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policing forever.
    But one thing that could never be changed was the popular music of that era, and on his late-night journey Henry allowed himself to wallow in some nostalgic rock of the time by sliding one of his ‘sad old git’ compilation tapes in and turning it up. He arrived in Bacup accompanied by Queen.
    He found Moorside Terrace easily, parked up some distance away and got out of the car.
    The cold hit him hard and immediately. A cold he had not felt for years. Half-past midnight in Bacup on a braw windy night was no place for the faint-hearted. He wrapped his coat tightly around him, pinned his ID to his chest and trudged towards the crime scene, hoping that most of the scientific work had been carried out by now. The house was slap-bang in the middle of a terraced row on a steep cobbled street which seemed to be holding on to the hillside by its fingertips.
    The street was a buzz of activity. Staring, nosy people, and cops.
    Every available officer in the division seemed to be hovering around. Probably all been to have a sneak peek at the body. A job like this was a magnet for the curious and it was often surprising how many cops turned up out of the woodwork. Henry prayed that the night-duty inspector had been telling the truth about scene preservation. Nothing fucked-up a crime scene better than a bunch of wanna-see bobbies in size elevens.
    As it happened, the scene was well preserved. The only people who had trudged through it were the ones who’d had no choice: the paramedics, the first officers on scene, the CSIs and the Home Office pathologist who, as Henry poked his head around the kitchen door to have a look at the carnage, was just rising to his feet having examined the body which was still in situ.
    The room was swathed in blood and the body itself lay pretty much in the centre of the floor, skewed at an awkward angle, limbs splayed to all points of the compass. Theatrically, Henry thought, the murder weapon was still sticking in the man’s chest. It was a very big kitchen knife. Henry winced.
    Backing off carefully, placing his feet with caution, the pathologist turned away from the body to be greeted by Henry’s beaming smile.
    â€˜Hallo, H,’ he said pleasantly, easing his hands out of his latex gloves.
    â€˜Dr Baines, I presume,’ Henry responded. The two men had known each other for many years and had established a friendly rapport which, on occasion, spilled beyond the professional and into drinking establishments. Baines was as thin as a post, with ears like car doors, but Henry knew his ability to imbibe was second to none. All the beer, Henry guessed, went straight to his legs. ‘You’re a bit off your patch, aren’t you?’ Henry asked. Baines covered the west of the county usually. ‘Filling in for a colleague out collecting dead bodies, or something?’
    â€˜Something like that,’ Baines replied as though hurt.
    â€˜OK, pleasantries over – what’s the prognosis?’
    Baines and Henry both turned their heads down and looked at the body on the kitchen floor. ‘Not good. Not likely to recover. He’s been stabbed to death, probably over a dozen times. The knife is in the heart at the moment, but any one of six other wounds could have been the fatal one. I’ll know for sure when I carry out the PM.’
    There was a blinding flash as a CSI moved in with his SLR to record the scene.
    â€˜As far as I’m concerned you can move the body to the public mortuary. I’ll do the PM now and get it over with. No point trailing all the way home only to have to come back in the morning.’
    â€˜Good idea.’
    He and Henry withdrew from the scene. After ensuring continuity of evidence regarding movement of the body – an officer had to accompany it to the morgue – Henry took his leave of Baines and headed back towards his car, thence on to Burnley custody office to take a look at the perpetrator of the