When Paul Rose got to the office later that next morning it was to find that, annoyingly, Joffa had beaten him to it. The brown haired infuriating likable constable was already ensconced at Rose's desk perusing a hand-written note as he munched on something that looked suspiciously like a bacon and egg McMuffin.

'Mornin', Sarge,' the younger man grinned without looking up.

'Bit early for junk food isn't it?' Rose asked gruffly.

'It's almost eleven, what's your excuse?'

Sergeant Rose twitched his moustache and grunted into the lukewarm tea Joffa handed him in a Styrofoam cup bearing a picture of the golden arches that he'd so thoughtfully picked up.

'Hadda take cat to vets.'

'Sorry, Sarge, didn't catch that?' Joffa grinned, one hand cupping his ear as though straining to hear.

'I said none of your goddamn business,' Rose said, a little louder before jerking his wobbly chin, greyed with bristle, at the post-it note Joffa had been reading. 'What's that?'

'DI Mason wants to see us as soon as,' Joffa said, licking a drip of brown sauce from his fingers and passing the note to Rose.

'Right,' Rose straightened the plain navy polyester tie he'd dug out of the pile of washed clothes he hadn't gotten around to put away the week before. As a result of being crushed by the mountain of his un-ironed shirts in the laundry basket the tie bore subtle evidence in the form of little creases. He took another gulp of the lukewarm tea before putting the cup down on the table and motioned Joffa to follow him with a twitch of his fingers over one hulking shoulder.

DI Mason's office was, as ever, neat and tidy. The large desk that took up most of the room in the few square feet allocated to him was devoid of any personal photographs or trinkets. Most of the rickety desks in the main office occupied by the CID officers were littered with various items, from the gallery of family portraits that charted the growth of DS Griffiths' two year old son into the gawky fifteen-year old with greasy hair and bad skin that he was now, the ten little glass owls that DC Marden's wife bought him, one each year to commemorate their wedding anniversary and their infamous honeymoon to the Owl Sanctuary in Suffolk, to the desk-sized Kylie Minogue calendar kept by DC Rose himself. It always struck him, the starkness of James Mason's office. But the spread of paperwork and towering piles of beige files was enough to draw the untrained eye away from the lack of personalisation.

'Mornin', Guv,' Rose said as he knocked on the partially open door and walked in without waiting for an answer.

'Good morning, Sergeant Rose, Constable Jefferies. Have a seat,' he motioned to the two hard-backed plastic chairs opposite him at the desk, which Rose might have tripped over with them being so close to the door but he was too used to the Mets layout and lack of space to be so clumsy. Joffa, on the other hand, had a little bit of trouble in easing his long legs into the small room with good grace. Once the young Constable was safely sat and out of the danger of falling flat on his face, Mason slipped a particular folder out from amongst the pile of identical colourless ones and handed it to Rose.

'It would seem your decision to get uniform to show our suspect's image to the prostitutes bought in last night may have been a good one, Sergeant. Six out of the ten that were arrested last night for soliciting recall seeing him at least once over the past few months.' Rose couldn't help the smug smile that began to tug at his lips, his moustache twitching.

'See, what did I say, eh?' he turned his almost beaming expression onto Joffa, who had taken the unopened file from Rose.

'But,' Mason held up one long-fingered hand, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses further up his nose with the other, 'It's not in the sense that you may think.' Rose looked confused.

'Apparently he's been seen locally on a Christian mission with the church local to that area. Every now and then they send out a patrol to save some of the girls from having to work through the night. They take the willing ones to a shelter set up in the church hall, give them a hot meal, the chance to clean themselves up a bit and a safe place to sleep that night.'

Rose found his eyebrows raising themselves higher and higher as Mason spoke.

'These girls aren't homeless, Guv, this isn't the age of good old Queen Vicky, they don't do what they do to get themselves bed and board.'

'Well, we aren't here to judge why they do what they do, Sergeant, are we? The point is we have another lead here and it's perhaps not flowing down the river you'd hoped.'

'So we should start out here, with this Church of the Good Shepard, then Inspector Mason?' Joffa asked, looking up from the file he had been perusing, tapping the address that someone had scrawled in the front.

'I would say that's a good as a place to start as any. This case seems to have so many loose ends we need to follow and link up.'

'As many brick walls as bloody Henry the bloomin' Eighth's maze,' Rose mumbled to himself as the other two men looked at him.

