Step Into the Story

Opening night of the most anticipated production in years. A director's long-awaited comeback. And a counterweight that fails during intermission, on a rigging line that had been inspected and cleared that very same morning.

"The Nightjar" was supposed to be Gabriel Thorne's return — his first major work since a public flop nearly ended his career six years earlier, and the most talked-about opening in the city all season. He was found backstage shortly after intermission began, struck by a falling counterweight from the fly system above the stage. A tragic accident, on paper. Except the venue's own safety officer has already flagged something that changes everything: that exact line was checked and cleared that morning. Rigging doesn't fail on its own, hours after someone confirmed it was fine.

This time, it's not a favour — it's a case number

You're not being asked quietly on the side by someone who'd rather keep this out of the papers. You're detectives with a real provincial Serious and Violent Crimes Unit, assigned a genuine case docket the moment that inspection log came to light. Search warrants, subpoenaed records, full authority — and a file that's going to the National Prosecuting Authority if what you build actually holds up.

Thorne was controlling, meticulous, and difficult in exactly the way that made him dangerous to somebody. Something he found in the days before opening night got him killed. Working out what that was is most of the job.

Three people, three logins, and a killer who isn't the obvious name

There's the production's producer, who has a great deal riding on this show and a lot to lose if certain numbers ever get properly audited. There's the lead actress — Thorne's former protégée, publicly and bitterly split from him weeks before opening — who every instinct in the room will point at first. And there's an uncredited co-writer with the oldest, most sympathetic grievance in the entire case. Add a rigging technician, a critic, and a distant relative, and you've got a full backstage's worth of people who all had a reason to want Gabriel Thorne gone.

This is deliberately our most demanding case yet — three fully-developed suspects, three separate accounts to get into, and a killer we wrote specifically to be the least satisfying answer in the room. If you're chasing the first name that feels right, you're chasing the wrong one.

What you'll actually be doing

You'll be working warrant access into two accounts and public access into a third, checking a call platform's own session log against an alibi that looks airtight until you check it minute by minute, and cross-referencing old production credits to spot a pattern nobody was supposed to notice. Every login is earned from something you found on paper first — nothing is handed to you.

By the end, you'll need to state — clearly, with a docket that would actually hold up — who is responsible, what happened during intermission, why they needed Thorne gone by that specific night, how they had the knowledge to do it, and why the two people you'll suspect first are not, in fact, guilty.

Curious how three suspects are built to stay standing this long? We wrote about it in why every suspect has to earn your suspicion.

Step Into the StoryComing Soon

The story ran on the front page. The correction ran on page two, three months later. In between, a company died.

Kesterley District Council put its waste and recycling contract out to tender for the first time in fourteen years. The long-standing incumbent lost. The contract went to a smaller family firm, run by a woman named Frances Aubrey, on a bid nine per cent cheaper — the kind of result that should have been a good news story.

Six weeks before the new contract was due to start, The Kesterley Clarion ran a front-page exposé: leaked council correspondence and a payment record that, the paper said, proved Frances Aubrey had bought the contract. The council opened an investigation. The new firm's lender pulled its funding within nine days. A firm mid-way through fitting out vehicles and a depot, suddenly with no financing and no ability to earn, doesn't survive that. Ninety-one jobs went. The council quietly reverted to the old contractor — which is the detail almost nobody notices, and the one that matters most.

Three months later, the Clarion printed a correction: the leaked material couldn't be authenticated, and the paper accepted the allegations were unfounded. Frances Aubrey sued for defamation. And that's where you come in.

You're working for the paper that might have ruined her

You're forensic investigators, instructed by the solicitors defending the Clarion, which is fighting this on a public-interest defence. Your job is to reconstruct exactly what happened to those leaked documents — because the defence, and the newspaper's own insurance cover, both turn on one question: was the newsroom fooled, or was it complicit?

That's not a comfortable position to investigate from. You're working for a client whose survival depends on what you find, and there's a real chance what you find sinks them anyway. Nothing here is a crime scene. It's disclosure — committee minutes, tender sheets, weighbridge tickets, newsroom copy, an insurer's own claim file — produced by people who all had reasons to shape what they handed over.

