Carter Burnes sat with his hands clasped. Gareth Masters sat beside him, leaning back in his seat. Burnes stared into space. Gareth was reading through the report of a near twenty-year-old case. It had gone stone cold less than six months after the murder it entailed had taken place.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and they were still working the McGallogat case. Carter had been off for two days, as had Gareth, and they'd come back to a swarm of new information at the morning briefing.

Before he'd left the office on the Wednesday to take his days off, Carter had called the SIO.

He'd remembered a case he'd been involved with what must've been eighteen, maybe nineteen, years previously that had gone similarly to this one. The woman murdered had been a candidate for Prime Minister. Her name had been Zoe Dakota.

She'd died from respiratory failure which had resulted from the ingestion of a fatal amount of chlorine over a very short period of time. She had died in the bathroom of a bar. There had been two CCTV cameras. They had caught Zoe coming into the bar with another woman who was never identified, because she'd never been traced.

This woman had been observed entering the bar by three witnesses, but never leaving. A second woman, wearing a completely different outfit, had been seen leaving, but never entering.

It was the same as the Darius case, which, Burnes had a suspicion, could mean that it was the same person who'd committed the murder both times.

There had also been another murder, just two days previous. It was another businessman, by the name of Tobias Wallace.

Burnes hadn't been put on an Enquiry Team dealing with that case, but apparently it was the same situation.

Whoever this person was, they took no risks in covering themselves. But they may have mucked up just a few days before the second murder.

Around twenty years ago, a Detective by the name of Mark Waters had been arrested for tampering with police records and open cases. He was suspected to have been involved with a number of cases around that time. He had changed CCTV footage, altered report files, and altogether messed up an approximated three dozen cases over the course of ten years.

He operated beneath an online name, and had confessed to helping various criminals to avoid the law for thousands of pounds worth of bribery.

He had many contacts, few of which had ever been traced. His many email accounts had been stored into police files, and had over the years been checked a couple of times for new information. Through it and newer technology, the IP address of multiple criminals had been traced, and they had been dealt with accordingly.

Not too long after Darius' murder, the account had received new mail for the first time in over three years. The message had been short, brief, and coded. It hadn't been all too hard to work out. The reply, however, had been hard to get right.

Deputy SIO McClucky had been given the job. He had a history with translation, and had for a while worked with the decryption of intercepted messages of war. McClucky had been more than happy to take the task onboard.

Previous outgoing emails had been used to determine what wording should be used. It was discovered that this person was an old contact. That had made the job simpler.

As Burnes understood it, finding out who this person was was an ongoing part of the investigation. He wasn't involved in that, but he was sure he'd receive information soon.

Now, Carter and Gareth had been given the task of comparing the McGallogat and Dakota cases. They'd been at it since the morning, and so far, very little had been amassed.

The woman from the bar of the Dakota case had taken a taxi to Weirwood Crescent, which wasn't too far from Westhall Avenue; where a taxi had taken the suspect of the McGallogat case.

Despite this, there was no clear correlation between the two. Reports from the Dakota case showed that the woman didn't live at any houses on the Crescent, or anywhere nearby in a ten-block radius. Whoever this person was, she'd thought things out well. She was experienced, she'd been in the job for a long time.

There were a few factories in that area, including one belonging to the Dasker Biscuit company. It was a huge place, with a small, built-in warehouse at the back. Burnes had noted it down as a 'place of interest'.

Burnes looked at the three separate groups of paper scattered across the table before him. The Wallace case was much smaller than the McGallogat case. The Dakota case was larger than Burnes had been expecting, but it was still small compared to most others he'd read. Some cases could be up to two hundred pages long.

He stood up, feeling Gareth's eyes on him as he did so. The Senior Detective sighed. "What're you thinking so far, Gareth?" He asked his partner.

Gareth stood up, and looked over the table. "I think the Dasker building should be searched. The houses all around have, in both of these cases..." he placed his left hand on the Dakota spread, his right on the McGallogat, "but the Dasker buildings have not, and that makes the factories suspect, I think. This woman, if she's the same person, has vanished maybe three times now. Two of those three times, the factory's been nearby, and it's the only place left untouched? Sounds suspicious to me." Gareth stood back. He pushed his hair back from his eyes.

