Chapter Eight

Half an hour later and Cassie was back at the mortuary, having installed TikTok and viewed the vid about a dozen times.

It opened with a slow zoom out from the mortuary at night, low angle and filtered to look like Dracula's castle, set to a doomy drone. Then it cut hard to a caption, the words against black:

What REALLY happened to Bronte ?

Then Bronte's hit single ‘Clean Break' – a dance music track with a kinetic beat – blared out over a fast-cut montage of the scrum outside the mortuary, before the voice of the pink-haired girl Charly came on, questioning Cassie. Then the music was dramatically silenced to highlight Cassie's answer: ‘ Go fuck yourself? ?' – the audio prissily bleeped to erase the f-word, her lips pixelated. Then jump-cut images of the police herding everyone away from the mortuary followed by the infamous shot of Bronte captured by paparazzi outside her flat. The doomy music returned, this time over a pull-out from Bronte's balcony that swung down to the towpath and the pile of flowers and tributes. Cut to another caption on black:

Suicide? – which evaporated to be replaced by words that loomed out of black:

Or is that what somebody WANTS you to believe?

Cassie had just showed the vid – which already had 310,000 views – to Doug. ‘I mean can she even do that?' she asked, pacing his office furiously. ‘Put out images of me without my permission?'

Doug shook his head helplessly. ‘I have no idea. It's the Wild West, isn't it? Social media. Do you want me to talk to the Trust, get the lawyers' advice?'

Cassie blew out an exasperated breath before shaking her head. ‘That would be like pouring petrol on a bin fire.'

‘Who is this @Charly_Detective?' asked Doug, peering at the screen with a mystified expression.

‘She's one of these keyboard detectives,' Cassie raged. Even a social media refusenik like her couldn't avoid their ‘theories' which were increasingly getting picked up by the mainstream press. ‘Any time there's any kind of supposedly unexplained death they pile in with their idiot theories just to get more views. This kind of shit is the last thing Bronte's mum and dad need right now.'

*

Cassie wanted to have a proper look at the pics Tina had given her from the scene of Bronte's suicide without having to explain her interest to Archie, so she texted him to say she was working late to catch up on admin and not to wait up. Archie's reply was a sad face emoji, which made her feel bad, before her guilt swiftly morphed into irritation. What was wrong with needing a bit of time to herself? It wasn't like she was cheating on him or anything.

She wound up in The Black Heart, once her go-to drinking haunt, in a converted Victorian warehouse in the market. It was her first visit in a while, since she and Archie had become a proper item, but she felt instantly at home. Despite the skull imagery and goth memorabilia it had a cosy charm, festooned with fairy lights, although she didn't recognise the barman under the big orange neon cross that still hung over the bar.

Taking her beer to a corner table, she pulled out her phone, having photographed the crime scene images and protected them with face ID.

But an hour later, any idea she'd had of spotting some clue the cops has missed had well and truly faded. The photos all fit with the police report which had found no sign of forced entry or violence.

But .?.?. was it her imagination or did the photo of the kitchen table in Bronte's flat feel like a still life? Like something posed? Her smartphone, green Rizlas and pack of Marlboro Reds were arranged alongside a psychedelic packet – the kind that synthetic cannabinoid was sold in. Cassie smoked a bit of weed, took the occasional pill, but she wouldn't touch the stuff, knowing it had been linked to psychosis and increased risk of suicide in the vulnerable.

Bracing herself, she opened TikTok, and flinched to see Bronte trending. Putting in her earbuds to cut the sound of The Cure coming through the pub speakers she listened again to Bronte's breakout hit ‘Clean Break', which had already clocked up more than half a million new plays since her death. The hook ‘Give me a break, break, break/I need a break, break, break .?.?.' was horribly catchy – a club anthem that conjured up a sea of waving hands.

From the lyrics the ‘clean break' had a double meaning – reffing her split from a man who'd left her ‘broken and broke', but also from ‘pills and spills', and ‘JD and coke' – the latter delivered with an audible wink that made it clear she wasn't talking about Coca-Cola. It sounded like a hundred other dance numbers but was elevated by her punchy contralto delivery: the voice of a woman who wasn't taking any more crap.

As Cassie closed the app she found herself wondering whether she was any different to all the ghouls out there. Perhaps some dark hidden story was somehow easier to accept than the grim but simple truth: that a twenty-seven-year-old with the world at her feet could smoke some dodgy gear and tip herself into the void.