A/N: The second chapter is up, people! I hope you all like it! Please let me know what you think of it, even if you absolutely hate it! Review make me a better writer, after all! And again I want to thank my friend Jessica for reading this chapter through. I'm sure there'd be a whole lot more mistakes in here if she hadn't!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Nor will I ever, I'm afraid…

Chapter two

Boyd stood in front of the team. They'd all gathered around him to hear what the boss had to say about this new case. The joy over their latest achievement still had not abided, so they were confident they would be able to solve this quickly.

"On these pictures you can see Robert McGrey. He was murdered two days ago. His window was smashed, he was tied up before being repeatedly stabbed. We've got to solve this since he was supposed to have bought drugs from Patrick Brown's father, which makes this a cold case, the MO is consistent with Patrick's, and because one of us has dealt with Patrick before."

He now turned towards Grace. It was the first good look at her he'd had that morning. He noticed she appeared to be somewhat more tired than usual, but else she seemed to be okay. He was relieved to see she was coping. All weekend he had beaten himself up that she might have been breaking down because he had been unable to turn down this case.

"Grace, you're the profiles, plus you're the one who's dealt with Patrick before. Could he have done this? And what kind of a man is he?"

"Patrick is a very disorganized man. Though you would hardly notice. His possessions are all neatly ordered, there will be no clutter in his house whatsoever. To an outsider he would appear to suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. He is afraid of his own mind, which is the thing above all else that makes him a danger to everyone around him. And he responds badly to violence because of childhood abuse. He murdered his own mother at the age of twenty-two, thirty-five years ago," she explained.

"But that doesn't say whether he has or hasn't done this," Boyd said. Grace moved closer to the board, scanning the pictures thoroughly.

She crinkled her nose in concentration, something he found very endearing about the woman. Luckily for him she didn't notice.

"The restrained hands either indicate that the offender wasn't strong enough, doubted his own strength or was afraid his victim would struggle and render him unable to kill him. That anxiety fits Patrick's profile, as he doubt himself all the time. Of course there's the age as well. And there's the injuries. Some of these lacerations are deep and deliberate, others are shallow and insecure. As he was unsure this was really what he wanted to do. Patrick never liked violence, but it's the only thing he can turn to, to resolve his issues. My guess is, Patrick is the one who murdered Robert McGrey. Find me some physical evidence that puts him on the scene and I'll talk to him. Then I'll be able to give you a definite answer."

Eve grimaced; there were boxes full of evidence: the clothes the victim had been wearing, the carpet covered in blood on which the victim had been found, a whole set of knives which were possible murder weapons, she would have to check everything for fibers and match them to the bloody shirt found on the scene, and try to find out whether it belonged to Robert or his killer. That put quite a damper on her good mood.

Luckily Stella was being rather inquisitive moods.

"Why was this drug case such a high profile case, boss?" she wondered.

"Forty years ago drugs weren't as common as they are these days, if that's the right way of saying it," Grace answered in Boyd's place. "The government had only just started to target those buying and selling the stuff. And Robert was only fifteen when he bought the drugs from Patrick's father, Edward. He was the key witness in the trial that sent Edward to prison for ten years, the young, innocent and ashamed boy who had been lured into doing drugs by this evil man."

"So you can imagine the press jumping on this like dogs on a bone," Boyd continued the story. "There were articles in newspapers, letters were sent to the man and his son, telling the boy what a terrible man his father was. We'll have to look into that, too. Maybe one of those people decided this had been going on long enough and took matters into his or her own hands. We have to keep all options open."

He threw a tremendous pile of letters onto Spencer's desk.

"Look into all these men and women. See which of them are still alive. Don't forget their children either. If they were old enough to notice their parents' resentment towards Edward, Patrick or both, they might be behind this."

Boyd wanted to have all angles covered this time; there was no room for screw-ups.

"You and Stella can do that, Spencer," he continued. "Eve, try and give us something as soon as possible. Grace, take your time to see if there's anything else we need to know about Patrick or the murderer."

Now that they all knew what to do, everyone set to work. Stella was already reading letters. Spencer began making a list of the names of the people they came across and who needed to be checked out. Eve left, carrying as much of the evidence out as she possibly could, though she would have to make the trip a couple of times.

"Stella, if you're done reading some of those letters, could you give them to me? I might be able to derive some underlying meaning from them that could be useful for us," Grace asked the youngest team member.

"Excellent idea, Grace. In the mean while I'll be go over the old case files from Edward's case and see if anything helpful is in there. And I'll try to get my hands on Patrick's files. I'll compare all of these and see what I can come up with," Boyd said.

"You might want to let me search for his file; I'm a profiler, it'll look less suspicious when I ask them than it would when you would enquire about them. And I worked with him when he was brought into prison, so I have access to them. You don't, unless you're lucky and they hand them to you without asking questions."

