Katie’s actions had harmed some of Liv’s closest friends, and even though she’d been exposed, they were still picking up the pieces.

Before she’d left the office, the superintendent had made the point that if she continued with this streak of sympathising with the enemy, she could lose the trust of her colleagues. It was hard to tell whether that was a warning or a threat.

She was tempted to throw back in his face that the big reason he was doing this was because of the breakdown of his relationship with Nikki, but given her own behaviour was borderlining on unprofessional, there was no way she could bring it up without coming across as a hypocrite. This is a battle I do not need to be fighting, especially with my commanding officer.

Olivia arrived home, settling onto the sofa that she shared with Dean, Briggs jumping up to greet her with much more enthusiasm.

Dean was in the kitchen preparing dinner. “Hope you don’t mind,” he replied apologetically. “It’s a pasta dish my mother used to make for me back in Italy.”

Liv could swear that whenever Dean reflected on his home country, his native accent that he’d tried so hard to bury became much more pronounced. “I’ll eat anything you give me,” she replied, impatient for him to come and join her on the sofa.

As they sat and ate dinner, Dean looked a little guilty as he ate. “I hope you don’t mind… but… I told my mum about our engagement.”

“I thought you said that we were going to keep it quiet from everyone else,” she said.

“We said that we weren’t going to tell anyone in our immediate circle because we didn’t want it impacting our day to day lives. My mum lives all the way over in Italy. Somehow, I don’t see her knowing upending everything,”

“Point taken,” she muttered, thinking that she’d already done the same thing, taking Clara in as a confidant. “How did she take the news?”

“Well, the first words that came out of her mouth were ‘what took you so long?’” he responded, a sentiment that’d clearly been on everyone else’s mind. “But she’s over the moon for me and says that I need to think about settling down. She’s even asking if we’ve got a date booked so that she can come over for the wedding.”

Liv beamed at that. She hadn’t had much time to get to know Dean’s mother, despite all the signs that she approved of the inspector.

It felt really exciting to know that a wedding was on the horizon at long last. And now, she was wondering why she’d put it off for so long in the first place.

“Who are you thinking of in terms of best man?” she queried.

“I’m trying to be selective,” he replied as he finished his dinner. “I’m trying to settle on someone who isn’t going to turn the stag-do into a 48-hour piss-up.”

“You could try Archie,” she suggested, though she couldn’t help wondering how good that was. While Archie could be counted on to keep things strait-laced, she was conscious that he might be too tightly wound for them to have any real fun. She was about to suggest Andrew, who’d always been the life and soul of a party, but decided against it, knowing how awkward it would be for Dean’s best man to be her ex.

“It’s still in the early stages, but I’m pretty sure we’ll work something out,” he suggested, feeling happy enough that at least they were moving ahead.

Suddenly, Liv’s phone went off. “It’s Mills. She’s asking if we can look after Ru for a few nights next week.”

“Sure,” Dean replied instantly, and that was something else she loved about him. Even though Mills wasn’t technically his family yet, he still went above and beyond for her, not needing any convincing at all. I really have got a good man.

“He’s a lovely kid, Ru,” he said fondly, and Liv remembered when the small boy had been asking Dean all about his job and Dean had been trying to find the watered-down version to give him. “I know that you and I have been on the fence about having kids before, but when I see him, I certainly see the benefit. The chance to guide a life. I guess… I always worry that I’m going to end up making the same mistakes my father did.”

The topic of Dean’s father was a sour point for them. His father had been an abusive man who’d made his and his mother’s lives a living hell until the day Dean had beaten him senseless in retaliation. Liv had tried to assure Dean many times that he was nothing like his dad, that he was a good detective and a good man, and he certainly had the capacity to be a good father. But it seemed that anxiety would always be with him.

Liv knew that she wasn’t without her own insecurities when it came to children. She’d always thought of herself as a detective first and foremost. Whenever she tried to form the idea of herself as a mother, it never took full form. Seeing baby Annie sleeping in her cot opened up the idea of having children again, but she still wasn’t sure how she would juggle it alongside her career as a police officer. She felt like she couldn’t be a detective and a mother at the same time.

“You’re not your dad,” Liv said for the hundredth time. “I’ll never get tired of reminding you. I think we’ve both got to get over a few hurdles before we can commit to being parents.”

“It’s perfectly possible,” Dean noted, walking over to Briggs. “Nikki’s managed it.”

That was true. DS Nikki Harding was passionate about her job, but her little girl Francesca always came first no matter what. In fact, Nikki’s transfer to Derby, practically upending her entire life, had been brought about by her desire to support her daughter through the loss of her daddy. Liv admired the dedication and hoped that one day, she would have the will to make a similar sacrifice for someone she loved.

“Do you think there’s a chance we’ll mess up the kid?” she asked quietly, as though ashamed of having to ask such a thing.

“Oh, there’s a very big chance,” Dean replied bluntly. “We’re two senior detectives working stressful jobs with no end of baggage behind us. No parents get it right. You think Mills and Max have been without their hardships? Of course not. But I know that when you and I have kids, there isn’t a thing we won’t do. This is as much your decision as it is mine. I’m not going to strongarm you into something you don’t feel ready for.”

Liv appreciated that. She could see a life with Dean taking shape and wanted to preserve it and fill it with things that had nothing to do with police work.

“Have you thought any more about where you want to get married?” he continued.

Liv’s dream wedding had taken many forms over the years, but the one consistent was that she wanted all their friends and family there to celebrate the occasion.

They finished the dinner and decided to take Briggs out for a late-evening walk, enjoying the tranquillity of Newquay and soaking in the scent of each other.

“Surprised how peaceful it is,” Dean noted, though he noticeably was reluctant to let Briggs off the lead in case someone else grabbed him.

“Looks like the arseholes have decided to give us a break for the night,” Liv muttered as she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

Suddenly, her phone started blaring in her pocket. She took it out and saw Archie’s ID tag. She rolled her eyes. “Why did I have to open my big mouth?”

She answered the phone. “Archie, please tell me it’s nothing more serious than a couple of pissheads who are having trouble finding their way home.” She struggled to keep the irritation out of her voice.

“Afraid not, Olivia,” he responded. “We need you back at the station now. If Dean’s there with you, bring him in too. This is an all-hands-on-deck scenario.”

Now, Liv was frightened, wondering what the hell was going on for Collins to call the entire Newquay police service back into the station at 8 pm. “Archie, tell me what’s going on.” Dean was listening into the conversation with growing concern.

“The five surviving Stairway to Heaven contestants? They’ve disappeared. All five, all at once. No trace of them.”

13

The first sensation that flittered through Caitlin’s mind was that her cheek was pressed against something cold.

She quickly realised she was lying on a marble tile, her entire body sprawled out. She tried to remember how she got there, to remember the intruder at her door who’d quickly subdued her.

She didn’t think she’d ever see him again.

Her brain sent a signal down to her limbs, willing them to move. Thankfully, everything still worked, though she could still feel the remnants of whatever she’d been drugged with echoing through her system.

For a moment, she wondered whether she was back in the rented house. It certainly looked the same. She must be in the main living room.

As she sat up, Caitlin realised that she wasn’t alone. Four other people were in the room with her. Specifically, everyone who’d partaken in the Stairway to Heaven audition.

Most of them were still unconscious, but they were starting to rouse one by one.

Tina was the first to wake up. She’d clearly been in the middle of dying her natural brown hair its trademark platinum blonde as evidenced by the mass discolouration.

“What the hell is happening?” she asked as she got up and walked around the room, taking in the surroundings.

“I don’t know,” Caitlin replied, rubbing her head as an almighty headache started forming. “I was at home by myself, and the next thing I know…” She remembered going to the front door and seeing… him standing there.

“It was the landlord,” she stammered, still not quite believing it. “Mr Doherty.”