'If you're referring to the maze at Hampton Court, I think you'll find it's mostly hedge,' Joffa pointed out.

'What?'

'Doesn't matter, Sarge.' Mason suppressed a smile.

'Right then, Sergeant Rose, Constable Jefferies, I trust I can leave you to follow this up now?' he asked.

'On it like a car bonnet, Sir,' said Joffa with a grin, whilst the two older men shared a brief look of confusion.

The Church of the Good Shepherd didn't look much like a church at all, in Rose's opinion. It was a squat red brick building that sat nestled amongst the dirty, rarely seen back streets of Peckham, and had been heavily patched up and restored following severe damage during the Second World War. The iron-grey roof looked as though it might collapse under the weight of a stray pigeon and the red brick exterior was lightly soiled by graffiti tags on three of its four walls. Mesh grills covered all of the grimy windows to prevent them being smashed. Rose wasn't religious at all, but he felt they were sad times when a church had to lock its doors against its worshipers. Overall, the effect was more 'abandoned Scout hut' than place of worship, but Rose didn't mind that. The haughty ostentatiousness of most churches left him feeling empty and the gruff police officer felt that should he ever have a need to answer an unexpected call from God then this was his kind of church.

'Father Luke?' Rose enquired as the plain door finally swung inwards to reveal a tall, well-built man of about fifty with neat grey hair and alarmingly blue eyes that peered at both Rose and Joffa with interest from behind a pair of silver rimmed glasses.

'Why yes indeed,' the vicar replied with a genial smile at the two men, 'what can I do for you fine gentlemen?' Rose produced his warrant card and Joffa followed suit.

'I'm DS Paul Rose from the Metropolitan Police and this is DC Jonathon Jefferies. We're investigating a very serious case at the moment and were hoping you might be able to help out with a few enquires?'

'Oh, yes, of course I can try! Do come in, you've caught me just running through my sermon for later this afternoon but you're more than welcome to come in. The house of God is open any time. Knock and it shall be opened unto you, as they say.' Father Luke smiled warmly and stepped to one side, holding the door open wider so that the two men could enter. Rose cast a critical eye around and found the inside was in as much disrepair as the outside. The magnolia paint on the walls was dull and peeling and given a grey washed-out tone by the low watt light bulbs that flickered in the two large dusty chandeliers that drooped from the ceiling. Row upon row of hard wooden pews were evenly placed either side of a threadbare moss-green carpet that covered the central aisle leading down to the alter and lectern that sat at the other end of the hall, slightly raised upon a dais. Father Luke paused as he led the two men towards the carpeted aisle, bowing his head and dipping his knee before continuing towards a pew at the front. Joffa copied him whilst Rose looked on in bewilderment.

'I didn't know you were religious,' he hissed softy at the younger man.

'There's a lot you don't know about me, Sarge,' Joffa replied quietly, with his easy grin and the ghost of a wink.

'Take a pew,' Father Luke beamed as he shifted a weathered looking black bound bible and a sheaf of loose papers from a seat worn to a highly polished finish by many devout bottoms over the years. 'Now, what exactly is it you are investigating, if I may ask, Sergeant Rose?' Rose reached for the slim briefcase Joffa carried and slipped out his trusty old CCTV still of their mysterious suspect, before sliding into the pew beside Father Luke. Joffa sat beside him, his gangly legs extended awkwardly into the aisle as his torso twisted to accommodate his pose.

'We're looking into the murder of two young men near Covent Garden a few days ago, Father. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on a suspect. We understand that the Church of the Good Shepherd runs a…' Rose cast a glance around the simply furnished church, moustache twitching as he tried to find the right phrase, '…relief programme for some of the local prostitutes?' Father Luke chuckled.

'Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Once a week we open the church hall as a night time drop in centre for those women unfortunate enough to have fallen upon hard times. We offer a hot, wholesome meal, a shower and a bed for the night to get them off the streets.' Joffa could see the tension in Rose's face, the bristling of his grey moustache as he no doubt fought back one of his usual back-biting remarks.

'Once a week?' Rose asked in a slightly strained tone.

'Yes. At the moment it isn't a very successful programme, mostly through lack of volunteers, but also a lot of the women choose not to take the help we are offering.' Rose nodded.

