Detective Inspector Roy Carver’s temper was mounting. A paunchy man with a face the colour of corned beef, whose shirts were usually ringed with sweat around the armpits, his short supply of patience had been exhausted hours ago. He had been here nearly as long as the corpse; his feet were so cold that he could no longer feel them, and he was light-headed with hunger.

‘Ambulance is two minutes away,’ said Detective Sergeant Eric Wardle, unintentionally answering his superior’s question as he entered the tent with his mobile pressed to his ear. ‘Just been organising a space for it.’

Carver grunted. His bad temper was exacerbated by the conviction that Wardle was excited by the presence of the photographers. Boyishly good-looking, with thick, wavy brown hair now frosted with snow, Wardle had, in Carver’s opinion, dawdled on their few forays outside the tent.

‘At least that lot’ll shift once the body’s gone,’ said Wardle, still looking out at the photographers.

‘They won’t go while we’re still treating the place like a fucking murder scene,’ snapped Carver.

Wardle did not answer the unspoken challenge. Carver exploded anyway.

‘The poor cow jumped. There was no one else there. Your so-called witness was coked out of her—’

‘It’s coming,’ said Wardle, and to Carver’s disgust, he slipped back out of the tent, to wait for the ambulance in full sight of the cameras.

The story forced news of politics, wars and disasters aside, and every version of it sparkled with pictures of the dead woman’s flawless face, her lithe and sculpted body. Within hours, the few known facts had spread like a virus to millions: the public row with the famous boyfriend, the journey home alone, the overheard screaming and the final, fatal fall…

The boyfriend fled into a rehab facility, but the police remained inscrutable; those who had been with her on the evening before her death were hounded; thousands of columns of newsprint were filled, and hours of television news, and the woman who swore she had overheard a second argument moments before the body fell became briefly famous too, and was awarded smaller-sized photographs beside the images of the beautiful dead girl.