No, I don't know how they rumbled me, but they have. I'd just put away another customer – how sweet that was – and was just about to get into the car when they were on to me. I abandoned the car and ran into the warehouse and hid under some stairs but they seemed to have x-ray vision and soon smoked me out.

"Stop or we'll fire!" a bloke yelled as I retreated to another part of the warehouse.

He's armed? I managed to take a look at one of them. He was scruffily dressed and he had something nasty in his hand. He wasn't bluffing then. But he's not a copper, from the state of him – unless he'd been dragged off duty because he'd got an arms certificate. I heard a ping ricocheting off the wall not far from me. It was from another direction. Christ, how many of them were there? Yes, I know that the sensible thing was to surrender but you should know me by now. I like a challenge. I danced about a bit, trying to get to higher and higher ground, keeping to the shadows as much as I could. I wasn't familiar with the area or the depot but the full moon was helping me to find my feet. I was trying to be as quiet as I could but these blokes were good. Another bullet nearly found me and had me scuttling for cover.

"Come on, stop messing about!" The same voice again. It sounded close.

I made it up onto the roof and looked for a fire escape or a route over the roofs. I kept into the deep shadows. I felt safer there. But as I was quickly scanning, a voice made me jump. He seemed just inches from me.

"Raise your hands nice and slow," he said.

"Wide and clear," his mate added.

I wondered if there were just the two of them. It made me laugh to think that they may be worried about my little cap pistol! I turned and looked into their eyes – from one to the other. I wondered if I looked like that when 'my gentlemen' got out of the car for their last journey. Their eyes looked cold and mean. Like me, they weren't angry; just getting on with their job. They looked like silver ghosts lit up in the moonlight like that - the ghosts of my gentlemen past. I backed away, aware that there wasn't much roof behind me and a long drop below. They slowly advanced. They seemed a little unsure of exactly where I was in the darkness but I wasn't going to underestimate their intelligence. These men looked like professionals.

"Come on," curly-hair wheedled, "you're not going anywhere. We just want to talk."

I wasn't going to be cajoled, or convinced either. You can see that, can't you? I had to do what I did next because there wasn't a Plan B. I couldn't out-gun them. They seemed very at home with their weapons. They used their armoury as easily as you or I use a knife and fork. The gun seemed a part of them. I certainly couldn't fight them hand-to-hand, man-to-man, or even use the knife which I was cradling in my pocket like a talisman. So I did what I had to. I moved backwards towards the precipice. I knew that I couldn't stop moving otherwise my nerve would go. Curly-hair seemed to know what was in my mind and jumped towards me. I was too far away and I stepped backwards quickly into a nothingness. I'd like to say that I had profound thoughts before my head struck the concrete below, or that I confessed my sins, but it was all too quick. The air was forced out of my lungs in that long plunge, and it was all my body seemed to concern itself with – forcing oxygen in. But it was too late. It was all too late. Crack, and I was gone. As quick as that.

It took a moment for Bodie and Doyle to realise what had happened. They looked at each other in the moonlight but had no answers. They eventually came round and then raced downstairs and out into the yard. It didn't take them long to find the casualty. It was clear – it always had been – that there was nothing they could do for him. You didn't survive a fall onto concrete from that height. Doyle shone his torch on the shattered remains of the man. He looked quizzically at Bodie.

"That's not Henson!" he exclaimed.

A cold feeling claimed them both.

"Our little pigeon told us that Henson was receiving here," Bodie insisted.

"Well if he was, he's changed his looks from his mug shot," Doyle said, examining the corpse.

Bodie had a horrible feeling that, if it weren't Henson – drug dealer and general racketeer – then it was an unarmed civilian that they'd effectively pushed off a cliff this night.

Doyle found something in the pocket and held it up to the light. "I don't think you'd hit much with that," he commented, handing it up to his mate.

Bodie took a cursory glance at the little cap pistol. Doyle was right, but it did mean that, technically at least, this bugger had been armed. Doyle was still going through pockets.

"And what have we got here?" he asked rhetorically, having got out his hanky, finally remembering about forensics. He got up from kneeling next to the corpse, satisfied that it hadn't anything much more to yield up. The pair looked at a bloody knife.

"You don't think …?" Bodie tried to put it into words.

"… that this could be the knife killer? Well, the weapon's right, the venue's right …"

"… now all we need is a corpse!"

The men smiled at each other, relieved that they hadn't killed an innocent civilian after all and that the Cow couldn't be too cross with them. They had set off to catch a racketeer and had caught a killer instead. Their job often yielded unexpected results.