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when, I can’t really say yet. I suspect Iron Age probably, but I’ll need to take her into the lab. The how is easy; I’ll show you.’
    I followed her under the tarpaulin again and she lowered herself gently into the pit where the body was lying. I knelt at the side and looked down.
    Linda used a small metal rod to tug lightly at something around the corpse’s neck. Peering closely I could see some type of twine tied around her throat and looped at the back around a piece of wood.
    ‘Is that a garrotte?’ I asked.
    ‘Absolutely,’ she said, smiling and blowing at a stray lock of hair which hung in front of her eyes.
    ‘So she was murdered?’
    ‘Executed,’ she corrected. ‘Or sacrificed.’
    ‘What makes you say that?’
    ‘If she is Iron Age, she should have been cremated. As far as we know, they only buried those who were very important, or who had been sacrificed.’
    ‘Why would she be sacrificed?’ I asked.
    ‘Every year, someone would be sacrificed to one of the gods. The god of the bog, the god of the harvest, the god of spring. Much like the ancient Greeks and Romans. You have different gods for different things. Some criminals, instead of being executed, would be sacrificed instead, and would be buried rather than burnt. It would be quite an honour for her, you’d imagine.’
    ‘I’d imagine she might be a little pissed off, actually.’
    ‘The well-being of her whole community depended on her sacrifice, Inspector,’ Linda said with a serious edge to her tone. ‘It would absolve her and her family from her crimes, whatever they were.’
    ‘I understand,’ I said, sorry that I seemed to have offended her. ‘I don’t need to start a murder file, though.’
    ‘Unless you spot a four-thousand-year-old man wandering around, I think you’re fairly free of this one, Inspector.’
    On Sunday, I returned my attention to the more recently deceased. I went to the car-boot sales in Lifford and Letterkenny with a number of uniformed officers to canvass for information about the Chechen’s death. We distributed the flyers I’d had translated to anyone interested and asked them to spread the information. Jim Hendry, my counterpart north of the border, had promised to do likewise around Strabane. Our efforts, however, garnered no further information.
    In the afternoon I went to the large market held on the outskirts of Derry. I stopped at various stalls selling eastern European foodstuffs, but no one was able to help me. As I was making my way along the final stretch of the market, I recognized someone working out of the back of one of the white vans parked against the perimeter fence.
    Pol from the Migrant Workers’ Information Centre was handing bags of toilet rolls to a heavy-set woman. Beside him stood another man, leaning against the side of the van, rolling a cigarette. He was wiry and sharp-featured, with a thin moustache.
    ‘You really are a migrant worker,’ I said to Pol when he was finished serving the woman. He looked at me sharply, as if searching for the insult in what I had said.
    ‘I mean, two jobs,’ I explained. ‘You’ll be putting the rest of us lazy buggers to shame.’
    ‘Work is work,’ he explained. ‘What are you doing here?’
    ‘I’m still looking for information on him,’ I said, handing Pol a flyer. ‘Will you display it on your table?’
    ‘This is my boss, Vinnie,’ he said, gesturing towards the other man. ‘Best ask him.’
    Vincent stepped away from the van and took the leaflet from me.
    ‘What’s he done?’ he asked.
    ‘He’s got himself shot,’ I answered. ‘We need to find his family, if he has one.’
    ‘Any leads?’ Vinnie asked.
    ‘Not a one,’ I replied, suddenly eager to end the conversation.
    Vinnie bit the end of his rolled cigarette and spat on to the ground. ‘We’ll put up the poster and keep an eye out,’ he said.
    The breakthrough, when it came, did so from an unexpected source. I had begun taking panic attacks a while