ONCE HE’D CHARGED BABBINGTON, Rafferty had been ordered by Bradley to get on top of the spate of knife crime in the local area. Bradley had made clear that, like the murder case, he expected this investigation wrapped up before he returned from holiday. As to their murder, it was cut and dried, so no worries there. He dismissed Babbington’s assertion that Curtis would back him up about the bottles, as the desperate struggles of a landed fish.
Rafferty had already directed the team working on the Hunter-York murder to switch their attention to a further round of interviews of the victims of the knife crime. There’d been no witnesses to the three attacks; their assailant had invariably sought out a victim alone on an empty street, and his victims had so far proved incapable of coming up wit
