The invitation came on a Tuesday, sandwiched between a reminder about her unpaid library fee and a promotional email from a skincare brand she had never subscribed to.
"You HAVE to come, Zara. No excuses this time. Ethan's place is huge, I'm talking rooftop, I'm talking views, I'm talking free food. PLEASE."
Zara Ademi read it twice, smiled, and put her phone face down on the desk.
She had a contract to review by morning.
That was the thing about interning at Halcott & Boye that nobody told you before you signed the offer letter — the hours didn't care about your personal life. The firm had three partners, eleven associates, and one paralegal who had been there since before Zara was born. And then there were the interns. Three of them, rotating on a six-month cycle, expected to be everywhere at once and invisible at the same time. Zara had learned that fast.
She pulled the contract back toward her, uncapped her highlighter, and got to work.
It was a lease dispute. A landlord in Southwark claiming his tenant had violated a clause about structural alterations. Routine. She had reviewed four of these in her first month alone. But routine was fine. Routine paid for her mother's next scan.
The scan was scheduled for the twenty-third. Today was the ninth. She had written both dates on a sticky note and pressed it to the corner of her monitor so she would not forget how little time was left to find the gap.
Her phone buzzed again.
"Okay I'm not above begging. Also I got you something. A gift. You have to come to collect it lol."
Zara laughed despite herself. That was Lena. Always finding the angle.
They had been friends since their first year at university — the kind of friendship that starts with a borrowed pen during a lecture and somehow survives three years of shared stress, missed deadlines, and one very bad semester that neither of them talked about anymore. Lena was studying communications. She was loud and warm and she laughed too easily and she had never once in three years made Zara feel embarrassed about how carefully she managed her money.
Zara typed back.
"I have work in the morning. Have fun. Take pictures."
She set the phone down again.
She did not go.
The next morning she was at her desk by eight, one hand wrapped around a takeaway coffee that had already gone lukewarm, the other scrolling through case notes on the shared drive. The office was still half empty at that hour. One of the associates, Mr. Adeyemi, was already in, tie loosened, looking like he hadn't left. He gave her a nod when she walked past. She nodded back.
She liked the early hours. The office was quieter. She could think without the background hum of phone calls and printer noise and the senior partner, Mr. Halcott, pacing the corridor the way he did when a case was making him nervous.
She was halfway through a revision note when her phone rang.
It was Lena's number.
Zara picked up without thinking.
"Lena, if this is about the gift, I promise I'll collect it when—"
But it wasn't Lena.
The voice on the other end was male. Measured. The kind of flat, careful tone that Zara had heard before — not from anyone she knew personally, but in recordings. In depositions. In the kind of phone calls that got transcribed.
"Is this Zara Ademi?"
She sat up straighter without deciding to.
"Yes. Who is this?"
"My name is Detective Seun Ola. I'm calling from the Metropolitan Police. I understand you're a contact of Lena Obi's?"
The coffee cup was still in her hand. She was aware of its weight in a way she hadn't been a second ago.
"Yes," she said. "We're friends. Is she okay?"
There was a pause. Not long. Maybe two seconds. But in those two seconds Zara understood, with a clarity that had nothing to do with reason, that the answer was no.
"I'm sorry to tell you this, Ms. Ademi. Lena Obi was found deceased this morning at a private residence in Greenwich. We're treating the circumstances as unexplained. We'd like to speak with people who knew her well, and her call log shows your number as one of her most recent contacts."
Zara did not say anything.
Her hand was still holding the coffee cup.
"Ms. Ademi?"
"I'm here," she said.
Her voice came out calm. She was not sure how.
She asked twice to confirm the address before she accepted it. Greenwich. She knew the area — not well, but enough. She had passed through it on the overground once, looking out the window at the river and the old buildings and the cranes rising in the distance over new development.
She told Mr. Adeyemi she had a family matter. He looked at her for a moment, whatever he was about to say about the Southwark file dying before it reached his mouth.
"Take the morning," he said. "Call if you need the afternoon."
She didn't thank him the way she normally would have. She just picked up her bag and walked out.
The building was a converted warehouse three streets from the Thames. Glass and steel facing, the kind of place that had been renovated recently enough that the edges still looked sharp. There was a concierge desk visible through the lobby window and a row of security cameras mounted above the entrance, their small black housings angled toward the pavement.