'I can imagine. A lot of those girls are more than likely working from necessity of their next fix or to avoid a beating. From my experience it's not because they lack any place to sleep. Most are so doped up they wouldn't even know what sleep is if it crept up and bit them on the ar-'

'How many volunteers do you have at the moment, then?' Joffa interrupted smoothly, in an attempt to steer Rose away from any profanities and diffuse the temper he could see was building. When Rose got on one, he could rant for England.

'Ah, at the moment we have five, including myself.'

'And the take up on the women's behalf is pretty small you say?' Father Luke smiled kindly.

'Yes, it is. We generally have about three or four take up the offer each week, usually the same ones. As the weather gets colder, though, we do see an increase in the amount of women that drop in for a cup of tea and a quick snack; even if they don't stay the night. I know, you must think it a fruitless exercise, a drop in the ocean as it were, but the way I see it is that if we can change the course of just one of those women's lives then we've done a job well done. Time and energy can never be wasted if one is spending it on improving the life of our brothers and sisters.' Rose cleared his throat gruffly.

'Yes, well, if I could just show you this photo, Father Luke? We have reason to believe he might be one of your volunteers.'

'Really?' Father Luke's tone was slightly incredulous as his silvered eyebrows rose to meet his hairline that, enviably, showed little sign of receding. He took the A4 photograph that Rose held out to him, the better of the CCTV stills that showed the man in all his towering, ferocious glory at the service station.

'Ah,' he muttered softly, 'yes, I do know this man. He certainly is one of my volunteers and a very good one at that. I've never met a man more compassionate to another's plight.' The two officers exchanged a glance as Father Luke looked troubled, passing the photo back to Rose before folding his hands thoughtfully in his lap. 'He is a suspect in your murder case, you say?' he asked sadly. 'Oh dear. I would never have thought it. But,' he brightened a little, though his blue eyes did not sparkle nearly as much as Rose's did at that moment. 'Innocent until proven guilty, as they say,' he added, almost hopefully.

'Do you have a name for us, Father Luke?' Rose prompted, almost gently as he was not unaffected by the air of sadness that seemed to have settled around the older man.

'Jinn QuilYa, Sergeant Rose.' Father Luke handed the photograph back to Rose without another look at it. 'Such a pleasant young man.' Rose practically crackled with excitement as he accepted the photo and scribbled hastily in his pocket notebook. Father Luke had taken the time to gaze up at the large wooden crucifix that loomed over them, the dark wooden figure of a dying Jesus peering piteously down on them all. The carved figurine clearly gave him some kind of solace and he was so caught up in gazing at it that he missed the look that flitted over Joffa's face, as did Rose, who was too busy scribbling in his notebook again buoyed up by their first solid lead. The moment passed as Rose looked up from his pad and grinned at Joffa.

'So, Father Luke, when was the last time you saw this Jinn QuilYa?'

'It would have been last Friday. We ran our drop in clinic the Friday before that so I wasn't expecting to see Jinn until the next one. He doesn't attend services here, you see, we only see him the Friday nights we open the hall to those less fortunate. He came by to say he wouldn't be around to help out for a little while.'

'Did he say why?' Rose asked, his eyes still glittering with excitement. They really had hit the jackpot here.

'No, he didn't actually, and I never thought to ask. Its volunteer work you see and I understand it's a great deal to ask for someone to give up their own personal time in this day and age. He did offer a cheque for a substantial amount though, which will be a great help to our cause.' Father Luke smiled his genial smile, no doubt silently blessing the generosity of the man.

'A cheque?' Rose asked with interest, 'do you still have it, or a copy of it?'

'As a matter of fact, Sergeant, I still have the very article itself. I haven't had a chance to get to the bank yet.' He stood up and pulled a battered brown leather wallet from the pocket of his plain black trousers, slipping a piece of paper from its folds. Rose let out a low whistle from between his teeth as he saw the amount made out to the Church of the Good Shepherd.

'Ten thousand pounds?' he asked incredulously as Joffa raised his eye brows.

'That's some philanthropist,' Joffa said softly, watching as Rose raised the rectangle slip up to his eye line, turning slightly to the left so as to catch the light a little better.

'To be paid from the account of Jinn Alexis Caelum QuilYa. What kind of a name is that?' Rose muttered, mostly to himself, but he looked up to give Joffa a bright grin. 'This day just keeps getting better and better.'