She remembered the perpetually sour-faced landlord when he’d first offered them to use the house for his audition. He’d come across as one of those misanthropes who had it in for the younger generation, so to see him standing at her door, looking so animated… It was like looking at a different person.

Tina started looking around the place, though Caitlin wasn’t sure if she was looking for an exit or whether she was looking for valuables to feed her kleptomaniac tendencies.

Jay was waking up, and there was a part of Caitlin tempted to knock him out again. “I could do for that bastard.”

“Yeah, because you’ve clearly did a stand-up job earlier,” she muttered sarcastically.

Now the entire group were awake, and they were looking around, trying to find a way out. There was no sense of urgency in their movement… yet.

Vinny moved towards the front door… and it wouldn’t open. He pulled at the door handle with both hands, but it still wouldn’t budge. “Guys, can you help?” he pleaded, prompting them all to trying it together, but the door wouldn’t budge.

The front door clearly out of commission. The group looked around the house, the layout reminiscent of all the sets they’d seen on Stairway to Heaven, leaving Caitlin feeling like they were part of some kind of fucked-up tribute act.

But unlike the previous house, this one was for the most part devoid of personal effects. There was no sign that a family lived in the home. The only thing they could find was a picture of a smiling boy in a school uniform. Caitlin walked over and picked it up, trying to see if a memory sprung out.

“If you’re looking for an exit, don’t bother,” a voice announced over a loudspeaker. The group whipped around at the sound of the voice, huddling together and trying to find safety in numbers. “Nothing can be opened from the inside. I made sure of that.”

Caitlin turned around to address the loudspeaker installed in the corner of the ceiling. “Mr Doherty, let us out of here or we’re calling the police!” She was trying to sound intimidating, but she wasn’t sure how much success she was having, the quiver in her voice betraying her.

“It’s funny how you’re all so eager to be a part of that social experiment,” he muttered indignantly. “You know what that show does to people. It changes them. And not for the better. Believe me, I know.”

“Look, I can assure you, this is all just a misunderstanding,” Jay stepped forward, trying to showcase his suave businesslike persona. “I’m sure we can come to an arrange—”

“Shut the fuck up!” the voice snapped, silencing the group. “God, you’re so fucking entitled, the lot of you. Think that the whole world owes you something for nothing.”

“Is this how you normally treat paying tenants?” Vinny asked, trying to put a humorous spin on the situation, as he normally did. “We come to you in good faith, looked you up, give you good money for that house, and then you decide to…”

“You didn’t come to me,” Mr Doherty’s voice sounded through to their confusion. “I was nudging you towards my house. Had a few people point you in that direction. Knew you’d find my house eventually, I’ve been watching you all for quite a while now.”

“Why?” Tina exclaimed, her attention purely on the speaker. “We haven’t done anything to anyone.”

“Speak for yourself,” Caitlin muttered, her eyes blaring into Jay’s.

Ben had dropped his usual chilled and relaxed mentality, his man bun frizzled. He looked around for something to grab, settling on a chair, and began to hurl it at the speaker.

“No! Don’t, you fucking idiot!” Vinny exclaimed, holding him back. “I want to know what all this is about.”

Caitlin stepped up again. “So, why do all of this?” Her eyes widened in dawning horror. “Oh, my God. You were the one that killed Amber, weren’t you?”

Everyone held their breath as they waited for a confession.

“I’m actually quite sad about what happened to her,” the voice came through, no longer intimidating, just solemn. “Of all the people in your clique, she was the only one who could have passed for a decent person. She was the only one who didn’t want to be there. I knew she was strong-armed into it.”

“Did you kill her?” Caitlin demanded, no longer thinking about her own safety, simply thinking about her lost friend.

But the man behind the speaker didn’t answer straight away. When he finally spoke, he said, “I’m going to be conducting a little social experiment. All of you are so eager to be on camera, to have the worst of you laid out for everyone to see. But it’s all going to be for nothing, isn’t it? I mean, there can only be two winners. So, you guys can tear into each other, you can show the world who you really are, but there’s only ever, what? One or two winners for this thing? So, is it ever really worth it? Chipping away at yourself?”

The voice was full of emotion, and Caitlin wondered if Mr Doherty was speaking from personal experience.

“So, as you’ve all already noticed, all of the doors are locked, so the only way you are getting out of this house is if I let you out. And fortunately for you, some of you will be able to walk out of here intact… more or less.”

“Some of us?” Tina repeated, sounding nervous.

“In the next hour, one of you is going to die,” the voice explained simply, as though it were a casual lecture.

“Please don’t,” Ben pleaded, all bravado now gone.

“Me?” the voice asked, surprised. “I’m not going to do a damn thing to any of you. You’re going to be the ones that land the killing blow.”

“What?” they all exclaimed together.

“You have three hours to decide amongst you which of you is going to die. Otherwise, I will kill you all. It’ll be interesting to see the results.”

The speaker sounded off, and the group looked amongst each other. All of a sudden, they weren’t thinking about solidarity or comfort in each other. They were all frightened people waiting to be pounced on.

An analysis was going through their minds as they tried to weigh up who should die.

Eyes darted about the room, trying to see if there was anything that could be used as a weapon.

Nobody dared say anything. They were too busy watching everyone else. The spell was already working as each member of the group was gripped by the same singular rule of engagement—one of them needed to die.

14

All officers were gathered at the station, handing out the relevant information regarding the development.

Once they’d dropped Briggs back at home, Liv and Dean had hastily changed into suits and headed out. So much for a quiet night in.

Liv and Dean rushed to the main CID office where Archie was already gathering all the relevant notes. “Ma’am, sorry to be dragging you out at this hour.”

Liv waved it away, more concerned with personal developments. “Arch, fill me in on everything that’s going on.”

“Somebody posted bail for Jay Cooper, and I got a little suspicious about it, so I decided to go round and have a chat with him, see if there was anything else,” Archie acknowledged. “At first, I thought it was his zealot fans that’d posted the bail. But when I got to the house, he was nowhere to be seen. Front door was wide open. At first, I thought he was going to target Caitlin Burns, so I headed to her flat to warn her. Again, no sign of him. Shortly afterwards, I had a call from Ben Draper’s landlord saying that he’d reported a scuffle. I headed down there, and next thing I know, I’m looking at a home invasion. I decided to check on the other two, and they’re all missing.”

“Fuck,” Liv muttered, angry that Cooper had been released from police custody. “How long ago did this happen? How long have they been officially missing?”

“About…” The sergeant checked the time on his phone. “...Ninety minutes. Could have been longer, though.”

She tried to think of who could have taken them all and for what purpose.

“You don’t think it’s possible they all did a runner?” Tim suggested as he clacked away on his keyboard. “Maybe they realised the jig was up and decided to skip town before we arrested them.”

“Come on, Tim,” Liv replied. “You honestly think it’s going to take five people to pour a single bottle of champagne down a woman’s throat?” He went silent at this. “Not only that, but you’ve seen the people we’re dealing with. They’ll happily turn on each other if it means saving their own skins. Do you really think they’re going to risk getting held up for each other?”

“Point taken,” he replied, going back to his desk. as Clara rushed into the room. She was still wearing her casual wear, clearly about to settle into a quiet evening with Diana. Liv admired the dedication, especially from a civilian. “You wanted to see me, Olivia?”

“Yes, I need you to triangulate the phones of all the people involved in the Stairway to Heaven party,” Liv commanded, hoping that there was a trace they could pick up on. “See if you can work out where they might be and home in on at least one of the signals. And let me know the second you have something.”

“On it, boss,” Clara replied before rushing back to her workstation.

Liv looked to Andrew and Diana, who were waiting for instruction. “I want uniform ready to go as soon as we’ve locked onto somebody.”

“Do we need to call on some AFOs?” Andrew asked.

“God I hope not,” she fired back. The last thing I need is this whole situation turning into a bloodbath.

