Hello again, guys! I know it has been quite a long time since I last wrote, but a new story just popped into my head Here we go with chapter 1. Hope you like it and if you do: don't hesitate to leave me a lovely little review ;) Oh and btw I might be a little rusty on my English, that might be because I haven't written anything in English for a loooong time :P

Btw I keep pretending no one ever left our team, so it's still Nikki, Harry, Leo, Janet and Zak

Also, this story has got nothing to do with my previous one.

Enjoy!

I do not own any of the characters in this story. They all belong to the BBC, I just like to keep them together :P

Chapter 1.

She got woken up by the sound of her phone ringing.

No, that couldn't be… It was dark all around her when she opened her eyes…

There was that sound again.

Nikki turned towards the sound and looked at her alarm clock; it stated it was 3.38.

Then she realised she had to answer her phone and she knew what it was going to be about, because she was on call.

She cleared her throat, sat up and answered her phone.

"Nikki Alexander."

"This is DCI Thompson. I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I'm afraid we need you at a scene."

She sighed and got out of bed.

"Where?"

"Kingston Road, near the bus station."

"Okay, I'm on my way."

She hung up and sighed again. She always hated this kind of thing, especially on Mondays…

Quickly she got dressed and walked out the door.

Gosh, why did it have to be raining?!

If only I had made myself a cup of coffee first, she thought as she was driving towards Kingston.

She was still far from awake when she arrived at the scene. There wasn't very much going on; there were only two police cars and a few officers were walking around with police tape. They had set up a tent where the body was lying, but usually that wasn't of much help.

Nikki parked the car a few feet from the second police car and got out. Even before she was able to get to her trunk for a SOCO suit she was soaked. Good thing she hadn't put any makeup on then.

As she was putting on her suit, a man with an umbrella came walking towards her.

"DCI Daniel Thompson," he said, as soon as he was in hearing distance.

He held out his hand, which she shook.

He looked like he was quite young to be a DCI… Maybe a little younger than her even.

"Nikki Alexander."

"Sorry we had to call you out of bed," he said as they walked to the tent together.

"Oh, I'm sure this wasn't your idea of a nice Monday morning…"

"What a great night to die," the detective grumbled.

"Do we have an ID yet?"

"Nope, we haven't checked yet, we reckoned we should wait until you were here."

"How very kind of you," Nikki said with a smile.

She sat down next to the body.

It was a woman, approximately 30-40 years old. There was no blood on the scene, maybe she was dumped here? There were no wounds visible or anything else, really. There was a big bag lying next to her, like a travel bag.

Nikki checked her purse.

"This driver's licence belongs to one Sharon Hughes. It looks like she was married, too."

She held up the wallet to Thompson, showing him the photos of two children inside the wallet.

His expression became a lot more serious straight away.

"We need to find out what happened here as soon as possible. Can you say anything yet?"

"Hmm not much. I can give you an approximate time of death, but in this weather you'd be looking at quite a big time frame… Plus, there are no obvious signs that indicate why she died, so…"

"How soon do you think you could get the PM done?"

"I think… somewhere today probably?"

"Good, let me know when you want to start, then I'll be there, okay?"

"Sure."

"Alright, then we'll wrap it up here. You can go back home and get a few hours of sleep."

"Great idea."

Although she doubted whether she was going to get any sleep, but at least she could get a long, very hot shower soon. Not only was it raining, she could only just keep herself from shivering because of the freezing gusts; winter was coming.

"Well, I guess I'll see you later sometime today, then," Nikki said.

"Jep, see you in a few hours."

She got back in her car as fast as she could and drove home. She was always so amazed by how quiet London could be at night, especially in this weather. On her whole ride home there was no one to be seen out on the street, but she wouldn't have been out there if she hadn't had to.

As soon as she got back home again, she jumped in the shower to warm up. The downside of that was that the hot water made her feel more awake, so when she got back in bed she didn't really need to sleep anymore.

After only five minutes she got out again and made herself a cup of coffee.

She sat down at the kitchen table with her coffee and a warm blanket and thought about the woman they had just found. She could never keep herself from imagining about their lived, especially if she hadn't done a PM yet. Had Sharon been happily married? Was she even married? How were the children called? Where did they live? And especially, what had Sharon been doing out there, in the middle of the night, in the wet and cold darkness? Had she been on a night out with friends? Probably not, why would she on a Sunday night? Maybe she didn't have to work on Monday?

STOP, Nikki said to herself.

There was absolutely no point in thinking about these things. There was absolutely no point in doing so, so why bother? It only got her emotionally involved in cases and that hadn't always turned out well…

She took a tip of her coffee and tried to think about something else. How busy was it going to be the rest of the day? Leo was on holiday with Janet, so she and Harry would have to manage the Lyell Centre on themselves. Of course they had Zak to help out, but still… She just hoped besides Sharon Hughes, she wouldn't have to do many other things, especially because she had had far too little sleep.

She checked her watch; it was nearly 5 o'clock now, only a few hours until she would need to do Sharon's PM.

So, that's it for now what do you think?