Murder rarely seems to come on a warm day – and last Monday was a bitterly cold night.

In the fifth murder probe launched since last October, police were called to a quiet cul-de-sac on a Brize Norton development so new the streets haven’t yet been inputted onto Google Maps.

Lock Court is a quiet, fairly normal new-build street.

READ MORE: Brize Norton 'murder' investigation - Pictures from the scene

The houses are red-brick, with porticos above the doors and the shrubs on the garden paths still little more than knee height.

And it was to this quiet street that paramedics and police officers were called – the latter around 10.30pm on Monday.

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A man in his 20s died at the scene. Witnesses reported a disturbance, although a post-mortem is yet to establish the cause of the man’s death.

For the detectives of Thames Valley Police’s Major Crimes Team it is the latest in a series of homicide investigations on their books: in Wallingford, four in Oxford, one near Cumnor, and a seventh in Banbury.

It proved to be a bad week for policing generally – and the Metropolitan Police in particular.

The force failed to kick out rapist David Carrick despite repeated allegations of harassment and assault being reported to the force.

So notorious was he that his colleagues dubbed him ‘b*****d Dave’.

In the wake of the case, the Home Office has ordered all forces to check their staff against national police databases in case anyone has ‘fallen through the net’.

In the Thames Valley, details emerged of one – female – rookie officer (who we can't name after she was granted anonymity by the misconduct panel chairman) who shared appalling racist language on WhatsApp.

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