The plot had housed five Edwardian villas until a few months back when they reached their dwell-by date and were demolished to make way for starter homes. Developers had second thoughts or faltering cash flow. Either way, the site was now an urban eyesore: weed-infested, fly-tipped, dog-shat. Among dust-coated nettles, crumbling house bricks, rusting bike wheels and stinking rubbish, clumps of poppies provided incongruous splashes of colour. As did the white forensic tent erected over a little boy’s body. Though the entire Marston Road site was now ring-taped, an inner cordon marked out a forensically safe corridor to the main action. Or temporary lack of. A subdued five-strong Forensic Science Investigation team stood anything but at ease within the circle, waiting on the gaffer’s nod. Elsewhere on the streets of the estate Operation Swift was in full swing; the inquiry’s tactics had already been thrashed out and its tasks assigned at the brief.
