‘Don’t worry about me, just point me in the direction of the body,’ ordered Detective Inspector Groves, rolling his way out of the passenger seat of the Ford he and his partner had arrived in, and refusing the help of the constable who was there to greet them. Groves knew he still had plenty of pounds to lose – hence the aggressive diet Mrs Groves had him on – but the lure of the biscuits and Kit Kats on offer at the station was just too strong for him to resist. Old habits die hard, and it’s even harder to kill them when you have a job as stressful as Groves.

   This was the last thing he needed. In all his years as a detective, Groves couldn’t remember a time when he’d had a week filled with this much evil. On Monday, he had had to attend the house of an elderly lady whose mail had been stolen. She cried so hard, Groves wondered if he would ever get over it. It had really started the week off on the wrong foot. But it just got worse from there – Tuesday opened The Case of the Missing Wing Mirror, where an unseen culprit drove off immediately after impact with a parked car, and has been on the run ever since; Wednesday saw a profanity too rude to print (starting with B, ending with M, and rhyming with HUM…) sprayed by some vandal on the side of a public toilet on the high street; and now, this. Thursday brought the worst crime Groves had ever had to investigate – a murder. Virtually unheard of, in this day and age.

   Reaching the room where the body lay in a shallow pool of its own blood, Groves saw that it was mutilated. The single stab wound was so deep, it looked like it had been made by a pair of… safety scissors or something. It must have been three inches deep. For a moment, Groves felt like he might bring up the biscuit and cup of tea he had consumed before leaving to answer this call; but his throat remained strong, under the pressure of his instinctual professionalism. He knew that he had to be the rock for his team here, to help them through the most horrid experience they would ever go through. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom and surveyed the scene, his eyes glistening with a thin layer of tears, but his face showing none of the emotion that exploded within him.

   Before too long, his partner was standing by his side. Poor, young Hadley, he was so horrified by what he saw that he began to cough into his tie, nearly dropped his notepad. ‘Oh, God, sir,’ he spluttered, ‘who would do this?!’

   ‘I don’t know, Hadley,’ Groves said, straightening his trousers by the belt, ‘but can you imagine how much worse it would be if that porn blocker had never been activated? I don’t even want to think about it. Thank the lord for David Cameron.’

   Hadley just nodded.