She left to speak to Collins, who was managing a stress ball. Clearly, this was his latest attempt at fending off a panic attack. “How the hell can five people disappear from their homes without anyone being any the wiser?”

“We’re still working it out,” she offered, knowing it was the only answer on hand.

“You know there is a very real possibility we could get somewhere and be dealing with another body,” Collins cautioned, always one to give the reality check.

“Well, we’ll have to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Liv snapped as her thoughts turned to the case. “And besides, if this person’s endgame was them dying, then they would have killed them the same way as Amber— poison most likely—and make sure no one was any the wiser. But they took them all for a reason.”

“We still don’t even have a proper motive for them killing Amber Heatley,” he iterated. “If it was getting rid of a spoilt brat wrapped up in a hatred of reality TV, then maybe I could get on board with that. But this? I see all these pieces that aren’t quite connecting.”

“Right now we just need to focus on getting them back in one piece,” Liv stated, knowing that Collins would prioritise a good result first and foremost. “You might want to contact Dr Pike and see if she’ll come in. We don’t know how unpredictable this bastard’s going to be, and frankly, I don’t trust myself not to set him off.”

“I’ll see if we can sort something,” Collins replied, dialling the phone.

Liv excused herself and went looking for Archie. “Let me know if any witness statements come rolling in. If anyone’s seen anything suspicious or if they’ve witnessed someone with a van or vehicle.” It was a long shot, she knew, but she had to exhaust every single angle.

“Tim, while you’re at it, go over all the footage that we’ve gathered from the launch party. I need to see if there’s anything that we might have missed the first time around.”

“Sure,” DC Harris responded. Liv felt like she was firing out blanks on all cylinders. She needed something concrete. If I’m not quick, someone’s going to be dead by sunrise.

Her thoughts once again turned to Stairway to Heaven. Dear God, how have I spent so much time obsessing over some crappy TV show?

But she kept on thinking that it all came back to that show. She didn’t know if the situation had become absurd enough for her to ask her colleagues to look up old episodes of a show that showed all the participants screwing each other over or just plain screwing.

She wondered if there were any other contacts that they could hit up, like the producers of the show or agents—someone who had a link to that world.

“I want to start looking over the paper trail,” Liv decided, trying to point the investigation in a specific direction. “I want to look at how they all came to be in that house together.”

“Well, according to Ben Draper’s witness statement, someone told them about the house and said that it would be a good way for them all to recreate the tone and atmosphere of the show,” Tim stated, glancing over his notes.

“I think we need to speak with the landlord,” Liv suggested throwing on her coat. “Dean, do you think you can hold the fort until I get back?”

“Sure,” he replied, fielding commands to the group.

“Archie, we need to have a word with Mr Doherty and see if we can get to the bottom of this,” she instructed as they headed out the door.

During the drive, Clara called them. “Boss, just letting you know I’ve been looking at the group’s phones, and I was able to get a signal on Tina’s phone.”

“Go on,” she instructed, motioning to Archie to write down the area code.

“Do you think that the kidnapper could have taken them to separate locations?” Archie considered, before squinting as he suggested that their job was about to get a lot more difficult.

“I bloody hope not.” They did not have the manpower to visit five separate locations all at once. “Our first bet is to see if the landlord knows anything, picked up on any tones.”

“You really think he’s going to know about the ins and outs of a group of twenty-year-olds?” Archie asked, knowing that most landlords would keep their noses out.

“I would,” she began and then stopped as though she’d had a lightbulb moment. “When he led us up to the house to have a look at the cameras, he made a point of complaining about the mess and breakage that’d been left behind. The man’s not an idiot. He must have known what kind of state they’d be getting into.”

“I’m sorry, Liv, I’m not following you.”

“You saw that house, it was practically pristine. I would have to work until I’m ninety and drastically save before I could afford a house like that. So, why would you honestly risk it being turned into a shittip by a couple of kids who are definitely not going to be concerned about breaking anything?”

Archie wasn’t able to provide a decent answer. That would be left to Mr Doherty to answer.

15

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Caitlin insisted, trying to be the moral centre of the group. “This isn’t right.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Tina spat, pacing up and down, going out of her mind. “He’s going to kill us all if we don’t do something!”

“How do you even know that?” Caitlin replied, trying to keep calm. “Last time I checked, there’s five of us and only one of him.”

“How do you know he’s not going to try and gas us all?” Ben suggested as he started looking over the walls for anywhere that gas could emit from.

Unwilling to entertain such bullshit, Caitlin grabbed one of the chairs, walked over to the window, and hurled it against the glass…

…but it didn’t break. She tried again, whacking it over and over until the physical effort had exhausted her. She turned to the other members of the group who were just standing there. “Feel free to step in at any time!” she panted.

Tina fumbled around in her pocket for a phone but came out empty. “The bastard must have taken our phones.” She looked to the clock on the wall, the only way they could tell the time. “We have just over fifty minutes before somebody has to die.

“No,” Caitlin replied firmly. “We don’t have to do this. I’m not pandering to some arsehole.”

“So, you’re happy to get us all killed just for the sake of your moral pride?” Jay spat, making sure to keep his distance from the rest of the group. “Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I plan on living.”

“You realise that he’s probably not going to let us go,” Caitlin suggested, feeling more and more like she was the only remaining voice of reason. “You really think if we kill one of us, he’s going to just let us walk out of here with no strings attached? We know who he is. Does he honestly think that no one is going to go to the police?”

“Maybe if we promise to keep his name out of it, he’ll let us go,” Vinny implied shakily.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” she insisted, wondering what it was she saw in this group. They were all selfish, opportunistic pricks who’d gladly stab each other in the back…

…and she’d been willing to throw away her friendship with her childhood friend for them. What the hell had she been thinking?

“Let’s say we do have to kill someone,” Jay suggested to their sudden alarm. “Who is it going to be?”

“You’re not seriously going to entertain that guy’s ramblings, are you?” Vinny asked incredulously.

“I’m not saying I would, but if it was the only way any of us are going to get out of here, then we need to decide who it’s going to be,” he explained, trying to fend off the looks of accusation. “Well, forgive me for wanting to live.”

“Well, it definitely can’t be me,” Ben explained indignantly. “I’ve got a son at home that I don’t want growing up without a father.”

Some of them snorted. From what they knew about Ben, he wasn’t exactly Father of the Year material. He only saw his kid once every four months and that was mostly because his ex was chasing him down for child support.

“We are not having this discussion,” Caitlin insisted, determined to keep moral order. “We have no right to decide who lives and who dies.”

“Well, there are a few factors that we can take into account,” Jay suggested as he went on. “If any of us have a criminal record, it’s not like we’re going to be productive members of society. They’re just going to drag everybody else down.” He turned to glance at Tina with less than subtle eyes, prompting everyone else to follow suit.

“What are you all looking at me for?” she stammered, backing away.

“Oh, come on, you’re the one who’s got several convictions for shoplifting,” he exclaimed pointing at her.

“Yeah, shoplifting. That’s hardly a capital offence,” she fired back. “And if we’re talking about a real menace to society, I think it’s safe to say that you two definitely fit the bill better than me.” She pointed to Jay and Vinny as she spoke. “Putting up all those cameras so people could perv on us?”

“Hey, it was his idea!” Vinny insisted. “I wasn’t happy about it.”

“Where was this moral outrage a few nights ago?” Jay demanded. “You didn’t mind going along with it then?”

“Well, that implies a greater range of options than what you presented,” Vinny suggested.

“Why don’t we draw straws?” Ben suggested. “And whoever draws the shortest…” he mimed a throat-slitting gesture.

“I’m not drawing any straws,” Caitlin snapped. “I’m going to work at getting out of here.” She resumed looking through all the possible exits, but Mr Doherty had designed the house to be impenetrable. The only way any of them were getting out was through the landlord, and he was clearly in no hurry to let them go.