Boyd agreed. Normally he would dismissed that final remark and would have persisted until he had found what he was looking for. Yet he had no intention of getting into a fight with the profiler. And he had to admit she was right.

He made his way to his office, throwing the door shut the moment he had gotten inside. Pleased with himself despite the situation, he now saw there were only four unfinished reports laying on his desk. He could tend to them later, concentrating on the more pressing matter of reading through old and incomplete case files first.

He had never particularly liked this part of his job. Evidence that had been completely disregarded, witness reports that had been largely made up and that had never been thoroughly investigated were not uncommon when they came across a case like this. That made the entire investigation even more difficult, as they had very little to go on. It was like conduction the first investigation of a case, only the physical evidence had already deteriorated immensely and memories had long since been forgotten. And in this case, many people would have passed away already. Edward Brown had been eighty when he passed away last year.

The ancient smell of discolored leaves entered his nostrils. Suppressing the urge to sneeze, he flicked through the pages for a few seconds before settling on what he believed to be the most promising one he was going to encounter for the next three hours: an at first glance detailed and meticulously investigated witness report in which an anonymous tipster claimed to have seen Robert leave the alley where Edward was known to deal, stuffing a rather large package of an unidentified white substance in his pocket as he went.

There were two more of these, although they were less accurate to say the least. But they could come in handy. Boyd decided to compare them to one another, so he could see whether they were alike in enough ways to be of any use. If it had anything to do with Patrick being related to a drug seller, there was a small chance their perpetrator would pop up in here somewhere. Especially if he had been somehow involved in that night's events. Maybe Edward had threatened to it had been he or she who had sold the drugs to the minor? Or maybe that person had been the go-between and Edward had threatened to sell him out to get a lighter punishment? With this kind of people, everything was possible.

The following quarter was spent reading and drawing up parallels between the statements the three witnesses had given to the police. Not one mentioned anyone else than Robert. However, he had not yet finished.

Suddenly there was a soft knock on his door. Grace was standing in front of it, holding some letters Spencer had just given her and a rather large, brown binder with the words Patrick Brown on the front.

"I managed to persuade them to give me these," she said whilst laying it down. "Those are the notes I made during his sessions with me in prison and the discoveries made by his current prison psychiatrist. As you can see, they're quite extended."

"Does that mean he's a huge trouble maker or that they believe him to be one?" he demanded the profiler.

"Most of that are transcripts from conversations he had with his prison psychologist after getting involved in fights, apart from the first one, which is his conversation with me the day he entered the facility. Two of the aforementioned transcripts speak of two attacks on different female guards. He ended up in isolation for that. But nobody got severally hurt during any of these… encounters." Grace told him.

Boyd contemplated this for a second. He was well aware of the violent tendencies this man occasionally displayed. Thus he was barely surprised to receive this information. Yet there was something bothering him about the fact no-one had gotten 'severally hurt', as Grace had put it.

"Why do you think that is?"

"Lack of time, I suppose," Grace answered his question, thoughtfully. "Five or six prison guards walking around, other detainees who were in favor of the one he was attacking, an opponent who was too strong… he would have had to act quickly to give his victims more than a black eye. And he must have feared the punishment that was no doubt waiting for him. That might have made it seem less than worthwhile."

Boyd admitted that all sounded very good. Especially the last part. Because he knew this man was a little shit with no backbone. So he told Grace that. And he immediately added a question, since he knew she'd been holding back in front of the team earlier.

"Do you think it might have been someone else? Maybe a teenager making his way home after a night out with one too many to drink and who ended up around the alley and saw something he shouldn't have seen? Maybe that person took matters into his own hands now, possibly because he felt Robert deserved it?"

As soon as the words had left his mouth, doctor Foley shook her head, determination written all over her face.

"No, Boyd… At first I was worried I was too involved to give you a good profile of the murderer, maybe hoping it was Patrick to get him back behind bars. But the more I think of it, the more certain I'm becoming: it was him who killed Robert McGrey."

The words lingered in the air. The DSI wasn't at all happy with them, though he knew them to be true. He'd just hoped they weren't. He did not want Grace to have to talk to this guy.

"These letters have led me nowhere, before I forget," she now said. She was trying to change the subject, he was sure. "They all seem to have been written by different men and women of all ages, for obvious reasons."

He breathed out, his frustration bubbling to the surface.

"Let's hope the others can give us something to nail this bastard by then," he said. "With all that evidence and tons of names to research, we should be able to get something on him."

"We should," Grace conceded. "His anxiety will have made him vulnerable, prone to make mistakes. And some of those stab wounds might have resulted in injuries on his own hand or even upper torso, given the state of mind he must have been in. Eve'll pull his DNA if he cut himself."

Boyd wasn't sure whether she was trying to convince him of that, or rather herself. He did not show her that, though.

"That's definitely a possibility," he told her. "Certainly if you're sure he's behind it. Are you, though? A hundred percent sure it's him we're looking for?"