Burnes nodded slowly. "I was thinking along those lines. But, none of this is..." Burnes gestured vaguely towards the table, "...is grounds enough for a warrant. Maybe, if those emails come up as being sent from somewhere near the factory, we can get something done."

Gareth sighed. He exhaled and placed the paper he'd been holding atop the Dakota case spread. "Fingers crossed." He looked up at a clock that hung above the door. It read 1:15pm.

"Let's go for lunch. We've got a lot done today. The SIO may be calling soon about the IP address too. That'll be our job to work with, after this."

The following day at a morning briefing, the SIO looked over everyone present in the room before she revealed the newest information.

"The IP address of the emails recently sent to Mark Waters' have been traced to within five hundred feet of the Dasker Biscuits' factory and warehouse." The room was silent as that information was processed.

Carter Burnes glanced at his partner. Gareth could only just contain a smile. So, they'd been right.

The Deputy SIO had been monitoring the Waters account for the last few years, Burnes had been told. He'd checked the account, and had found the new messages.

The SIO raised one eyebrow. She was expecting someone to speak. Her eyebrows didn't seem quite so sharp this time around; they seemed more natural.

Gareth stood up. All eyes turned to him as he spoke. "During our comparison of the Dakota and McGallogat cases yesterday, Detective Burnes and I realised that the Dasker Biscuits factory is a common point in both cases. Within a ten-block area, it and its sister factories are the only places that haven't been searched..." Gareth paused. He looked down to Burnes as if for confirmation. The Senior Detective nodded almost imperceivably.

Gareth continued, "We believe that this may be evidence enough for a warrant. We also believe that there may be further evidence to be found within the building. I would like to apply for this today, and will go and collect it personally from the Magistrate should the warrant be granted."

The SIO tapped her fingers against her chin while she thought that over. A minute or so later, she bobbed her head once. "Yes. That sounds like a reasonable idea. Do that. If you get the warrant, you and Detective Burnes can lead the raid on the factory. Take as many officers as you see fit. Today, you will write up your reasoning for the warrant, and have the application submitted as soon as it can be. Detective Burnes, you will help him, and continue the Dakota and McGallogat case comparison in the meantime."

"Thank you, mam." Gareth sat back down again, and the SIO moved on to a member of the CCTV team across the room.

Burnes thought over what they would have to do next in his head. The warrant would likely take a couple of days to be accepted, or rejected.

In that time, he could go through the CCTV of the Dakota case, perhaps. Burnes had viewed a lot of the McGallogat CCTV. He would look for a clearer image of the suspect, preferably something in colour.

There was still a lot to see to in this case. Carter was determined he would see it through to the end. So many possible leads, one of them had to go somewhere.

If this factory ended up being nothing, at least it could be checked off as a dead end. It should've been at least investigated in the Dakota case; it was two streets away from where the woman accompanying Zoe had been dropped off. He would've checked it out, had it been his case at the time.

Carter had been a uniformed cop back then. He could remember a Detective explaining the case to him over a shared lunch break.

The Detective's name had been Victoria Forbes. She was retired now. She owned a bookshop somewhere in Dublin. She had been his mentor for a while, just after he'd passed the examinations to get into the Detective field.

Victoria had been a good mentor. She stayed with him for near eight years, and then retired. The last case they had worked through together had resulted in the life imprisonment of Lily Robertson. She had robbed a shop at gunpoint, and had then set the place alight. There had been one casualty; the shop owner.

The poor old woman hadn't died at the scene, or even in the following couple of days. Carter could still remember her, lying on the hospital bed, more blister than skin.

She had lived through nine whole days of constant, excruciating pain. She couldn't swallow, couldn't speak. She had looked like a living monster. Carter had been almost glad to hear that she had passed away, even if only because she was released from her terrible misery.

He'd never seen Victoria angry before, but during that case she'd worked without any signs of her usual cheeriness. She'd stayed at the desk, silent, working with more drive than Carter had ever seen in anyone, until long after her shift had ended. This had continued for days.

Eventually, Burnes had convinced her to come out with him, so they could do an interview together. She'd calmed down a bit during that, and when they'd returned to the office, she'd apologised for how she'd been acting. Burnes had never heard anything further on it. It wasn't his place to ask what her reasoning had been.

He thought about Victoria on the drive back to the office. She'd want him to solve this case, too.