“You know,” Jay loudly announced, as though the whole living room was a performing stage. “When I think about everything that’s gone wrong for us… it all comes back to you.”

“Oh, and how did you figure that one out?” Caitlin asked, hands on hips, not at all impressed by Jay’s attempted posturing.

“You were the one who was so insistent on bringing Amber into the fold. She was meant as our golden ticket, you said,” he continued. “And for whatever reason, he…” He pointed to the speakers in the absence of the landlord. “...decided that she had to die. That got the police involved, and now everyone’s coming crashing down on all of us.”

Caitlin laughed. “How the hell did you come to that bullshit logic?”

She looked to the others, hoping there’d still be some solidarity.

But looking at the likes of Tina, Ben and Vinny, she could see the wheels turning in their heads, all feeling put out by the events of the last few days and needing a scapegoat.

“Guys, you’re not seriously buying into this bullshit, are you?” she asked backing away. “This is him twisting everything…”

“I’m not having any part of this,” Vinny exclaimed, holding up his hands.

“You have a choice, Vincent,” Jay insisted, not taking his eyes off Caitlin. “You’re either the butcher or the cattle.”

But Vinny continued stepping aside, and Caitlin could tell that even if he didn’t want to have a part in murdering her, he had no issue with standing back and letting it happen.

Caitlin looked to Tina pleadingly but saw no warmth in her eyes. She was outnumbered by the group three to one.

“Unless you want to suggest anybody else for the chop,” Jay said, reciting a phrase he’d heard several times on the show. “I suggest you choose your next move carefully.”

It would be simpler for her to just pick someone to die. But she thought about all that she’d lost for the sake of this stupid show, and she didn’t want to change herself any more than she already had done.

She ran through the house, the others pursuing her. She wasn’t familiar with the layout, so she didn’t know where she was heading. She knew that there were limited places she could hide, and they would check through every room to find her.

Caitlin ran to one of the spare bedrooms and barricaded the door behind her, pushing a cabinet against it, and then turned to the window from which there was a forty-foot drop.

She tried to pry it open, but there was nothing to grasp. Mr Doherty had clearly removed all of the hatches. She pounded on the glass, but the only effect she achieved was bruised knuckles. She pounded over and over, praying that it would break.

On the other side of the room, people were trying to kick the door in.

She grabbed a lamp and threw it against the glass in frustration. It didn’t even make a scratch.

This was it. This was how she was going to die. She tried to tell herself that she’d done the right thing. That she hadn’t lost herself. But that sense of morality was going to do little good to her.

She wondered if there was an afterlife awaiting her. Maybe she’d see Amber again and she could say all the things to her she never got to say in this life.

16

Liv and Archie approached the house registered to Alan Doherty and his wife Susan, hoping that the man could give them some clarity on the guests. Liv knocked on the door with excessive vigour.

“Calm down,” Archie suggested. “Unless you want to pay for a new door.”

But Liv paid no attention. They were already looking at the possibility of up to five dead bodies if they didn’t act quickly.

The door opened and Mrs Doherty stood in front of them. She had short reddish-brown hair and was in her late fifties. She looked perturbed by the intrusion. “Can I help you both?”

“DI Austin and DS Elmhurst,” Liv introduced rapidly, looking past the woman into the hallway. “Is your husband in?”

“Alan, no, he’s out running a few errands,” the woman replied, looking primed to close the door in their faces.

“We need to speak to him about him lending the house to the Stairway to Heaven contestants,” she instructed, not knowing how much time they had but sure it was running out. “Do you know where we can find him?”

“Why is it so important you have to speak to him now?” she asked impatiently. “Can’t you just leave us alone?”

“Not when there are five people’s lives at stake!” Liv snapped, wanting to shake the information out of the woman.

“Why should I care about what happens to five spoilt, overgrown children?” she asked before catching herself. But it was too late. The damage had already been done.

“We never said anything about who was at stake,” Liv noted quietly, her fury more palpable. “Mrs Doherty, do you know anything about the abduction of the five contestants that occurred earlier this evening? I need you to tell me the truth now, or I can bring a police car around and march you down to the station in handcuffs.”

She paused, before folding her arms. “No. I’m not betraying my husband. We’ve been married for thirty-nine years, and we’ve been through so much together. I’m not going to turn my back on him when he needs me the most.”

So, it was the fucking landlord that had kidnapped everyone. Liv chided herself for not coming to that conclusion sooner.

“Mrs Doherty, regardless of what you think of these people, they don’t deserve to die,” Archie pleaded.

“You probably won’t be saying that by the end of tonight,” she suggested ominously with a hint of a smirk.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Liv asked as the woman pulled out her mobile, and for a moment, the inspector hoped she was going to call her husband.

Instead, she showed them a screenshot of a smiling boy in a school uniform. “This is our son Owen,” she announced before looking at the picture with fondness. “When he got to twenty-two, he was a strapping lad. He had a very sweet nature about him. But he was a sensitive boy, not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. A lot of people mistook that for cowardice.”

Liv thought back to all the archived episodes she’d watched and remembered a young man who struggled to exist alongside the lively crowd, and indeed, one person had referred to him as spineless.

“He went on that show as a contestant and didn’t really think about what he’d be getting himself into.” She looked at the picture again, her eyes full of regret. “If I’d known what he’d be facing, I’d have locked him in his room and kept him in there for his own safety. I guess that’s my failing as a mother.”

Liv wanted to call a halt to the story and get back to finding the five missing people, but she felt that if she was going to save anybody tonight, she’d need the full story. Maybe I can use these facts later on.

“You imagine having all the eyes of the world on you, expecting you to be a certain way, holding you to standards that it’s impossible to live up to,” she continued mournfully, running a finger over the image clearly preferring to remember her son as he was.

“What happened to him?” Liv asked, dreading the outcome.

“It wasn’t just the people on the show who were bullying him. It was all the online comments that got to him. And I tell you, it went far beyond taking the piss. I’ve seen the comments people posted, and a lot of the time, it was ‘why don’t you fuck off and die?’ And he certainly tried to. He tried to slice his own wrists. I remember seeing all the water pouring out from the bath, and Alan had to break the door down. I honestly thought he was already gone. Alan dragged him out of the bath, tied towels around his wrists and sat with him until the ambulance came.” She stopped, the effort to speak clearly taking a lot out of her.

“I’m so sorry,” Liv offered remorsefully. No parent should ever have to go through that. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. “Where is Owen now?”

“He’s in a psychiatric hospital,” she explained, a steel in her voice. “He’s been in and out of them for the past eighteen months. Alan wrote to the programme afterwards to complain about the treatment of our son, but they refused to hear us out. Said that they couldn’t help it if Owen refused to disclose any mental health problems before coming onto the programme, never considering that maybe he wouldn’t have had mental health issues if it weren’t for that fucking show. We just wanted somebody to take responsibility, and nobody was willing to address the damage that show does to people. It changes them, and not for the better.”

Liv nodded along, finding it hard to disagree with the woman’s words.

“So, what exactly was your husband’s plan?” she asked, voice filled with dread.

“He’s going to show everybody what kind of people that show attracts. He’s not going to kill any of them. But he’s going to watch them tear each other apart and then let the world see,” she explained in a tone that was supposed to be triumphant but instead smacked of sorrow, no matter how much she tried to will it.

“Mrs Doherty, I can’t even begin to imagine what you and your husband have gone through, and for that, you have my deepest sympathies,” Liv began, trying to understand the mother’s pain and how it’d driven her and her husband to such extremes. “And I’m not going to stand here and justify anything that’s been done to your son. But these people who’ve been rounded up, they don’t deserve to die.”

Mrs Doherty went quiet. “I am sad over what happened with the girl who died. Amber, I think her name was. Alan told me about her. Said she was very polite, and she didn’t deserve to die.”

Then why did he end up killing her?

