Disclaimer: Please see part one, I do not own anything.

Author's note: DCI Anderton is very loosely based on Andy Dalziel of 'Dalziel and Pascoe' fame, where much deserved credit belongs to the talented Reginald Hill.

This chapter is slightly shorter than expected as it should technically be pegged onto the end of chapter one; by the way, please note time-line alterations, it's still 2005 but November instead of September.

Thanks again to all the reviewers…hope you enjoy this.

Harry was more than fed up. It was currently nine o clock in the morning and he had been at work for an hour, after waking up at six thirty again but this time with a stiff neck from falling asleep in his chair. His third cup of coffee had now gone cold and he was still no further forward on the case of the nameless murder victim than he had been when he left to go home the night before. Sitting stiffly in the green directors chair he had drawn up to the fold up desk he had been assigned in the chilly town hall they were currently using for an incident room he found himself callously wishing the man could have waited a bit and been murdered in July instead of the last week in November.

"Mr James? Sir?"

Harry looked up from the pathology report he was slowly leafing through and tried to smile at the rather nervous looking young man slowly shifting from foot to foot in front of his, surprisingly untidy, desk.

"Yes Clive?" Harry managed successfully to fight the urge to tell the younger man to stand still.

"The DCI wants to see you sir." Harry sighed.

"OK, I'll be there in a minute." He waved a hand dismissively at the other man and turned back to the report taking a sip from his cold coffee as he did so. It was only after he had replaced the cup back down on the brown ring now stained onto the top of the desk that he realised the man was still shifting in front of him. He looked back up, raising an eyebrow in question. Clive cleared his throat and glanced nervously over his shoulder as if expecting to see the DCI or a hungry lion bearing down on him. Harry rolled his eyes. Had he ever been that green?

"Er.. sorry sir, but he said he wanted to see you….well, now sir." Sighing again Harry nodded and closed the pathology report with a snap before taking a final large swig of his coffee and standing up. Slipping his black jacket on over his jumper he picked up the file and nodded at the young man as he swept past making his way for the small office at the other end of the hall.

He knocked briefly on the Perspex window making it rattle slightly and turned the handle, stepping quickly inside the surprisingly warm room and closing the door firmly behind him. Glancing around Harry noticed with a slight frown the small fan heater humming away happily in the corner. Typical.

"Ah Harry lad, sit down, sit down. Tell me what you've got."

Stepping over to the desk Harry sat down in one of the plastic chairs and faced his boss. DCI Peter Anderton was a short, stocky, brusque man of approximately 55. Native to Yorkshire he had relocated to Oxford in his late twenties when he had got married and had stayed ever since despite the failure of said marriage fifteen years ago now. Harry knew all this and more from the discussions they had had in the pub whilst partaking in post-conviction drinks. The DCI had a habit of becoming rather chatty when inebriated and he and Harry had developed a friendship of sorts. Today though, the DCI was all seriousness, his chin resting on his steepled fingers, elbows propped up on the edge of his desk. He was surveying Harry intently, waiting for him to begin speaking. Harry shifted slightly trying to get more comfortable.

"I've been going through the pathology report." He told him, holding up the file in question.

"And?" 

"Just as we thought. No clear cause of death. No evidence of asphyxiation, or strangulation. No signs of cardiac arrest or head trauma. No marks anywhere on the body save for the symbol etched onto the chest, which was done after death, same as the others." Harry sighed, shrugging. "According to the pathologist it's as though he simply stopped functioning."

Anderton's usual frown increased. "Do we know anything?"

"We know that the time of death has been confirmed as somewhere between six and ten Monday evening and the body was moved to where it was found, afterwards."

"Well that's useful as always. Thank you Harry." The sarcasm was thick and Harry grimaced slightly, dropping the file onto the desk in front of him and leaning back in his chair.

"All we got." He said with a shrug.

"Ah well, that's where you wrong my lad" Harry raised his eyebrows. Anderton stood up and moved over to where he had a map of Forest Hill pinned to a board on the wall, gesturing for Harry to join him. "This" he said, pointing to a road with a red pin next to it. "Is where our mystery man was found yesterday morning. Now, this morning, when you were still nicely tucked up in bed, we had a phone call from a man who said he saw a group of figures in dark cloaks of some sort going into the woods here" He pointed to a second pin two inches, or ten miles, from the first one "at approximately five thirty on Monday evening, on his way home from work."

Harry frowned/ "Didn't we have a similar report two months ago after the first murder?"

