Kimberley Collins, a blonde teenager, made a distressed call to the North Manchester Division Police Station on October 15th, 2023, at 8:15 a.m. She reported that her mother strangled herself with a rope. It was a crackling and tears-shedding voice that fired Inspector James Johnson off from his black leather chair to the sight of the scene. Before setting off, he told his secretary to photocopy criminal records and arrange the stack of files on his polished table. It was a bright morning; the skies were woolly, similar to an unchastised white garment of baptism, and the trees rustled among the wind, rustling decayed leaves on the wretched earth. Throughout his twenty years as an officer, he hasn’t recorded a suicide case but tonnes of murder, but this matter was strange. On arriving at their brick cottage in Downing Street, Northern Manchester, her two daughters sobbed next to her. Their…