“Do you realise that if you go through with this, you and your husband will face serious charges of kidnapping and multiple murder. And I can promise you that regardless of the circumstances that drove you to it, the Crown Prosecution Service will come down heavily on you both.” When that didn’t seem to sway her, she tried a different tactic. “Owen needs you. I don’t doubt that you and your husband are doing everything you can to look after him. But if you go through with this and people die, then who is going to take care of him? I’m not asking you to help us because we’re telling you to, or because these people aren’t worth the extra time, but because you love your son.”

Mrs Doherty was quiet as she considered her position, the conflict spread all over her. Liv tried not to press her for an answer despite knowing that every minute that passed risked them coming across another body.

“Okay,” she said finally, looking like the decision was taking so much out of her. “I’ll help you find him. But please go easy on him. He always had a close relationship with our son, and it broke him in a way that he’s struggled to recover.”

Liv tried to be sympathetic as they hustled Mrs Doherty out of the house and towards the police car. “So, where did he take them?”

“To a property he owns.”

“Can you give us the address?”

Please God, don’t let me be too late.

17

Alan Doherty watched the contestants through a series of cameras that he’d hidden throughout the house, looking disappointed with the results.

Owen’s suicide attempt had broken him. He’d lost a part of himself that he could never get back. And when he failed to get the programme to acknowledge any wrongdoing on their part—standing by and allowing their son to be abused on the programme and in the media—he knew he had to take action.

It wasn’t enough to write an angry post online. He had to take action and show them the damage it did, how the show could take seemingly ordinary people, dangle a prize before them, and turn them into monsters fighting over it.

He’d heard about a group of Newquay locals looking to stage an audition tape to send off to the producers to prove their suitability and were looking for places that they could rent. Having rented out several luxurious houses around Newquay, he knew he could offer them exactly what they needed. And they would be the perfect people for his experiment.

He remembered when they all came into the house, all believing that they were about to become big stars and that he should be grateful that they’d chosen his house to set the stage for their audition.

The only one he’d really liked was Amber. She’d been very polite and courteous to him, not a single smack of entitlement.

He was very sad when she died. If he’d had to pick someone to make it through in one piece, it would have been her. He was worried that her death would impact his plans moving forward. But once it looked like the police weren’t going to charge any of them, he moved onto his next plan.

He moved onto a rented property that he kept fairly well hidden and made sure that none of the locks worked, that all of the glass was unbreakable, and that there was a camera in every room. It’d been very costly renovating the entire house, but he told himself that this was the right move. He owed it to Owen.

And watching from his car a short distance from the house, he watched as the group debated amongst themselves which one was going to die. Despite himself, he admired the young woman’s resolve. She could have just thrown her principles away to attack her so-called friends, but she wasn’t willing to become a murderer. It was a shame the same couldn’t be said for the others.

As he watched her in one of the bedrooms, crouching in the corner, Alan felt himself quivering, realising that he wasn’t watching a spoilt adult in arrested development with a bloated sense of entitlement but a terrified young woman at the end of her life.

He almost bolted from the car in an attempt to call the whole thing off, but then he remembered the whole point of this exercise.

The people needed to see the footage from this night. They needed to see how people were willing to devolve into animals for a chance at survival.

He didn’t give much thought to his own life after this was over. He’d lost a lot of that with Owen.

Suddenly, someone knocked on the door of his car, and he was alarmed to see his wife standing outside… along with two police officers. “Patricia… what have you done?”

Caitlin cowered in the corner of the room as the group fought to get in, wondering what she should do.

She could hear the chest of drawers starting to budge…

…and then she heard the sound of the door being opened, the sound of heavy footsteps, followed by “POLICE!” and then, “You’re all under arrest for attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, however, it may harm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later go on to rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

There was the sound of something moving against the door, but with no luck getting in. Then there was a knock. “Caitlin? It’s DI Austin. I just wanted to let you know that you’re safe. No one’s going to harm you. Do you think you can open the door so we can make sure you’re all right?”

Caitlin wasn’t sure if she knew what to do and numbly pulled herself to her feet, stumbling, the adrenaline still coursing through her veins. She moved the cabinet away from the door, surprising herself with the show of strength. And then she opened it to see the concerned faces of DI Austin and DS Elmhurst looking at her.

“Are you okay?” Liv asked. The question set something off in Caitlin, something she couldn’t control, and then all the stress of the last few days came pouring out of her and she collapsed into Olivia’s arms.

“It’s okay, you’re perfectly safe,” Liv shushed, holding her close.

They escorted her down the stairs, wrapping her in a blanket, and leading her towards an audience. The other four people were all sitting in a living room, all handcuffed.

“You’ve got to get me out of these!” Vinny pleaded, gesturing to his handcuffed hands. “I never tried to kill her.”

“Well, you didn’t exactly spring to her defence,” Archie spat back.

“It was her or us,” Jay insisted, not quite ready to relinquish his part as the ringleader. “You don’t understand. He would have killed us if we hadn’t acted.”

Liv paused, trying to weigh up whether to let them know the truth. But looking at these people, all of whom had almost taken a life and were now acting like they’d done nothing wrong, it made her blood boil.

“It’s funny you say that,” she said, her fury palpable. “We spoke to Mr Doherty just outside, and apparently, he had no intention of killing anyone. The whole point of that exercise was to show people how easily contestants could be persuaded to bring out their worst.” She took a fair amount of pleasure as the penny dropped. “So basically, you tried to kill an innocent woman for nothing. You might like to think about that when you’re sitting in a prison cell.”

Leaving the horrified people alone, Liv escorted Caitlin out of the building and over to the ambulance. “You’re going to be okay,” she told the young woman as another blanket was wrapped around her, but Caitlin barely registered the detective’s presence. “Listen, Caitlin, I want you to know that you should be proud of yourself. You stuck to your guns. And there aren’t many people who would have done that in your situation.”

But the woman looked too mortified to take the compliment, and Liv thought back to what she’d been told about the Dohertys’ son. The cycle of harm just keeps on going.

“So, what do you think is going to happen to all the people inside?” Archie asked, looking back at the house which felt less like a home and more like a fortress.

“Well, I suppose a lawyer is probably going to make a case for diminished capacity, which isn’t technically a lie, I suppose,” Liv suggested, though there was a part of her that did want to see the four face their day in court.

“I’d say coercion is going to be a big part of their defence,” the sergeant implied, watching as they were brought out by armed officers. “I mean, they probably wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t been forced into those circumstances.”

That was not the right thing to say, and Liv instantly turned on him. “Archie, they chose to kill one of their friends to save their own skins.”

“Are you telling me that if you were in that position, you would not do the same?” Archie asked, and Liv knew that there would always be a time when she’d have to weigh up her life against somebody else’s. So instead, she avoided answering the question directly.

“Caitlin didn’t,” she replied, gesturing to the woman sitting in the ambulance. “Despite everyone else turning on her, she refused to become a murderer.” She felt like she’d judged the young woman too harshly beforehand. Clearly, she was a stronger and more moral person than the inspector had given her credit for.

“Right now, I want to get Alan Doherty set up in an interview room,” she insisted. “I don’t care how late it is, I want to put a bow on this case.”

“Perhaps you should head home and get some rest first,” Archie suggested. “We still need to find out how and why he killed Amber, and I’d prefer not to be nodding off during the interview.”

18

Archie had been right. With fatigue starting to set in, there was no way Liv would have been able to get through the interview without dosing herself up on caffeine. So, she’d been content to let the man sit in a prison cell overnight while she went home to Dean’s loving embrace.

The next morning, she and Archie took their places alongside Alan Doherty, who looked like the life had been drained out of him.

“I’m switching the tape on now. This is Detective Inspector Olivia Austin commencing an interview with Mr Alan Doherty at 9:25 am. Also present is Detective Sergeant Archie Elmhurst.” She began laying out all the evidence the team had gathered—bank statements, invoices, pictures, screenshots from cameras, fingerprint analysis—enough to convict the man several times over.

