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“His central and lateral incisors, if I were to guess,” Chichi continued. “But you’ll need a dental specialist to confirm.”

Pember grimaced and covered his mouth. “What about his fangs? Weren’t they knocked out?”

Chichi nodded, rummaging around a bit more. “Not that I can find.”

“So what the fuck happened to them?” Mark cut in. “Taken out? Spat out?”

Chichi shrugged. “You’ll have to go back to your crime scene. Have another look.”

Mark’s attention snapped to Pember and Duncan. “I thought you combed every inch of those woods?”

Duncan held up a hand. “We did, along with your colleagues from Major Crime.”

Mark’s face pulled into a snarl.

“But what I will say,” Chichi continued, eyes flicking between the two of them.

“Is that it appeared to be a front-facing hit, and I’d have expected him to swallow most, if not all of his damaged teeth.

Especially if he was knocked unconscious or died quickly after.

The mouth structures go all floppy and… Anyway, shall we continue? ”

They worked quickly to take more histology samples, and Pember found that Duncan was actually far more efficient than Maya ever gave him credit for. When his head was in the game, he was a true professional.

“The adrenal gland is normal, no indication of any adverse effects, though bloods will confirm,” Chichi said, holding the organ out so Pember could fasten it into a plastic pot.

Mark sighed. “Maybe we don’t have a serial killer on our hands after all. Just a couple of crackheads going around attacking people at night.”

Pember pressed his mouth into a hard line, because something told him that wasn’t the case at all

Clutching a cooler full of samples, Pember held open the door to the police station and stepped inside with Duncan. Reception was empty, save for Wallace and Samantha hunched over her mobile phone.

Wallace’s head snapped up. “Ah! There you are! Anything?”

They both nodded, glancing at one another with knowing smiles.

“Well come on, lads. Don’t keep us in suspense,” Samantha called. “You solved it yet?”

Pember frowned. “I thought you were only interested in neighbourhood disputes?”

“And I thought you had two sugars in your coffee, but lately you’ve been favouring sweeteners. What’s your point?”

Pember scoffed and took a step back. “Well, I… You… What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, just get to the fucking point.”

Pember gripped the cooler bag closer to his chest and strode across the room to the security door. Punching in the code, he exited reception and padded down the corridor towards the lab, but not before swiping Samantha’s hole punch on the way out.

They relayed the morning’s findings to Wallace, and at some point Blake and Lily appeared in the lab. They didn’t say much, only sat in the corner and watched them work. Pember caught Blake’s eye from time to time, but it was difficult to communicate when they were all wearing masks.

Just as Pember was taking a final set of swabs from the knife shards, Duncan whistled and tapped the desk. “Motherfucker was right,” he said.

“Who?” Pember replied, standing next to him.

Glancing at the screen, he saw a number of spikes in the readings taken from the Robert Green’s stomach contents.

“Motherfucking Mark Matthews was right. We have a lovely little cocktail of tequila, blue curacao, some kind of apple sours and lemonade. Oh, and a handful of dry roasted peanuts. A quick Google search confirms that it is in fact a Lapis Blast.”

Blake stood up at that. “I’ve heard of it,” he said, turning to Lily. “Who’s serving it in High Enfield?”

Lily cleared her throat and tugged at her mask.

“I think we can rule out most of the working-class pubs on the outskirts of town. The only thing you’ll get in there is a pint of Stella and a punch to the face for your troubles.

There’s a couple of places closer to the uni that have started calling themselves ‘bars’ instead of ‘pubs,’ trying to make everyone believe they’re fancy.

The Dog and Duck, Beezle’s, the Nock and Ore. Should I go on?”

Blake shook his head. “I want you to go to every bar and pub in town, find out who was serving it the night he died.”

Lily nodded, typed something into her phone and walked out.

“And the knife?” Blake continued, looking at Pember. “Can you find out the make and manufacturer from the little that you have?”

Pember let out a breath. Whilst he was fairly confident in his abilities, he wasn’t that good.

Wallace placed a hand on his shoulder and stepped forward.

“Not in this lab. You could get a ballistics analyst to look at it, but the wait time for the National Crime Agency is about four weeks. You’d be better off getting a surgical specialist to look at the victim’s wounds, but ultimately all it’s going to tell you is what type of knife caused the injury.

If you want to match the sample to the weapon, you’ll have to find it.

” He shook his head and turned to Pember.

“Were there any other notable injuries around the stab wounds? Hilt marks or the like?”

Pember shook his head. “None. He had far fewer stab wounds than the first and they were much shallower. Messier, too.”

Wallace hummed. “Which might imply Robert Green was still up and fighting when the first couple of blows hit. The attacker didn’t or couldn’t use their full strength to stick the knife in him.”

Blake rapidly made notes in his black notebook. “Could you get everything into a report for me by the end of the day?”

Wallace tutted, and Blake glanced at Pember, who raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms.

Blake sighed. “Please?”