• Blue and red emergency lights flashed silently atop the ambulances and police cars parked on the road and the verges that flanked it. Uniformed figures moved about in the gloom as shadows.
    The sky was still dark. Not surprising considering the banks of slate grey rain clouds moving across the heavens in unyielding masses. The park too looked like liquid granite. The whole landscape was dark grey.
    As Detective Inspector James Riley brought the Peugeot to a halt close to an ambulance, a few drops of rain hit his windscreen and he shook his head wearily. He took one last sip of strong coffee from his Styrofoam cup then swung himself out of the car, glancing around.
    To his right lay streets overflowing with parked cars. Beyond, the town of Wellington. Most of the inhabitants, he fancied, still tucked up warm in their beds.
    Lucky sods.
    A number of the inhabitants would be making their way to work. The town was firmly embedded with council estates with single mothers having to do two shifts.
    Ahead of James, the narrow pathway stretched long between two hedges. To his left, down a narrow slope, lay the small park. As the Detective Inspector made his way towards the bottom of the slope he could feel a cold wind blowing in from the park. He pulled up the collar of his coat and muttered curses under his breath as he began the descent on ground made slippery by two days of rain. Today looked like the same pattern.
    A number of uniformed policemen were attaching strips of blue and white ribbon to metal rods that had been pushed into the wet earth. They tied them off tightly and James saw the words POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS printed on the tape.
    He ducked beneath one of the makeshift barriers and walked slowly towards a huddle of figures gathered close to a set of swings. He could hear the sound of metal creaking gently in the wind. He noticed some discarded newspaper floating in the breeze, gaining altitude as the wind blew.
    James dug in his pockets for his cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it, shielding the lighter from a particularly strong gust. He puffed on the B&H and continued towards the group of figures now less than ten yards from him.
    There were four of them. Two in uniform, the other two dressed formally. They all looked frozen. James recognised the uniformed individuals, and, as he drew nearer, one of them turned and nodded a greeting in his direction.
    At thirty two, Detective Sergeant Robert Thompson was three years younger than James. He gestured in the direction of the swings, at something the others were gazing down at.
    It was a sheet. Black, like everything else about the morning, draped over something that sat upon one of the swings.
    James nodded to the others, a paramedic, and two unknown men in black suits then turned his full attention to the sheet and the girl that lay beneath.
    “Let’s have a look,” he said quietly, taking a drag on a cigarette.
    Robert pulled back the hood.
    “s**t…” murmured James as his cigarette dropped form his lips.