“Mr Doherty, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence against you,” Liv explained, wanting to be sympathetic but also conscious about what had almost happened last night. “We know that you sanctioned turning that property into a fortress for the sole purpose of terrorising the group. We also know that you threatened to kill them all if they didn’t kill one of their own. They’ve all given their statements. Obviously, your wife has refused to give any statements.”

Mr Doherty sat back in his chair. “Whatever happens to me, I want you to leave Patricia out of it,” he insisted. “I was the one who did the whole planning and kidnapped all of them, so if anyone is going to take the blame, it should be me. Our son is going to need at least one parent taking care of him.”

There was a part of Liv that admired how even though his wife had been the one to lead them to his doorstep, he didn’t hold it against her. Perhaps because they’ve both been living with the same pain for too long.

“You know, it’s funny. After Owen was first hospitalised, we considered separating because we couldn’t see it through. But once I knew what I was doing with those brats, I felt like I could be the man Patricia needed me to be.”

“And you felt you could do that by killing five people?” Olivia asked. “You say that you had no intention of killing anyone, and while I’m inclined to believe you, a young woman almost died yesterday because of you.”

“I wasn’t the one who was going to kill her,” Mr Doherty insisted. “They were the ones who were going to deal the killing blow.”

“You know, one could argue—and many do—that pointing a gun at somebody’s head and forcing them to pull the trigger would still count as murder,” Archie chimed in.

“If they’d stuck together throughout the entire hour, they could have made it out of there alive. A little traumatised, perhaps, but nothing that they couldn’t recover from.”

“Tell that to Caitlin Burns,” the inspector retorted, thinking about the young woman retreating into herself, barely reacting to the help that was being offered to her. “She chose not to become a murderer, and yet she still would have died if we hadn’t got there.”

“That was unfortunate,” Mr Doherty replied, looking down at the table, trying to push back his guilt and tell himself it was worth it. “But the message needed to go out. People need to see how that show changes people for the worse.”

“I’m not going to sit through a police interview and debate the ethics of reality television,” Liv declared, bored with the topic altogether. “But to kidnap five people and coerce them into killing each other, how does that make you any better?”

“It doesn’t,” he replied. “But the message I was trying to get out was more important than how I felt.”

“Well, nobody is going to get that message,” Liv told him. “Because we seized all the footage from the cameras that night and will make sure that they never see the light of day.”

“You can’t do that!” Mr Doherty roared. It was clear the possibility of a long prison sentence inside didn’t unnerve him, just the idea that all of his work would be for nothing. “The people have a right to know the damage that these shows can do.”

“I like to think that we can trust people to come to their own conclusions,” Archie suggested before adding knowingly, “for the most part.”

“These people deserve complete scrutiny for what they did to my son!” he pleaded, and he seemed less like a demented killer and more like a damaged father who’d been unable to do anything with his grief.

“Your son was the victim of internet bullying,” Liv replied, wanting to sympathise with the man but her sympathy only taking her so far. “I don’t know your son, so you tell me, if he were sitting here and he was coherent and he knew exactly what you’ve done, how do you think he would feel?”

Mr Doherty looked completely blindsided by the question. He didn’t answer at first, possibly because he was terrified by the ugly truth. Finally, he answered, “I think he’d probably hate my guts… but I hope he would understand why I did what I did.”

“I understand your grief, Mr Doherty, I really do,” Liv pleaded, “but all of the things you’ve done to prove your point? Kidnapping, murdering a woman in a horrific manner? I mean for God’s sake… how could you do that to Amber? The last few minutes of her life were spent in complete agony.”

Now, Mr Doherty looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“The champagne bottle. It was laced with acid, and that’s what killed her,” Archie reminded him, a little disgusted that he’d barely given any thought to the woman who’s started this spree.

There was a moment’s silence at the table, and Liv wondered if he was going to give another half-arsed justification before he came out with, “I didn’t kill Amber.”

“Of course, you did. You were one of the only people up at the house!” Liv insisted, wondering if this was another trick.

“Why would I do it?” the man asked. “We all know that I had no problem with risking their lives to prove a point, but I had planned to stick everyone in that house as soon as possible. If anything, her dying brought the wrong kind of attention my way. I just figured that she’d been killed by people at the party who were jealous of her.” He looked mournful. “It’s sad, really. She seemed like a sweet girl when I spoke with her. If I could have let her off the hook, I would have. She definitely didn’t deserve to be there. She reminded me a little bit of Owen, stepping into a world he was ill-suited to. And even if I wanted her dead, I wouldn’t kill her in such a cruel manner.”

Liv and Archie sat there in silence, feeling like their moment of victory had come crashing down on them, setting them back at square one.

She decided they needed a break to collect their thoughts. “Interview terminated at 9:48 am.” The detectives got up to leave the room when Alan looked sharply in their direction.

“The young woman who nearly died,” Mr Doherty asked, suddenly struck with conscience. “How is she doing? Is she all right?”

“She’s heavily traumatised, and her family are talking about checking her into a mental health unit,” Liv explained grimly, wondering if he’d appreciate the irony of subjecting the woman to the same pain that his own son was enduring.

“So what are your thoughts, Arch?” she queried as she helped herself to a coffee.

“Well, once we had him bang to rights, he had no problem telling us all about his own plans for the group, but when we mentioned Amber, he was completely blindsided,” Archie iterated as he helped himself to some water. “That he would confess to everything else but deny that doesn’t make sense. It’s not like it will make any difference to the legal charges he’ll face. And he says that he would never do anything so cruel. Again, I’m willing to believe him on that front. Based on all the talks we’ve had with the contestants, I think we can assume it wasn’t them. They had too much to lose from killing her.”

“Well, I’m not about to write her death off as an accident,” Liv declared angrily, frustrated that she had six people who were guilty of everything except for the murder of Amber Heatley. “Someone killed her, and I’m not closing this case until I find out who.”

“Then we’d better have another look at the trail,” Archie suggested, sharing that determination.

19

Liv and Archie went over all the information they could find on the house and all the people that were associated with the crime.

“You know, I’m beginning to think we might have been looking at this the wrong way,” Archie suggested. “Throughout this whole case, we’ve been wondering why Amber would be targeted, considering she had no real love for the position. And by all accounts, she was a very sweet-natured person. I’ve been looking over the information provided by her parents and cross-referencing it with everything we’ve got on the other five contestants, and I can’t find anything that might make for a good motive. So, either we’re not looking hard enough… or she was never meant as the intended victim.”

Liv nodded as she took this onboard. It certainly felt like the case where the other five were concerned. They’d certainly make much better targets. “So, it’s possible that the champagne could have been meant for somebody else, and Amber must have drunk it by accident.”

They paid a visit to Clara to replay the moment in the footage where Amber had died. They watched her walk around the room in a daze before she picked up a bottle, noticing the ribbon attached to it. She gave a snort and tore the label off before glugging the bottle. Seconds later, she started convulsing and clutching her throat before she fell to the floor.

“Let’s go back a few hours,” she instructed, and Clara did so. She kept going, trying to trace the movements of the group members until finally… “Stop!”

The footage resumed, and Caitlin came into view setting the offending bottle down on the table, marvelling at the ribbon attached to it. Olivia looked over her own notes and time stamps for how the evening had progressed. That would have been the same time the pizza guy had turned up, and according to the notes, aside from him and the landlord, nobody else had approached the house around that time.

It hadn’t taken them long to deduce the location of the pizza delivery man. Normally, Liv would have been disappointed with how easily he was brought in, but she’d been given the runaround so many times already that she’d settle for an easy win.

His name was Aiden Mills, and he’d carried an infatuation for a long time, one that had blossomed into an unhealthy obsession, like a parasite. But not for Amber. For Caitlin.

