One

The man with the scar on his cheek looks down at the cold steel of the railway tracks and the morning sun glints back up at him. He wonders what it would be like to meet your end in this place. The wind picks up for a moment and he pulls his thick coat around him against the chill. The sharp breeze cuts into the scar on his cheek and makes it ache.

A dozen or so separate railway lines branch here, in a complex spider’s web of iron that stretches out to meet the platforms at Sheffield station. Another man, in a bright orange safety vest with reflective flashings, stands a few paces ahead, holding a black and white communications paddle. He’s there for protection, in case there’s a mix-up and a train gets shunted through on the wrong line. A radio crackles on his belt.

There’s not a great deal to see, of course. The body found here thirteen years ago is long gone, the parents of the teenage boy have put him to rest, and the blood and any other evidence has been washed away by countless rainstorms. And yet, the man tries to imagine what it was like.

It had been late evening, snowing heavily, and East Midlands Trains were already running a reduced service. There were no witnesses passing on the final trains in from Manchester or Nottingham. The original investigation posited a rival gang, some turf beef that ended in a knife to the guts. Tragic and unnecessary but sadly not unusual. The death of young boys is an embarrassing stain on the reputation of this city, which once had a different reason for the fame of its knives. His parents and friends said he wasn’t in a gang but then they always say that, don’t they?

The boy’s corpse had been found the next morning, half-buried in a snowdrift and an unnaturally deep shade of blue, the body so unrecognizable the driver who reported it assumed it was an animal hit by a passing train. The woman sent out to check had needed weeks of counseling.

After a few months, the investigation stalled. The case was filed away with all the other unsolved cases. Which is what has brought the man with the scar here.

“Finished?” The railway worker has returned from the tracks ahead. “Only, the eleven-fifteen from Plymouth’ll be through soon and if they have to divert, it’ll throw a right spanner in the works.”

They begin the short walk back to the platform.

“Can’t imagine what you thought you’d find after all these years. Reckon this was a bit of a waste of your time.” The railway worker clearly considers it a waste of his.

But the man with the scar has found something. A building that overlooks the crime scene. He knows no one in those offices was interviewed in the original investigation. Maybe someone in the building was working late that night. Maybe they saw something they didn’t fully understand at the time. Maybe they’ll remember it, thirteen years later. Maybe.