Idiots.

The two people moved from under the street light and started to walk briskly in the direction of where the man knew they both lived. He had figured it might come down to two people together. He wasn’t confident he could take down a pair at the same time at this stage, certainly not for his first piece of work, but he knew there was a pretty good chance they would split up soon enough to go their separate ways.

He had done his homework.

The man kept pace with them, carefully watching his step. On one of his practice runs, he had soon worked out it wasn’t just a case of staying unseen; you had to watch where you walked too. As best he could in the gloom, he avoided any stones on his path that could have caused a noise and hurried after the two figures, determined not to lose sight of them. They crossed a road as he knew they would and then, finally, he saw them shaking hands and saying their goodbyes for the night. The man crouched behind a car, unconsciously holding his breath. He felt his heart rate rise, knowing he was a minute or two away from the moment he had spent the past few months preparing for. He moved his hand to the outside of his pocket and felt for the knife. It was still there and, even through the material of his clothes, felt slightly cool to touch as if it were waiting for his hand to warm the handle up.

Ahead of him, the second man turned to his left and walked through an archway that separated the blocks of flats on the estate. His shadow disappeared away from the lights and into the night. That left just the one.

The target turned around and started walking towards where his follower knew he lived. The man trailing him knew he would have to act in the next five hundred yards. He stood up from behind the car and began moving quickly behind the victim. It didn’t matter if he was seen now. He held his hand in his pocket and quickened his pace, moving within thirty yards of the person he had been watching for the past hour.

‘’Scuse me, mate . . .’ he said. The man was careful not to speak too loudly. There were still flats and houses in this area and he didn’t want to risk anyone hearing him.

The target turned around quickly, eyes wide and clearly surprised someone had got this close to him without being heard. ‘What do you—?’ the victim managed to say before he stepped back.

There was no distance between them now but the target was reeling, as anyone would if a stranger had moved so swiftly into their personal space.

Then it was over.

The knife had flashed quickly from the man’s pocket and into the other person’s neck. Again the homework had paid off. The killer knew it was important to go for somewhere around the Adam’s apple first in order to prevent any kind of sound. The victim grabbed the man’s wrist but it didn’t matter as his hold was weak. The man with the knife pulled back as he heard the gurgle from the other person’s throat and then stabbed twice more in quick succession, this time aiming for the heart.

It wasn’t as clean as he had hoped for but the job was done. The piece of filth dead at his feet wouldn’t be peddling drugs or carrying out random acts of violence any longer.

The killer wondered if he would get the credit he should be due for such a positive act.

1

The sun was just beginning to rise as Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel walked from her parked-up red K-reg Fiat Punto towards the thin white tent which had been put up around the crime scene. She had been told on the phone it was a dead body so had a reasonable idea what to expect. Given the particular area of Levenshulme in Manchester it had been found in, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise either. The youths who lived here seemed to spend large parts of their free time finding new and ingenious ways to hurt either themselves or someone else who happened to look a little different to them.

They rarely went as far as killing each other though.

It had still been dark when Jessica had taken the call to come to see this particular body. Being a DS meant she was only phoned if something serious had happened. Her sleeping patterns hadn’t been so great over the past year or so anyway but it seemed pretty typical that some poor guy had got himself stabbed on one of the few mornings she had been fast asleep.

Jessica reached the front of the tent and saw one of the Scene of Crime officers walking out wearing a white paper suit. They had obviously been quick off the mark that morning even though their department was notoriously under-staffed and relied on volunteers to stay on top of Greater Manchester’s policing needs.

Noticing a familiar face towards the back of the tent, Jessica walked around to join Detective Inspector Jack Cole. ‘Bit early for all this, innit?’ she said. Cole shrugged. ‘Have you seen inside?’ Jessica asked, nodding towards the tent.

‘Yes, I got here about two minutes before the SOCO boys.’

DI Cole was Jessica’s immediate superior. They had been promoted at the same time eighteen months ago. He had gone from DS to DI, with her bumped up from Detective Constable to her current DS position. DI Cole was well known in the station for not wanting to get his hands dirty and preferring to work from his desk. Some people saw that as a negative and, although Jessica had at first, it did enable her to get more involved in things. Despite that, he was loyal and one of the people she trusted the most at the station, even though she didn’t really know much about him.

Jessica was in her early thirties but the fifteen or so years between her and Cole couldn’t have been wider. She was still living in a flat with next to no savings and taking things as they came. He was settled with two kids and a wife he clearly adored but kept that side of his life completely separate from his professional career. She had never met his partner or children and, as far as she knew, neither had anyone else in the station. He was a normal, unassuming guy who you wouldn’t look at twice if you didn’t know he was a detective.

Jessica acknowledged Cole’s reply with a nod and moved around to the front of the tent. The white material was encircled by the standard police tape on a pavement, with marked police cars parked nearby shielding their position from easy view. A couple of uniformed officers milled around near to the vehicles. As the morning began to get lighter people had started to come out of their houses and flats to gawp at the police scene. Jessica noticed a couple of young teenagers in school uniform on the opposite side of the street. The schools had only gone back after the summer holidays a few days previously and, while it was still early in the morning, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see kids out at this time, certainly not in this area. The bigger shock was the school uniform as the estate the body had been found on was one of the roughest in the neighbourhood and just getting the youths to school was an achievement, let alone in uniform.

Jessica ignored them and walked around the tape to the tent’s entrance.

The Scene of Crime team’s job was to make sure any suspicious incidents were catalogued. Bodies would be cautiously removed from a murder site, photographs taken and everything measured and carefully chronicled. Things like fingerprints would be checked for, as well as blood or hairs that might belong to the perpetrator. It was very specialist work and the team didn’t like having their scenes trampled upon.

There were two people working around the site and Jessica recognised both of them. She didn’t know their names but people got used to seeing each other due to the nature of their overlapping jobs. Some people got closer than others but the ins and outs of dead bodies had never appealed to Jessica. Although she felt the crime scenes sometimes helped clarify her thoughts, she was more than happy to read a report rather than see the gory parts for herself.