They’d been at school together, and he’d always had a crush on her, always encouraging her whenever she auditioned for the school play. She thought that the attention from him was cute, but he knew that he never stood a chance with someone like her. She’d preferred to go out with one of the cool kids. He was seen as far too reedy and skinny to attract her interest. But he was able to maintain some contact with her by proxy to Ben. Ben would keep him in the loop from time to time, giving him an insight he wouldn’t have had elsewhere.

But he never gave up his crush, and when she’d started acting, even though he never approached her directly, he befriended her online, trying to give her positive encouragement, assuring her that she had a gift she needed to share with the world. At first, she’d returned the messages, flattered by the attention. But as time went on, they become more intrusive and more personal as Aiden had described all the things he wanted to do to her, and she’d acted with revulsion to the point that she blocked him online.

Regardless, he still had several other accounts to hide behind. It bothered him that she never saw him as he was and what he could offer her. It was like he didn’t even exist to her.

He’d tried to reconcile his feelings with a homemade shrine to her made up of distant pictures, but they did very little to satisfy his cravings.

Eventually, he decided that if he wanted to have any part of her life, he’d have to make her dependent on him. Once he heard about her auditions for Stairway to Heaven, he decided to make his move.

He bought some sulfuric acid and concealed it within a champagne bottle and delivered it to the party along with a set of pizzas as part of a complimentary gift. Caitlin had come to the door to retrieve the bottle, and he hoped that in that moment, she’d recognise him. Then maybe he’d decide he didn’t need to go through with his plan. But she didn’t even acknowledge him, and he handed over the bottle freely, knowing exactly what would happen to her.

He’d hoped that she’d drink enough to scar her, leave her unable to pursue the career she’d always dreamed of, and that was when he would step in and play the knight in shining armour, nursing her back to health and looking after her. He’d make himself everything she needed… even if he wasn’t what she originally wanted.

But he hadn’t expected her friend—in a moment of fleeting jealousy—to drink the bottle out of spite, thus leading to her death. He’d spent the next few days fretting over what to do. When the police came to his door, he didn’t see the point in fleeing or lying. It wasn’t like he was going to have any life with her after this.

Once he finished telling his story in the interview room, he leaned back and waited for the detectives to be impressed by his commitment to his ‘beloved’.

“That’s it?” Liv barked out loud. “A death, five kidnappings, and several days’ worth of police work… just because you couldn’t stand to hear the word ‘no’?”

But Aiden was struggling to understand the implication of his actions, as though he felt entitled to her love. “I would have done anything for her,” he pleaded. “I just wanted her to notice me…”

“So your go-to response was to mutilate her?” Archie asked, silently wondering if this was his idea of romance, then what the hell passed for harm?

Liv was eager to end the interview and walked off into the corridor, huffing. Archie joined her, a little reluctant to fully approach. “How you feeling, boss?”

“Like I want to go back in there and throttle the little shit, police brutality be damned,” she retorted, pacing up and down the corridor.

“At least we got a confession out of him,” Archie muttered. “That’s got to count for something.”

“But think about all the resources we’ve had to throw at this case,” Liv exclaimed, remembering how everybody had pulled their weight. “I swear to God, if I have to see another reality TV show, it’ll be too soon.”

“There’s another point we’ve got to cover,” Archie suggested hesitantly. “And I don’t think you’re going to like it. Caitlin needs to know the truth.”

“Do you not think the poor girl has been through enough?” Liv asked, knowing that the trauma had nearly shattered her mentally.

“Normally, I would be inclined to hold back that information for her sake,” the sergeant noted with an air of pragmatism. “But Amber was her friend first and foremost, and I think she has a right to know what happened to her… even if the truth hurts.”

“Oh, my God,” Caitlin muttered in the hospital bed. “So, this guy killed Amber… because he was trying to get to me?”

“No,” Liv demanded sharply. “You’ve got to push that thought out of your head right now, Caitlin. That guy did what he did because he was a pervy stalker. What happened says more about him than it’ll ever say about you.”

Caitlin held her head in her hands. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on like this, not after everything that’s happened. Not without Amber.”

Liv was mindful that whenever she left a case behind, the people would remain with a huge hole where their loved ones had been. She knew from her own experience that the hole might get smaller, but it would never be filled.

“I suppose the best advice I can give you is to think back on all the good times you had with Amber,” she suggested gently. “I think that's what she would have wanted for you.”

“The last time I properly spoke to her, I said some really horrible things to her, things that I’ll never be able to take back,” Caitlin sobbed. “What kind of friend says that?”

“I think deep down, you both knew that you would have made it up eventually,” Liv noted, not wanting to leave the woman with too many regrets. She knew how they could weigh one down.

EPILOGUE

Now that the case had been wrapped up and Liv felt like she’d scored some appropriate brownie points with Superintendent Collins, she decided to try her luck once again.

“Well done on wrapping up the case, Olivia,” he offered sincerely. “We haven’t always had good days, but this certainly feels like one. It could have gone down very differently if you hadn’t persuaded Mrs Doherty to tell us everything.”

Liv felt for the Doherty’s more than anything. They weren’t motivated by greed. She understood what it was like to feel loss to acutely, to want to pour it into anything just to make the pain easier to live with.

“Christmas is just around the corner, so let’s hope that the criminal element will ease down for our sake,” he prayed aloud despite knowing that definitely wouldn’t be the case.

“How did it go with Nikki?” she asked, not having had the chance to talk about their impromptu phone call.

“It went okay,” he noted slowly. “She didn’t hang up on me, that’s for starters. I think Derby is really growing on her.” Even though it sounded positive for Nikki, for Collins, this was less than stellar news. The more she gets used to Derby and her team down there, the less she’s going to want to come back home… or maybe she’s already thinking of Derby as her home.

“I told you she’d get over it,” she assured him. “She just needed some time to work things out in her head.”

“Well, I think the leak being identified definitely helped. At least she knows that Gibson isn’t going to be ruining any more lives.” He paused as she picked up on the venomous tone in her voice. “I’ve also been thinking about our previous conversation.”

“Look, you were right, sir,” she noted. “I can’t forget what she did to this team, and I’m sorry for trying to push myself through on that one.”

“I get it,” the superintendent said. “After what she did for you and your sister, it’s hard to look at her through negatives eyes. How is Camilla doing by the way?”

“She’s working her way through the usual teething problems of motherhood, but she and the baby are both all right, thank you,” she replied, thinking again about how she still had a sister and a niece thanks to Katie’s support.

“I think that if I were in your position, then I’d probably be more willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.” Well, at least he understands where I’m coming from. “The problem with this job is that the good doesn’t make up for the bad, nor the bad the good. We have to take people as we see them in their entirety.”

She hung her head, thinking this was a moot point.

“That having been said… I’ve been thinking about our last conversation,” he began slowly, choosing his words despite clear rehearsal. “And while I do want to see her punished for damaging the integrity of the station, I don’t see what there is to be gained from marching her through the courts. I mean I could do it, but I don’t think it’d be worth the time and the effort it would take to do so. I’d rather just have her out of sight and out of mind. As such, I shall be recommending to the CPS that alongside a red notice she receive a suspended sentence for her offences. I’ve gone over the evidence and cases very thoroughly and lost no end of sleep for my troubles, but I’m now convinced that there’s nothing else she can do that can damage the integrity of this station. So I’m moving into ‘wrap-it-up’ mode.”

The news warmed Liv’s heart. God, I really need this after the last few days. “What about her editor? What are you going to do about him?” Please tell me you’re not going to cut him any slack.

“Well, the way I see it, the only reason we’re in this mess is because he pushed her into it, and as somebody who likes to track down the source of the problems, I’m going to be making a point of crucifying him. I’ll make sure he’s removed from his position as editor, and by the time I’m done with him, the only time he’s going to be allowed back into a newsroom is to clean the toilets.”

Well, at least the right people are getting their comeuppance.