Zara stood across the street for a moment before she crossed.
There were two patrol cars parked at an angle outside the entrance. A cluster of residents on the pavement, some still in coats thrown over pyjamas, some on their phones. A woman in her sixties was talking to a uniformed officer, arms crossed tightly against the cold.
Detective Ola met her near the entrance. He was younger than she'd expected from his voice — mid-thirties, slim, wearing a dark jacket over a shirt that suggested he'd also come in early that morning. He had the look of a man who was used to delivering this kind of news but had not become comfortable with it.
He thanked her for coming. He offered his condolences. He asked if she was all right.
She told him she was fine and she asked him to tell her what happened.
He paused at that. A small evaluation behind his eyes.
"You're an intern at a law firm," he said. It wasn't a question. He'd done the basic background already.
"Yes," she said. "Halcott and Boye. I'm not an attorney. But I know how to listen."
He nodded slowly. Then he told her what they had.
Lena had attended a party the previous evening at the apartment of one Ethan Mears, her boyfriend of approximately eight months. The building's security system showed her entering with him at 11:47 p.m. The system showed Ethan leaving alone at 2:14 a.m. When he returned at 7:05 a.m., he called emergency services immediately. He reported finding Lena unresponsive on the living room floor.
There was a single gunshot wound.
No weapon had been found at the scene.
The security camera covering the corridor outside Ethan's apartment had gone offline at 1:52 a.m. It came back online at 2:31 a.m.
"And that window," Zara said quietly, "covers exactly when you say he left."
Ola looked at her. "Yes."
"So the footage of him leaving alone — that's from a different camera?"
"Lobby camera. External angle. You can see him cross the lobby and exit the building. His face is visible. His hands are visible."
"And empty," she said.
"And empty."
She looked at the building. At the cameras above the door. At the grey morning light coming off the river two streets over.
"He's a game developer," she said. It came out flat. She had met Ethan once, briefly, at a coffee shop near campus. Lena had been glowing. He had been quiet and polite and he had a specific way of looking at things — at his phone, at the table, at the space between people — like he was running a calculation.
"That's correct," Ola said. "He works independently. Builds shooter games, primarily. First-person."
"And no registered firearms."
"None."
Zara was quiet for a moment. A gull crossed the sky overhead, moving inland, away from the water.
"Has anyone looked at his drone?" she said.
Ola's expression shifted. Not dramatically. But she caught it.
"What makes you ask that?" he said.
"He lives near the Thames. A drone can cover that distance in minutes. If you need to move something away from a scene without being seen leaving with it—" She stopped. Looked at him. "You already thought of that."
"We're looking into a number of possibilities," he said, carefully.
"So it's not ruled suicide."
"It's not ruled anything yet, Ms. Ademi."
She nodded. Looked back at the building. At the cameras. At the gap in the footage that sat between 1:52 and 2:31 — thirty-nine minutes that a man with the right equipment and the right idea could use very precisely.
Lena had sent her that last message at 11:31 p.m. Sixteen minutes before the cameras showed her walking through that door.
"I got you something. You have to come to collect it."
Zara pressed her lips together.
She was not a detective. She was not even a solicitor yet. She was an intern reviewing lease disputes and trying to cover a medical procedure on a salary that barely covered her travel card.
But she had read enough case files to know that the gap was the whole story.
And she had known Lena for three years. Long enough to know she would not have walked through that door alone if she thought she had anything to be afraid of.
Which meant she hadn't known.
Which meant someone had made sure she didn't.
Zara turned back to Detective Ola.
"I want to help," she said. "I know I have no formal standing. But I knew her. And I know how to look at documents, at timelines, at the things that don't fit. If there's anything I can do — formally or otherwise — I would like to."
Ola studied her for a long moment.
"Go home, Ms. Ademi," he said. "Let us do our job."
She held his gaze.
"I will," she said. "For now."
She turned and walked back up the street, away from the patrol cars and the residents and the cameras over the door.
She had a scan to pay for. A contract to finish. A family that needed her functioning.
But on the tube home, with the city moving grey and fast past the windows, she opened the notes app on her phone and typed one line.
The camera went off at 1:52. He left at 2:14. Came back at 7:05.
Thirty-nine minutes.
Find what happened in thirty-nine minutes.