‘MADAM!’ Kirsty bellowed in a voice stronger than she had ever believed she possessed. ‘Call your dog back immediately!’

The woman shot back a look of irritation. ‘He’s all right, he won’t bite,’ she brayed back.

‘There is a DEAD BODY here. This is a crime scene.’

It was her very first. All her training had kicked in, and yet she was helpless. The inviolable sanctity of the forensic search area was already being polluted and compromised under her nose, and she could do little about it.

The woman began to call for her animal in a tinny high-pitched entreaty. ‘Binky, come on Binky.’ The animal paid not the slightest bit of notice, so Kirsty threw a stone at it and missed. The stone landed on the hem of the coat of the dead woman, and the Jack Russell sniffed at it.

The male dog walker, phone clamped under his chin, was trying to describe their exact location to the operator, and in response to Kirsty’s gestures led his own animal and the now attendant terrier away from the scene. With the collar of the boxer in one hand, Kirsty whipped out her phone and began to take photographs, trying to capture the bike tracks, the footprints and the blood spattered snow. The first few pictures were spoiled by flash, so she overrode it, but still it was hard to capture the depth and shape of the imprints, especially with the distressed animal in her other hand trying to lunge at any other dogs which approached. She recalled from her course only a few weeks ago that the ideal way to preserve tracks and footprints in muddy ground was take a cast of them. Presumably that would apply to snow too. But that required considerable resources and time. She had neither.

Finally, she was able to pass along the boxer to the male dog walker, who swapped his phone across to her to complete the call to emergency services. Kirsty identified herself, and said she needed CSI assistance as soon as possible. As she waited, the sky cleared and a bright sunshine bathed the common. The temperature had already begun to climb, and droplets were beginning to slide off twigs and branches.

Her first crime scene.

Melting away before her eyes.

Chapter 2

Detective Chief Inspector Craig Gillard got the call at the dog-end of a long night shift. Saturday nights had a habit of sliding well into Sunday. A fight outside the Three Feathers in Epsom at three a.m. had left one man unconscious, and another with a broken jaw. Three men had been detained by venue security staff. Uniformed police had secured the scene; the duty CSI officer was busy elsewhere, so as duty DCI it was up to him to bring some order. The crime scene was easy to map out, with spatterings of blood across thirty yards of pavement. At one edge, he found a pair of broken spectacles and a bloody tooth located in the gutter. Most of the witnesses seemed drunk, as were both victims and the apparent assailants. Luckily, there was good CCTV coverage. Like most brawls, the advent of dispassionate camera surveillance had greatly simplified who said what about who hit whom. He always kept a data stick in his pocket, and had been able to download the relevant footage within half an hour of arrival. That would give enough evidence to hold the alleged attackers overnight. They were taken away in a van, leaving just him and one PC to finish up.