Anderton glanced at him. "We did, yes. Nice to know you do pay attention." Harry scowled slightly but ignored the familiar jibe.

"Nothing came of it though. We searched the area and nothing was found. Not even any tracks or footprints." He said instead.

"Hmmm…yes which means we have nothing to go on. We have no evidence to lead us to this…cult so you need to go out and find some."

"Sir?" Harry was rather unsure as to how he was expected to find clues that simply did not exist.

"House to house Harry." Anderton told him, as though it should have been perfectly obvious in the first place. Harry groaned, he hated house-to-house enquiries. They hardly ever turned up anything useful and he always ended up baby-sitting some new and over eager detective constable. As though reading his mind, Anderton looked thoughtful for a moment before turning to Harry with a slightly disturbing gleam in his eye.

"You can take Clive"

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Moving silently the large black dog circled around the outside of the derelict warehouse before cautiously entering through the glassless window he had found the night before. Dropping down inside with a soft thus the dog paused quietly, extending his senses to search for any signs of other life forms within the building. Finding none the dog moved further into the room where with a soft pop he disappeared to be replaced by a thin, gaunt looking man with shoulder length black hair.

Pulling his wand from a long pocket hidden in the inside of his black winter cloak Sirius whispered 'Lumos' and held the now faintly glowing object in front of him in order to better survey the room. The area he was standing in was almost exactly how he remembered it from the previous night; the bare concrete floor was covered with a scattering of bits of straw and wood with a heavy coating of dust. There were several sets of footprints leading from the door opposite into the centre of the room where Sirius saw the only new addition to the room, a pile of six or seven red bricks. Smirking Sirius moved quickly over to the pile and crouched down examining them as closely as he could, without actually touching them. If he was right, and he strongly suspected that he was, these bricks would lead him straight to the site of the next in the long string of murders. He sat back on his heals still looking at the bricks and tried to decide on the best course of action. Probably the most sensible plan would be to head back to Snape, report what he had found and then come up with a plan together, more tempting though was the desire to take one of the port-keys now and to try to solve this before he missed his chance. The decision was taken from him though as his sensitive ears suddenly picked up the sound of someone trying to open the door. There was now nothing for it; cursing silently Sirius reached out and grabbed hold of the topmost brick. He felt the familiar jerk at his naval before the floor moved from under him and he was spinning away into darkness.

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On reflection, Harry decided, it had probably been one of the most trying days of his life, that he could remember of course. After being told of his bosses' evil and quite frankly sadistic plan to send him on house to house, Harry had been shunted quickly and efficiently from the small, temporary office only to find Clive, all nervous smiles and perpetual fidgeting, waiting for him huddled in a thick beige duffle coat of all things and holding Harry's car keys. Harry had snatched the keys with a grunt, picked up his mobile phone from his desk, where he generally preferred to leave it and left the hall without looking back to check whether the other man was following him or not. Unfortunately for Harry he had been and the day had just got progressively worse from there. Countless uneventful and pointless hours had now passed and with the time just ticking over to six o'clock Harry was finally on his way home after having relieved himself of 'Bloody Clive', as he had taken to referring to the younger man, outside of his Headington flat scant minutes before.

Being the middle of winter it was already well past dusk as Harry slowly made his way down Headington Hill behind the number 7A bus which he could see was, as always, full of university students. Cursing at the traffic lights who had the audacity to turn to red just after the bus had passed successfully through, Harry stopped rather a bit too quickly, the front wheels of his new, silver Toyota Avensis just inching over the white line and waited. Drumming his fingers on his steering wheel in time to the latest, pitiful offering from Geri Halliwell, who should have really quit while she was behind in his opinion, Harry glanced to his left and gazed absently out over the wide expanse of South Park that was visible behind the wrought iron railings.

It was only after a moment that Harry realized that the black shadows he was looking at were not the bushes his tired mind had at first assumed but that they were, in fact the forms of several people moving slowly across the grass and wearing, Harry swore, what looked like long black cloaks. Startled suddenly by the blaring of a car horn behind him Harry realized the lights had finally turned to green but instead of continuing straight ahead towards his own flat in St Clements he instead made a quick right into Morrell Avenue and receiving another horn for his troubles. Pulling over quickly Harry his engine off and fixed his eyes back on the park. Finding the figures still moving steadily away from him he quickly left the car and entered the park himself, before his brain could talk him out of it.

To Be Continued************