AN: so I'm back, I'm deleting Their Stories because the writer's block was too much so i'm here with another story. Hope you enjoy this new story, please review. x

XxX

Joe shivered as he and Ron walked under the police tape that was cordoning off the crime scene. It was early morning in January and the bitter winter weather cut straight through him. He pulled the sleeves of his jacket over his hands as Ronnie made his way to Joy.

"Morning." Joy nodded seeing them both.

"Looks more like evening." Joe muttered and Ronnie shot him a looked which told him to stop moaning.

"Trust me Joseph I have better things to be doing than standing round here talking to you." Joy folded her arms. "I'm sure Tristan Marks did as well."

"Who?" Joe asked.

"The victim." She said as she was handed a clipboard and walked them over the spot where they had found the body. "Tristan Marks, 34, bullet to the heart. Found by a nurse on her way to work. She though he might have been drunk but when she got to him she realised he obviously wasn't."

"Do you know any more about him?"

She nodded. "He was dressed smartly, from his business card we believe he was a lawyer." She handed him a wallet in a plastic bag. "There's a photo of two young kids in it, and he had a wedding ring on."

Ronnie sighed. "What a start to the year." he carefully took the wallet out of the bag and opened it seeing the picture of a boy and girl aged around 6 and 3. "Well we'll see what we can find."

Joy gave him a reassuring smile before walking off to continue her work.

"What now?" Joe asked looking at the picture.

"We'll contact his family..." Ronnie closed the wallet and put it back in the plastic bag. "Shot through the heart, that's not some kind of random killing. This was planned. Look at this place. Why would someone like him be in a place like this?"

Joe looked around the street they found themselves in. Ron was right, it was a rough area. Someone like Tristan Marks seemed very out of place. "Maybe someone asked him to come here?"

"That's what I'm thinking. And then they killed him."

XxX

"Did that just..." Kate started but found herself unable to finish her sentence as she and Jake walked out of the Old Bailey. The events of court playing through her mind. Two words ringing in her ears. 'Not guilty'.

Jake simply nodded. "Yes. Yes it did."

She ran her hand over her face. "He walked. Just like that..."

"I know."

"How can he have walked?"

He could tell just how angry she was by the way she nearly choked on the tears that were forming in her eyes. Some cases would get to them more than others and after all the work they'd put into the case to just have it collapse from underneath them was so frustrating. Even more so for Kate as she'd been leading the trial. He couldn't work out what had gone wrong. Chris Barson was a monster and now he was back on the streets.

He took her hand in his but said nothing unsure on what he could say that would make her fell any better. She was glad he didn't say anything, she wasn't in the mood to talk. 3 months they'd worked the Barson trial and it was all for nothing. She didn't understand, how could he have been allowed to walk free? Not guilty? Were the jury not listening? Now Barson was free what would he do next? She blinked hard refusing to let any emotions get the better of her before she held Jake's hand tighter.

"Let's just go back to the office. Henry's going to have a fit but..."

"Forget about Henry." He said calmly. "We did everything we could."

"I must've missed something. "

"Stop right there." He pulled her aside. "This wasn't your fault, I don't know what happened in that courtroom because you should've got a guilty verdict."

"Yes. I should've done. But I didn't."

He put his fingers to her lips silencing her and she sighed as he carried on speaking. "And remember you weren't the only one working that case. I was there too. We did everything we could. You did everything you could. Now it's over."

"But Barson is free. He'll kill again."

He nodded. "I know. Everyone in that courtroom could tell he was guilty."

"So what happened?"

He moved his hand stroking her cheek. "I don't know."

XxX

"Tristan Marks was a lawyer, he's worked as a prosecutor up North for the last year but moved back to London three weeks ago with his wife, Danielle and their two kids." Angie informed Ron and Joe as they arrived back at MIU.

"Right well, we should go and speak to her then, do you have the address?" Ron asked and Angie handed it to him. "Angie can you find out wherever Tristan was working, I think we should look into what he might have been working on."

Angie nodded going back to her computer.

"You think it was work related?" Joe asked.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "But there must be a reason someone like him was in that part of town? According to Joy he'd been killed between eleven and one this morning. What was he doing?"

XxX

The grief in the families eyes was something that Joe struggled to look at. The way that they could say just a few words and it would bring a stranger's world crashing down. Ron always said it didn't get any easier and he was right, it didn't. He thought maybe it would just seem like part of everyday but it didn't.