The forged documents are sitting right in front of you

Here's the part that makes this case genuinely different: you don't read a description of the forgery. You get the actual leaked package, exactly as the newsroom received it — and half of it is completely real. A genuine payment, to a genuine firm, for genuine work, made years before any of this started. The other half was built to sit next to it and borrow its credibility. Working out which is which, and who could possibly have built it, is the entire investigation.

Along the way you'll meet a reporter who's been suspended over a story that wasn't entirely hers to get wrong, an editor who cut a verification step that exists for exactly this situation, a councillor with a real and properly declared financial connection to one of the leaked documents, and a council compliance officer twenty-two years into a job nobody ever looks at twice. Every one of them can explain a piece of what happened. Only one of them built the forgery.

What you'll actually be doing

This one doesn't ask you to read someone's private inbox — it asks you to search institutional records the way a real forensic accountant would. You'll be comparing a document-reference format against a system migration date to catch an anachronism nobody meant to leave behind, cross-checking a company register against a client's own ledger, and doing arithmetic on a weighbridge ticket book that looks perfectly ordinary until you sort it by load type.

By the end, you'll need to say — clearly, and with the paperwork to back it up — who built the leak, how it survived a legal read on deadline, and why. Get the who right and the why wrong, and the case still doesn't hold.

Step Into the Story

Every record the bank holds says the same thing: decommissioned, contents none, nothing to see. So why did someone go to the trouble of quietly resealing it during a power cut nobody was supposed to notice?

The old Church Street branch is being cleared ahead of a scheduled redevelopment — the kind of routine, unglamorous work that mostly involves clipboards and dust sheets. Then, in the early hours of 14 June, the night security officer notices something the paperwork can't explain: the vault's inner seal has been disturbed, and carefully put back, during a maintenance blackout that shouldn't have given anyone the chance.

According to every system the bank holds, that vault has been empty since 1994. Officially, there was never anything here worth stealing back. Unofficially, someone was willing to arrange a five-hour power outage to get near it — which means either the records are wrong, or somebody wanted them to look that way for a very long time.

Brought in before anyone official finds out

Lena Marais, the bank's Head of Compliance & Legal, isn't ready to hand this to the insurers or the board — not yet, not until she knows what she's actually dealing with. So she brings in outside help, quietly, and that's where you come in: a set of pre-demolition sign-out slips, a decades-old locksmith's invoice, and a court judgment from 1985 that nobody's thought about in years, all waiting for someone to notice they belong to the same story.

What you're chasing isn't a straightforward theft. It's a secret that somebody has been protecting since long before the vault was ever declared "empty" on paper — and the closer you get, the less that word looks like an accident.

Everyone in this file has a reason to want that vault to stay shut

The Head of Archives has been quietly pulling old personnel files that have nothing to do with her actual job. A young CEO — grandson of a name buried in that 1985 court case — has had his office calling Archives about this exact vault, more than once, including the day of the break-in. A woman with a family grudge that predates all of you has been researching the same history from the outside. And a Branch Operations Manager whose sign-off happens to cover the exact area that was broken into is carrying a kind of stress that colleagues have definitely noticed.

Every one of them has a real reason to be on your list. Only one of them arranged that blackout.

What you'll actually be doing

This is the case that taught us three logins is better than one — you'll be cross-referencing an old locksmith's invoice against a personnel file to reconstruct a password nobody wrote down anywhere, reading through a colleague's actual inbox once you've earned your way in, and reading a real bank statement, transaction by transaction, to find the exact moment somebody's finances stopped adding up. Nothing is handed to you as a conclusion. You have to go and find it, the way an actual investigator would.

By the end, you'll need to say — clearly, and with evidence — who actually emptied that vault, what they took, why they wanted it, and how they had the access to pull it off. Get any one of those wrong and the case doesn't hold.

New to this kind of evening? Start with how to run a murder mystery at home, or read the nine checks worth running on any case before you buy it.