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the kidneys, doubling him over before sending him crashing to the turf.
    A collective 'Oooohhhh' rose up from the crowd and Tom swivelled in his seat to punch Jon delightedly on the shoulder. 'Straight out of “Spicer the Slicer's” tackling manual!' he said. 'What a hit!'
    Aware of several other spectators glancing over at Tom's comment, Jon modestly kept looking down at the match below. But the mention of his nickname when playing for Stockport hadn't gone unnoticed. Sure enough an elderly man wearing a tie approached.
    'Jon Spicer? Rupert Horsely.'
    Jon looked up, taking in the posh accent and Manchester Rugby Football Club badge on the man's blazer. With the faintest reluctance, he stood up to shake hands. 'Good to meet you.'
    'Still playing, Jon?' the man asked in a blustery sort of way, a pint of bitter held against his paunch.
    Jon rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. 'Yeah, but just socially nowadays. Cheadle Ironsides.' 'Open side flanker?'
    Jon nodded.
    'First team?'
    'Yup.'
    The man stroked his moustache for a moment, then looked down at Tom. 'Saw this man taking apart more than a few players when he ran out for Stockport. Finest number seven outside the professional code I've ever seen play.'
    Jon cringed as Tom raised his eyebrows to indicate he was impressed.
    As the man turned away to rejoin his friends, he placed a hand on Jon's shoulder and murmured, 'You could have gone all the way in my opinion.'
    He walked off without waiting for a reply and Jon sat back down awkwardly. Once the man was safely out of earshot, Tom leaned to one side and whispered from the corner of his mouth. 'I like that! Doesn't even bloody remember seeing me play. The old fart.'
    As the afternoon wore on they kept up a disjointed conversation between bursts of action on the pitch. Once the final had been battled out by a pair of very weary teams, several pints had gone down and Jon could feel Tom relaxing.
    'How's life in... what's the bit you're in again?' asked Tom.
    'MISU. Major Incident Support Unit. Hard work and the hours can be shocking when we get a new case, but it couldn't be better, cheers.'
    'When did you switch to them? Two months ago?'
    'Nearly four.'
    'God, that's gone fast. But you still count as a CID officer?'
    'Yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare set-up. Basically, I work for Trafford division CID, but when a major incident occurs – usually a murder – I can be seconded into MISU to investigate it. All the CID divisions round Manchester contribute officers into MISU as and when they're needed. It's decided by some sort of extraction formula, but all the divisions moan about its fairness.' 'Don't tell me – they're paying a firm of consultants to come up with a better system?' 'No, we're just ripping off how they do it down in London.' 'Which is?' 'AMIT. Stands for Area Major Incident Unit, I think. A permanent collection of officers who are there solely to investigate big crimes. Except we won't call ours AMIT. Probably be FMIT – Force Major Incident Unit.'
    Tom laughed. 'And I thought Manchester's advertising agencies' names were bad. JWT, BDH, MKP, MAP – I always get them mixed up. So you'll apply for this FMIT when it starts up?'
    'Definitely. All the top people and all the best cases. It'll be tough getting in, though.'
    'Not like MISU, where you get dumped with looking for car thieves?'
    'Hey,' Jon answered, holding a forefinger up. 'Don't knock that case; they're stealing dozens of vehicles each month. Whoever is in that gang is making a lot of money. But that's just a single investigation. We have more than one to work on at a time.'
    'So what else?'
    Jon searched his mind for a case that he could talk about. 'Remember that woman who was found under the viaduct near Stockport last year?'
    Tom nodded. 'Some barmaid who'd taken a battering?'
    'That's the one. Her killer's just gone down for life and the team I was on caught him. Well, us and forensics.'
    Tom stayed silent, looking expectantly at his