"I am. Just don't trust me blindly on this on. For once I'm asking you not to give psychological and physical evidence the same chances. I'm asking you to with the physical side of thing and use my profile as an extra," she pleaded.

"I always trust you blindly, Grace. In everything you do," he whispered.

If by any chance he would have looked up, he would have seen the glint of shock and something else in Grace's eyes. As it was, it merely passed him by unnoticed.

"Thank you so much, Peter."

He looked up at that. She hardly ever used his given name, unless she demanded his attention or she was letting her guard down. The latter was most likely what she was doing.

The moment between them passed. Grace averted her gaze, while Boyd glared out of the window behind him, acting as if something outside had drawn his attention.

"I'd better be going," she stated. "There'll be a new pile of letters waiting for me by now, ready to be checked."

Boyd waved his hand, indicating he needed nothing more from her and she could go now.

Around lunchtime his witness reports were done, his conclusion being that only one of them spoke of an unidentified white male in his early twenties that had been hanging around the alley entrance. The witness claimed this person was also a regular of Edward's, which made Boyd doubt the validity of the statement.

The 'children' were apparently out to eat today. The cluttered desktops they had left behind suggested more of people leaving in hurried flight than of a man and a woman going out for lunch to return later to pursue their work in orderly fashion.

But a quarter later, he was proven wrong. Not all of them had left.

Eve suddenly appeared in his doorway, her hair pretty messed up, one side of her face covered in a black dust-like substance and her left hand looking rather red.

"What's up, Eve?"

Boyd thought it would be best not to ask her how she had gotten into this state. She seemed to have suffered more than enough.

His colleague continued to wipe her hand with a cloth drenched in cold water whilst addressing him.

"The blanket covered in blood those investigators pulled from the bed at the scene is in a poor condition..."

Before she could in on, her boss had already opened his mouth.

"Tell me you can do something, anything with it, Eve!"

"So far no luck... The DNA wasn't preserved as it should have been. The blanket was manually cleaned, and a lot of the DNA was partially destroyed. On other parts of the blanket whole strands of DNA were rendered useless because some type of pure acid was poured over it... But I'm running a possible sample as we speak. By the end of the afternoon I should be able to tell you whether it's Robert's or somebody else's. If I can do anything with it, that is."

He praised her achievement. He was glad she was doing her job. He couldn't ask for more.

"Oh, and I have been doing other things while the sample has been running,' she told him. "I've digitalized the measurements of the six knives they found in that kitchen block. Three of them have come out as being the possible murder weapons. I've swabbed them for blood, and two came up positive. I'm going out for lunch now, but when I get back I'll test them for epithelials. That should give me something more to work with if the blood isn't good enough."

"Eve, I love you."

"Well, we don't hear that very often, do we? You haven't by any chance eaten anything wrong this morning, have you?"

"Eve, I still love you, but I might not anymore if you stay much longer," he warned her.

Calm returned when Eve had left. Boyd stretched his legs; he wasn't in the mood for going out to grab lunch.

So he made his way to the ground floor and crossed the street to the small store in front of the CCHQ. He bought himself a plastic-wrapped sandwich with chicken and a small bottle of water to drink. Not that either one of them seemed that alluring, they'd probably both taste like plastic, but he thought they would do. And he had to eat anyway.

After having paid, he walked back. In the seclusion of his office, or what he sometimes called his private quarters at work, he quietly enjoyed his food. If enjoying was the right word, of course. He wasn't bothered by it, though, as he was too caught up in their current case, too caught up with Grace.

Maybe he had judged her wrong, he mused. He had know her for a long time, he had seen how strong and independent she was. So why wouldn't she be able to deal with this? Yet she'd asked him to give the physical evidence a head start and to ignore her profile, instead of practically pleading with them to put them on equal foot. He found it frustrating, not knowing what was going on in her mind. And admitting that, even to himself, was difficult.

You're going soft with old age, he pestered himself. Gruff DSI Boyd, it's okay to worry about your team –Grace- just don't let it get in the way of what you have to do. You won't get the answers you need if you let yourself be blinded.

By the end of that evening, Eve explained to him and the others that due to cross contamination and deterioration of the DNA she had not been able to get a match to the DNA sample. The results of the second one were supposed to be in tomorrow, but she told them not to get their hopes up. And she was planning on running some test on the fibers she had collected the next day as well.

Stella and Spencer had better news. They had finished three quarters of the letters. They could now split the work, one of them reading the remaining letters and the other one focusing completely on the people who had written them. That would make it easier, and quicker.

Grace added there was barely a chance those letters would be useful. She would look into the last ones to be sure, but thought it would be a waste of time. And she told them that she had not anything else that might help.

The only thing keeping Boyd from grabbing the bottle that evening as he sat home alone, was the knowledge they had at least accomplished something. Even if it was hardly more than anything.