“I can’t believe it,” Katie muttered, bowled over by the news.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to thank me just yet,” Liv warned. “Just because Collins is pushing for it, doesn’t mean it’s all over. You’ll still need to go through the court process, and the suspended sentence only applies as long as you keep yourself out of trouble.”

“I don’t really know what to say,” the former PC muttered, but Liv could see the glow in her eyes that wasn’t there before, knowing that she was still going to have some semblance of a life after all of this was done. “Thank you so much.”

Looking back, Liv could understand the resentment everyone shared towards Katie, but she was positive this was the right thing.

“You’ve got a fresh start ahead of you,” the inspector noted with an air of caution. “Not many people get that. So, I suggest you take some time out for yourself and figure out what you want to do with your life.” She hoped that the young woman would take advantage of the opportunity she’d been given. She felt that her obligations were over, and it was time to move on for all their sakes.

“DS Harding, is she all right now?” Katie asked, and Liv could see the guilt lining her face. She’d never stopped thinking about the incident that had brought out her conscience. “I want to be able to reach out to her and tell her I’m sorry for what happened.”

Liv took a seat opposite the young woman. “Look, Nikki’s putting herself back together. She has to for her daughter’s sake. That’s the thing with being a parent, you’re always expected to be strong, even when you just want to collapse. But to do that, it means that we’ve lost a good friend.”

Katie squirmed a little as she remembered how selfish she’d been.

“Now, as far as I’m concerned, I know you’re trying to change. And I think everyone at work is trying to change too, because they don’t want this eating away at them. Nikki is trying to move on too. She lost her husband in the worst possible circumstances, and Francesca lost a father. So, while I know you want to make amends and have the best intentions in mind… I think its best if you leave DS Harding to her healing process.”

Katie nodded, accepting the need for distance on her end.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Nikki noted on the other side of the Zoom call as she bounced Francesca on her lap. Liv smiled as the little girl yelped.

“Careful, you might be getting too old for that,” Liv chortled lightly.

“No, I’m not!” the four-year-old grumbled.

“I mean your mother,” Liv joked.

“Careful,” the DS replied warningly. “How’s Annie doing?”

“She’s perfect,” Liv responded, a sense of longing in her face as she imagined the sweet little girl fast asleep in her cot. She’d been over to Mills’ house recently when the child had woken up for a feeding. She’d held the child for a long time, watching the early twitches of a smile on her face and was almost mortified when she had to give her back to her mum.

“You want to think about having kids of your own,” Nikki suggested in her usual blunt manner. “Body clock’s ticking.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Liv joked, remembering how much she’d missed the DS’ brutal honesty. “How’s Derby shaping up?”

“Quite well. I’m working with a good team. Though…” She set Francesca down on the floor next to a set of stuffed toys. “...I always seem to get the odd personalities.”

Is she waiting for me to point out the double standard?

“I’d love to meet them one day,” Liv said hopefully. “Do you think you’ll be coming up to Newquay for Christmas?”

Nikki’s face froze, and for a moment, Liv wondered if she’d lost the connection. Then the DS showed off that non-committal face. “I’ll try and get down. Francesca’s made a few friends down here, and I’m trying to organise a set of playdates.”

Even though she was disappointed that Collins’ prediction was coming true, and that Nikki was becoming more and more settled in Derby, she was glad that the sergeant was able to follow through on her promise to support her daughter through a new chapter.

“I’m glad that you were able to put things right with Steven,” Liv noted, pleased that they could no longer dance around the subject of their relationship.

“Well, I couldn’t stay mad at him forever. Well, I could, but I’d have probably blown a blood vessel doing so…” Liv noticed that Nikki hesitated to mention her deceased husband in any capacity. If she’s feeling the emotional brunt of being a widow, she’s hiding it better than I ever could.

“There’s something else, too,” Olivia announced, and rather than put it into words, she held up her hand to the screen, focusing specifically on her fingers, revealing the sparking engagement ring that Dean had slotted on there.

“YES!” Nikki exclaimed, punching the air with glee. “About bloody time. So, when do you think you’ll have the wedding?”

“Whoa, whoa, steady on, we’ve not thought that far ahead!” Liv retorted, though she figured she should probably get a date in mind.

“Well, I’ll definitely be down for that,” the sergeant stated passionately. “I always knew you two were meant to be together… I’m just glad you both realised that before I died of old age.” Liv gave a laugh. Every word exchanged reminded her of how irreplaceable DS Nikki Harding really was to the team.

Liv had seen Dean in many perplexing positions since she’d known him both professionally and personally, but this was probably the first time she’d ever seen him hunched over a racing car set.

Mills was having some bonding time with baby Annie, Liv and Dean had decided to take Ru off her hands for the next few days, and Ru had relished the chance to spend the night with his Auntie Liv. They’d all watched a bit of television together… though when a reality show came on during the senseless browsing, Liv turned the channel over a little too quickly. What’d been a lovely treat to see was how Dean had bonded with the boy and played games with him and fully immersed in the five-year-old’s fictional world. She hoped that one day, Dean could see exactly what she saw, that he would be the perfect father. Attentive, considerate, and nurturing…

“No!” Dean exclaimed dramatically as his car spun off the track. He played up his defeat for the boy’s sake, but Liv could see how even though Dean had had a less-than-idyllic childhood, he could still be a part of making Ru’s a happy one.

“Be back in a few minutes, little man,” he said as he got up to join Liv, who was cooking chicken nuggets and chips for Ru in the oven. “If we decided we wanted to keep hold of him, do you think Mills would object?”

“Not right now, no,” she said as he wrapped his warm hands around her body and pulled her in close, kissing her up the neck.

“God, I love you, Olivia Austin. Every time I ask myself how life has got so good for me, you always end up being the answer.”

Liv twisted around and kissed him, holding him in an embrace. Even though she experienced no end of stress and anxiety of work, to come home to this every night made it all the more worth it.

They watched as Briggs made his way over to Ru, who burst into a giggle as the dog licked the boy’s face. He patted Briggs’ head, the dog immediately rolling over and showing his belly for more fusses.

“Speaking of a full house,” Dean started, looking back at Ru. “My mother was wondering if she could come down for the Christmas period.”

“I’d love to have her here,” Liv responded. Now that she and Dean were getting married, she was looking forward to bringing the two families together. “I think maybe you should signpost all the areas of Newquay she should avoid.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll signpost them,” he answered confidently.

“Is there anything you don’t have figured out, Dean Lawrence?” she asked coyly.

“A few things,” he suggested mock-humbly. “Like when we’re going to tie the knot. I was thinking of asking some of our colleagues for advice.”

“Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed, feeling like she could breathe again. “I think Clara was working herself into a state trying not to give anything away.”

“This is meant to be the best day of our lives…” Dean declared. “And I want to make sure all our friends are on board for it.”

THE END

TO BE CONTINUED…

Find out more in Book Forty-Two here: Snow Turned Red

DS NIKKI HARDING WILL RETURN IN HER OWN SERIES:

BOOK 1 - BLOOD LIKE WINE

THE RELEASE DATE WILL BE COMING SOON

Looking for Book Forty-Two? Don’t worry, it’s here!

Snow Turned Red - DI Austin Book Forty-Two

Want to follow Olivia’s ex-colleague, Detective Sergeant Leah West?

Why don’t you get into my other crime thriller series?

Sins Evoked - DS Leah West Book One

Missed Book One? Don’t worry, it’s here!

Find the Girl - DI Austin Book One

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’ve always had a passion for writing stories and loved being able to create a world and have my characters live inside it. Being able to do this has been a dream come true and I’m so grateful that you could join me on this journey .

I live in the United Kingdom with my Husband and four young children who keep me busy and who I wouldn’t ever be without.

I hope you enjoy reading my books and please feel free to join me on social media where I love to interact with my readers!

mrsrobertswrites@hotmail.com