Ron and Joe sat on the sofa in silence allowing Danielle to deal with her grief in her own way. After the initial shock had passed and her first tears had subsided she went quiet, mentally trying to process what she'd just been told.

"Do you know who..." She started and Ron shook his head.

"Not yet, but we will."

She ran her hand over her face. "When he didn't come back I just assumed it was you know, work related or something, thought he might be sleeping at the office like he sometimes did when he was busy...but then he didn't call or text and..."

"Your husband was a lawyer?"

She nodded getting to her and crossing the room before returning with a photograph. "Him and his law school mates. He said they were...like his brothers. He was an only child you see. So they became his family. He's known some of them years before that, at boarding school." She turned the photo to show them handing it to Ron, it was of a group of men in their early twenties gathered in a pub. She pointed to where her husband was stood. "Him and Jake definitely, deadly duo. He always said it was Jake that got him through law school...and he loved his job...even when it was hard..."

It took a moment for Ronnie to recognise him but he saw the man stood next to Tristan in the photo was Jake.

"Jacob Thorne?"

"You know him?" She asked and

Ron and Joe nodded. "He's a friend of ours, we've worked with him quite a lot."

"Yeah? Him and Jake have been best mates forever I'll have to tell him...I...I don't know how to..." She burried her face in her hands. "What am I gonna tell Ethan and Jodie? How do I tell them their daddy isn't coming home?"

Ron placed the photograph on the coffee table and moved to comfort her. "We'll find who killed him, Mrs Marks. Can you think of anyone who might want to harm him in anyway?"

"When you exclude all the nutters he's helped get sent down over the years then I don't know..." She bit her lip. "But he did seem off recently. Like something was bothering him. I don't know what. He never really spoke about work unless it really upset him but...you know, yesterday he mentioned that he had to speak to Jake about something. I asked him what but he said it was nothing important. I could see it in his eyes though, it had to be something important because he said he wanted to meet up with him rather than phone him."

"Okay." Ron said. "We'll speak to Jake and see if he knows anymore. And we'll speak to his work colleagues."

"Can...can you tell Jake for me?"

Ron and Joe both nodded, the poor woman had enough to deal with herself. They both got up to leave.

"Call us if you need us." Joe told her. "Or if you remember anything that you think might be connected."

XxX

"Well that was mild by his standards." Kate said after Henry left their office. She turned to look at Jake who was lent against his desk. "You okay?"

He nodded. "Thinking."

"Always a worry."

He rolled his eyes and she lent agaisnt his desk beside him. "Tell me I'm overthinking it."

"You're overthinking it. What are you overthinking?"

"It's probably nothing..."

"Yes..."

"But if you think about the cases the CPS has dealt with over the last, what six months, not just by us but everyone, there's been some pretty shocking turn outs."

"What do you mean?"

"Well Lucy Featherstone walked free despite the fact she was found with the murder weapon on her, In the Cope and Greggory case both of them walked free. It doesn't make sense."

"You think it's something more than just juries being inhuman?"

He nodded. "Yeah...I do..."

They were interrupted by Ron and Joe entering.

"To what do we owe the pleasure?" Kate asked the detectives as she and Jake stood properly. She suddenly got the feeling they were about to tell them something bad.

"Jake..." Ronnie started. "You're friends with Tristan Marks, right?"

Jake nodded. "Yeah? What's he done?"

"I'm afraid he was found dead at half past five this morning. He'd been shot."

The room fell silent and Jake's mind went blank, nothing registered at all for at least a few seconds, Ronnie and Joe might have been talking but he wasn't listening. It was only when Kate put her hand on his arm did things sink in. He looked at her, she was blinking back tears. She'd met Tris when they were still just friends, before they became a couple, and she'd become good friends with Tris and Danielle. Even more so since she and him became a couple. The family Jake had found with Tris, his wife and their kids Kate had so easily become a part of. Tris coudn't be dead. Kate turned into him and Jake wrapped his arm around her holding her to him. She was suddenly the only thing holding him together.

"Danielle...is she okay?" He asked.

"She was holding herself together when we left, but she said Tristan had wanted to speak to you about something?" Joe said.

"He wanted to meet tomorrow but..." Jake swallowed. "He never told me what about, I think it might have been work related..."

"She said the two of you had known each other a long time?"

Jake nodded. "Since we were kids..."

"I'm sorry."

Ron and Joe exchanged a glance with each other, they had a feeling things were about to get worse.